I’ve been using Twitter for a few months now(*), and I can’t imagine life without it. But I’m still not sure how I’ll want to use it in the long run. I see many people trying to get as many followers as possible and then using it as a glorified marketing tool (similar to RSS or email newsletters). I know ‘me marketing’ is hot, but the longer I think about it I believe these people will eventually kill Twitter. And I’m way too fond of it to let it die without a fight.

The way I see it there are three basic ways to use Twitter.

1. Inner circle only.

This is how I’m doing it right now. I follow a limited number of people, most of whom are either personal friends or Dutch WordPress experts. This keeps the number of incoming messages manageable, and I enjoy reading (and replying to) most of them. I can handle a few more, but I’ll probably never reach triple digits.

2. Broadcasting.

Other people put up a “follow me on Twitter” badge on their blog. And in their email signature. And on a bumper sticker. They have thousands of followers and mostly send out mostly uninteresting messages about their professional efforts. I’m sure there are benefits to being in the spotlight like this, but I’d feel really silly tweeting about what I had for lunch to thousands of total strangers. Getting a large following works best if you’re a celebrity or a well-known expert in your field. If you’re not, there’s options 3.

3. Total mayhem.

Most of the follow email notifications I get now are from users who not only have a huge following, but who also follow thousands of others. Probably because following someone back on Twitter is considered good karma. They expect me to follow them simply because them follow me. And they’ve done this to all their other followers too.

I can only imagine what their update list must look like. How can they possibly keep track of it all? My guess is most of them don’t. They probably don’t read most incoming tweets. They broadcast to their following and probably only read direct replies. And so do most of their ‘friends’. This totally bypasses the social element that makes Twitter fun and will eventually ruin the experience for this type of user. If not for all of us. The number of these type of ‘invites’ seems to be on the increase.

Cheers!

I’m becoming more and more certain that option 1 is right for me. I tweet about WP-Cumulus from time to time, but if you want to know about its development you’re way better off using this blog’s RSS feed. Twitter has been called the social media equivalent of a bar, and I like smaller, more intimate venues best. I might eventually even make my updates private to keep you from listening at the door. This is my inner circle. If you like shouting short messages to a football stadium full of people, be my guest. The arena is down the street.

* = Actually, I signed up once before, in March of 2007, but being an early adopter and trying to keep it ‘inner circle’ was no fun.

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One of the silliest things a blogger can do (imho) is to blog about why you’re not blogging. I’ve had “blogger’s block” now and then, but have always resisted the temptation to write a “I’m still alive” type of post. Until now. Sort of.

Last Thursday, at around nine in the morning, my ADSL connection was disconnected. My modem was unable to reconnect, and when I contacted my ISP I was informed that there were problems with Tele2’s digital TV system that could also affect other services. So I waited for a few hours. But when I phoned them again, those problems had been long fixed. Yet I was still offline.

I took a day or two to get through to a tech support person, and then another couple of days to a knowledgeable one. I guess that’s what you get when you go for the cheapest ADSL provider out there. I was planning to make minced meat out of Tele2’s tech support in my next post, but other than their slow pace they’ve been helpful enough. And since this is the first severe outage since I joined them I really can’t complain (which is too bad really, I really enjoy writing that kind of blog post)

Tomorrow, an engineer from KPN is going to look into what’s wrong. It turns out the actual physical line has issues, so there’s very little Tele2 can do about it, as they simply provide services over lines that KPN maintains.

It’s funny how much my life has been disrupted over the last couple of days. I’ve been unable to reply to blog comments, Twitter has come to a grinding halt for me, and email is piling up. Sorry about all this. I’m not dead. Just offline. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering… I’ll have two separate broadband accounts starting next week. If anything, this has proven I can’t do without my daily dose of online, so I’m going for redundancy.

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I really should ‘egosurf‘ more. It was only because I was testing a seach engine yesterday that I stumbled across this post on ZDNet’s Linux and Open Source blog. In it, Dana Blankenhorn argues that social media make this recession different from previous ones, and that releasing open source software can help advertise your abilities as a media professional. And he does so by taking me as an example.

While it is true that WP-Cumulus has brought me some modest fame in the WordPress community, I wonder why Dana didn’t contact me to confirm some of the details in the story.

Solo career

For one thing, I didn’t become self-employed until 2007, and the decision to ‘go solo’ was entirely voluntary. The article suggests I lost my job, when in fact I chose to start my own business in a relatively comfortable position, with a couple of launching customers and plenty of work.

Another thing I want to correct is that WP-Cumulus has actually brought me very little paid work. A few modified versions here and there, and it might have won a few clients over. But 99% of the people I do work for find me through word of mouth and business networking. All the direct and indirect income generated from WP-Cumulus could perhaps have bought me a nice mid-range laptop. That’s it. For now at least.

It’s been fun to have customers ask me whether I know how to install ‘that really cool 3D tag cloud’ on their blog, but to really make money off open source projects directly, you’d probably need to get into paid support, or offer a paid ‘pro’ version. If you’re using open source software to promote yourself as a professional, make sure you pick the right expertise to display. There’s very little work out there for a 3D flying tags expert .

Social media, open source vs. the recession

Still, Dana’s basic point is correct. You can use open source software to place yourself in the spotlight. And blogging, twittering and social networking can definitely help put you on the map. It allows you to create opportunities for yourself. I guess I’m just not the best example out there.

As for making friends all over the world, that is something that surprised me. I now indeed know people on every continent, and it’s been great fun connecting with these fellow web enthusiasts. Like that one in Atlanta. Guess I’l have to send him a LinkedIn invite and see where that takes us. Here’s to optimism, Dana!

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When the first Eee-PCs were introduced, it was love at first sight for me. I’d been looking for a small, portable device that would let me blog, send email and surf and this seemed to be it. The reason I never got the original 701 was because models with bigger screens were announces even before these 7″ versions actually hit the market. But when I saw the pink 701 on sale last week I couldn’t help getting one for my eldest daughter. It was dirt cheap and she loves it to death.

Great for kids

Judging from the bundled software and the pictures on their website, Asus definitely also targeted these machines at kids. TuxPaint is on there, as well as a couple of educational games. Although somewhat ‘aesthetically challenged’, these programs are truly ideal for kids. TuxPaint especially is quite clearly the result of years of user feedback. It’s got everything that kids want, and for them is the best paint program I’ve come across.

But there are more reasons why the Eee-PC is ideal for kids. It’s ‘their size’, it’s colourful (the pink definitely helped win my daughter over), and it’s very easy to operate. Asus’ special blend of Xandros Linux might be a little too limited for power users like me, but it’s completely ideal for children. The tab-based interface has a ‘favorites’ tab that I used to gather all the programs my daughter uses so she has no trouble at all switching apps and finding her way.

Some room for improvement

Of course there are a few things that could be better. The power adapter didn’t have a euro standard plug, and with the supplied adapter thingy it’s not quite as safe as I would’ve liked. For now the 7″ screen will do perfectly, but eventually I’d also like to teach her how the web works. Most websites are designed for larger screens, so that might prove to be a problem. The 2 GB SSD drive is 80% full with just the default software, but there’s a lot of stuff she’ll never use, so I’m sure I can free up some more space. Also, the model I got (701 2G Surf) doesn’t have a webcam. Ruby loves Skype, so we’ll probably have to get her an external one.

Another problem is that the OS comes in English and Chinese only. Currently, my little girl doesn’t really read anything on the screen, but she will at some point. At that point I’ll probably look into upgrading to Ubuntu or enabling Xandros’ full desktop mode.

The machine came with Skype 1.4 installed, but that doesn’t even do video. I went to the add/remove software application expecting to be able to download updates, but I couldn’t. This utility is essentially a package manager which you can use to get ‘officially supported’ software for the Eee-PC. Unfortunately, it offers only one single download, a BIOS update. It looks like Asus has been so busy milking the Eee brand they forgot to post more software. There are plenty of tutorials out there on how to upgrade Skype anyway, and it’s not very difficult. But for a machine named ‘Eee’, where all three for those ‘e’s stands for easy you’d think Asus would make this well… easier.

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Somebody once told be that whatever you do as a multimedia designer, you should always ’shine’. By which he meant exposing your work to an audience as much as you can, and enjoying the feedback. That’s why I’m not going to hide it, I love being included in ‘top somethingsomething’ lists. Especially when the other people on said list are people I admire very much.

My blog currently ranks very high on Technorati (#18 on the day of this post), but I think this list is far more relevant. Apparently, I’m the #53 WordPress plugin developer. Largely thanks to WP-Cumulus’ download counter which is well over 50k. Thanks!

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I’ve been pretty happy with my ISP, Tele2, for a few years now. They’re cheap and the connection has been both speedy and reliable. Unfortunately, their DNS server has been causing issues for me lately, so I decided to drop their support desk an email. I got a very kind reply which basically said they did not have any information about their own name server, and could not answer questions about it. Fair enough. It was a very technical issue, so I asked them to forward my question to a system administrator. The reply I got was a carbon copy of the first one. They simply will not answer my question or investigate my issue.

It’s like buying a car and having the salesman tell you that it comes with a full warranty, except for the engine, which they know nothing about and cannot possibly fix. A DNS server is a crucial component of an ISP’s service. Without it you can’t surf the web. Tele2 runs mine, so I have no-one else to direct my questions at.

Now I know that opting for a price-fighter ISP isn’t going to buy me the very best in tech support. But up until now I’ve had no issues, and it’s not that they take a long time to answer questions. It’s that they do not answer them at all. At least not the harder ones.

I guess I’ll have to rely on community support for this one… Anyone else having trouble with Tele2’s DNS being very slow in catching up with changes made to domains?

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When visiting family last week, the conversation turned to Sudoku puzzles and how to solve them through software (I know, it’s sad ). My initial impression was that it shouldn’t be too hard to write a program that fills in the missing numbers but, as so often, I now stand corrected.

My first attempt was to write a program that does the following:

1. Pick a 3×3 box of numbers
2. See which numbers are missing
3. For each of these, check the number of possible positions
4. If it fits in only one position, fill it in

While this worked for some Sudokus I soon realized I needed to also pick columns and rows in step 1. That helped. It then worked great on easy to medium puzzles but failed for Sudokus that require some thinking ahead. Determined I wasn’t going to write a chess-like program, I was just about give up when I realized that instead of checking for a single possible position, I could do educated guesses with numbers that fit in two spots. So this is what the current version does.

1. Pick a 3×3 box, column of row
2. See which numbers are missing in those 9 positions
3. For each of these, check the number of possible positions
4. If it fits in only one position, fill it in
5. If that does not happen for a reasonable period of time, go into guessing mode and guess a number with two possible position
6. If the process stalls again, delete all uncertain numbers and go back to step 5

This is how a third incarnation of my little Flash movie came to be, and it now solves pretty much all of the Sudokus I found online, labelled as ‘hard’ or ‘very hard’. As an application it’s still a little rough around the edges. You should see this as more of a proof of concept kind of thing. It is also built so you can see the progress and for low CPU utilization, it’s not at all optimized for speed. Therefore, it can take quite some time to solve difficult puzzles. Nevertheless, if you feel like playing with it, please feel free:

Black numbers are given, blue ones are deduced through logic, red ones are guessed and gray ones are results based on those guesses. Please do not try to edit the puzzle whilst solving, that will almost certainly result in weird behavior.

I realize there are tons of Sudoku solvers out there, almost all of which are better than mine. Please keep in mind that I made this because I wanted to see not if it could be done but whether or not I could do it…

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Some bloggers have wondered whether the netbook hype that’s currently going on will popularize Linux among (former) Windows users. For me personally, I can aswer that question with a firm ‘yes’. Not only did I opt to install Ubuntu on my netbook, I’ve also set it up on my ‘TV-PC’.

I have a little HP e-PC hooked up to my LCD television. Even though its an older machine and quite slow compared to most true HTPCs, it does allow me to watch movies and surf the web whilst being a couch potato. It was running XP until today, which worked OK but had a few issues. Most importantly, I couldn’t set the desktop resolution to anything over 1024*768. The integrated Intel graphics should be able to run higher resolutions, but the driver wouldn’t budge. I even read somewhere that my TV reports the 1024 as its maximum resolution through ‘plug & play’. All the more surprising then that it booted into 1360*768 straight away when I popped in an Ubuntu 8.04 CD. The optimum for my TV. Right off the bat.

Ubuntu’s slightly bigger default fonts are very easy to read, whereas XP required some squinting. I don’t use this machine every day, so not having to run tons upgrades and get the latest virus definitions when I do is also pretty nice. Like with my netbook I do not need it to run applications like Photoshop and Flash, which aren’t available for Linux. For everything else, I’m starting to like Ubuntu more and more.

One small problem I have with my current setup is that there does not appear to be a Bittorrent client for Ubuntu that supports auto-shutdown. I quite like the idea that when my downloads are finished, the computer shuts down automatically. No need to further waste energy until I’m back to the keyboard to shut it down. The very nature of Linux, the way it handles sessions and security, might be preventing this, but it still would be a good feature to have.

I hope netbooks will help get users to at least try Linux. Asus’ choice of (the slightly awkward imho) Xandros is a little unfortunate, but with other companies embracing Ubuntu it might just happen. I for one now have two machines with a valid Windows license sticker on them that do not run Windows. My Vista workstation is now officially outnumbered. Ubuntu 2, Windows 1.

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As you may know from previous posts, I’m not really a Mac zealot. In fact I’ve never owned an Apple computer myself. I have used them at work, and I’ve always liked having them around just for the sake of competition. It actually was an Apple IIc that got me ‘into’ computers. When I was eleven, a friend of mine’s dad had one and we taught ourselfs Basic just so we could write little games and apps to play with. Fond memories indeed.

Asides from the obviously superior design of some Macs, I just feel there’s little to lure me there. OSX annoys me at least as much as Vista does (which is not much btw), and since the innards are identical nowadays I see no reason for me to switch. Especially not when Apple itself, the company I mean, is bugging the hell out of me.

App Store controversy

It was one thing to stereotype PCs in those terribly unfair “Hi, I’m a PC” commercials, but its the way they’re managing the iPhone’s App Store that’s really making my neck hairs stand on end. Ryan Block of Engadget has written a brilliant post about the many ways in which Apple is screwing (potential) iPhone application developers. Basically, they can kill your app at any time, and without a proper reason. And there’s an NDA keeping you from talking about it if that happens. Ouch. Required reading for every Apple user imho.

Uh oh, a keynote speech

Apple also has a tendency to screw loyal customers by selling them a product one day and then, without warning, introducing its vastly superior successor the very next day. I know at least two people who bought a dual G5 rig that cost more than my car weeks before Apple announced the switch to Intel processors. Remember how they tried to convince us those were slow in the ’snail’ commercials? Funny thing how the Intel Macs were touted as being twice as fast…

Gotte love ‘em. right?

I guess that ‘gotta’ part is the most important thing keeping me from switching to Mac. Everybody keeps telling me I should. Fanatically an frequently. With more passion than a mere tool should invoke imho. And I don’t like being told what to do. I like to think differently. I like openness. I like to make up my own mind. I guess I’ll be getting that Android phone to go with my Windows PC. Call me a rebel…

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For as long as I remember, WordPress has had the option to send an automatic email to the admin whenever someone posts a comment. I used to have that option enabled. I love responding to comments right away. It helps keep discussions alive and it helps to keep you blog clean of any spam that might slip through Akismet. With the succes of WP-Cumulus however, the volume of comments has been increasing steadily, and I’ve had to disable comment notification.

For every new email I get, my Nabaztag rabbit’s lights flash, my Google Talk icon changes, and I get a notification box in the lower corner of my screen. When I’m working, that can be quite distracting. In fact, these signals are meant to distract me. Sometimes there’s important business to take care of, and as a freelancer I need to reply to some emails asap. Most comments however do not fall into that category.

So, are you using email notification for your blog’s comments? What made you decide to turn it off (or on)? Any tips for keeping tabs on your comments in a less intrusive way?

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