Global Dashboards of Everything

August 25th, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

 

Planet example

Planet example (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

So, everyone is talking about a balloon accident lately, but my Blogspire sent me a version of the report that blew my mind – hungarian project that maps all emergency events on the planet, from major traffic accidents to fly-by-objects.

Here is an example:

 

Vehicle Accident – Europe – Slovenia

EDIS Number: VI-20120823-36303-SVN Date / time: 23/08/2012 14:30:44 [UTC] Event: Vehicle Accident Area: Europe Country: Slovenia State/County: Capital City Location: [About 6 miles south of Ljubljana] Number of Deads: 4 person(s) Number of Injured: 28 person(s) Number of Infected: N/A Number of Missing: N/A Number of Affected:…

via: hisz.rsoe.hu

 

and they have another project, mapping all grobal warming events.

 

Both of them are a great addition to a growing list of real-time global dashboards of differenti aspects of the Planet. I’ve been collecting them for a while now, and it seems it’s time to create a dedicated page for them.

 

 

Please feel free to submit any dashboard you know of that I’ve missed in the comments. 

 

 

 

Iceland the First Internet Enterprise Zone

May 23rd, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

iceland

iceland (Photo credit: osmium)

Iceland the First Internet Enterprise Zone

Iceland has a unique opportunity to lead the world by defining a Internet Enterprise Zone, Brad Burnham of Union Square Ventures defined this term to me while he was in Iceland. What do we mean by this IEZ? We mean a Policy framework focused on allowing innovation in the Internet space.

via: blog.startupiceland.com

I recently visited Iceland (again) and had a privilege to meet some of young entrepreneurs there. The amount of startups and interest in
entrepreneurship is amazing, specially if you consider that the whole country is the size of Ljubljana, Slovenia Capital.

The locals told me that the financial crisis hit everyday people pretty badly, specially because they actually weren’t doing anything wrong –
normal people were as scrappy as you’d expect from a scandinavian. They have also been very resourceful throughout history, probably a result of
harsh weather and soil conditions.

Oh, and every citizen has Facebook profile, which makes them super efficient at forming a new constitution. The rest of us should observe and learn.

Bicoastal Approach to Engineering

March 20th, 2012 § 2 comments § permalink

thumb|right|230px|Comparison photo; June 2004 ...

Image via Wikipedia

this is incredibly important – how to keep two parts of remote organization connected:

Foursquare Tries a Bicoastal Approach to Engineering

Some companies are almost entirely virtual, like blog host Automattic. Others grow through acquisitions, like what Groupon is doing in the Bay Area – piecing together a tech team thousands of miles from its Chicago headquarters. Another strategy is to build strategic outposts, like Facebook’s new engineering office in New York.

We need this to understand how you use our service - you can take it out if you like. Cheers, your Blogspire team.

via: allthingsd.com

we are doing many things in a similar way over at Zemanta.

Since our Ljubljana office is much larger than NY one, we only have a big screen in Ljubljana, but as soon as we set that up, everybody started using it for cross-ocean meeting. I’m actually thinking we will need a second one soon. we’ve learned that sound quality is much more important than anything though.

ever since our NY office was just one person, I insisted on making weekly check-in meetings with everyone. it has grown to be a well-self-moderated debrief from both sides. it turned out that on every meeting several people are dialing in, because they are traveling, sick, or just work remotely. point being: don’t make it an excuse for not having a meeting, embrace the remoteness.

and travel – we realized that US and EU cultures are so much different, that it’s essential for everyone to get to know the other. so we do 1 or 2 all-company weeks per year, where everyone from US comes to work from Ljubljana (and more than just work of course). at the same time, there is almost always someone of the developers working from NY office, just for the kicks of it.

and despite all these efforts, quite often a mediation is required, because people assume the other person is thinking about something else.

you might recall the Sunscreen verse: “Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle” – well, it’s true for the people you work with, not just friends.

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Calypso Cases

February 15th, 2012 § Comments Off on Calypso Cases § permalink

Didn’t get a chance to write about them earlier, but this Ljubljana-based company is truly amazing.

the little case you see on the picture bellow – it’s made of 17 different parts and materials. I was privileged to see the drawer with all the variations they’ve built for testing purposes – 3 feet long row of cases of all shapes and sizes, with one common denominator: they all fit the phone perfectly, and they are all without a sew.

Calypso Cases

I’ve been heavily testing (read: beating up) a new Calypso Case for more than a month and it’s easy to say simply put, I’m impressed. Based in Ljubljana, Slovenia the founders are hand making iPhone 4 cases which are simply perfect in fit, function and design. They’re made of conite, titanium, leather and specially designed microfabrics.

We need this to understand how you use our service - you can take it out if you like. Cheers, your Blogspire team.

via: joshspear.com

great work guys!

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Missunderstood

April 6th, 2011 § Comments Off on Missunderstood § permalink

Have a Very Bokeh Christmas

While wandering around Ljubljana yesterday, I met two friends from previous lives. While briefly catching up, they’ve asked me two very interesting questions, that made me realize two important points about my current life and how it’s different from other segments of Slovenian reality.

A friend from academia, professor, has asked me what is it again that we are doing, “something web right, I mean, I’m guessing you’re doing everything by now…” She was assuming that a successful company must be expanding the portfolio, rather than be successful in one niche. Kind of old school, but predominant assumption in our society.

A friend from NGO, now freelance designer, has asked me “so you guys are still focused? Is it hard to keep working on just one thing?” My answer was “it’s hard, but it makes sense to focus”. His question was excellent, to the point, and surprisingly nobody asked me this ever before. And it neatly expressed the modus operandi of the freelance crowd over here – be overwhelmed by projects, doesn’t matter if you finish them really.

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Press Conference

September 21st, 2010 § Comments Off on Press Conference § permalink

Water mass bodies of the Southern Ocean
Image via Wikipedia

Press conferences and press releases are not about visibility or marketing, but about setting the record straight.

Sadly many marketing people and their bosses don’t understand that and journalists are left alone in finding only the relevant information in the information noise that is being thrown at them every day. And even more sad, lot’s of them don’t know that anymore as well and think that what used to be ‘reporting’ is just a game of swimming in the attention flow, and see their role in it an equivalent of eddies in the stream that ensure only the strongest survive.

I realized this recently when after long time again I read about a proper ‘use case‘ of press conference. It was held by Ljubljana nursery hospital, where they recently found one nurse infected with tuberculosis. And the press went wild, writing a lot of guesswork, opinions, catchy headlines. Stirring the waters without serious reporting really. Of course the public was worried, and after a few days even scared.

And then the director of the hospital held the conference and explained that they have everything under control, that tuberculosis is far from being  dangerous these days, that it’s routinely curable, not very contagious, and that everybody should just go home and let the medics to their job. I believe this was an example of a properly used press conference, well prepared and timely.

Now of  course there are other types of situations in which a press release and/or conference are properly used, but I wanted to use this one to illustrate the difference between news and gossip, reporting and writing, traditional and contemporary media (not new).

Wouldn’t it be great if ‘journalists’ would do their job in the first place, including the old ‘three-sources’ story verification, and tell the public that they don’t have to worry and should focus on the relevant issues.

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