A good song before the week starts

HERE
Serving suggestions: put on warm socks, get a cup of hot chocolate, snuggle up on the couch next to that person, push the tips of your toes underneath the old pj, let the shoulder touch the shoulder and then ignore the constant typing and focus on the lyrics :-)
(sorry cannot embed and this is the best version I found)

My no.1 reason why 2009 IS going to be a better year

Online piracy

I have been reading a couple of things about (illegal) downloads (among which Lessig's Free Culture from dailylit.com) and talking to a bunch of friends about (illegal) downloads. I am a constant and heavy user of peer to peer and torrents and have absolutely no qualms about using Vuze to get any movies or music I need from the Internet. I play everything on my iPod. So to me the concept of DRM and copyright is pretty lax simply because I find Internet has challenged ownership to a significant degree and it is not Internet who needs to "change" the way in which it operates but we need to reconsider the way we share and own.
But I am less equipped to express this so I was excited to come across a book by Cory Doctorow (google him, you'll find out soon enough he's worth it) which he prefaced with some thoughts about sharing in the age of Internet. The book is "Little Brother", it's free - you can get it from here - and has a cool story about another favorite of mine, Neil Gaiman, who, when asked about people sharing his books, replied by saying that he had never discovered an author he liked by going and buying a book but mostly from books shared from his friends. Following on that point, Cory goes on to say that for an author getting awareness is more important than forcing sales.
Have a look at the download info and the preface because they are true eye-openers.

... (2)

Last year I was writing this as my 2008 resolutions:

"1. go to bed everyday feeling like i have done one thing right
2. give more attention to the people who matter and less to the things that do not
3. turn my blog (and my profession) from just planning to communication design (thanks you know who for all the advice)
4. figure out how to buy, accommodate and raise a dog
5. draw a huge mural on my bathroom wall"

In retrospect, these may have been a bit too general and thus make me unaccountable to myself for doing them or not. Objectively, I think I may have achieved no.1 by about 76%, no. 2 by about 20% - meaning, I missed utterly on doing that one, and completely coped out on no.5. I do think that I am happier professionally and have grown, which makes 3 an almost hit. I did do all the research and preparations implied in no.4 although I did not get the dog which means that technically I have completed no.4 but actually I missed out on the core.

So, for 2009 I am being more specific...a lot more. Here goes:
1. Get a second tattoo, my beagle and spotless bathroom tiling
2. Spend at least one week every quarter in another country (a new one)
3. Make a meaningful commitment to a person: friend, lover, pen pal, hobby partner, whatever.
4. Create a time-plan for my mom and dad (moving, new house, retirement)
5. Keep the business afloat.
6. Re-cultivate my planning roots.
7. Work out a solution for my blog/s – how many, in what language, what for.
8. Learn or teach myself something new ( and be good at it)

so, there, that should make for easier evaluation next year. Wish me luck and if someone feels like this is a good tag for 2009, take it away and be specific :-)

:-)

pic via

Their people are smarter than ours

Not because they said Apple was right but simply because I would never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever (okay you get the point) expect our own advertising regulatory body to say something like this:
"We considered that people would understand [the ad] to mean viruses that infected Windows based PCs would not infect Macs and that Macs were less likely to be infected by viruses than those PCs; not that Macs would never be infected by viruses and did not require virus protection. ... We concluded therefore that the ad was not irresponsible or likely to mislead." Not after I personally have heard such abnormities (invented word, I know) like "the ad tells people to buy this products and this is against the law", "the ad targets kids because it has kids in it", "the ad speaks about the product in a warm way" ...

full story here

Flickr-ing

For a while now, I have been toying with a different way of browsing the Internet. I don't read my feeds, I don't google, instead I flickr...I simply search different words on flickr and see what comes up and from there I move on to actual bits of information. I find that people place on flickr not only visual aids for written text but also actual replacements for text, collages of information, screen crops of interesting trivia.
For instance, searching for "facebook" gives you a lot of profiles, but also a lot of information about app overload, anti-facebook philosophies, facebook weirdness, etc etc. Try it. You may find it more inspiring than regular browsing.

Three memories

I am trying to not put in the context of what is happening today, or everyday for that matter. That is why I only took pics of one and will maybe post it here later. but so far, from this holiday I take away with me:
- walking home from a dinner and looking at my block of flats with its over 200 windows and seeing just ONE window lit up with xmas lights (last year it was blinding, filled with the gaudiest of garlands and decorations)
- an oversized Bugs Bunny doll ( probably as tall as I am, and I'm 6'1) sitting in a seat on the Underground. I saw it going to and later that evening saw it coming back from a friend's place, always in the same seat, like it was waiting for someone
- a chimney sweep, with a huge black hat and red shoes hitchhiking from Deva to somewhere.
:-)

The age of free - today LITERATURE

I just came across this interesting new website called dailylit.com. It's basically a site that serves you installments of the books you choose by e-mail or rss. I have subscribed to get stuff via e-mail and I am currently reading Lawrence Lessing's Free Culture. I have browsed their library which is not extensive but for those who have been unable to go through the classics of world lit and some of the best known modernists, it's not too bad. Some of the books are free, some are subject to a fee but overall seems like a brilliant idea.

will keep you posted

Enterprise IT and its demise

This is Lee Bryant talking about the best way to use IT within corporations. Interesting take on how IT within corporations (as opposed to what people use when they are at home) is limiting staff's creativity and performance. Unfortunately the code for the player is broken so i cannot embed it here but you can watch it on the reboot site here. Start watching about minute 12, bit too theoretical till then (basically about different ways of encoding progress)
Also some more talks by the guy on the same topic here (including one with a case study)

Update to previous

While checking out the reboot copenhagen website here, I can accross a wiki style "free" forum where someone tellingly filled in FREE (FROM) THOUGHT - free FROM thought... LOL

what freaks me out about Facebook

is not the intesity with which it has caught on, nor the intensity with which people use it for a variety of reasons, from "uploading" pics to saying yes and sending off the weirdest of apps. Mind you, these are people I would never have pegged for "the type" - I mean, like me, addictive and unable to defocus from wanting to know if someone commented on my status or what new stuff my "friends" have up there. These are people who have a life outside Internet, who travel, have not developped "Internet humps" [ in case you are not familiar with the term, this is a slight curvature of the upper body caused by overusing your laptop while sitting upright in bed or on the sofa]. So, as I said, the fact that even "normal" people have begun to "share" more with Facebook is really no problem for me - it seems normal. What freaks me out though is the sheer corectness with which Facebook chronicles people's intimate lives via their status updates.

"x xulescu is no longer listed as single" "m mulescu has changed her status to in a relationship" "d dinulescu is now listed as in a relationship and it's complicated". While twitter, as I was writing a while back, requires some introspection to unravel the signs of intimacy, Facebook is, as its name becons, a face value book of private lives. A quick run through my homepage today and I realized that a couple of my friends have gotten back together, a couple broken up, some of them had actually been dating each other.

I love Internet, I think it is a great tool for keeping in touch, linking, finding out useful stuff or simply whiling away time, but sometimes the load of data about other people's lives, combinated with a natural inquisitive nature, is simply overwhelming. and sometimes irrelevant. and sometimes tiresome.

pic via