Archive for May, 2009

Everyon is talking about it, Panic!—the developers of Coda, Transmit and some other cool Mac Apps—are doing a 3 day (27th till 29th Mai) 50% off, with an awesome Video Promotion.

I had no idea code could ever be this beautiful.

~ Michael Mistretta

I used coda for quiet some time and already owned a license, but what I didn’t knew was that code in Coda could even look cooler as it already did, till Michael Mistretta asked for it. Now I’m completely hooked by this new color sheme provided by joebergantine.com called ‘seestyle‘ just looks awesome!

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What I think about the Sense of Twitter

Web | Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

I’m using Twitter now a little more than 1 year (exactly 459 days, if my stats are correct), I’m about to send the 1400 tweet out, as of right now, I have 70 followers and am following 34 people. But what’s it about twitter? My view, why so many people are using Twitter and my way of using Twitter.

Like I already wrote in my last Tuesday Post, I recently cut back on Twitter usage. I unfollowed many people and now read every tweet which arrives in my twitter Inbox also called my timeline. But why are so many people following way to many people? Just for the big numbers of followers? I don not think that Twitter is just about followers! As you may see if you visit my Twitter account, I’m just following 34 people. And I read all of their tweets! That as a result meant for me to unfollow some big twitterers, some not so big. In the end it came down to this 34 I’m following right now. That number is constantly changing, it may be 33 tomorrow or 35 who knows? The thing is who I’m following.

The last time I scanned though the people I follow to find out whom I may unfollow was when I was about to get more stress at school plus the fact that I switched the Twitter Client—I’m now using Tweeti. But how did I decided whom to unfollow? For me I decided to unfollow big accounts which were posting a huge load of tweets per day. For Example @garyvee or @kevinrose. These are just two and I have to admit that these are two who are very interesting persons from around the web but for me they didn’t provide relevant content in their tweets. Gary Vaynerchuck (alias @garyvee) posts much more relevant video posts at his website garyvaynerchuk.com and Kevin Rose does the weekly Diggnation which is also very informative and worth watching. Even though they have several thousand followers and post many times a day, I continued to not read their tweets and just overlooked them.

I needed to get rid of this tweets which I never read. I needed to lower the amount of time which I needed to skim through my timeline for more relevant stuff, like learning for school especially in the last weeks before my final exams! Just like my RSS Reader needed to be cleaned up. But who is worth following is Twitter even worth using? In the end it came down that Twitter definitely is worth using! But it needs to get used wisely. I’m just following people who are interesting for me, who post relevant tweets and are personal at their twitter profiles. And I really don’t like it if a person posts to many times per day cause I just do not have the time to read all that stuff!

In my eyes Twitter is not about the number of followers nor about how many people I’m following. It’s about whom to follow and what to tweet!

Quick Note About this Post

Even though, I was about to publish this post, reread it and checked the links. You may notice that I’m again following @kevinrose. The reason for that is simple. I checked the link, read the last tweets and noticed that they are more interesting than I thought last time I deleted him from my followers list. Let’s see if he’s worth following.

The Spectrum of online Friendshp

The Spectrum of online Friendshp

~ via Chris Bowler

Very interesting chart and I think a pretty good view.

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Stress and what I do to come over it

Organization | Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

At the moment there is a time I have more stress as normally and I’m not expecting the stress to get less over the next 6 weeks. Most it is according to my school’s final tests at the end of this 6 weeks and some other school projects which are due to the 25th of May. This stress lead to some thoughts about my time management.

One first thought was if I need to cut down from two posts per week down to just one per week. Till now I am willing to try to stick to that schedule. The main reason for that is that I need to come over problems. If I have a steady job, I can’t just say that I have no time to get the job done, it just needs to get done. I don’t see this blog as a job but as a opportunity, like I already wrote, for improving my writing and english. And one second reason is that these times full of stress train me at self discipline and force me into a stage were I need to rethink some habits.

For example I had to rethink my time spend daily with reading Twitter and skimming my rss-reader. Twitter is great to stay informed about different topics and different persons, weather the persons around you in real life or just random people from around the web. I had somewhat about 60 people I followed and that was OK as long as I used TweetDeck for my twitter client cause it has the ability to organize people in groups and that gave me the chance to focus on one particular group of people I’m really interested in. Doing that I noticed that I never read the tweets of many people I followed, just because they were not that relevant to me. The logical result was that I unfollowed about half the people I was following at the time. These people were mainly people who are very popular or write way to many tweets per day so that they didn’t post anything I would like to read, rather than replies to people asking questions which don’t interst me. Now I just follow about 35 people and since I use Tweetie I read all messages this people send out.

But maybe one relevant aspect of unfollowing these people: It was not about the people themselves. It was about what I’m interested in. Most of these people write blogs and if they write relevant posts, I’m still reading their blog/rss but many just do not post relevant tweets.

But what is it about the RSS-Reader? I tended to read as much as possible just to stay on top of the happenings. These habit also had to be rethought. Reading about 100 rss-freeds I needed to get rid of some. In the end I got the count down to 69 feeds. The once I deleted were mostly Tutorial like blogs which posted one or two tutorials per day. The problem was that I don’t have the time to get through this massive load of tutorials to do them and to learn the stuff they would like teach me. My decision was that I’m going to check these sites once in a while to see if there was any interesting tutorial and may do that but not in times which are as stressful as the once right now.

One foot note: This post was written in a state of stress and no time, so it’s greatly possible that the decisions I took were wrong or not the best but they worked — and may work in the future — for me. I get a little relaxed and can focus on the main points which need to get ready in time.

Twitter is a great thing / social-network and on it’s way to mainstream at the time. It’s a great tool to stay informed and to get information about all kinds of stuff. Some people even call the search.twitter.com somehow valuabler than Google Search.

Maybe I’m wrong about that but is it really needed to get all information out at Twitter? One great example of what some people are doing is this video of Dan who took his tweets to the streets.

That’s just one bad thing about twitter one other is the fact that you can spend hours at twitter and do really nothing productive!

Is that really the way we want to use Twitter? If you want, check out what I’m writing at twitter by following me.

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English improving besides School

Personal | Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

Some time ago I wrote about the reason ‘Why I write English‘ here at this blog. Now I want to go a little deeper, about the way I’m training my english besides writing this blog. One thing to start with, it’s definitely not just school!

Actually my opinion is that school’s good for the basics but the german schooling system for languages is definitely no more than for basics. I started to learn english at school at the age of nine and since than I had no single year without english. But as far I can tell, my knowledge was little till I stared some training by my self. My main intention was to get better in speaking and understanding. School manly teaches how to write and how to read. Not even that! Manly they teach vocabulary and grammar.

My way of learning English started with watching movies in German. Some of them were so good that I watched them so often that they got boring cause I was able to switch the sound of and tell what the actors were saying. Someday I thought about simply watching the movie in English. Told, done! Sometimes it was hard and in the beginnings I had to turn on the subtitles.

Since than I’m watching movies manly in English — if possible, friends of mine don’t like to watch movies in English so I have to watch them in German with them. One thing I didn’t liked about watching the movies in English were the subtitles, I tended to just read the subtitles and no more actually watch the movie. Someday I just switched them off, to prevent just reading and no more watching and if I wasn’t able to understand a speech, sentence or conversation, I rewinded and listened again with subtitles and switched them off after the conversation or speech was over.

Since some years now I’m able to watch movies in English without any subtitles and without any problems. But not just watching movies in English made my English improve I also started reading books in English. Some funny fact — I’ve never been someone who read much and I’m still not a book worm but if I read a book in English it’s most likely to hook me. One of the books I first read in English was ‘Into The Wild’ by Jon Krakauer’ which I read after watching the gorgeous movie. Besides reading books I’m reading many blogs — mainly English once — my MacBook OS language, keyboard layout and mobile phone’s language is set to be English.

I’m sure that this factors are responsible for my improvements in the English language — not just school. Again, schools OK for the basics but the use of a language just can’t be taught with the methods used by the German school system. I’m happy that I’m able to understand nearly everything and am for sure going on improving my english skills. All I can say and what proves that my way is right, is that my marks have improved since I’m learning English the way I learn it. And I just can give you the tip: if you struggle with learning languages, get it into your day, watch news, read books or write a diary.

I’m still not perfect and may never be perfect in speaking, writing, reading or understanding English but I’m training to do the I can!

And one thing is for sure — English is the language I’m — maybe most people at this planet — going to need most in my life!

If you keep your application’s settings in the Settings application on iPhone, your users have to go out of their way to change how something works.

~ Louie Mantia read at JORGE QUINTEROS

I think different about this. I’d prefer it if Mac OS X would have the ability (and every mac-developer would do it that way) to store the settings in one centered Settings App. But not that you have to quit the app to change the settings but that in the app it self — like is now — still remains the menu point ‘Preferences’ which directly links to the settings specific to this app.

I think that would be a great way to simplify some things, and come over this problem. Just one button to change the settings inside the app but still the ability to change them via the Settings App.

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Why I left many Social-Networks

Organization, Web | Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

Some weeks ago I decided that I wanted to get rid of some of the social-networks I was registered in. This is why and how I changed my use of social-networks.

My problem was that I tended to register an account at each and every social-network I was able to find, just to protect my nickname and / or to test what the network was all about. Till I hit a point where I started to think about why I have all this different social-networks? That was when I decided that something needed to change. What I did was that I created a MindMap of all the networks I was registered at and thought about the reasons, why I registered there. Moving the different networks around I decided which to use active, which to stay registered and not use actively and most important to delete! In the end I got a massive load of networks to delete.

There are some different reasons I decided to delete some networks, some of which were:

  • that I had most people in two ore more different networks at a time
  • the network had no value to me
  • the network is not international

Maybe I’m wrong about this. I now some people who told me that it’s important to be in each and every network, in as many as possible, just to get your name out there. Maybe that’s right but if it is, I decided against that. Why? I think it’s not important to be in as many places as possible to meat the right people. It’s much more important to be at the right place at the right time with the right people. Maybe I decided against the ‘best places’ but for me the places I’m still at are the once which provide valuable to me.

One question I got a lot in the past weeks was why I deleted all my accounts at local networks which concentrate on German / European people. My answer to that is that nearly all people I had there as contacts are registered in at least one international network where I’m too which makes the local network somehow senseless. I’m an international person, I’m interested in what happens all over the world, I’m not really interested what happens locally and if something crucial happens I hear about it thought the people registered at the international networks. Local networks — in my eyes — are some kind of limit.

Maybe some of you think differently about this but for me it meant that I now am registered at social-networks of value to me. Spend less time in the once which didn’t meant anything to me and have more time for things I love to do — somehow that was a GTD decision but I’m feeling better and that is what counts.

We had an idea. Go to a place. Ask fifty people the same question. Film their responses.

~ Fifty People One Question

The idea of asking as many people as possible, the same question is great. I do not know if I would have asked the same question but the idea is awesome!

We’ve asked two questions and received thirteen hundred and eighty-five responses from seven hundred and thirty-one cities.

~ Fifty People One Question

They took the project to an extend, by asking more and more people at more different places. One project which is totally awesome and I hope it will stay for a while!

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