Thord D. Hedengren

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Month: December 2012

  • The Power That Is Possibilities

    In my hands is a portable machine that lets me create just about anything. Maybe I’ll refine it, maybe I’ll tweak it, maybe I’ll trash it, but the possibilities are there.

    So are the distractions and hence I’m thinking a lot about what all the noise is giving me. Do I need to be this available online get the most out of Twitter and Facebook? Can I disconnect for a week/month/year and still live on?

    Of course I can, and so can you.

    Through sweat and wine, these last days if the year 2012, I ponder the future of social media and online sharing, and what it means in terms of investment. Communication is always the center of anything, but it should be on our individual terms and not some predestined This Is How You Do It ruleset. I wonder if that’s how I’m living today. Am I communicating, playing around for fun, or am I just procrastinating because it is too hard to get real work done all the time? And if that is true, is it good or bad that I’m doing what I’m doing?

    I’m not sure, I have an inkling, but I’m not sure just yet.

    What about you? What are you doing with the power that is Possibilities today? It is worth considering.

  • Traveling

    Traveling. It is such a bore when done during the Holidays, capital H. People everywhere, noisy and sometimes utterly unbeknownst of how they bother their fellow travelers. Luggage are getting in the way, and all those bags of Christmas present at that. I ventured into the second class carriage and it was even worse, as it usually is. I’m just glad I didn’t plan on getting any work done on this trip.

    I’m writing this on my iPad mini. It works well enough, and since the device is so small the lack of proper table space isn’t an issue. It is hunt and peck typing though, but it is better than sitting cramped over a laptop. Although to be honest, I’m just too lazy to bring out my 11″ Macbook Air that sits in my bag in the compartment above my seat.

    I used to be able to get a work done traveling by train, which is my means of transportation right now. By air is impossible for me, always has been, but trains usually offer more room for this sort of thing. These days I’m so worked down to the bone that trains have gone from an opportunity of getting some work, usually writing, done, to a chance to catch up on sleep. I’m 40 minutes from my destination and aside some texts, this is the only thing I’ve written today. I have slept for three hours straight though, after a nice reading session, so there’s that.

    I’ll spend the Holidays (still capital H) resting up. The new year kicks off with a busy writing and editing schedule, I’m even starting two weeks behind which is far from ideal but that’s the way it is. Reloading my batteries is more important than the minor work I could squeeze in the coming week.

    That includes this site, by the way. Don’t expect any updates until next year.

    I bid you a great Holiday, no matter what and how or even if you celebrate it, and a Happy New Year at that. Let’s talk soon.

  • Om tillit och öppen källkod

    Apropå en (förhoppningsvis avslutad) diskussion på Facebook så tog jag mig i kragen och skrev klart posten Lack Of Trust och publicerade den på TDH.me i går kväll. Den behandlar tilliten till varandra inom öppen källkodsprojekt, ett ämne jag rört tidigare i en omdebatterad krönika.

    Jag skriver, i Lack Of Trust, bland annat så här:

    The members of an open source community need to trust each other. It takes all kinds to make a community, not just a small core group of brilliant minds. No question is too stupid, no problem is too small, no suggestion is too trivial, et cetera.

    It really is a matter of trust, because the next time someone isn’t meeting the launch date, everyone need to trust that there’s a good reason for the delay.

    Risken med projekt där folk lägger ned sin fritid, och inte sällan sin själ, är att de tröttnar. Det är ett allvarligt problem, för så fort ett öppen källkodsprojekt får negativa vibbar så går viljan att vara delaktig med, dels från befintligt engagerade, och dels från potentiella nytillskott.

    Läs hela posten Lack Of Trust här.

     

  • Lack Of Trust

    Open source communities are built on people volunteering time and knowledge to something they want to support. This isn’t always without friction. Sometimes users of contributed code react poorly to bugs, to delayed launches, to answers they didn’t like, and so on. As someone who has given my fair share of time to open source projects over the years, I know how hard it can be not getting any appreciation for your work.

    Time spent doing something so that others can enjoy it, is fragile.

    Yes, the word is fragile. Because if people keep thinking the worst of you, thinking that you’re not doing the best you can given the circumstances, then you get fed up. Actually, you get angry, annoyed, sad, and then you get fed up.

    Why spend your free time giving something to others when they don’t appreciate you?

    (more…)

  • Episerver och Sitevision får propagera fritt i Internetworld-artikel

    Internetworld har publicerat en förbryllande artikel där de vill ta reda på framtiden för CMS, så här beskriver de den:

    Vad är nästa stora grej inom cms? Internetworld frågade några tillverkare och leverantörer av publiceringssystem vad de tror kommer att hända den närmaste framtiden.

    Oavsett vem vi frågar verkar framtiden ljus. Såväl tillverkarna av proprietära system som leverantörer av öppen källkod-lösningar tror på en ljus marknad framöver.

    Här ges Episervers säljchef Gustaf Snöbohm och Sitevisions VD Anders Korsvall utrymme att sälja sig själva, och de är inte ett dugg oroliga.

    (more…)

  • Apple Won, Google Maps Is Available Again

    Google Maps is out for iPhone, which means that Apple won. The whole point of throwing out Google Maps was to get a better map experience on iOS, since the Google Maps app prior to iOS 6.0 was sorely lacking when compared to the Android offering. Despite all its troubles, Apple’s Maps.app is a better technical achievement and will no doubt be a great map alternative in the future.

    I think Apple knows this. I think Apple wanted Google Maps for iOS, but they wanted the same great Google Maps experience that Android users were getting, with turn by turn navigation and whatnot. I think that Apple’s Maps.app was just as much a pressure tool made for getting Google to release a proper Google Maps app for iPhone, as it was a declaration of independence from the largest mobile competitor.

    And thus Apple won, not only getting free of Google where maps are concerned, but also getting the Google Maps app they wanted.

    The job is just half done though, now comes the tricky part. Apple’s Maps.app can’t be allowed to be so bad compared to Google’s offering, that won’t look good. Maps.app is an embarrassment for Apple, and while they did get what they wanted with Google Maps, they also got a whole load of additional pressure where their own Maps.app is concerned.

  • The Magazine And What Marco Arment Got Wrong

    Marco Arment, of Instapaper, and more recently The Magazine, fame has written a post on the future of publishing. He says that several parties have contacted him about licensing The Magazine’s platform, a business he is reluctant to be in. He also says this:

    The last thing I’d want is for a bunch of The Magazine lookalikes to flood the App Store with mediocre articles that haven’t passed through an editor and should just be (or already are) someone’s mediocre blog posts, just so they can easily charge for a subscription.

    Well, too bad. Success will be copied, and The Magazine is not only successful, it is successful within a niche where people are starving for a solution, any solution really. I’ve already explained why that is, so let’s all take a moment to remember, shall we?

    Marco Arment then says this:

    If the App Store gets spammed with hundreds of bad clones, The Magazine itself will lose credibility and potential subscribers as people make incorrect assumptions about its article quality.

    I disagree. With that reasoning there could not be any blogs with credibility, since there are so many “bad clones” out there. Still there is, and still there is quality writing, bloggers with fanbases large enough to launch niche tablet magazines even…

    (more…)

  • WordPress 3.5

    WordPress 3.5 är släppt och som alltid ska du självfallet uppdatera. Den största nyheten i 3.5 är den uppdaterade mediahanteringen, ett rejält steg framåt. Andra nyheter inkluderar putsat admingränssnitt, xml-rpc påslaget som standard, och att Länkar-delen numera är ett tillägg – men bara för nya installationer. För utvecklare finns det en del att kika på, se alla förändringar sammanställda i Codex.

    Min ebok, Webbpublicering med WordPress, kommer förstås uppdateras till 3.5. Det blir först nästa vecka dock eftersom jag har lyckats få en elak inflammation i axeln och inte klarar av längre tider vid tangentbordet. Det här skrivs således på min iPhone, med appen Poster för övrigt.

  • Starting Fresh

    I feel like buying a new laptop. Not that I really need one, my 11″ MacBook Air is working perfectly well and I’m happy with it (for now), but I still feel like buying a new one. I passed on the current generation, so I’m getting the next one no matter what, but it is months – MONTHS, I SAY! – away.

    And I want a new laptop.

    Why?

    Not because I want new stuff really, no it is the matter of the clean start. I always start from scratch with every computer, only installing the apps I end up actually missing. I’ll write more on that philosophy later, for now all you need to know is that’s what I do. Incidentally I do the same with iOS devices too, starting fresh.

    (more…)

  • Se alla avsnitt av Nils Prylar

    Tillsammans med Petter på FKDV gjorde jag en inslagsserie till första säsongen av Studio Bronx AW, en webbtv-talkshow med tolv avsnitt. Inslagsserien hette Nils Prylar och kretsade kring underbara Nils Olander på Tekniska Muséet, och hans härliga prylar från arkiven. Se själv:

  • The Daily And Tablet Magazines

    Rupert Murdoch shuttered The Daily yesterday, the iPad only newspaper with a staff of a 100 or something like that. Quite an operation, quite a project, and quite a project propelled by the dreams of an old media publisher and their hopes of doing the same old thing on a new media format such as an iPad. No wonder it failed, right?

    The iPad magazine business, if we can call it that, is in an interesting spot right now. To understand this, it is important to remember where it all started, with bloated versions of paper magazines, more or less behaving like an interactive PDF really. Not only did the format, with its “tap to view video” and similar, not engage readers as much as magazine makers might’ve thought, it also meant huge file sizes for every issue. The weight issue has been handled somewhat, but magazines clock in at over 150 MB more often than not.

    (more…)