marks.dk
Light CMS overview
Way back in May, Joen asked for a list of recommendable lightweight content management systems, and poking around in the archives gave me the following list (which I publish so I don’t have to poke around that much again):
The ones I like the best are Harmony and Stacey, of which Stacey seems to be the most interesting for managing something really simple (e.g. cphtwestival.com)
Paginating on-the-fly
This is clever:
Paginate.js is a JavaScript bookmark that adds Instapaper-style pagination tap zones to any page in Mobile Safari. It also works on WebKit-based desktop browsers, namely Google Chrome (extension available) and Safari.
— grantheaslip’s paginate.js at master – GitHub.
On curating Twitter
James Shelley:
If you check your twitter feed and are confronted by a news item, a trivia fact, a magazine update, commentary on your friend’s tooth-brushing experience, and a blog update, this stream is not even remotely helpful for anything but developing an addiction to distraction.
You must curtail Twitter with purpose. To use Twitter without any intentionality is to spray yourself in the face with a high pressure blast of contextless, random information. This can serve little greater good other than sending you down countless rabbit trails.
It goes well with the previous post I just wrote. I don’t agree fully with James Shelley’s advice of making lists out of everything (especially seeing that Tweetie doesn’t support them that well — or rather, at all), but I do agree that following should be more about quality in every single tweet.
I will get better at this.
— Inventing a Planet » Blog Archive » Real Friends Follow Less: Intentionality on Twitter.
It takes a long time to grow an old friend
Richard Ziade:
Everyone applauds the hyper-connectedness we’re experiencing today. The truth is we can’t really leverage it in a very meaningful way. There are a chosen few that get proper attention, the rest just end up in a sort of long tail of human connections. They’re relegated to an almost trivial status – only acknowledged as a scored point on your “friends” or “followers” tally.
I’m constantly thinking about this, and following 620 people/services on Twitter is beginning to feel a bit too much (I read as much as I can get my hands on through Twitter). I already took the deep cleanse in Google Reader, and I might do the same with Twitter. Erase everything. Start over. Treasure every time I follow someone a bit more than I do now.
— Basement.org: Growing Old Friends.
On interpreting big govermental data
Interesting quote by Charles Arthur from The Guardian on the trend of governments opening up their data silos:
We didn’t build libraries for a literate citizenry. We built libraries to help citizens become literate. Today we build open data portals not because we have public policy literate citizens, we build them so that citizens may become literate in public policy.
— Learning from Libraries: The Literacy Challenge of Open Data | eaves.ca. Link found through Michael Migurski‘s Delicious-feed that is constantly flowing with interesting links: http://delicious.com/migurski (Michael is the technology head at Stamen, so they should be).
4chan breeds a whole new era of hackers
danah boyd in her first ever blog post about 4chan (obviously recommended highly):
I would argue that 4chan is ground zero of a new generation of hackers – those who are bent on hacking the attention economy. While the security hackers were attacking the security economy at the center of power and authority in the pre-web days, these attention hackers are highlighting how manipulatable information flows are.
For the lolz: How 4chan is hacking the attention economy
How to—theoretically—be able to use foreign web services in Denmark (or where ever)
To be able to use web services such as Hulu, Netflix, see full episodes of The Daily Show or check out BBC’s iPlayer, you can use a VPN to virtually cross the border, and make them think you are allowed to see it (because being in Denmark sucks on this particular point—but not that one, obviously).
- Go to http://hidemynet.com and sign up for an account
- Follow the setup for a PPTP VPN connection found on the Setup page (you can use a server sitting in Dallas or DC to get started)
- Make absolutely sure that you checked off “Send all traffic over VPN connection”
- Go to Hulu.com — if it doesn’t blast a “You’re not welcome here”-sign in your face, you’re good to go.
This is obviously very illegal, and you are a criminal that will be punished in the shower by Carlos And The Moneymakers if you break the web services’ EULA. I do not endorse this, but until people come to their senses, this could be one way to not care about it.
Theoretically.
Nik Fletcher brings the sanity to the discussion on Safari Reader
Perhaps instead of flamebait posts of ‘Apple are out to get us’ media companies should be asking themselves ‘how did reading content online become so sucky’?
— nikf.org ~ On this Safari 5 Reader Hysteria.
Walled gardens as misguided metaphor
Neven Mrgan’s reaction to the term “walled garden” as something that can be described as despicably closed, when the benefits of having something that is closed and cared for can also be of immense beauty:
A software store is not an actual garden, not literally. But enough people have used this metaphor that it’s worth thinking for a second about what it’s actually supposed to mean.
I’m assuming we’re supposed to compare this approach to the freer alternatives such as community gardens and city parks. Ignoring for a moment the fact that these gardens are also regulated by serious restrictions on what one can and can’t do, it still puzzles me that the ‘walled garden’ is presented as an obviously undesirable structure.
Recommended reading for everyone that wants a nuanced view on the closed app store vs. open web discussion.
— The Walled Garden – Neven Mrgan’s tumbl.
Cathodique — a standalone YouTube player for Mac
What a great idea—Cathodique is a standalone YouTube-player for Mac. Ideal for those of you who have let go of the TV and does not like browsing through YouTube’s website (or just want a simpler approach to the viewer):
It would be amazing to have a queue function or the ability to create playlists, but that is about it—I love the lean look it has now.