If you appreciate my stuff, now you can flattr me!

As faithful visitors of my blog may have noticed (do I even have any of those anymore - isn't it all driven by google reader, facebook and twitter?), I have added some colorful buttons in the sidebar and beneath each post.

The first of these are for a peculiar community called "Flattr". I hope to add some others as well, and tidy up the blog, but I feel a bit locked up in blogspot and of course as they say - the children of the shoemaker walks in the worst shoes. Anyway, Flattr is a voluntary community based on that people are willing to give away a constant pretty small amount of money every month, a "flat-rate", to things they appreciate online, which they want to "flatter". Get a better introduction to it here, in this excellent video:

Honestly, I'm participating in this experiment without a serious hope of breaking even, and I would suggest that so should you. I don't think I am the type of content producer to amass people's appreciation like that, but regardless, it is important to realize that the Internet is participatory, and every attempt to reward that should be encouraged. That's actually an interesting threshold - that mainly people who at least are producing some type of content online will be motivated to try to gain something and thus also contribute themselves.

As I discussed recently with a friend, the Flattr model has a number of weaknesses, for instance that it is so completely voluntary, the entry threshold is significant, you only have the option to give one Flattr click not more if you really like something, and finally the incentive to raise your commitment above the basic 2€ per month is way too weak. Overall thought, it would seem, as Chris Anderson would express it, that the routines for charging for close-to-zero-marginal-cost content are still completely under-developed in the economy. I will be very excited to see that development truly happen.

Finally, I think those offline flattr (also IRL-flattr) things seem adorably nerdy, would love to see some innovative use-cases of them!

I hope to have the opportunity to write a bit more about the dynamics of flattr later, stay tuned.

Pipes plus feeds merged burning

Finally I have gotten around to doing two things: Feedburning my blog RSS feeds so I can see how many are subscribed and reading, and creating a personal plus-feed.

The first is done easily by visiting Feedburner, signing up, giving it the URL of your blog, create the feedburner feed and then modify your blog's settings to point at the new feed according to the instructions given. Nothing too hard. I should get myself into Technorati one of these days as well. However, what it it may mean is that I would love for you to re-subscribe to my blogs! If you are currently subscribed to my blogs in Google Reader or another blog-management tool, please subscribe to these new feeds (and we'll see if Blogger gets things right sooner or later as well):

• UncleCJs nerd-blog
  
• The Emigrant blog
  
• UncleCJs plus-feed

Secondly then, Christian Rudolf suggested me that instead of spewing URLs randomly, I should do like Doktor Spinn and market my "+1"-feed (a way of indicating something you like, you give it a point) as a great distillation of the mess out there on the web. Fine, but first I needed to put together my three different outputs of goodness then, my shared items in Google Reader, and pages tagged "cool" and/or "recommended" by me on del.icio.us. Yahoo Pipes did the trick, just sign in there with a Yahoo ID and you're good to go!:



Here's the end result: pipes.yahoo.com/unclecjpipes/plus (which I'd love for you to subscribe to at feeds2.feedburner.com/unclecjplus)

Finally, if you don't understand a thing of what I mean by "subscribe" above, please please please watch the video Google Reader in plain English beloew, your online life will be better with it and it's extremely easy to do:

And don't let the "blog-stress" grab you, remember that your blog reader should be "like a river of fresh water, from which you may drink now and then whenever you feel like it". Just let it flow.

Amateur = ♥, Professional = $, which would you rather be?

The websmurfs are running another blogging Saturday, this time on the theme of the etymology of the words amateur (amor, passion) and professional (profit). "Old media" as they are lovingly denoted at least in Sweden like to slap the label of "amateur" onto bloggers and everyone else voluntarily organized through the internet, and we'd simply want to say - fine, then we are, and we love being amateurs.

pro⋅fes⋅sion⋅al   [pruh-fesh-uh-nl]
1. following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain

am⋅a⋅teur   [am-uh-choor, -cher, -ter, am-uh-tur]
1. a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons.

I would by the way want to run a shameless plug for my favourite amateur come extremely professional photographer Graham Mitchell (Foto-Z). The quality of his work is amazing and he is available for photo jobs around Scandinavia.

A lot is likely to pop up during the day, so check this post for updates! You can of course follow us on twitter


I spent a significant part of my Saturday updating the Websmurf member list, and check out the pictures (also here, here, here and here), but the others were productive:

• Erik Starck - Älskade amatör ("Beloved amateur", translated here), Amatörmässigt? Amatören och Piraten ("Amateur? Amateurs and the Pirate", translated here) and Amatör betyder älskare ("Amateur means lover", translated here)
  
• Simon Winter - Hur långt räcker det med amatörer? ("How far is it sufficient with amateurs?", translated here)
  
• Henrik Ahlen - Amatör eller Proffs inom företagsvideo? ("Amateur or Professional in enterprise video?", translated here) and Creating impact with corporate video
  
• Christian Rudolf - Amatörernas lördag! ("Amateurs Saturday!", translated here)
  
• Peter Sandberg - Bloggare är amatörer! ("Bloggers are amateurs!", translated here)
  
• Martin Sandberg - Amatör eller proffs ("Amateur or professional", translated here)
  
• Jonas Lejon - Amatör ("Amateur", translated here)
  
• Judith Wolst - Amatörskap - ja tack! (Amateurism - yes please!", translated here) and Blogglördag! ("Blogging Saturday", translated here)
  
• Björn Falkevik - Amatörernas Blogglördag! ("Blog amateurs Saturday!", translated here), Då var det av mot blogglördag, Så är en blogglördag! and Mina tankar runt Amatör och proffs! Blogglördag! Tag 2
  
• Ted Valentin - Underbara amatörer ("Amazing amateurs", translated here)
  
• Walter Naeslund - I Never Want To Be Anything But An Amateur.

(Update: Björn Falkevik reported live here)

(Update 2: The Online Etymology Dictionary may have a different opinion about the origin of professional and amateur, but as they say, "never check a good story" :-) )

Gimme Smurf Saturday!

Sort of like last time, but hopefully even more eventful, the websmurfs are having a blogging Saturday (facebook)!

I've said I'll participate some from a distance, not sure I will really create anything serious publicly, but I'm considering pre-loading for "Remember, remember, the fifth of November..." (on facebook here)

See you tomorrow on the Internet - eating pills!

Update: Seems people are a bit sleepy in Sweden as well, but there are some 6-7 people present in Jesper's conference room:

View Larger Map

• Christian - "Entreprenörskap och lågkonjunktur!"
  
• Peter - "De struntar i lågkonjunkturen och bygger en webbtjänst på 24 timmar"
  
• Jesper - "Lågkonjukturens inverkan på innovationen"
  
• Erik - "Lågkonjunktur - vad händer sen?"
  
• Henrik - "Recession: threat or opportunity?"
  
• Per - "Är Lågkonjunkturen här?"
  
• Simon - "Lågkonjunktur -- se fördelarna!
  
• Judith - "80-talisten och lågkonjunktur"

Update 2: We've produced quite a bit of material, I've updated the links above to the material, myself I wrote a piece "In Sweden we call it a "lågkonjunktur"" for my Emigrant Blog.

I want to hear your opinion!

Now I am attempting to improve my blogs a bit - first out is trying out the poll function, go ahead and answer it! (I also happened to make one for the emigrant blog) Poll closes next Monday.

Another thing I definitely want to do is provide links to the most popular posts, and possibly highlight browsing by label to find old posts on similar topics, but I got too many labels with maybe just one post tagged...

Blog button - Förbundet Unga Forskare

As Simon has been writing - let's make a blog button to spread your message! As possibly too few know, I really like the Swedish Federation of Young Scientists (sv. Förbundet Unga Forskare) and want them to get as much attention as possible, so here goes:


The motif would appear obvious - Young Scientists like to blow things up :-) . Of course that's not the only thing they do, or even the primary thing, but it's easier to work with the image you already have. If you want to add it to your own blog, just copy and paste this code into the customization of the blog:

<a href="http://www.fuf.org/"><img border="0" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 2px; text-align:center" alt="Förbundet Unga Forskare - den bästa skolan som finns" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6isDYENeA4ko5zmDZfDgAswZrGTKPLo8JlPADtmENZtNnVzb5KAlS4vNkl8BZuAAtDjZj6qSomutDbYJzLESDTfYmH38Y9Y0NHO6CWNv7VjQkKV50fXloU56WFI-UYfcyQ1K2xcwO7n8/s400/Iblowfuf.png"/></a><br/><a href="http://unclecj.blogspot.com/2008/08/blog-button-frbundet-unga-forskare.html"><span style="font-size:0.7em">Lägg till den här knappen på din egen blogg</span></a>

I may improve this later, maybe make a better landing page and put the picture somewhere better, but this is good enough for now. Enjoy!

(Update: Let's have a blog button for Gnosjö as well:

<span style="font-size:0.8em" align="left">I am from Gnosjö! :</span><br/><br/><a href="http://www.gnosjoregionen.se/"><img border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5212418522378624866" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" alt="Jag har Gnosjö-andan i mig!" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5RgfyOQAwsKhFRrL2lhthyphenhyphenUgy5pxDP3NOsMkuAsr5RPyXmOfDauvt9hJxgOzUdgOS6MV0yC8cx52k_kN66mKMJR-jHwHTB1LnT5PmfVpXWWIWss8afoGvPXcNCVo3m2SbVHM3n9L3WVpQ/s200/gr_logga_13.gif"/></a><br/><a href="http://unclecj.blogspot.com/2008/08/blog-button-frbundet-unga-forskare.html"><span style="font-size:0.7em">Lägg till den här knappen på din egen blogg</span></a>

I borrowed the logo from GnosjoRegionen, but since I link to them, I hope they're happy anyhow:

)

Today the smurfs are creating a blogstorm

My friends Christian and Jesper of the websmurf group have decided to make today a blogging day, and I will of course participate from my side of the pond. For any non-geeks this may seem like an odd thing to dedicate your day to, but for one thing, they are dedicated to prove the power of blogging.

Today, one demonstration is to make UPS listen to my old friend Dan in his objection to how they are mistreating him as a customer and then strategically making him pay for them correcting their own mistake. Go Dan! Anyone interested in helping Dan or proving modern customer power, just link to that entry and make sure to mention "UPS" and maybe "customer care" in the anchor text.

• Christian writes here
  
• Jesper writes here
  
• Simon writes here

I have in the "pipeline" to write about

• Securing your own windows computer like a pro - for Christian at mjukvara.se (Done, being processed before publishing)
  
• Colonialism and spreading democracy - the speck in your brother's eye and plank in your own - for the Emigrant Blog
  
• It's not "gaming" anymore, it's "e-sports" now - for this blog
  
• How to encrypt using security tokens and S/MIME - like a professional - for this blog
  
• The customer is always right - Engineers do not learn service -for this blog
  
• Fysiktävlingen - for this blog
  
• Social bookmarking - Finding the popular pages and reading the popular books - for this blog

I suspect I won't finish all that today... actually I won't even try to finish it all, it's nice just to have it in the pipeline too :-)

Hey guys, don't miss out making a visit to "Karin på Ön" as well, one of the coziest and strangest cafés I've visited in a long time.

Check back here for updates later.

(Update: Actually, I spent my evening reading and commenting at Blogge Bloggelito (not safe for work) about Göran Skytte and Russia annexing Ossetia, at mjukvara.se and Tommy K Johansson. I'm pretty happy about managing to put together the last pieces of that security tutorial for Christian, finally! )

This is a mobile blogging test

This is a mobile blogging test.

Just set up mail-to-blogger, save the addres you have set in your address book, sync addresses with phone and send blog posts as MMS (SMS to email works or not too?) to that email address at blogspot. Edit posts afterwards as needed. MMS costs a couple of EEK as I have realized through my dear friends at MoYuMe, but I think it may be worth it for the occasional picture report from my life (at least when on vacation or similarly disconnected).