And yes, I already did enable the new Timeline through the, already notorious by now, developer work-around. And no, Facebook is not making its way into the internet of things — nor is it becoming one, nor is even close to the Semantic Web. Why? More on this in a minute.

Change the verbs, change the world

Facebook is transforming itself right from its core. Last year it was all about like. What you like; pages, people, things, articles and blog posts — everything. Today it is about do. What you do — and… serendipity. You’re not sharing — you are doing. Running, eating, watching, and the list goes on and on. Optionally with whom and where. Its core, though, is the “do” factor.

This like to do transformation shifts Facebook from a website to a hub. You login, you see what people are doing, or did, optionally you stalk. It’s not about sitting in front of the computer and hitting “Share” on a YouTube video. It’s about getting out to jog, which is shared (if you’re having the Nike app, that is.)

Not your typical profile

Facebook is now a life stream only better. Richer, interactive, and you can create things atop and with it (Hello, API + Open Graph.) Mark wants us to share everything. “One Mark to rule us all.”

Your profile is not a profile anymore. It is you. You, you, you. Right on from when you were born, up until your very latest activity. Your e-go (see the pun here, yeah, I’m that smart-ass.) Until Google+’s next major update, Facebook has won the identity war in the Internets, plus many more other things.

Google’s on fire, caught on sleep

Sadly for Google, Google+ is out of competition now. In its current form is fighting with the old Facebook, the moment where it started getting some serious user base (estimated at 40M.) Despite that it became a heaven for spammers and totally random people (I mean, I get circled even by plumbers with their contact and work availability information public, etc). So unlucky and unfortunate, but, hell, this is life.

What Google has to do is still, for me at least, unclear. One thing is sure: they have to innovate. Heavily. As MG Siegler said, Facebook skated to where the puck will be — or even better, Facebook kicked it there while everyone else still tries to skate to where the puck was. I’m talking to you, Google et al. A nice typical Apple move.

Semantics and why Facebook simply isn’t it

To get a gist of what actually the Semantic Web is read this very short older post of mine.

In a very naïve approach one could argue that Facebook’s upgraded Open Graph is a step closer to Semantics or even it is Semantics. But I think this approach is false.

Firstly, Facebook is a very closed ecosystem, a web-ish Apple, that doesn’t plan any time soon on opening up. This is neither necessarily bad or good. It is simply Facebook’s strategy. But this isn’t Semantics. Semantics need open environments, open data, to fully be sustainable and grow.

Secondly, Semantics is not about who does what or having <objects> in your code. Semantics is about linked data (don’t know what linked data is? Watch Tim Burners-Lee’s TED talk and call-out to everyone to open his data.) It is about describing the world, objects, things, data — describing and naming the relationships between anything. From human to human relationships to human to objects et cetera. Based on Wittgenstein’s question, the foundation of contemporary Western Philosophy, “Does the world make sense or do we make sense of the world?”

Thirdly, Facebook can’t become the Semantic Web because of Mathematics. Let’s do a bit of Venn diagrams. Facebook is a web, it is not the web, not everyone on the web is registered in Facebook that is , only a handful of 750M people. The web is much bigger. Not every device that can be connected to the web can be connected to Facebook. Plus, as already discussed, Facebook is not open to communicate with with its data.

Schematically, (click for full-size)

If you can’t figure out my writing read it here: [1] denotes people who use things. [2] denotes people who have internet, axiomed in: you can’t have internet w/o a human (who would create the internet if humans = 0?) and a thing (eg. router), and [3] denotes Semantic Web. People + things + internet, assuming it will push industries to make connected things. The “→” trend goes (will, actually) up until 100% things = connected things. This graph was a quick response to @manogr as we discussed this on Twttr. So it may contain math errors. So can my argument based on Set Theory. Feel free to point them out. But I think you get the point. (another pun? Oh.)

Recap, not a TL;DR

Facebook did innovate. A lot. And this is very good, for everyone. Facebook also transformed itself and the web — again. From like to do, Facebook is now about sharing everything, not only web & media (club photos, videos, etc) related. Google+ is left behind. Just in a day, Mark and team made it to look obsolete. Google has to innovate too, otherwise it’ll lose again the social web game, as it did several times before. And this time it will be such a pity, since Google+ is really good. And a call for Semantics: open your data!

Additional discussion, upvotes, downvotes and other fun things for this post over at Hacker News.

Specifically, this was the question:

@yiannis_k yep, read it. I mean what'll you share. Lifestream/pics, small rants, music, videos -- everyrhing? :)

August 19, 2011 11:51 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@apas

Apostolos

@apas You got it. You bet. I'll try to be an amateur, young, careless, stupid one again.

August 19, 2011 11:53 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@yiannis_k

Y. Konstantakopoulos

“I’ll try to be an amateur, young, careless, stupid once again.”

This quote—this quote, I loved it. It made me think how essential is to have in mind those things. Things that drive you forward, push you forward.

Today I also happened to stumble upon Konstantina’s blog called Amateur Notes. Not a coincidence—I was sure about that. So, these two events, Yianni’s reply and Konstantina’s blog name, made me think once again about amateurism, passion, carelesness, fresh ideas, risks and pushing things forward.

Having this mindset helps you stay active and creative. Passion is essential not to succeed in life, but in order to enjoy life and your work. If you enjoy it, then you have succeeded.

To the hell with unnecessary formalisms. We need professional amateurs. People who will always explore, try and do new things. People who stay active, who create, take risks, try and fail. Amateur means also loving what you do, as Konstantina correctly says. And by loving what you do, you become more and more better at what you do. You enjoy it. You have succeeded.

Additional discussion, upvotes, downvotes and other fun things for this post over at Hacker News.

Για να σας δώσω το full picture, ο λόγος που το app θα καθυστερήσει το public launch του για ακόμη λίγο καιρό δεν είναι ότι το έχουμε δήθεν παρατήσει ή κάτι παρόμοιο. Το αντίθετο, μάλιστα.

Αυτό το καλοκαίρι είναι το πρώτο καλοκαίρι μετά τις πανελλήνιες (more on that later) και όπως είναι φυσικό είναι παραπάνω ανέμελο if I may say so από τον “μέσο όρο”. Αρχικά, είχαν ήδη προγραμματιστεί αρκετό καιρό πριν διακοπές, οι οποίες δεν μπορούσαν να γίνουν rescheduled, ακριβώς μετά την λήξη του App Camp. Στην συνέχεια είχαν επίσης προγραμματιστεί παρόμοιες διακοπές και μετά από τις δεύτερες διακοπές υπήρξαν και τρίτες. Sounds cool, eh?

Παρά το overdose διακοπών με φίλους όμως, μεταξύ του δεύτερου και τρίτου vacations batch έπρεπε να ασχοληθώ με το που θα σπουδάσω. In other words έπρεπε να περιμένω όλες τις απαντήσεις κάποιων πανεπιστημίων του εξωτερικού και να διαλέξω που θα συνεχίσω τις σπουδές μου. Μια διαδικασία που δεν είναι εύκολη ούτε σύντομη. Τελικώς, για να μην πολυλογώ, όσοι με κάνετε follow στο Twitter ξέρετε ήδη εδώ και λίγο καιρό πως θα σπουδάσω στο Πολυτεχνείο της Βιέννης. Οι υπόλοιποι, το μάθατε μόλις τώρα. Επίσης, είναι ήδη uploaded στον πανεπιστημιακό server, η academic σελίδα μου. Clean, minimal and to the point, I guess.

Έτσι, καταλήγω στο ότι επειδή αρκετές διακοπές ήταν ήδη προγραμματισμένες στο συγκεκριμένο χρονικό διάστημα, το university picking και κάποια άλλα random πραγματάκια με κράτησαν εκτός προγραμμάτος όσων αναφορά το launch και το finalizing του 4sqwifi iPhone app. Και για να είμαι ακριβής, το app είναι σχεδόν έτοιμο. Έχουμε να λύσουμε μόνο ένα bug με το geolocation και να κάνουμε τα τελευταία μερεμέτια για το “κούμπωμα” του UI.

Άρα λοιπόν you can expect το launch του 4sqwifi iPhone app πολύ σύντομα — έχοντας υπ’ όψιν πως όλα βαίνουν καλώς.

Όσοι δεν έχετε δει την παρουσίαση του 4sqwifi iPhone app στο App Camp Demo Night μπορείτε να την δείτε τώρα, included app screenshots.

The organizational part

The first ever App Camp was focused exclusively on development of mobile apps or tablet PC apps. There were 3 App Campuses throughout Greece—Athens, Thessaloniki and Patras. The App Camp’s main goal was to turn good ideas for mobile apps into commercially viable products and services for the global market, all accelerated through this two-week program. Teams were consisted of at minimum 2 members, no single/solo founders were allowed, if I may say so.

App Campuses were mainly co-lab workspaces, such as Co-Lab in Athens and Thermi-Link in Thessaloniki. Patras’ App Campus was based in Indifex’s HQ, though—a very nice and cozy HQ of a great and promising global startup. Each App Campus provided the basics such as internet access (well, obviously, it’s 2011 and we were developing mobile apps for the TCP’s sake), comfortable couches (at least Thermi-Link here at Thessaloniki—I enjoyed it very much when I was napping and reading my Instapaper saved articles on the iPad 2), video-streaming & projectors for the mentors’ sessions which were available to all teams via UStream. App Campuses also served as the meeting point with the mentors.

Speaking of mentors, the participating teams were guided by mentors who they represented a variety of specialities and skill-sets ranging from development, design, marketing and to intellectual property. Almost each mentor had to prepare a session about his specialty. For example Petros talked about Github (for which he actually works for), Dimitris for mobile apps marketing and so on. Mentors were also available not only via person-in-person meetings at each Campus but also via IMs, Twitter, Skype and email, constantly.

Right in between of the weeks, in the first weekend of the program, the App Camp gig (teams and mentors) went for a 3-day trip to the App Resort, Friday to Sunday. The first ever App Resort was at Pelion, right in the middle between Athens and Thessaloniki. It was not a holiday-trip. Instead, the teams attended many meetings and sessions, coded almost everywhere—from their rooms to by the pool, enjoyed beers at night and various other geeky startup stuff.

The teams and 4sqwifi

I think you already know about my 4sqwifi idea-project which started back in January ’11 as a simple Foursquare initiative only now (to be precise, very soon) to have its own iPhone app, so I won’t bother you with the details: what it’s all about, how it works and how you can take part. On the other hand, if you don’t know anything about 4sqwifi (that’s not bad) and you’re interested on learning more check out 4sqwifi’s website and its presentation at App Camp’s Demo night right below:

Since I didn’t attend the App Resort weekend because I had to do business in Athens (that did sound very badass-like) I won’t talk about the other teams a lot, only some generic words and rants. From what I heard and saw, the level of all teams (Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras) was decent. Some had experienced engineers, some not—but that’s why applied for in the first place (at least me)—to gain experience, not only to launch a product and call it quits. Some apps are cool indeed and look promising—can’t wait to see how the evolve and adapt into new environments and the upcoming challenges.

The 4sqwifi App Camp team consisted of Panos Oikonomakis, Lead Developer aka JavaScript poet, Gerasimos Tsiamalos who kindly provided his ninja design skills in order to design an incredible UI and Eleni Gizi who also provided her artisanal skills for to design 4sqwifi’s logo, and well, me who (tried) to do all these tasks before the guys would enter the team. It was a pain, to be honest. I deeply appreciate each one’s commitment to the team, trying to balance between personal work and life with this project. They could easily decide not to take part and work on some personal stuff, but they decided to take part with 4sqwifi and build something for the fun of it.

Closing rants

App Camp was a great experience. I would, without a second thought, do it again. It’s time for a post-4sqwifi idea now to be developed. Surely, App Camp could improve some things but those aren’t any significant draw-backs. A good idea would be also to have two App Camps per year. A summer and a winter session (just like YC’s batches). That’d be very interesting, challenging and will push each time the limits of creating, thinking, engineering and launching.

Update about 4sqwifi

Due to personal issues which I cannot write about (yet) 4sqwifi’s app launch will be delayed for a few weeks. Sorry, folks. I promise it won’t take long.

In order to understand BoothChat, we need to go back a bit in time. To be precise, we need to go back right when Thanasis Polychronakis from Athens, Greece took the brave decision to leave Greece and head to mighty San Francisco’s Silicon Valley to pursue his (then) startup, geoWarp. But one night, in SF’s StartupWeekend, Thanasis had the idea of BoothChat and immediately started working on it. The idea was is, in fact, very simple. You write something, BoothChat snaps you a photo via your computer’s web camera (USB or built-in, doesn’t matter) and the photo gets published in a room.

To learn more about Thanasis story on migration (and how-to’s), working in the Valley and many more interesting things, read his blog 20minus.

Anyway, you must have thought by now “Oh, another Chatroulette…”. BoothChat though, has some significant differences.

• Firstly, it isn’t Chatroulette
• Secondly, it is about pictures & chat, not about video
• Thirdly, it is much more fun
• Fourthly, there are no weirdos (and probably, won’t be any—more on that in a little)

So, how exactly does Boothchat work?

You sign in with your Twitter or Facebook profile(*) and you are dropped automatically in a system-made chatroom (you can identify them of their /booth_10540 URLs). There, you start typing your chat message and you’re asked to give permission to BoothChat to take over your webcam and by the time you hit “Enter”, to take you a picture. It is really fun.

You can create your own rooms (key feature for ultimate fun) just by entering whatever you want after boothchat.com/ and chat and play with your friends there. All rooms are public though—the user created ones are accessible only if you know the full URL. There are also boothpics perma-links and cool viewing features. And of course, you can share with Facebook and Twitter your photos.

(*) note: that’s the reason there won’t be any weirdos, or at least there will be few of them.

BoothChat hasn’t yet received any kind of funding, but I think after they ship some cool new core features (can’t reveal, sorry!) it will be the next logical step.

Back in the first paragraph (second time-travel in this post) I wrote that BoothChat needs an iOS app. Hell yeah it needs one. Imagine the fun and the possibilities. iPad 2 comes already with Apple’s Photo Booth. My guess is that after shipping the new features, BoothChat needs to start developing the iOS app and seek for funding. Times are exciting.

What are you waiting? Join the fun!

Disclosure: Thanasis is a good friend of mine. This post was not “pushed” by him. It is just another post of a web-service/app/startup review here in apas.gr.

Anyway, here are my two cents.

Πριν το event

Έφτασα στο Royal Hotel με τον Νίκο και τον Ανέστη μετά από ένα συναρπαστικό “Rally Βροχόπολις” (credit goes to Nick) λόγω της ξαφνικής τροπικής βροχής στην Θεσσαλονίκη. Με το που φτάσαμε, άρχισε το socializing με τα υπόλοιπα παιδιά. Γνώρισα επιτέλους από κοντά τον Βασίλη (και τον Ανέστη, ήδη από το αμάξι), την Ζαχαρένια, την Κωνσταντίνα. Με τον Δημήτρη είχαμε γνωριστεί από το προηγούμενο βράδι της Παρασκευής πίνοντας συζητώντας. Λυπηρή ήταν η διαπίστωση πως ενώ υπήρχε, το WiFi δεν δούλευε και πολύ καλά με αρκετές απώλειες στο σήμα.

Οι Παρουσίασεις

Ύστερα από μια μικρή καθυστέρηση λόγω βροχής, το event ξεκίνησε δυναμικά με τον Δημήτρη ο οποίος μίλησε για το blogging, πως να γράφει κανείς καλύτερα, do’s & don’ts, blogging & review ethics και κάποια άλλα tips. Σειρά είχε η Ζαχαρένια, η οποία ίσως είχε την πιο communicative παρουσίαση που έχω δει (kudos, Sug). Μίλησε για το πως να επιτύχουμε ένα not another WordPress blog. Μετά μίλησα εγώ (imo, μέτρια παρουσίαση, τα είπα λίγο γρήγορα και πρόχειρα. Έχασα την ευκαιρία για την οποία μιλάει ο Γιάννης, αλλά we learn from failing, so it’s ok). Ήρθε η ώρα του Θάνου μετά από εμένα, με μια ωραία παρουσίαση σχετικά με τυπογραφία και font picking problems & solutions στο WordPress—και γενικότερα στο web. Ο Βασίλης έκανε ίσως την πιο αναλυτική παρουσίαση που είδαμε και κάλυψε εκτενέστερα το θέμα WordPress as CMS με ένα δυνατό how-to. Ο Γεράσιμος μας είπε την γνώμη του — και έκανε τον συνήγορο του διαβόλου — για τα Frameworks και τη σχέση τους με το WordPress. Ο ίδιος δεν τα χρησιμοποιεί και έχει αναπτύξει ένα προσωπικό toolset. Για αυτό τον λόγο τον χαρακτηρίζω ως Lucky Luke των developers. Σειρά του Γιώργου, evangelist της Microsoft Ελλάς ο οποίος έκανε δύο παρουσίασεις. Η πρώτη σχετικά με το web platform που προσφέρει πλέον η Microsoft και η δεύτερη για την επόμενη μέρα του web: HTML 5. Μετά από την Γιώργο, παρουσίασε ο Βασίλης (host του event) το BuddyPress — πως μπορούμε να φτιάξουμε ένα social network βασισμένοι στο WordPress και τέλος, μίλησε ο Φώτης για την ένωση του CodeIgniter με το WordPress και τις δυνατότητες που προσφέρει.

My take on all presentations: δεν μπορώ να ξεχωρίσω κάποια συγκεκριμένη. Όλες μου άρεσαν για διαφορετικούς λόγους, όλες κάλυψαν εξαιρετικά τα topics τους. Οι υπόλοιποι ομιλητές ήξεραν ακριβώς τι έκαναν και όλοι ήταν fluent στον λόγο τους and to the topic. Από εμένα, πολλά μπράβο και ευχαριστώ για αυτά που είδα και άκουσα.

Μπορείτε να δείτε όλες τις παρουσίασεις στο GreekTuts.net (το οποίο το είχα κάνει cover από την αρχή του με συνέντευξη) μιας και τις ανέβασε όλες στο SlideShare και τις μάζεψε σε ένα blog post. Για την δικιά σας ευκολία, μπορείτε επίσης να τις κατεβάσετε από το επίσημο site του WordCamp.

Η (αναμενόμενη;) γκρίνια

Event χωρίς γκρίνια, δεν είναι καλό event. Έτσι λένε στο χωριό μου (insert #lol here). Well, για δύο πράγματα θα “γκρινιάξω”. Το πρώτο είναι σχετικά με το πρόβλημα που αντιμετωπίσαμε σχετικά με το WiFi στον χώρο του Royal Hotel. Ευτυχώς που είχα 3G στο κινητό. Το δεύτερο είναι σχετικό με την ημερομινία του event, το οποίο συνέπεσε με το event του Parallaxi mag, Θεσσαλονίκη Αλλιώς.

Το bonus

Ναι, υπάρχει και bonus. Spoiler alert: Ένα video που ετοιμάζει ο Ανέστης για το Away.gr. Πολύ γέλιο. Το μόνο που μπορώ να πω είναι: συνεντεύξεις. Αναμένουμε λοιπόν να τελιώσει με το μοντάζ ο Ανέστης και να το δούμε uploaded.

Bonus #2: notes

Σε μερικές παρουσιάσεις κράτησα κάποιες σημειώσεις στο notebook μου. Here you go λοιπόν. Sorry για τα περίεργα γράμματα, έγραφα πολύ γρήγορα. Οι φωτογραφήσεις (insert 2nd #lol here) έγιναν στις καρέκλες του Καφεναί (όπου γράφτηκε και το post), εξού και τα πλακάκια στο background, τα οποία δεν θα τα είχατε παρατηρήσει έαν δεν το έγραφα.

Κλείνοντας, δεν πρέπει να ξεχάσουμε να δώσουμε πολλά συγχαρητήρια στην ομάδα του Βασίλη και τον ίδιο, για το τρέξιμο τους ώστε να πραγματοποιηθεί ένα τόσο καλό event. Kudos, team.

Το πρώτο ελληνικό WordCamp πέρσι τον Φεβρουάριο χαρακτηρίστικε άκρως επιτυχημένο. Μετά από έναν χρόνο και κάτι μήνες ήρθε η ώρα για το δεύτερο. Πιο δυναμικό, πιο μεγάλο.

Με πολύ δυνατό line-up που απαρτίζεται από τους Δημήτρη Καλογερόπουλο, Ζαχαρένια Ατζιτζικάκι, Θάνο Παπαβασιλείου, Βασίλη Μαστοροστέργιο, Γεράσιμο Τσιάμαλο, Φώτη Αλεξάνδρου, Βασίλη Κανονίδη και Γιώργο Κανελλόπουλο πιστεύω είναι event που δεν πρέπει να χαθεί — αν και δυστυχώς, το ίδιο Σάββατο θα τρέχει και το event του Parallaxi mag μαζί με Open Coffee SKG στο Λιμάνι.

Για τους περισσότερο geeks, mighty developers και designers, το φετινό WordCamp είναι must. Θα καλυφθούν πολλά θέματα όπως frameworks, cloud blog deployment, WordPress as CMS, typography, design, themes και φυσικά blogging. Μπορείτε να βρείτε όλες τις παρουσιάσεις που θα πραγματοποιηθούν εδώ.

Summing-up λοιπόν:

Date: Σάββατο 4 Ιουνίου
Time: Στις 12 ξεκινάει η πρώτη παρουσίαση, λογικά προσέλευση πιο νωρίς
Place:  Royal Hotel, περιοχή Αεοροδρομίου
More infos: επίσημο WordCamp site

Disclosure: σχετικά με τις παρουσιάσεις στο φετινό WordCamp, θα παρουσιάζω και εγώ. Παρέλειψα ηθελημένα το όνομα μου παραπάνω.

But sun shines for all and you don’t have to be in Thessaloniki. Nick Drandakis and Nick Damilakis, both from Athens, Greece, started up Taxibeat. Taxibeat is a new unique way to find a taxi in Athens (and soon in other major Greek cities). With just two taps from your iPhone or Android you can book the taxi driver you want and who is the closest to you. While you’re waiting you can watch his GPS signal on your iPhone app, then rate him. Taxibeat’s business plan is kind of similar to Flattr (at least for the driver). Suppose x the number of clients a driver got in a month, then at the end of each month the driver will get paid x*0.49€. For the end-user it’s totally free.

But it’s not the technical part that makes me like Taxibeat (which is great by the way). There are some key-facts, which I think make Taxibeat awesome. Let me list them.

• Easyness. Taxibeat is very easy to use. Just two taps and you booked your taxi.
• Rate the driver. Rating will give a great feedback for each driver’s quality for the customers-users. Plus that you can leave comments too—not only rate with starts.
• Easy interface. The UI & UX must be easy to use. Not everyone is a geek or spend much time to play-understand the app. You need fast and responsive clients. Taxibeat has that.
• Awesome for the tourists. It’s a well-known fact that many taxi drivers in Greece aren’t the best guys around. See also “rate the driver”.

And there’s something more, for which I like Taxibeat the most.

It can disrupt the taxi business as it is now in Greece and make a fresh start for them. It can be the force to make radical new things in this field. And the best thing? I believe it can.

Fast forward to 2011 Linden Tibbets developed this awesome app called If this Then that. Ifttt (it’s the acronym) is based basically on the concept of event-driven programming. The whole concept of event-driven programming is that during the execution of a program, the programmer has some ideas about what types of events may happen.

For example “a user clicks a specific button” or “a new message arrives in your inbox”. Knowing what these events are, you can then attach a bit of code that runs the same way every time an event is encountered. It is very much like cause and effect, except as a programmer you’re free to be creative with what effects match up to each cause.

In plain English ifttt provides a simple logical structure, if this then that, along with two properties that fit into that structure, called triggers and actions. That being said ifttt enables anyone to be creative in their digital environments. Ifttt though, isn’t a programming language or app building tool, but rather a much simpler solution. Internet’s digital duct tape in a way, allowing you to connect any two services together.

Ifttt is in beta mode and just today I got my invitation. My first impressions are extremely positive. You can imagine, the first task I did create is a Delicious to Twitter process. As of now, whenever I submit a link into Delicious it will be automatically tweeted. Other tasks I created include “if current weather condition changes to rain, send me an email” or “when I share an item in Google Reader, then submit it to Delicious” which leads back to the first task, from Delicious to Twitter.

If you’re creative enough you can make clever “if this then that” tasks. Not only that, but there are literally dozens of web services and tools ifttt supports (which they are called channels in ifttt). I liked ifttt because of its easy-to-use interface and approach. You just log in and click create a task. Then, there’s something I’d call an automated wizard, which in about 5 steps helps you create your brand new tasks with beautifully simple menus, prompts and design.

The least I can say is that I am very impressed. Well, I am and I cannot help it. Ifttt is awesome and I suggest you registering for their beta invites. And just now, while writing the previous sentence, the very first ifttt email arrived notifying me that it rains in Thessaloniki. It’s quite fast, should I add. Take a look for yourself:

Again, I repeat. Ifttt is awesome and I suggest you registering for their invites. Now.

Random rant: the biggest part of this post was written in WordPress’ iPhone app while raining in Thessaloniki and watching Champions League’s semi-final between Manchester United and Schalke. It’s a long time since 2008, isn’t it? I was 16 and now I’m graduating from High School in a month!

Update: I liked a Vimeo video and boom—here’s the relevant tweet from ifttt:

Nikos Anagnostou ''Social Shopping'' http://bit.ly/m5xgqx

May 5, 2011 12:02 am via iftttReplyRetweetFavorite

@apas

Apostolos

It’s time for another public repo to be shared. Now, it is about a very cool WordPress theme. In fact, it’s about the WordPress theme I’m using right now, which is called mnmlist.

Mnmlist is a very clean and minimalist (obvious minimalist name is obvious, lol) WordPress theme that focuses on the content without distractions. One (left) sidebar, no-widgets ouf-of-the-box (you can add if you want) and simple comments. Mnmlist was originally developed by Leo Babauta, founder and the guy behind mnmlist.com. It is shared “as is” and uncopyrighted, so I figured out that it’d be a good idea to share mnmlist with my changes and tweaks.

Changes made:

• sidebar is css fixed, only main content is scrollable
• a new design approach on links both in main content and post, changed their css
• HTML “placeholder” for an image in the sidebar
• Twitter & Facebook share/like buttons under each post
• RSS icon in the sidebar
• Helvetica font, not Verdana
• a few other minor and subtle changes I cannot remember of now

For a live demo, do not seek further; you’re viewing mnmlist now in apas.gr. For the current status and the full rundown of mnmlist, read its README file at its Githup repo (link below).

Mnmlist’s license is Leo’s uncopyright and my Kopimi.

Go grab, use, mess with the code, edit, wreck, optimize —whatever you want— mnmlist from my public Github repo.

It’s called Recommendatr and as a concept is kind of similar to 4sqwifi yet radically different. Recommendatr does not focus on where you can find a (Foursquare) venue with wifi but instead, it focuses on where you can find a venue with excellent service for you, the customer. It can be anything: from a cafe to a restaurant and an electronics retailer. Most importantly, it can be anywhere—it is not do not solely focused for and in Thessaloniki.

Recommendatr operates under the spirit of “keep calm, hack the world and do epic stuff” while being also licensed by Creative Commons & Kopimi. So I’d say do not wait no more, visit the website and give it a spin.

By the way, I created a new page in which I list all my projects I’ve created. You should visit it.

Unlock the Wifi, that is—with the tagline “Unlock your city”.

But what is it exactly, eh? A little history:

It is a Foursquare initiative I started with a tweet in the morning. After several minutes it was retweeted by ±5 people so I decided to start working on it more seriously. I setuped a Tumblr blog, serving as the initiative’s new home and kind of a hub of all activity regarding to it. Then I reposted the links, pinged some guys about it, and boom—the word did spread.

But what exactly you want to do?

That awkward moment when you sit in a cafe/shop/whatever and there’s wifi but it is locked. I bet you know it. And I also I bet you dislike it. So, why not after asking politely for the passcode, make public the wifi’s key for other people to use in future. And what’s a better place to do it than Foursquare?

Uhm I get it—how do I contribute?

It’s really simple. Assuming you’re having a Foursquare account, once you find a venue that has locked wifi and after acquiring it (the wifi of course!), you only have to post it as a “To-do” or a comment in the venue’s Foursquare profile. Simple and elegant, eh? Now everyone can see it and have free wifi!

To find more info about “Unlock the wifi, unlock your city” just visit our Tumblehome! And do not forget: tweet, share, like, post, email and share the word about it!

Update:

• away.gr wrote about Unlock your wifi! Have a look.
• techinsider.gr wrote about Unlock your wifi! Have a look.