WordCamp Greece Θεσσαλονίκη #2, the Aftermath
Μια εβδομάδα καθυστερημένος, αποφάσισα — ή μάλλον καλύτερα, βρήκα το κουράγιο — να γράψω το aftermath του φετινού WordCamp που έγινε στις 4 Ιουνίου στην Θεσσαλονίκη. Έχουν γράψει άλλοι ήδη πριν από εμένα. Η Ζαχαρένια, ο Δημήτρης, ο Γιάννης, ο Γεράσιμος, ο Θάνος — και μάλλον καλύτερα.
Anyway, here are my two cents. Continue Reading →
WordCamp Greece #2, Θεσσαλονίκη
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.
Startups: Taxibeat, disrupting the greek taxi business
Startups in Greece aren’t common. There is SocialWhale, Indifex and a couple other cool startups, but the reality is that we do not have the startup culture of Silicon Valley or that of NYC—or anything that is close to that level. There is a pun here in Thessaloniki (in which SocialWhale and other awesome guys are based). We call the place “Salonikon Valley”. I think you get the point, it’s pretty much obvious.
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.
Review: Ifttt.com, your digital duct-tape for the internets
It was 2008 and I was 16 years old. Nikos Anagnostou and me had this idea of when you share a Google Reader item it should be automatically submitted in Delicious. We separately had some ideas based on APIs and Yahoo Pipes but for reasons I cannot remember we didn’t develop or make anything.
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:
The importance of being free
Being able to create is one of the utmost and fundamental axioms of the computer culture. The importance of being free, also. Free not as free beer, but rather as the right to mess with with the hardware and software you use. Study the code, tear the machine up, study the bridged RAMs and SLI’ed nVidias, et cetera.
Freedom though, includes freedom of choice.
Despite all the OS’s fuss and “wars” one has to chose his set of tools that best fit him and his needs. Lately I see many Linux- and GNU-heads stating that, well, you can’t be a hacker or believe in the hacker culture if you use a Mac (or Windows). “Go Linux.”
This approach reminds me the Marxist practices at USSR: we’re all the same, no matter what.
Hacker != Proprietary software
They say these two things can’t go together. We say, why not? The culture of sharing knowledge, code, tearing machines up, making customs solutions, studying how something is built, etc cannot be forced to be a possession only of one ideology or of the practice of using open-only software. Then it becomes proprietary itself. It’s contradiction in terms.
Speaking of freedom, people forget the actual freedom
Isn’t that a paradox? We are not the same. Each one of us is different. You have different needs than me, I have different needs than you. Forcing ideas and concepts to such narrow terms is not freedom at all. We need to re-think things again, re-challenge ideas, people.
It’s 2011, we need change
What’s the purpose of having many programming languages that satisfy different needs? It’s time to understand that we should separate the human factor and ideologies out of hardware & software and enjoy true free creativity without setting ourselves and our practices in vary narrow terms and bounds of these ideologies.
Because, true creativity, innovation and progress won’t come by the people who use only GNU or only Mac or only Windows. They won’t come by Stallman, they won’t come by Jobs, they won’t come by Linus or Gates. They’ll come by the hackers, entrepreneurs and people who actually create, focusing on just to create without limiting themselves to certain sides or OS wars.
And this, reminds of Apple’s quote:
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them. Disagree with them. Glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world. Are the ones who do.
It’s time to reconsider things.
Working on a standing desk
“If you aren’t trying new things and failing, you aren’t learning.”
—Pedram Keyani, Facebook engineer
Pedram is right.
I first saw Pedram at MTV’s “The Diary of Facebook“. Apparently he is a very talented engineer, hacker extraordinaire, creator of Facebook’s infamous “Keg Presence” and has a radical approach regarding his work-desk. He doesn’t use a chair!
When I first saw this (for me at least, new) approach, I was in a way shocked. I was asking myself “is he crazy?” or “don’t his legs hurt a lot?” Well, the answer to both questions is no. No he is not crazy. Regarding legs, more in a second.
So today I thought why not try this. Experiment. Learn. Fail maybe, but learn whatsoever. I’m already working for 40 minutes at my standing desk and feels really cool. At first, I thought I’d dislike this new way but these 40 minutes prove me wrong. It feels a lot better as of working/writing/coding/killing time standing in the front of my Macbook while sitting on my chair.
Pedram’s arguments were that by standing and not sitting he was more active and busy all day long rather than getting too comfortable on a chair. My arguments are “just try it” and see if it fits you. I’m not sure if I can describe well the new feelings of the “standing desk” but I’m sure you’ll like it. For me it’s like freedom to stroll around brainstorming when you’re stuck with something (eg. writing this blog post), being more creative, having more luls, easier to interact with other people and fun.
Regarding legs as Gina Trapani wrote, the first two days will be a pain for you. That varies of course for each one. You might be athletic and you won’t hurt you a little or you might be not athletic and you’ll have to adjust yourself for a couple days or so. Really, it depends on your body type.
Most surprisingly though, medical studies have shown that the human body is not suitable for to work many hours while sitting. Excessive sitting might cause health problems. I guess though, all you need is some balance. When you see that your feet hurt take a 10-minute break to sit somewhere. Eat something, drink a tea—have a break basically.
Pros
- Freedom, enabling you to work better in many ways
- Focusing easier to your work
- Unique desktop environment
- It feels great
- Brainstorm awfully easier
- It’s better for your health!
Cons
- Feet-ache in the first couple days (maybe)
- New workflow for you to adapt into
- I don’t know something else
So, who else is using a standing desk?
As Gina informs us, mighty former Twitter developer and founder of BankSimple, Alex Payne, creator of Instapaper, Marco Arment, podcaster extraordinaire Dan Benjamin, novelist Philip Roth and even former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
My setup
This is how my computer-standing-desktop looks like now.
If you’re still skeptical about it, I’d say give it a 1-day try. I bet you’ll like it. Already using or want to use a standing desk? Share your experiences in the comments below.