LukasRos' Blog

This week’s #MusicMonday: Video Games from Lana del Rey as...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:20:54 +0000

This week’s #MusicMonday: Video Games from Lana del Rey as a live performance on the German TV show “Inas Nacht” (song starts at 0:30).

Switch off and have a happy weekend!

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:53:03 +0000

Switch off and have a happy weekend!

Later than usual … this week’s #MusicMonday with...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:46:09 +0000

Later than usual … this week’s #MusicMonday with some orientally remixed UK R&B dance track: Alesha Dixon ft. Jay Sean - Every Little Part Of Me (Culture Shock Remix)

The 10 Minute Tidy Up

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:01:05 +0000

Yes, I admit it, sometimes my room is a mess. Things don’t get stowed away after they were used and even if, so far nobody has found a way to get rid of the unavoidable dirt and dust.

The web is full of advice on how to get organized, but too often this advice is not very helpful. Hence, I would like to share a tip that I found really helpful. It’s called The 10 Minute Tidy Up.

The problem with tidying up is that there are two hindrances: Either you believe you don’t have time, because there’s so much other work to do, and then end up sitting at your desk surrounded by chaos. Or, you’re afraid of spending too much time in tidying up with rather irrelevant things because it’s your favorite way to procrastinate.

So here’s what I do:

Set a timer to 10:00 and start the countdown.
Do whatever you can accomplish in 10 minutes.
When the timer rings, stop and start your “real” work.
Repeat the previous steps on the next day.

If you do this every day, and honestly even with the tightest schedule you should be able to spare 10 minutes, then there won’t be enough stuff lying around to do so you can use this time to vacuum the room one day, dust your desk on the other etc..

Hope you’ll find this advice helpful.

Today several websites, such as Wikipedia, are protecting...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:56:36 +0000

Today several websites, such as Wikipedia, are protecting against SOPA and PIPA. In case you still have no idea what this is all about, check out these informative slides from Arun Pattnaik.

Vanessa Carlton - Where The Streets Have No Name

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:23:25 +0000

I have another U2 cover version for #MusicMonday, which I discovered while trying out a 7-day trial of the music subscription service Rdio. I like this version because it is quite close to the original, but guitar replaced by piano and male vocals replaced by female vocals makes a refreshing change!

"Why this Kolaveri Di?"

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:13:00 +0000

In India, “Why this Kolaveri Di?” (often translated as “Why this murderous rage, girl?”) has been an awesome viral hit on the Internet. The song is from a Tamil movie, but the lyrics are in a very, very simple English without proper English grammar. Honestly the song doesn’t really improve the perception of English speaking Indians by foreigners, but it is nevertheless awesome :-).

Apart from the original version and the female version, which you may have listened to already, for this Music Monday you can also choose to watch a dance flash mob or listen to remakes in Punjabi and German!

Just like last year, I’ll start the first #MusicMonday of...

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 11:29:19 +0000

Just like last year, I’ll start the first #MusicMonday of 2012 with DJ Earworm’s Mashup of the greatest hits of the year, the United States of Pop. This year it’s called World Go Boom!

I wish you all the best for the upcoming year! May it be a good...

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:31:00 +0000

I wish you all the best for the upcoming year! May it be a good one.

It’s December, and we need a song to say so on...

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:11:15 +0000

It’s December, and we need a song to say so on #MusicMonday. I think this singer was a “one hit wonder”, I don’t remember any other song of hers. But she made it that this track is played on the radio every year.

Expectation vs. Reality

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:18:05 +0000

So true …

I have never featured the same artist twice on #MusicMonday, but...

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:03:05 +0000

I have never featured the same artist twice on #MusicMonday, but this is also the first time they sent me a “thank you” note, even recommended their latest recording and With or without you (originally by U2) is still a classic. So enjoy the Harp Twins once more!

Names on Facebook

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 11:01:05 +0000

Most of my Facebook friends are cautious people who are sensible of the implications of an online profile, so I can’t remember any of them having had difficulties or embarassing moments due to oversharing. They also know their way around the privacy settings and how to hide their profile or friend list from strangers (or even friends).

One thing, however, that irritates me when browsing the friend list, are the friends that use fake names or shortened forms such as Ma Ny or Lo La. Combined with a photo of their dog or a random sunset, it makes me think for a second: “Who is this person again?” Guys, this is a Facebook! A collection of pictures and names of the people I know. I think of it as a dynamic extension of my address book, in which I also prefer having full, real names (unless the person acts under a different, well-known pseudonym, but that’s a different story …).

Now you may argue that you’re doing it for privacy reasons, and I can see the noble intentions behind it, but I believe that changing one’s name is not the right strategy to protect one’s privacy. It could even invoke a false sense of security.

A fake name is not the best way to protect you from stalkers, your boss or other annoying people:

Facebook has privacy settings that allow you to hide your profile from search, both in Facebook and on external search engines. You can also limit messages to friends and new friend requests to friends of friends, or block certain people. I believe these are better methods to prevent yourself from being found and stalked than changing your name, which may also annoy your friends.

A fake name doesn’t do much to hide your identity from Facebook:

If you think your enemy is not your boss but Mark Zuckerberg, think again. Facebook’s business model is to take your demographics and the observed behavior on Facebook and attached sites, e.g. your “likes”, and serve advertisements that fit your interests so you hopefully click on them. Is your name relevant for this?! Not much. If you still think Facebook shouldn’t know your name, because it allows matching with your real world identity, think about your email address or other associated accounts. Do they contain your name? If yes, Facebook could get it if they really want it. Which also means, if you really want to build a fake identity (which I cannot endorse, of course) on Facebook, you need more than just a modified name.

Thoughts about Choice

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:03:05 +0000

A friend asked me whether I could send him an MP3 file to his iPhone. I sent the file to his email address and now he can play the file from his inbox. Not in the native music application (“iPod”) on the iPhone, mind you.

The one and only option to get music stored on an iPhone, it seems, is to sync the whole device with iTunes.

On my Samsung Galaxy SII, I have the following options:

Sync the device with the Samsung Kies app on my PC.
Sync the device with Windows Media Player on my PC.
Browse the device from my PC and copy the file into the appropriate folder.

Now these are just the options I have when I have installed and configured the device with my PC. Apart from that, I also have the following options (this is all built in, no third party apps required):

Download the MP3 from a URL through the mobile browser.
Transfer the file via Bluetooth.
Access Samsung Kies Air through a browser on the PC and upload the file to the phone.
Switch the phone into “USB thumb drive mode” and copy the file to the drive.
Copy the file to a Micro SD card and insert it into the phone.

So, what is this blog post?! Is this a rant about the iPhone being a locked-down platform with no choice and Android being much better?! If you think so, this is only half true. Of course I think there should be a way to transfer a single file to an iPhone. But seeing all these options I have on my Android phone, I might get overwhelmed by the choice: How should I do it? What is the right tool for job? I can understand a non-technical person already being tired when reading the list of options.

It is Apple’s philosophy for their devices not to do everything but whatever they do they do it really well. Apple has to support only a limited set of features, compared to other vendors who compete on the feature counter - but that often means some of those features may not work perfectly.

So, does this mean I personally prefer the Apple way?! Not at all. I would never exchange my Samsung Galaxy SII for an iPhone. But you have to consider I’m a person who loves playing with technology. I can understand anyone who prefers the iOS simplicity approach.

Great that we have various mobile ecosystems and everyone can find what’s right for them. Now that’s choice! Sorry fanboys for not taking part in your battle :-)

An interesting interview with AirBnB covering the roots of the...

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:31:05 +0000

An interesting interview with AirBnB covering the roots of the company and their international expansion to Germany. Worth watching if you like AirBnB or simply inspiring entrepreneurial stories.

The Harp Twins

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:19:06 +0000

The Harp Twins:

If you’ve been following my #MusicMonday posts, you may have come to know I’m a big fan of musicians who take a song and interpret in a different way. So next in this series there’s Camille and Kennerly. These two ladies, who happen to be identical twins, are harp players and they have made a series of cover versions of pop and rock songs on two identical harps (what else!?). Two of my favorites are Stairway to Heaven (originally by Led Zeppelin) and Clocks (originally by Coldplay), but there are few other great ones as well. Check them out!

If you know Nyan Cat, Leekspin, the Ragefaces and other memes,...

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 23:00:05 +0000

If you know Nyan Cat, Leekspin, the Ragefaces and other memes, you propably spend way too much time on the Internet! At least you will enjoy this week’s Fun Friday video by “The Gag Quartet”, a band that compiled over 50 memes from Internet culture into one song.

Google+ Migration

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 11:19:21 +0000

Google recently announced support for Google+ in Apps accounts. For me, this was good news, because it meant I could consolidate my two Google accounts into one. I’m Google Apps user with lukasrosenstock.net and I really appreciate Google Apps and how Google made these Apps accounts first-class Google Accounts while at the same time baking features such as sharing within the domain into their products (even if they are pretty pointless for a single user domain like mine).

Previously, some products were unavailable for Apps Accounts, but now with Google+ they have really become first-class Google Accounts.

Do you remember Google+? One of the “Facebook killers” where now everybody’s joking about it being a graveyard. My experience is the opposite, Google+ is well and alive. I see a lot of interesting content in my Google+ stream, but admittedly this comes from a few users only. The question remains: How my of the people in my circles are actually still active users?

To find this out for myself, I ran a little experiment. As I was too impatient to wait for the announced “Migration Tool” anyway, I just created the profile in my Apps account, but didn’t add anyone. Instead, I posted a link to my new account into my old account’s stream, indicating that people should add my new account. I posted this twice with some delay, so that it wouldn’t be buried in the stream.

So here’s the numbers: I had 42 people who added me to their circles in the old account. After my two postings, 10 of them added my new account. In other words, the postings had a ~25% response rate. Of course I don’t know if the other 75% really haven’t seen it, are lazy or don’t like me anymore ;-)

I have collected few thoughts about Google+ and other social networks and how they’re used. I’ll keep that for the next post.

Jason Fried / 37signals

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 11:00:06 +0000

I finally watched an interview with Jason Fried, which was waiting in my bookmarks for around a month. Jason Fried, in case you don’t know him, is the founder of 37signals, a company that started as a mere web design service firm and turned into one of the most well-known providers of web-based collaboration software: Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack and Campfire. The company is also behind the famous Ruby on Rails framework. They are not only known for their products, though, they are also known for the way they look at business and the future of work, a topic about which Jason talks a lot, maintains a blog and even released two books. For an entrepreneur or anyone who wants to look at how things in their company can be improved, Jason and his company can be an inspiration. That’s why I wanted to see the interview. In case you won’t find the time to watch the one-hour video, I have compiled the main takeaways here:

About the company: 37signals has 20 employees (number is from 2010), of which 10 are local and 10 remote employees. 40% of those are college dropouts or never went to college in the first place. They are bootstrapped and never needed VC money.
Product Design Philosophy: Make products that do less than the competition, but to this really well.
Making simple products is something small teams are better at.
“If you have a great idea, cut it in half first.”
Workplace: Face to face time is important, that’s why even remote hires are brought in the office to meet their colleagues at least once, but typically workers get more done when separated.
“If you meet less, this time becomes more valuable. If you meet more, you collaborate less.”
People work best where they are comfortable.
In a physical office, avoid interruptions. Have an open office but separate rooms for conversations so nobody is disturbed.
Startups: Don’t take VC funding upfront! “If you need to make money early, you get better at making money. If you have VC money, you get better at spending money.”
VC-funding often causes companies to grow too fast too soon. Growing slowly and/or staying small is more natural.
Don’t sell your company and then figure out what to do next. Maybe this business was the best idea you ever had?!
Sharing: Freemium works as the “Drug Dealer Model”; give away something for free and make people pay for more.
If you use and depend on open source, give something back. 37signals thinks of itself as a product company, not an infrastructure company, so Rails is not seen as a core business. As it is free, it can become better through external contributions.
Sharing more gets the word out about your company (he compared it to chefs cooking on TV shows and sharing their recipes to drive people to their restaurants), so share!
Hiring: Hire as late as possible when it already hurts! A lot of startups (especially VC-backed) scale up their team to early.
Hire people for a test project for one week. It says so much more about them compared to a resume.
Recruiters should look for people who want this job, not just a job. Cover letters are important.
When hiring developers, look for their contributions to open source.

Talking about 37signals, I have one more gem to share; a video from their blog demonstrates the history of the their homepage. Interesting to see how small and big changes are coming after another.

“Smack that” on #FunFriday. Don’t watch the...

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:00:06 +0100

“Smack that” on #FunFriday. Don’t watch the girl, watch the little boy :)