Disqus - Latest Comments for Nicole Simon

Re: Podcast Downloads Dominated by Men in iTunes?

Nicole Simon — Thu, 17 May 2007 06:36:28 -0000

I do believe it. It is only 2/3 to 1/3. They state they have a panel of 2 million world wide, but as I found comscore does have 'more limited' requests when doing their research.

Also you should not forget that this is a pre xmas half year old survey. Given podcasting, this is a huge time frame.

A German study confirms that still most listeners are male, therefor I find 1/3 women to be already quite high. And also that is the number which is going to rise.

Re: BlogHer

Nicole Simon — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:28:00 -0000

I hope I will remember to bring candy then. will chocolate do as well?

Re: FriendFeed Flaws – The Wrong Kind Of Attention Grabbing

Nicole Simon — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:43:50 -0000

It's starts with more basic flaws than that - thousand ways to include data, but no way to exclude it, making redundent data over and over again. Plus as you said - you rather go to the source than to have it scattered in million places ...

Re: FriendFeed Flaws – The Wrong Kind Of Attention Grabbing

Nicole Simon — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:43:50 -0000

Re: barcamp london 06 - the morning of day 2

Nicole Simon — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 07:21:11 -0000

Well, that is one thing to be moderator - you at least get not thrown out, then again, you end up wanting to play sometime and leave the space at 5:30 in the morning or so ;) ;)

And it is not so much you being marketing, in this definition the werewolfs could not really hurt you as already being on the dark side of the force. ;)

Re: http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/archives/2006/12/le_web_3_what_s.html

Nicole Simon — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 20:04:28 -0000

In general I think that is a good idea - I just would not tag it that way.

This name in its varieties is connected to this conference - and the next good conference can be something totally else.

Orientations to look at are already DLD, Lift and Reboot of course.

Re: An Eggshell Psyche, Mister Wong, and Why 8A Took a Stand

Nicole Simon — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 11:28:20 -0000

I agree with Klaus description, and he is right to bring up exactly those examples.

Akrypti, as you said: there are strong strong problems with this in America. Which I am in no way denying. But it is not the solution to be offended by something which is happening outside your little eggshell - and this is the point i am missing, as I wrote ernie before as well.

The acknowledgement that not YOUR definition alone is what counts in the world, but that this is more than a one side thing. I am still missing that. And I take offense in that, I react angry on the fact that you demand from me - doing accusations like this as well - that I should bow to your experience, to your history of racism and what you experienced in the US as you say every day.

That _is_a problem - but you cannot judge by that on the general population of the world.
.
The solution is not "ignore others, I like to do as I do" but we together have to work on it. It is not going to work that just one side obeys to what the other side thinks is appropriate.

Nicole
ps:i wanted to use the link only in the website field, but it is not long enough to take it. I would be fine with you just deleting this sentence and put the link in there: http://crueltobekind.org/archive/2007-07-27/the...

Re: Fear of being blogged

Nicole Simon — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 08:36:20 -0000

Was she promised to get such? And, on the other side: If she is afraid on a conference like that to ask a question + she was sent their by her company, she already has her strategy: Not for her.

If she is not able to just ask a question, how is that company supposed to blog?

And yes, it will be a long way - for them. We are already there.

Re: Five Reasons Why You Might Not Want to be a Top Stumbler

Nicole Simon — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 07:56:25 -0000

In the end, it is a pure number game.

People being around for a longer time have the advantage of a) having the network of getting new stuff to be submitted (you rather want to have the powerful stumbler to stumble it) and b) the experience and the ease to deal with it.

But in the end 'power stumbler' only means something to me, if that is in the area I am interested in, and for somebody being able to stumble and process a lot, this tool has some very hard limitations.

So it is a balance between what you want to get out of it and what it brings you.

And Michael: Yes, some people do earn money with social media, but it is not that they earn money because they are on stumble upon. It is because of what they do and are good at that they earn money, and SU is just a part of that toolbox.

Re: barcamp london 06 - the morning of day 2

Nicole Simon — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 12:21:11 -0000

Re: Facebook’s Failed Attempt at Acquiring StudiVZ

Nicole Simon — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:57:02 -0000

You forget the market size of Germany (and which relevance those 'small' 10 million have in a market with ~80-100 million possible targets for the whole country). Germany is a language silo-ed country, meaning that most users like a complete german interface.

If you like to compare how much studivz and their additional offerings for pupils and not students anymore users smash everything else in regard to page impressions and more, take a look at the ivw numbers - they rank consistently as top of germany. Not just in social networks - all over the board.

[ivw numbers are independently counted by tracking pixels and are regarded *the* numbers for the german market, not to be compared with bogus numbers like alexa and co.]

While I do not dispute that StudiVz probably is way more a real clone of FB than many other sites, it is hugely successful even without the API.

For the german market facebook needs to behave *way* more clever than they have in the last few months or buy the competitor.

It is also not to be underestimated how suing StudiVz will make an impression on the users: "First they tried to buy us, now they are suing my beloved social network and now finally they are trying to win me over? Not going to happen".

Even if StudiVz needs to shut down now - I assume users will rather sign up for a new network by the same people than move over to Facebook.

Is the German market lost for FB? Not at all. It just takes more than the "oh we are the greatest and allow you to join and worship us" attitude they have shown so far.

Re: Against Splitting The Bill

Nicole Simon — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 04:19:28 -0000

I don't like splitting the bill evenly for the very simple fact that I usually never consume the kind of thing others do and while I may feel like inviting somebody else, I am not comfortable doing that in a normal condition.

I don't drink wine, I don't drink alcohol, but I do drink a lot of water, usually at least one or two, and if I find something nice on the menue I like to order more - but as I am picky too, it may very well be that I choose only a very limited small selection. Or something really expensive.

Either way, I am usually always NEVER with what the rest of the crowd does, either I am using up much more, or much less than the rest.

I could make a smiley face and say I don't care, but I do. I could "be nice" and just swallow it up, but I won't because I see no reason to.

I agree with Stephanie on that if everybody pays, that is taking advantage of, and more than once I have overheard those happy "yeah we like to share and it is great!!!" people afterwards grumpling about how X did have so much more. It is fake in many cases.

It is a good reminder though to pay attention to 'group' habbit and make things clear in the beginning.

Something I feel comfortable with for example is a combined thing - I pay my share first (remember, this being either much more or much less) and the rest can go for a shared meal if they like, I do not mind that at all.

If this makes the rest of the group uncomfortable I am sorry, but I rather am at peace with myself than just make somebody else comfortable. Tara's argument of "oh but that is just greedy individualism whereas the other one is cool collective" does not go with me either IN THIS SPECIFIC case.

Collective for me is not about being made equal all the time, but for me to have a choice and an agreement with the group I am in that this is the direction how we all think is good to go. There has to be compromise on both side usually, which is fine, but that is about it.

In this specific case just reading how it worked I would have expected from you to pay for the starters, since you ordered it (my perspective: usually resulting in a lot of stuff I have no interest in eating) and after that it is up to everyone to organize themselves.

The cultural side of it being that you pay for the birthday girl - over here it is more responsibility for the host to invite everybody is another dimension to it.

To sum it up - it is not easy and needs talking. But there is not the case of "my way is the only one which is the correct one".

Re: Being My Own Travel Agent With Kayak

Nicole Simon — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:47:29 -0000

In complicated cases likes yours (this is not even a normal open jaw flight) one does call the call center of their favourite airline (in your case most likely AA as they serve with BA on the same alliance) and let them wiggle around a bit unless you already know your flight patterns.

And they let you book such a flight because it it the legal turnaround time on the airpoirt - which for T1 to T1 in LHR for example is also an hour - and you have to have something like a call center agent to put you on a later flight.

One reason I prefer to take a special route to SFO over LAX is simply that I do not need to go through AA's hubs in DFW or ORD; but go LHR-LAX directly.

I also notice that you use two allicances in your flight which will make it more expensive; also you cannot select miles this way reasonable. As you are going to SFO more than just once, I would make this part of the calculation of your trips.

One reason for me to go through paying a bit more for my BA flights was that I now have enough miles in the bank for a free flight in their premium economy. Note: not all classes earn miles, and with a call center agent you can ask what the booking class above costs a bit more (sometimes this means the difference between 25 or 100% miles).

Hope everything goes fine with this journey ;)

Re: Working For Fame Or For Cash

Nicole Simon — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:31:38 -0000

(hint: if it is generated by something but displayed visible on the site, it IS harvestable - another reason not to put email addresses online).

You use cash or fame, whereas I would like to see a third option, the "what is in it for me". I am very much a fan of the barter system - but only if it is a true win win plus if one does not loose track of earning money.

I would not label Going Solo non profit btw, because this year it is making no profit but is supposed to be doing in the future. It must be this controlling background which makes Marie-Aude and me cringe at this mentioning ;)

Re: O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo Berlin (after experiencing New York one)

Nicole Simon — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:43:49 -0000

There is this cool tool called zemanta which does automatic links to everything you mention maybe you should try it out? ;)))

http://berlinwebweek.de should have most of the links available for what you mentioned ;)

Re: Free Expo-Pass for Web 2.0 Conference in Berlin

Nicole Simon — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:15:27 -0000

Instead of having fun in the hallway and with all the people you have not seen in a while and having a bad feeling about not being in the sessions, this pass provides you with more reasons to stay outside and interact with interesting people. ;))

Re: Starting to get podcasting…almost

Nicole Simon — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 13:34:30 -0000

The usual question first: Does a "these are the jobs at MS you could have" and "learn to like our marketing guys" really work together that well? :)

But then again, I think that would be a nice idea, just as some other departments have made contact to the outside world through their blogs to show themselves as being nice people.

Well, then again, we are talking marketing folks here ... ;)

Re: 2007/07/03/pownce-rivals/

Nicole Simon — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 08:05:39 -0000

One benefit of Jaiku is defenetly the fact that you can unscubscribe from feeds within your friend - I for example am never interested in last fm or picture, I can unsubscribe on a per friends basis.

And if I follow someone on twitter as well, I can remove that from jaiku too.

So far Ponce though is the easiest way for me to have one application and post in different languages, and I would love to have reading sets as well - as some people are more important than others.

Despite whatever client you choose, I am looking forward to the meta clients as they will provide real benefit.

If those services want me to be with them exclusivly - well, then THEY have to pay me something for it.

Re: 2007/12/23/paris-is-no-silicon-valley-neither-is-europe/

Nicole Simon — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 15:07:12 -0000

So a hot spot by your definition is anything as long as a lot of venture capital is flowing there? I know it is on vogue, but what has become of the idea to actually HAVE a business and not see ipo / exit as the only relevant business sucess?

I am getting a bit sick of seeing this as kind of the only measurement of success.

Re: 2008/02/22/grandcentral-blogger/

Nicole Simon — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:26:46 -0000

Don't think normal blogger, think podcasts, blogs for shows etc who would love to have a call in they can work with.

I in my case would love to use it for something like my podcast and other stuff, but google refuses to even let me in because i do not met the criteria being in the US. Funny thing though: I want to use it for my US listeners, and the only application I would use it for on travel is actually when I have a US number and *am* in the US. Go figure.

Re: 2008/02/23/virgin-america-tickets/

Nicole Simon — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:27:54 -0000

I know 13 is for many not a lucky number but for me.

Love for mashable? hmmm let's see. what i probably like best about mashable is the focus, not as many other sites have 'expanded' into different areas.

focus on social media - with the usual sidetracking - but it makes it a great ressource to read every day.

btw roundtrip from where? I still need an air ticket in April for the web 2.0 Expo ;) Where btw I hope to meet some of you :)

Re: 2008/03/17/sxsw-plague/

Nicole Simon — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:03:07 -0000

Wishing everybody quick recovery - those get togethers with people from all over the world each with a different set of virusses in them is a bitch.

[usually I get knocked down with severe cold every single time, *knockonwood* this time it only seems a bit of the voice as everyone else.]

My guess is it is iphone and apple related, you should check that. ;)

Re: 2008/03/19/infected-scott-sigler/

Nicole Simon — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:48:42 -0000

Without having listened to it yet, Scott's story really is an interesting one and should be carefully watched by anyone wanting to generate buzz.

Having been involved in Podcasting since early on, I have seen him not only take the home market by his marketing efforts, but also the _outside_ as in international market. Others where able to profit from his efforts as well.

Just one example - I remember him sending out messages to German podcast mailing lists and making sure everyone would know about him. Companies wanting to earn money until today don't understand how or why to do it.

And while I personally can't stand his genre - sorry Scott ;) - everybody should take notice on how to generate this kind of buzz. They will not be able to copy it 1:1 but it is a good learning piece and does belongs spot on into this series of interviews.

Looking forward to listening to it.

Re: 2008/03/29/what-would-you-ask-robert-scoble/

Nicole Simon — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 07:23:31 -0000

1. What is Mashable good for?

a news site with a specific focus which I can follow to stay informed in this area.

2. What are blogs good for? How do you use them?

Wrong question. What are books good for? How do you use them? I use a certain kind of blogs for information retrieval, others for amusement, others for inspiration, others for keeping in touch.

Blogs per se to me are "something with a feed which is more usable than a static website". A tool I can use in different varieties. I for example rarely follow comments on entries, but digest a lot of feeds with a different interest than somebody who wants to read up on three closest friends.

3. Are bloggers journalists?
Not that one again. Are tabloid reporters journalists?

A journalist is somebody with a certain set of talent, goals and expertise. A blogger can be so as well if they like, but it is more about professionalism on the one side and content on the other.

4. Are you more likely to trust a company that has a corporate blog?
Not per se. It depends a lot in how they actually present themselves. Do they treat me like I would like to be treated? Or do they try to jump on another hype and still not get it?

5. Flipping the question: what are blogs bad at? Whatâ€™s the worst thing about blogs?
Too simple of a question. Again, there is not 'that' blog.

There is no need for me to consume everything, so if I do not like something, I can leave it. Blogs are tools and it is the people behind it who make the strategy and planning as well as the execution and implementation.

Speaking of implementation: your comment area sucks. ;)

Re: 2008/04/11/summize-twitter-search/

Nicole Simon — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:22:41 -0000

I am rather disappointed by your posting - this tool has a lot of interesting options, but it is more or less a posting about how you monitor mashable.

And let's not forget:
"Most noticeably, Summize has a shiny design, versus the rather drab Tweetscan."

Tweetscan is a hack i welcome very much, because it is mobile friendly. Summize has a lot of better features but probably also better backing.

Language filtering is huge and it would have been interesting to see how they do it; support for hashtags as well as the built in re-twitter bot for free etc ...

But of course. Most noticeably is that it is more shiny.

Re: 2008/04/13/mibbit/

Nicole Simon — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 04:33:49 -0000

You make it sound as if IRC is so far behind, nobody would ever want to use that again. I would say most veterans still use their old setup - in my case that is basically a decade old setup of MIRC and it is about new users entering the fold.

The beauty and the features of IRC are still unmatched in nearly all IM apps while some advancements have been made to make it more shiny.

Twitter has added the mobile functionality - for all the people never bothering to setup their irc or jabber clients on the phone, but basically the reason why many return is because the rest is still so much in it's infancy.

It is a pity though that all of the apps do not mix both worlds - but then again, it is probably about loosing control when you have your users run on an irc client/ server, they might actually go away from you.

Re: 2008/04/13/mibbit/

Nicole Simon — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:18:53 -0000

Effnet? No way. Left that one when the server did the split. ;)

Re: 2008/06/16/mashable-conference-guide-3/

Nicole Simon — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:47:53 -0000

I am missing blogher on this list, July 18/19 ;)

btw they will have schwag there ;)
Nicole

Re: 2008/06/16/mashable-conference-guide-3/

Nicole Simon — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:10:31 -0000

I will be happy to speak there about how to branch out more internationally by just adapting a few steps. And just payed a little extra by rebooking the flights so I can be at the summer mashable event as well! And while I cannot speak for the organizers, I am sure your team should at least be talking to them! ;) ;)

Re: 2008/07/25/china-internet-users/

Nicole Simon — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:31:23 -0000

While the market is huge, it depends on how many of those people will be english speaking to start to be relevant to the international market.

As mentioned by antmam, india already has a high percentage of people speaking english as a more or less native language, and they do not make that much of a splash.

To gain full access to that power, otherwise the companies will have to start to speak chinese in its different varieties ...

Re: 2008/08/03/social-bookmarking-3/

Nicole Simon — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:53:52 -0000

I think it is like asking if blogging tools where there to express your self or to promote something. It is of course both.

Me personally, I usually bookmark sites I want others to see, where others can be peers but also strangers. 'I want others to see' for me means "i put it out there and if it crosses their screen, I think they'll like it if they are subscribed to me".

Also I will be using bookmark sites for research for a specific projekt and I will rely on delicious a lot. Because the way they structure it will make it a research feast for me.

Which I think is okay to 'use', because I do enter information there as well and I am very interested in adding for example a language tag.

Different to that, a site like Digg I would not call a research site, but 'headlines of today'.

So different tool, different purposes.

Also I use it commercial to add links to the services, though I do not use my own users for it if it is not something I would have bookmarked otherwhise. You bring up the point of 'rendering it useless' to which I disagree - we just need to find mechanisms to make the stream of information more relevant to yourself. :)

Re: 2008/08/11/topics-for-corporate-bloggers/

Nicole Simon — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:24:44 -0000

I'd add: If you are only few people, do share which events you will be attending, especially if it is not a tradeshow. It helps readers to connect with you and helps you to get information from other people who will also attend.

Re: 2008/08/12/twitter-pownce-following-limits/

Nicole Simon — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:23:24 -0000

Why is _your_ interpretation of what is managable or not relavant in regards to what I should do?

What is next, limit in feedreaders to 5 blogs because "that is all i can follow so you should not do different"?

I am all for managing problems, making a platform stable and everything, but please do not try to put your limitations on other people.

You can see clearly how many people somebody is following and followed by, it is your decision who you want to follow or not, who you want to publish to or not. It is not your decision to determine how I use such a system.

Re: 2008/08/14/twitter-outbound-sms/

Nicole Simon — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:31:25 -0000

The biggest problem I see (at least for the German market): We do not pay for simple SMS receiving, ever. The idea ot get a text message and pay for it is associated with the likes of ringtones and similar.

Also, while DM per SMS is nice (which is the feature I assume most people really use and not having everything delivered to their mobile) it is doable by mobile internet. That could be an angle to work it, but mobile phone providers are not interested in small apps with low footprint, as it does not bring in money.

To give you a reference: I use twitter extensivly through a prepaid data plan when in Germany for 24 Euro cents a mb and made barely 3 megabytes since last christmas. Not much to get there.

Re: 2008/08/15/mashable-monthly-blogger-lounge/

Nicole Simon — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:20:56 -0000

Not everybody does like reporting just from the event or directly afterwards - and looking on how most startups present themselves at such events and outside it would be more helpful to many to just get their game up to par.

Starting with decent information about what they are doing, image material, including screenshots / logos on site as well as accessible on the web site, on site of course a decent plan for how to be accessible for people doing interviews - everything you would need need if you would decide to cover them.

I mean, you know what _you_ would be looking for in reporting about them, probably the best thing to do for those startups is to give them a training on how to work with bloggers (or even just get the bloggers interested in what those startups do).

Take care of that and people will actually be interested in talking to them, but as long as they stay in the stupid 'I have a table, a press release with a lot of cool words in it how awesome we are, this will make people talk to me'!

From my personal point of view: As long as startups do not make it easier for me to cut through the crap and have easy access to what I need, I will not waste my time on them but enjoy the networking.

Re: 2008/08/15/irony-alert-social-media-introverts/

Nicole Simon — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:17:19 -0000

@coachdeb that definition of Extroverts vs Introverts is so spot on. ;))

I do not think that smart people (and we do have a lot of *very* smart people in this space) are comfortable with just lowering expectation all day long. Also they are sufficient enough to stay on their own and do not need that more simple kind of interaction.

It is just the label society gives. Feeling comfortable with throwing yourself at everybody, talk to everybody about everything on a broader level etc in opposite to being more picky is the label for extrovert if you like.

To this, your typical 'social media' person is introvert. Once we enter the Net, we suddenly find all kind of people who are alike. We get to know them from the inside out instead of starting the other way.

And then it gets really really interesting.

At least for myself I find that I thrive on connecting with people, which is one reason why I like to visit events. But not just any people - my kind of people. That is the difference.

Re: 2008/08/15/irony-alert-social-media-introverts/

Nicole Simon — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:52:43 -0000

@GeekMommy absolutly same here. it took me a while to realize why I was so fine in corporate time with being more on my own on the weekend - it was that I would recharge from the week. And I am fretting a bit my upcoming trip to the states for the expos in NY and Vegas - it will be awesome but I will need recharging time.

Recognizing your pattern makes it far more easy to adapt to it - I for example loath on site or after reporting of events, simply because my energy goes to different outlets during this time.

There is no right or wrong in it, just recognize your pattern and then work it. ;)

Re: 2008/08/16/twitter-threaded-replies/

Nicole Simon — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 06:14:51 -0000

And in 15 years we also maybe arrive at features available on IRC and usenet ten years ago like crosspost elimination (better aggregation), watch and kill filter plus scoring ... *sigh* it is not that the information is not there.

Threading has been done in usenet, and all the problems around it are solved as well, devs just would have to look back into the specs and go on from there instead of reinventing everything. :)

Re: 2008/08/17/new-media-expo/

Nicole Simon — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:13:26 -0000

Oh when they finally got the part about the blog, podcasters really has evolved. ;)) And yes, choices is the point. Because not only circumstances demand different solutions, personal preferences do too.

Will video have more audience in general? Jup. But it will not take away from the fact how mcuh audience audio has.

Re: 2008/08/18/web-20-expo-ny/

Nicole Simon — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:30:03 -0000

I am actually exited about going, as I never have been to NY - I expect it to be different by attendees and of course I also want to make advertisement about the Expo in Berlin in October as well as the huge international Barcamp happening the weekend before (discl. I am on the advisory board for the first and help organizing the second).

To Sam et al: you know all of that costs money to put together (look at mashable - they also have a staff of people who needs feeding, I accept their advertisement as part of the equation.).

But you should not miss out on it, play it strategically. Get yourself an expo pass, a cheap flight to it and a night or two through priceline. Share costs with somebody you like for the hotel. The opportunities you have at these events especially for introducing your app to people is so much more expensive otherwhise. :)

And if you do go, make sure to bring some nice schwag and if it only is for Tamar ;)

Re: 2008/08/27/4-questions-for-every-early-adopter/

Nicole Simon — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:00:22 -0000

Dear Mashable, I'd like a filter please probably for the next 6 months at least for any post done with a political reference. This is supposed to be a blog a) about social media and b) about the internets.

Not about the presidential race in the US. I suggest you take a look at your analytics and decide where your readers are coming from and think about the USP of it.

[Even more so Mark: Please post that political stuff on your blog instead of finding excuses to bring it up here. If you just would have used as much effort to link in the lower part of just this post as you did in the upper it would have made a much better post. In fact, removing the political part at all would have made it reasonable useful.

And linkable. Or bookmarkable. This way? Na.

Re: 2008/09/08/the-new-mashable/

Nicole Simon — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:37:17 -0000

I hate the new Facebook because it removes choice and reduces ways of finding. But this here felt nice and naturally at once, especially the social media buttons at the bottom / tag bar is are nicely placed and not overdone.

The only thing I do not really like is the tag page that far up though I like it is not the usual 20 tags and be done with it - i'd like the advertisers to be further up. I like looking at them to see if there is something valuable in it.

(missing btw - a link to the ff remote key in the dialog box, that is standard.)

Re: 2008/09/29/cloud-computing-evil/

Nicole Simon — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:40:02 -0000

To stay with your example of Gmail - one of the main reasons to use it is the fact that I can get my data out through IMAP and POP. Google Analytics? Nice features, but also export of the data and automatic sending by mail. As long as you make sure that you have setup a working system to get your data in and out, I think you are covered. Of course most people do not go there - but they do not use decent programms on their system either. ;)

Re: 2008/09/29/cloud-computing-evil/

Nicole Simon — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:48:38 -0000

It does not need to be the DESKTOP we work for. Exchangable / retrievable data is something different to insisting on it has to be on the desktop. Dont get me wrong, I am the first to talk about stuff I want on MY machine, in MY control to work on the tools I want to have. But not everything is working on the desktop, nor is it supposed to be.

It is the data we care about and what we do with it. And before you go there - Blogs are basically pretty version of usegroups with a slightly different toolset, and yes I'd like a working nntp gateway for my feeds, thank you. ;)

Re: 2008/10/01/stumbleupon-browser-plugin/

Nicole Simon — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:23:05 -0000

but i like the toolbar :o( i see the point for new visitors to get them engaged, but I hope the toolbar stays, at least for the major systems.

Having to go _through_ the site every single time to get somewhere will render it quite useless because that is a use for dummies. This of course is the majority of the users who surf the sites, but I assume that the people submitting the sites are the more experienced ones - and they will not really like that experience.

Re: 2008/10/16/tech-industry-evolution/

Nicole Simon — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 06:07:53 -0000

Just seeing that a message from your boss is not highlighted - Filtering, Quicklinks and automatic starring (you know you can search for stars, right?) work. Lifehacker and other sites have a lot of articles on them.

Rather than doing that, I'd suggest you get yourself an impap client in which you can drag and drop mail more easily for sorting them (though you should not do that with large amounts at once).

Re: 2008/11/18/how-to-auto-follow-people-on-twitter/

Nicole Simon — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:13:17 -0000

Once you are over the "oh my god the sky will fall down" (do get over it, please), you might be able to come up with some useful scenarios beside the spamming.

Yes, of course spammers will use it, so what? We have other mechanisms for this.

I see it primarily the other way round. Put out a trackword (in your blog post, in a competition, in an announcement) and twollow that trackword. Throw out a question and people to answer right away once you follow them. And as @drewie123 said, for brands it is invaluable if they can track certain keywords specifically.

Seeing Liz' comment I am reminded back of the days of blogging, when the first business bloggers arrived, which had vastly different needs and interests than the 'normal bloggers'. And that is fine. Just dont confuse your wishes and needs with what everybody else is needing or wanting.

Re: 2009/01/11/tech-twitter/

Nicole Simon — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:39:18 -0000

If I want twitter news, I subscribe to twitter relevant sites. Is it something mashable should cover? Absolutly, but probably a) balanced with other stuff going on and b) in a way as they have done in the past: as thought leader with well researched articles rather than noting all the newest twitter apps. hint: you dont report about most facebook apps either, and my guess it, that would intererst a bigger crowd.

but please continue especially the summary and overview articles on twitter, they make my live much easier. ;)

Re: 2009/01/15/twitter-suggestions/

Nicole Simon — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:41:46 -0000

Getting back the banner they had during election so one could see what the current trends are - allows you a peak into what is happening.

RT this - also gets my vote.

And: make the top link of search.twitter.com back to twitter.com.

Re: 2009/01/15/twttrstrm/

Nicole Simon — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:04:33 -0000

Content creation for them - yes. But on which grounds? Did you agree on being pulled in with your tweets?

And how would you feel ending up with your tweets on a squidoo page just because you used a specific hash tag?

Re: 2009/01/15/twttrstrm/

Nicole Simon — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:05:03 -0000

@roo ahem yes, that is the point. besides there being an ethical side to it - so you dont mind that i put up your tweets up on my porn side as an example for a typical customer, right? - there is a legal side to it. you might want to brush up on the topic of copyright and permissions to use your content.

without my permission you cannot use the content of my website without compensation and you try and scrape my content of my blogs. I can waive these rights to a certain degree, but that is about it. you cannot use content without prior consent, period. even the american concept of fair use is something very specific, and tweets are no different to that.

Re: Find ‘Em On Twitter: 15 Twitter Directories Compared

Nicole Simon — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 10:12:28 -0000

I do host several of those german lists as well as collect links to such list under http://mit140zeichen.de/uebersicht-twitterverze... including top german users, german politicans, PR and communication twitterers as they are also mentioned in my twitter book.

yes it is not as nice as having a dedicated directory, but honestly often they are just that: directories without a lot of additional functionality. My politician list is sorted by party and if it is state or local, the PR list most likely will be done by town or company soon. The reaction of the readers usually goes to specific demands per category which also change quite a lot over time.

my suggestion is to collect them and grow with user demands on them. and dont get discouraged when for example you do a list for politicians and the guys are too stupid to add themselves to your list.

Re: Find ‘Em On Twitter: 15 Twitter Directories Compared

Nicole Simon — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 10:12:28 -0000

Re: 2009/02/04/tweettornado/

Nicole Simon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:07:55 -0000

I disagree slightly. I would love to have a tool to manage several accounts, and yes even create them automatically for a real purpose. It is throwing out the kid with the bathwater - because banning these tools will make sure that the useful purposes get attacked as well. Back to pen and paper anyone?

Instead people should really head over to forums like digitalpoint / warriorforum and such where these tools are given out with instructions how awesome for spamming (excuse me: advertising and huge amounts of traffic) is - only if you tell them that we do infact watch and react on it there might be a chance to not stop them, but make their life more miserable.

It does not stop there. Spamming is an issue in every system and it is no wonder that they pop up so fast, accompanied by gurus who really are successful in this game - but only because they know how to play it.

I am not saying to give up, just react in a way we know it works. :)

Re: 2009/02/04/tweettornado/

Nicole Simon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:14:01 -0000

If you have a look at the video, you should note that they do have some good features in there. Now take away the "oh my good spammers" view and look at the features from a real power users point of view ...

Re: 2009/02/04/tweettornado/

Nicole Simon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:27:58 -0000

Jason, there is more than just tweeting to using accounts and there are people running more than just one account. I am currently juggeling 5 accounts and yes all of them are valid ones. It would be a real help having professional software available for managing the accounts - tweeting is only a small part of that.

Hell, even a working tool to sync my german account with my main account would be enough. Why do i have to dive into API programming when clearly there are ways to do it differently? Because it is exactly the either or view, the black and white Jason portraits (or shall I say lack of imagination?).

*sigh*

Re: 2009/02/04/tweettornado/

Nicole Simon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:01:54 -0000

@jason no you cant. firefox is just a solution for a small need to have more than one account in the hands of one person who only from time to time needs to switch. Then it is useful, and trust me I know Twitterfox.

To begin with: it is not outsourceable (as it runs in your firefox), it does not allow for efficient updates of either the tweets (yes that would be also scheduled tweets) nor the management of the profile (you are aware that people do use the background image for useful scenarios like http://twitter.com/philharmoniker)?

Just to stay with the automated tweeting - and you may lack the imagination when there is a valid use for such - but none of the shiny web services allows you import for example from a text file or spread sheet. [If anyone has one available, please ping me]

My point being: the only ones currently bringing these kind of featuers are the spammy ones, which I really find sad. Given the popularity of Twitter I have to ask why spammy tools manage to bring useful innovation which normal services lack.

Now where is my automated tool where I can quickly search for a phrase through twitter, go to all of the accounts and block them with not many clicks per entry (search - view profile - click block - click yes do blog, repeat)?

And as Karl wrote in his article, the real problem is that they have a business model behind it.

Re: 2009/02/04/tweettornado/

Nicole Simon — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:57:07 -0000

@Xen, for startes, I have a german and an english account as Twitter does not care to allow for easy separation of languages. A third is the account where I interact with my book readers (a twitter book btw), the fourth and fifth are for the topic of my global business women forum and the girl geek dinners I run. All of the messages are done by me, and I currently use different browsers for managing the accounts.

You say it is about social networking and yes, indeed it is. I do check every single profile who follows me. Still results from twitter can either be processed by hand or for example with somebody else helping out. Like asking for events in Europe and then collecting the data out of the stream of answers, prepping an overview and posting this. Which again brings value back to the stream.

I am also not encouraging that kind of tool, I am the quickest one to block these people and report them.

Re: 2009/02/11/twitterremote/

Nicole Simon — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:51:20 -0000

That kind of application is a reason not to stay logged into twitter and use a third party app. Afaik there was some discussion on the api mailing list that this behaviour is not intended. Especially since different to mybloglog I cannot "log out" - most of us stay logged into twitter all the time.

So nice idea, but very much a security and privacy issue.

Re: 2009/02/11/twitterremote/

Nicole Simon — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:04:17 -0000

Boris, you know how much I love twittercounter, but this is the kind of
app where you _know_ before you build them that this kind of argument
comes ... It is like building a webform and afterwards saying "gee I did not think
somebody would use it for spamming" - your api shows that you can do better!

At least with mybloglog (if I remember correctly) I was able to delete
myself once I was on a page I really don't want to be tracked.

Re: 2009/02/11/twitterremote/

Nicole Simon — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:23:25 -0000

Okay, as I got some dms on this: yes I read the part about 'When you first encounter a TwitterRemote in the wild, you do need to sign in with your Twitter credentials in order to get your picture to show up, though the creators note that this wonâ€™t be necessary once Twitter implements OAuth, which is expected soon." - I am talking about the "won't be necessary" part. In an app like this, is should _always_ be necessary to state your intent. :)

Boris [it is Nicole btw, not Simone ;)] as long as you make sure I will have to do the concious decision of saying yes before you hijack my twitter login, there should be no problem at all.

Re: Turn Your Business Card Collection into a Valuable Online Database

Nicole Simon — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:31:17 -0000

Many of us do have scanners lying around. Take each card, strike out the information not needed, scan the rest in batches of normal paper size, use an outsourcing service to do data entry and get the data back. :) this works if you have a lot of data not needed, but it may be easier to use a service.

As I deal mainly with social media people, the email address is usually enough to fetch their profiles like on facebook or twitter ;)

Re: Twitegy, Trying To Capitalize On Tweeting

Nicole Simon — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:11:41 -0000

Thanks for the mention - if you think my @m140z account is good, what will you think of my main account @nicolesimon? ;)) The book is indeed a real published book, 235 pages long on how to use twitter with an extra chapter for business.

The females list is one of many I am hosting (I provided the direct link in this comment form as web address) because most people want to connect based on topic and interest, so I find those very helpful myself.

Back to your point about the twitter ad agency. It is a nice idea but I think one has to realize that twitter is not the only point of interest / entry. It is rather a mixed combination and just focussing on twitter is wrong.

It is of course okay to work with somebody to help you with just twitter, something I do with my clients, but it is never meant as 'just' twitter. It is always about "a) how to use twitter so you dont look like a fool but b) how to integrate it with the rest. There is no other way.

Re: Tips for Personal Branding in the Digital Age: Google Insurance, Cache-flow, and More…

Nicole Simon — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:13:32 -0000

The more good content you put about yourself on the net - in a controlled way - the more work it will be for somebody to digg something up. Even basic profile pages on social net works can help.

I am still amazed how much people try to limit whatever is on the net about them, starting with mere photos. It will hit them so much harder where there is nothing if something 'bad' is put online.

[ Somebody once tried to threaten me with "I will google you and find out everything about you!" to which I replied "Good luck reading through all of that." ]

Re: Seeking Suggestions and Case Studies for New 4HWW (Plus: Twitter Giveaway Winners)

Nicole Simon — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 21:13:00 -0000

Going away from the more obscure topics suggested by some, I found mainly one shortcoming in the book: the concentration or focus on the one specific style of how you work your business. The new version should include more ground instructions for people to apply in different areas, the most promising probably around the area of people in the cubicle.

Although it does not seem so at first sight, the principle can be applied to everything and once you understand that, things can change. But many people have a problem in 'structuring' work, which is why these kind of instructions need to be broken down more.

Instead of just describing outsourcing (for which many people will claim it does not work for them but still probably is wrongfully the most described content of your book) describe how thinking about this process can be applied to all kind of work.

Re: If by 800 followers you mean…

Nicole Simon — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:22:52 -0000

While I follow you, I rarely read you - for the simple fact that you do post in the wrong time zone for me and twitter only allows me to read back a certain amount of pages. In my morning it is midnight over at your place, I will miss out on most of the conversations of the evening of the states.

With so many people following you, I think there is some amount of people really into you and following you religiously. Others do it occassionally and even further some people do it from time to time - all of which is good.

And while I follow some people through the day, I mainly use searches on keywords and specific accounts I call up by hand. It is way more efficient. :)

Re: Accomplishment is What Matters

Nicole Simon — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:43:11 -0000

Interestingly to see that behaviour at a McDonalds.

I worked for a brief time at McD in 1991, over here in Germany shortly before my graduation.

Videos where part of basic training, how to make the stuff etc. And one of the first videos we where shown actually was exactly about that: Be grumpy and be assured, everybody around you will be the same.

Smile to the customer, say please and thank you to your colleagues as well and everybody will be nicer.

Illustrated with teenagers at McD who suddenly saw themselves faced by smiling customers etc.

But it worked - it got so far out of hand that my family was frightened by my sudden behaviour of saying thanks to everything done. ;)

Re: The Myth of Evil Corporations in Social Media

Nicole Simon — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:50:53 -0000

Wonderful, as I was just thinking about a similar kind of post in German, something along the lines of "what you should do and not do when attending a barcamp as corporate".

And yes, they should come, see and learn. If they are willing to learn, they are welcome. If they are not, then they are as unwelcome as anyone else.

Plus just like with childreen, they need somebody to guide them through the process. They are used to certain mechanisms which are natural to them but may be highly offensive to others - without the intention of being offensive they may not know what hits them.

So yes, please. It is about tolerance on both sides - because many times those evil corporations are much more open than those "oh my god! somebody in a suit!!!! evil!".

Re: Snake Oil In Social Media

Nicole Simon — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:23:14 -0000

I dislike Expert as much as everybody else, more for the fact that many people use it and clearly are not the ones.

Advisor though has a ring to it "for somebody else" as in not necessary something I can get right away.

In the battle of how to describe this thing what i am good at - which is being an advisor - I came up for my self with the terms analyst and most often specialist.

This describes my expertise in a sense that leaves yet the room for discussion if or if not I am 'enough' of a specialist for you, but I am one.

From there on it is much easier to follow through in communication with customers and possible customers. Because I do not claim I am an expert, I am not imposing the 'i am superior'.

But I like the term advisor very much!

Re: Quick One- Are You Using StumbleUpon

Nicole Simon — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:31:57 -0000

I actually love Stumble upon. It has brought back the magic for me to the net, I was missing since URL Roulette got out of business.

It does help probably that I have wide interest in many things plus love the social media stuff.

Get yourself a lot of related topics to start with and just stumble away. :o)

my profile if you like to get some ideas for tags of interest:
http://nixande.stumbleupon.com/

Re: Quick One- Are You Using StumbleUpon

Nicole Simon — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:41:43 -0000

You need to make sure to add some friends first, as you will be stumbleing their submissions and thumbs up.

In the beginning you can just look around a bit radomly and connect, they are not that meaningful "will you be my friend" friends.

After a while, add others and you will see a huge diversity of content (dont forget to add tags of your interest!)

Re: Buy a Domain for Email or at Least a Gmail Account

Nicole Simon — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:20:11 -0000

There is another reason to use gmail: you can hook it up with pop3, access it from mobil and with impa, it has an unintrusive interface - i would say therefor it is also accepted as a 'normal mail address'.

Where in comparison hotmail and co is like stating your myspace page is your homepage. ;)

Re: What I Want a Social Media Expert to Know

Nicole Simon — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:33:02 -0000

To Lonnie's point - understanding what market you are in and why stats like Alexa are nothing to be used unless in a certain context. Many english speaking websites nowadays have a huge international audience and we do shop too.

One big item missing in your list: Understanding analytics to a deeper degree than just looking at pretty stats. That is *huge* for measuring success and goes hand in hand with monitoring tools.

To your point of being an expert. I see your point but that is what people want to see on your biz card. As such, yes I am a social media expert. The byline says "helping people understand" which is similar to your advising but yes, I am more expert than others.

In some areas that is, and if somebody really is looking for an expert, I expect them to understand without saying that I'll never be the expert to know everything.

For me that also runs into making sure the client understands very fast if or if not whatever they search is something I can offer. If not, I do say so very quickly.

Re: Chris Pirillo tells Google to fix BlogSpot

Nicole Simon — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 05:47:14 -0000

Christopher, depending on your blogsoftware and where they get the addresses from, different blogs receive different kind of spams.

I only have one of my blogs which gets spammed with a lot of blogspot spam. But I do see that about 80% of the requests for all of my pages are with referer spam.

Why? Because many blogs by default show referrers. Or "so many people are coming here from this blog!"

Make the world a happier place for the moment by educating them to take that off their pages. Show them how to lock out the statistik pages for search engine bots. Scare them by telling them they a) look stupid by letting spammers on their blog through showing it and b) are giving away secrets if they don't lock out the statistics.

Second, let's start thinking about what brings companies like Google to start paying attention. It is not because some people in 'our' part of the blog world posts about it. It does not hurt. It does not even sting.

Re: Addendum to #29: Engelbart says a mouse should have more than one button

Nicole Simon — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 05:01:47 -0000

One is awful, two is kind of okay, but two with wheel and the wheel clickable works best.

More buttons, especially on the side, don't work. Probably because the mouse has to be hold tighter to get it where you want - you can push harder if you do not have to worry about side buttons.

(Especially awful: That press me to click one buttong mouse.)

Re: #71: RSS Bandit author considers OPML reading lists

Nicole Simon — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 07:28:58 -0000

Well, when the average user only has a handful of feeds, then he can go web based and have a nice little page display.

But for serious users of RSS (and I mean this in the sense of *needing* to work with this stuff) I find many developers trying to reinvent the extra wheel - instead of concentrating on things which would be important to a user.

I am not saying that there is the one right solution of how one has to use RSS, it would be nuts to say so. Everybody has a different style of working.

But there are some things which are consistent:
We want to read information which are important to us. We need to read certain information regardless if scored down otherwise- We do want to read our feeds but would like to explore more ("other people writing about this, ordered by if they are subscribed to by your friends")

On some topics we want to see updates from other sites ("if x new reactions have arrived, pop this up again"). Some information we only want to read for a special amount of time ("gadabe this stuff for the next 30 days, then disappear") We have rules based upon we would like to unsubscribe ("show me that this feed is on probation, if I do not click the interesting button at least on X percent of the posts, put it into the unsubscribed folder")

Also my friends could say this post is important so it pops up on my radar - and they do not need to post about it every time they see something slightly interesting.

*sigh* but of course, everything would be a goldmine for data mining - concepts of trust and of what share with whom (you can see my feeds but not my recommendations) need to come with this also.

I doubt that people with many feeds to read have so different needs from the people with some feeds - the latter just gives up earlier. If we improve ways to handle the feeds for power users, I am sure, there will be benefits for the others as well.

I would hate to see the typical user of IE7 with RSS built in to give up after a handful feeds because they are not managed well enough.

Re: Why open up?

Nicole Simon — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 03:10:47 -0000

I live in Excel at work. Me and my collegue got Excel 97 installed - but to make you happy, the rest uses Excel 2000. Upgrade? Our makros do not work under 2000 and the UI is not helpful but irritating when it comes to pivot tables. But I will gladly take a look at the new Excel.

Because the one thing which really might help is the new limit on rows in the new Excel. Which probably means I will want to install the new version, use it for slicing of big files and work the rest in Excel 97 again. ;)

Re: It’s interesting what happens when you clean your blogroll

Nicole Simon — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 09:51:10 -0000

I find it interesting that people would like it more to just be included than actually be read.

While I of course like to be subscribed to, I find it more important that things I write do have something to add to what people want.

Re: No AJAXy women?

Nicole Simon — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:30:11 -0000

Well, I am not a lamp girl, and I will be going to Etech. :)

And yes, servers of mine run on Lamp. But not my working machines for myself, those are Windows. :)

Re: Noah’s guide to the Internet

Nicole Simon — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 07:21:49 -0000

Of course, I am missing podcasting - not everyone is happy with just text or video.

Therefor I suggest Odeo (http://www.odeo.com/listen/featured/) as a portal to explore different podcasts and users as well as IT Conversations as a premier source of all kind of interesting podcasts.

Re: Blogher dates announced, my wife goes gushy…

Nicole Simon — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 05:58:02 -0000

Well, a geek couple I met recently quarreled a little bit. Her comment after that? "well, he will explain it in an email later. he always does".

This might sound strange, but in a way okay for me. If I can write it in an email because I am highly uncomfortable with saying it, the choice is not between "finally learn how to overcome this" or nothing but with a way to slowly get comfortable with speaking about it. For some this might sound like a step back, I think it is 10 steps forward.

Re: Russell is SSSSOOOO right about mobile usage

Nicole Simon — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 08:29:34 -0000

Germany is awful in regards to flat rates for mobiles - and prices are too expensiv for moblogging and such.

I just retrieved fotos from my phone from December in London which I could have uploaded in a second if the price would not be so expensive.

Now, when going over to the US in March, I would like to use my mobile phone for lookups of information on the net because I don't know what everything to try and store on my pda and or print out. :(

I never in my life send out an MMS and I don't fon very much, because it is too expensive or do SMS.

So when people argue about "well, they don't use the services now, why should we invest" I can tell you: I would spend money _through_ being connected not because of being able to connect. I pay a flatrate at home, I want the same with mobile.

And oh boy, how i would use them. Show me the plazes around me where I can spend money, baby! :))

Re: I’m not a Guy kind of Evangelist

Nicole Simon — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 19:29:38 -0000

Robert, from my European point of view, many americans have a very religious background, much more than we do have over here. This is annoying on several occassions and even more frightening sometimes.

But when I think of tech and I think of evangelist, this has no religious meaning for me at all but the title of somebody who is passionate about a product and therefore is good in presenting whatever product you have to others. Because he / she wants to convince them about it too - it is his or her true believe that this product rocks.

A good evangelist is also capable of accepting other peoples likes and dislikes. When I think of such an evangelist, I do think of a person with a passionate glow in their eyes, and an open smile in their face; more a child in joy than a terrorist who wants you to follow his believes.

Does that make sense?

Re: Off to Switzerland, taking my podcasts

Nicole Simon — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 12:09:04 -0000

I'd suggest some music too, and if you don't like Rock so much ;o) I'd suggest the Tartanpodcast to you - also Scottish, language learning included as it is with Ewan.

U-Turn cafe is more chill too. And of course Coverville. ;)

For a long flight, you also you try out a Podiobook or get some more European taste with the BBC. ;)

Re: Microsoft doesn’t support Firefox?

Nicole Simon — Sat, 06 May 2006 09:11:01 -0000

Firefox users are approaching 50% of my readers, IE readers are already in the minority. This is consistent over all my blogs.

As for supporting IE vs. Firefox: I do accept if a service starts out the full version on their own browsers IF and only if it is built to support both. If not, then building "it for good in our browser first" usually introduces 'features' which will never make it to other browsers at all. That is like wanting to use a basement which was not built from the beginning.

Now, do I use Microsoft pages at all? The only one I do use it win update / driver download and yes, I have to do that in IE because Firefox does not work properly there. Everything else which says 'IE only' I leave immeadeatly.

Last example was a website which sold me a gadget at some hundred dollars. I went for another website which was 20 dollar more. But it did work great in Firefox and let me do what I wanted.

Re: Microsoft Word generates clean HTML for blogs?

Nicole Simon — Wed, 17 May 2006 13:51:14 -0000

I would use Word for blogging - because I can work fast with it, it has a decent macro recorder, there are keyboard shortcuts for all the goodies (and I expect alt+1-3 to get H1-H3)

I might even use it for blogging directly to some of the given hosts or otherwise I would try to get the HTML code out of it.

Make that thing nice, and I can stop bitching about stupid blog editors which do not get the basics about windows software UI.

Re: The Mojito Show (Saturday at 2 p.m. is next taping)

Nicole Simon — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 07:56:24 -0000

where to go to why don't you go
where vloggers sits
Puttin' on the Ritz

....
Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper
Tryin' hard to look like scoble-ooper (super duper)

...

thanks for putting that song again in my head arg :)
Nicole

Re: We still have the scars… (Jeremy wins award for killer business card)

Nicole Simon — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 17:46:31 -0000

They are probably great. For somebody in the US. :)

Re: Interesting podcast service overview

Nicole Simon — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:59:07 -0000

Interesting posting by Ev, really helpful except for one thing: the so called Statistics by Alexa.

He makes some adjustments but unless everybody is using it, this is a reason to toss away the results at once.

It is only preferring a certain browser usage, it is preferred by the english speaking audience - hell Technorati has a better ranking mechanism like that and we know about the hickups with that.

*sigh* it devalues his work on that completely.

Re: Vista beta testers mad about forced startup sound

Nicole Simon — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 14:08:20 -0000

Actually, such annoyances like this ARE a reason not to run the system and or annoy you each time you start the system.

And I bet the market for replacement UIs will come very very soon.

Hell, we even got somebody to do a way for the tablet enhancements of MS to work on non US versions via patching executables.

Re: The startup sound in Vista …

Nicole Simon — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 16:11:02 -0000

Oh now I get it. They want everyone to buy the more expensive version. As it "pay more and you might be able to have a patched version without sound".

Steve thanks for the though of me needing a signal when my computer is ready to finally do what I want. If you put down your ideas down for a second - could you please come and take a look at how normal people work?

They turn on the PC and go do something else because it takes AGES to load it. Even Coming out of hybernation is endless. I don't need that 15 sec is over sound, because I will give my computer the longer time to boot up and do something productive in the meantime like fetching coffee. And no start up sound will change that.

Adjusting the speakers? Hello? How dumb am I suppose to be?

People put glue on the caps lock key to finally turn it off. I had a patch for NT which would just kill the key, make it do nothing. It was on the systemlevel. It is one of the most annoying things on any keyboard I encounter.

[If anyone has a reg patch working for an IBM tablet PLEASE tell me about it, and if you would have one which also makes the function key a working windows key instead of it just leaving it out I might consider loving you. Well, Marcipan perhaps].

Is it branding? Of course it is! Is it working? Of course it is! It will show you at once the one person in the room who is not in charge of their computer. It says a lot about the skills of a person if they have a laptop and still have it on.

Will it be working and recognizeable? Of course it will be. But tell me: Why are you so desperate to make it unchangeable instead of making it so compelling that everybody will tell people like me "don't you dare touch that, I love that!".

Well, I guess you have to stick with 'don't let them touch it' ...
Nicole

Re: The startup sound in Vista …

Nicole Simon — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 16:27:13 -0000

Hei Blake, a Spaces blog with content, cool ;)

I forgot in both my article and my posts here: I would be just a little bis less annoyed by it if it would be piano. I would probably still be sick of it after awhile - even with the piano.

There are so many posible ways to make this a cool and good experience - hell you have to update the pcs anyhow in regular times (or does anyone REALLY really believe we will not have updates anymore) and make it fun. Interesting. For everyone. Compelling you see?

This is like forcing somebody to feel like a child again (and boy do we all love this). *sigh*

Re: The startup sound in Vista …

Nicole Simon — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 18:24:50 -0000

They are not saying that. They are saying "but it is such a good idea to make a unique branding for MS!"

And hey, if the sound really cannot be turned off without screwing up the system I amsure there is no problem in programming something which will hook in for shutdown and turn off the speakers by default.

But as said before: Instead of making something compelling and remarkeable which nobody *wants* to turn off they are setting the mark at "you cannot do it".

And those xbox comparisons are stupid because we don't run around in daily life with them. Oh and I am sure there will be a version available for companies with this stuff turned off ... Anyone taking a bet for that?

So while there is praise from the marketing side about this clever move guess why they have the word 'marketing' in their name. They are not the ones using it afterwards ...

Re: Where do you learn more? Small or big audience events?

Nicole Simon — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 06:51:42 -0000

Try being at a female only event for a change and you have the additional problem of the higher voices getting on your nerves in well visited events! ;)

Yes, you do feel like you have achieved more because you do not need to hop around to "take advantage" of all the people out there, so your ratio of 'how many percent' you had a talk with will rise.

I for example missed Guy Kawasaki at blogher - bummer. I would have liked to give him a short thanks for his books because I really like them. There are a few other people I read about I did not meet and it feels like "damn! you where there! so many people you did not talk to! why did you not talk to them?!"

But on the flipside, I would not have time to have a longer conversation with them, if I wanted to be the butterfly. Instead I had some deeper conversation with the "same old and a few new people" over two days. But you know what? They where cool as well. I now know a Fashion Journalist from NY and an engineer from Toronto better.

Which Rick Segal asked me to connect him to as in it is only a good thing to know more people from where you live - only to find out they both already knew each other. ;)

But back to your question: I think we learn more when we make sure to remind us that it is okay to have one conversation that evening even if that means leaving out 699 others.

I am for the exact reason interested to see the differences on my next trip: Portable Media Expo is supposed to have 3000 attendees where as office 2.0 seems to me a smaller event with like 200-300 people.

Barcamp London next week will be even smaller, 80 people. If it will be as Barcamp LA, it is going to be great.

PME: I know I will feel bad looking out for some special people I really want to meet on the possibilities I would have.

Lesson for myself in those cases: If you do have such a monster event, try to get a notice of the people you know are coming and decide if they might be interesting to each other and try to hook them up because you know they might have a great chat that they.

'Pay it forward' as netweaving.com is calling it. :)

Re: Google not serious about Web spam?

Nicole Simon — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 13:15:22 -0000

I would say they are in regard of punishing them in the search engine. I cannot imagine they rank them much higher because they are spam. And perhaps they consider this to be punishing.

Also we know that whole accounts are not only thrown out of Adsense, they also suffer from their rankings.

The problem with a lot of the blogger blogs is not so much the spam on them but the spam from them - I can make a Spaces spam attack even without having one.

And registering: This is why I never comment on Maryams blog. Or any spaces blog. I refuse to sign up with so many strings attached. You know how much I love your wifes blog - but even for her I will not.

If you mean 'doing something right' as in avoiding comments all together ... This is nothing I would call a solution.

Does Adsense / Adwords have a problem with it? Yes. On the other side this would be a short sighted benefit, because in the long run, they will loose money through this.

Problem: Google still is one of the view programms which is a) easy to set up b) running nearly everytime and c) accessible for people outside the US.

Pointing this out still rises the pressure on google. Giving the question over and over again perhaps also. But they will not react other than if it goes for the money.

If no money is coming in, then they will react.

Re: My 9/11 history was erased

Nicole Simon — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 08:49:02 -0000

I think this is one of the defining moments for our generation - and with a similar impact like Princess Dianas death. Although I dont understand that one.

9/11 to me was when the internet was slow to not working at all, I remember where I sat and when I got a call from a friend who told me about it. I tried to get to *the* german news site (spiegel) and it only worked out a few times - they had made a low end version of it to get the site out at all.

Today, the internet is the first place we go. And even normal family members do. After the thing in London recently I got a call from a family member to see if I was alright - the person did not know exactly when I got back from the states and was worried becuase I had not blogged yet.

I havent read the wired article yet, but I think we have seen since then which affect blogging (with pictures and videos) can have about such events. And I think it is a good effect - event though I would love if the reasons where different. :(

Re: The one with the most stickers wins (and learning from the students)

Nicole Simon — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 09:34:17 -0000

There is also a flickr group :)
http://www.flickr.com/groups/laptopstickers/

My advise for anybody trying it though would be to check the surface first - the thinkpad will be hell of work to get them off for the next round of stickers.

There is actually one I removed and that is the windows sticker. Reason? Not what you might think: It was reflecting the sun so much that I was disturbed heavily while working.

Re: Matt Cutts wins my “corporate blog of the week” award for Google

Nicole Simon — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 08:18:50 -0000

There are always too sides of the story and with the net you have a chance at giving yours. Usually it is not the big company but the other side who can set the record straight through the net (i just had such an incident myself).

But I absolutly love what Matt has done here: yes it is one incident but it actually gives a lot of information around it and helps understand what happens.

What he does not mention so heavily: We tend to forget how huge the data base of google (and others) is and with how many different information they need to make decisions in an automated way.

A feedback loop like described with the webmaster tool is necessary. Where is my webmaster link for Yahoo, MSN and co? :o)

Re: More expos and conferences giving bloggers credentials

Nicole Simon — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 08:25:00 -0000

It is just a logical conclusion as blogs will cover so much more than what typical magazines will report.

Especially given the international reach of blogs (rather than the very limited one of magazines just sold in the US) it is absolutly necessary to use the kind of buzz which can be generated.

Hm. Do they sign up international bloggers as well? ;)

Re: Le Web conference in Paris in full meltdown

Nicole Simon — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 21:30:51 -0000

There have been parts which have been boring - as with every conference everybody has different interest and interest levels.

I know for example that many people find David Sifry's numbers to be exactly that, I find them interesting even though I have read it before and espeically when combined with another study set (Ipsos) to make something out of it for Europe.

I do also enjoy having presentations like with Hans Rosling who shows a quite different picture towards modernisation / globalization than we might still used to be.

So as Loic put it at the end of the day 2, it was "only" short interruptions and not really a lot. (Please view the video for correct wording).

But like rotten food which is put into a perhaps good to great meal, it will spoil everything.

There are quite some reactions in the french blogosphere but I am sorry - even with 5 years of school french that is not readable for me and there still is no working babelfish. It would be appreaciated if on such a topic people would at least add a blurp in english - especially when they link to english text.

The good news? Anybody who wanted to do a conference like this might now have an easier time to get some sponsoring ...

Re: Le Web conference in Paris in full meltdown

Nicole Simon — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 05:03:43 -0000

Michiel I did leave. So did a lot of others.

To the effect that later near the end the rows where massivly empty. Did all of them leave? No.

Re: TechCrunch, German “Digg,” language barriers on Freiburg’ers minds

Nicole Simon — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:38:25 -0000

It may be that the roots of the word geek can be lead to Narr but i totally disagree putting that even in close proximity as they do have nothing to do with one another.

As for the english sites being read by germans - yes. you can be very successfull just writing about stuff you read on techmeme and are considered to be really innovative ...

but there are slow changes to be seen. ;)

Re: A bug with TechMeme…

Nicole Simon — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 17:32:33 -0000

My goodness, can't you people stop seeing conspiracies?

I too mailed Gabe some time ago because one of my articles was beneath another persons article - to which I did not link and especially would not want that connection to be made through that.

I see the problem of how to bubble up the newer articles withoug loosing the older ones, but other than Roberts example, this is a combination of the two - bubbeling up of a newer one and showed linking beneath that (this is how most of us read that!) without a real connection nor relevance.

No, I do not claim to have the solution but I do not need to like the current system just because I have no better.

Re: Another definition of “Second Life”

Nicole Simon — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 09:47:43 -0000

Chip, just go and read Maryam's comments on this how a wife travels happily with her man to such conferences.

Copenhagen is beautiful (so should Amsterdam be) and if you put her up in a nice hotel and give her your credit card, she should have a great time too ;) ;)

Re: Another definition of “Second Life”

Nicole Simon — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 14:15:09 -0000

Peter, I am not interested in making this into a credit cards are evil!!! thread. My comment is the usual answer on "how to handle the misses if they do not want to come over with you on a nice trip".

If or if not that is applicable to your situation in being able to handle money is besides the point. And: Just because some folks cannot handle how credit card works does not mean nobody can. No, you do not need to have a lot of money to work efficiently with credit cards ...

Re: Get ready for Web news wave

Nicole Simon — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 08:16:21 -0000

I rather prefer a nice twitter account which will send me sms about new and interesting stuff from the Web 2.0 Expo as i will be able to receive SMS without a problem - but will not be able to get any sim card with a usable data plan. ;)

Re: Lawyers at Skype bring negative PR to Skype

Nicole Simon — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 09:27:10 -0000

Is this something Skype has to do, due to trademark etc? Yes of course. Is this something which could have been expected? Yup as well.

It is a clever way to do so and treat Jan like every oder kid who just registers a domain without even the hint of recognition that he might have done something nice (of course in ways which do not in any way admit anything which could be used against them?) Nope.

Re: Flickr Ticker and more from the feeds

Nicole Simon — Mon, 28 May 2007 16:45:30 -0000

That is what you get from getting your wife pregnant!

I am going to miss you and Maryam but of course it is sensible to stay where you are. Hopefully we will have a lot of reports for you. :)

Re: Dreamhost sucky

Nicole Simon — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:52:52 -0000

As others said before, if you run a huge hosting business, you are likely to read more about them when they fail - and never really when they are good.

Dreamhost for me is a dream - great support, very fast even on the weekend, ssh, cronjobs and reliable fast webserving. I may have seen 2-3 outage over the last 2-3 years. How many providers really do use a dedicated other server to inform you about what they are doing?

Additionally their one click installs are gorgeus.

And yes, if I have something like that running to present, I make sure to have more than one option up because murphy is always around.

As said, I am a very satisfied customer for what they are costing and delivering.

Re: Plaxo 3.0, the new “Switzerland” of social networks, but…

Nicole Simon — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 08:22:42 -0000

The reason why my order of social networks is Xing, Facebook, Linkedin is very simple.

Facebook does provice me over Linkedin with information much richer - and while "but it is business only" is so last century, the new way facebook allows me to combine both is great. And with additional f8 there is a lot to do with facebook.

But, in the end, when I am online, it does not matter where i get the information. It is relevant when I am offline, and in more cases than not I do not have mobile access because I am not willing to pay international roaming fees for data, especially when I am in the US.

Xing allows me to download all of my contacts into outlook. It is no synchronize, but you can manage and you have the relevant information downloaded on your mobile device.

I am not the only one having asked for a synchro with outlook (after all, not even other systems), but Xing does prefer to "improve" their mobile client. Which, if you see my comment above, is totally beside the point.

It is about integration and synchronisation if online of offline. The times when work was work and you left your private stuff on your home computer is gone. Everyone of us has 2+ devices they want to synchronize and for god's sake, it is 2007.

The standards are there and it still is not working with major clients properly.

If facebook and plaxo can open up the competition, so be it. But I still believe it needs a third party developper like plaxo to do it right, just like back then with intellisync.

But in the long run I agree with Jeremiah - I do not want to tell (as I do at the moment in 3 new systems) everybody over and over again that you are my contact. We've done this a thousand times now.

Can those developppers please wake up?

Silo is yesterday. Try it and you will fail.

Re: TechMeme not going for most linked blogs anymore

Nicole Simon — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:00:32 -0000

Interesting how these comments always only come out when somebody feels not being listed 'correctly' instead of the time when this is not the issue ...

But this only openes up the market for something really valid in recognition. Which is what again? If small blogs blog about it? If bigger ones blog about it? If it has many links? Is read by many people?

These are the questions we should talk about and not "buhu they linked me wrong! I was first!!!".

Question a for techmeme for you to check Robert - are they in the 'feed' for techmeme? Because otherwiese they could not have been found.

Which of course you cant, but still.

Re: Feedburner bad for us?

Nicole Simon — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 21:16:24 -0000

Provider of feeds are much more protective of their reach than they care about which format they are using.

If it is a useful enhancement, others will follow in storm - see the itunes / podcast elements. Yes, it says itunes, but nobody really cares, they care about the content. (I am not up to current specs, but i assume there is still no length element in RSS for an episode - and you can do beautiful things with this.)

Or they will stop using it if, it is not useful.

Re: Feedburner bad for us?

Nicole Simon — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:56:03 -0000

colin, they do, and that is what mybrand is about. it has not been as widely used as it costed money before.

as for the leave and get 301 for 30 days: I have made a transition with them for one blog feed and have to say that while the feedburner part was great, those pesky feedreaders did not do the job well. if it tells you 30 1 for 30 days, you really should believe it and adapt. hrmpf.

Re: Facebook wall update coming tonight

Nicole Simon — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 07:47:18 -0000

When I look at my Xing account - still of course my main network application for various reasons, I do have over 400 contacts in there. A bigger part of my linkedin / facebook contacts are not in this. I recently did a go through of all my contacts and I see that at least 75 if not more of my contacts are "real" contacts I have made over the years.

I could contact them not as a dear friend at night, but i am able to contact them. There are still a lot of people missing I have not hooked up with yet or who are not online in this sense.

It may be that this is not how everybody handles their contact life, but in my case I do say honestly: This is not a collection, but this is true network.

[It helps to not only have one country as home base at hand of course ...]

I can see myself having 1K connections in my database and still have over 3/4 of them 'real' contacts, but even the other ones are at least good aquaintances.

Do I expect everyone to work the same way? Au contrair. I find it great if somebody only adds real dear near friends and I am not disappointed when they do not connect with me due to that. I would be disappointed though if somebody like you would not connect with me. ;)))

Re: JimDo: not your father’s FrontPage

Nicole Simon — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:19:02 -0000

While I agree with you on the feeds in general, at the moment it is not a blogging tool, but for your own webpage - and which part of that acutally does belong into the feed?

The newsletter feature is already good for the audience in mind, so if I would be a little company, rather than use google page creator or such, this might be a good idea.

But I clearly see how this can be a good blogging tool as well. Interstingly I found on my quick check that the hardest part is to enter / manage pages. But perhaps I am just not made for this kind of tool ;)

Oh and I hope you do send a trackback to Markus short information about Jimdo when you have the interview online! ;o))
http://detech.blognation.com/2007/07/27/jimdo-l...

Re: A Web-based IM that “sticks” to the desktop

Nicole Simon — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:25:05 -0000

I HATE applications which force me to use the mouse to actually do something.

I dont want yet another service to have me a social network, I want those boys to play together and let me have one place to run it.

Is this really so complicated?

Re: Crowdsourcing the answer to “what conference to attend?”

Nicole Simon — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:28:20 -0000

Most people use the list also for groups - I run two for European New Media conferences as well as Meetups, to make it more specific to the geographical area.

People tell me that they use my list (I tend to add a lot of the stuff watching) as reference list of relevant events and go on from there.

[Too bad that the recent updates benefit the occasional user whereas a person like myself screams at the screen regulary with upcoming.]

Depending on what your goal is, it really makes sense to go into community meetings as well. And if you are not going to have a sponsorship, very often there are cheaper ways to still attend, even if you have to fund the travel.

Re: Yelp events compared to Upcoming; Incoming “bacn”

Nicole Simon — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:52:13 -0000

It depends on your community.

For Germany, the better upcoming is wevent.org (covered them here http://detech.blognation.com/2007/08/21/wevent-... )

so if I would stay purely German, that would be my choice. But I am not. I am international and geeky, which despites it shortcomings, upcoming has my choice.

Yelp? Uninteresting to me for the very basic fact that it does combine events in a way I have no interest in with locations out of my reach.

Same with meetup - I use them when I engagen in something American centric. If in Germany, I would go for amiando, much stronger ties to the communities.

But to give the comparison to Yelp - I would not use it, but rather Qype.

Why? Content. Contacts. In MY sphere. In my field of interest. Opera is nice - for other people. I am just not interested in that, so upcoming with its geeky roots is just fine for me.

Upcoming btw sucks greatly for the fact that they still cannot separate events I attend from the ones I am watching, very annoying. And the recent 'enhancement' on search clearly make me want to try out another competitor because it tries to force me to only search on one area, totally dismissing the fact that most users are interested in more than one area.

Because if they are not and they are focussed in one area of contacts and places - well then yes, they would rather use yelp than upcoming ...

Re: Yelp events compared to Upcoming; Incoming “bacn”

Nicole Simon — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 15:11:55 -0000

John, it takes the brain of a fruit fly to not see coming that his next journey will lead him to networks for the mamas and the papas.

Simple as that. Different things happening in your live, different attention. Robert, looking forward to that part of the journey and i don't even want kids. ;)

Re: Plaxo news: microformats based online identity consolidator

Nicole Simon — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 06:44:55 -0000

Really impressive and congratulations. Plaxo really has managed to turn me from a Plaxo hater to a lover, in the sense of that before they were just spammy, but now they do something useful.

Now if they could start working internationally please aka start talking to the real networking sites outside of the US and stop making my birthday entries multiday events, I would be happy ;)

Re: Plaxo news: microformats based online identity consolidator

Nicole Simon — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 03:12:58 -0000

Eugene profilactic is yet another site for me while Plaxo has my address book and can give me this as an additional feature.

Also, I had a quick look at it and I do not see how they are offering up a) soemthing which can be deployed as open source for everybody to play with it and b) help me make those connections.

It is the place collecting everything and distributing, but does not help me solve the problem of syncing. Something as it seems nobody except Plaxo really seems to understand.

And Robert, if you can't hook up with Maria to let her show you Linqia this time, you have to make time for her when she is back in October.

Therealmccrea: She will be easy to find. Just look for that energetic and enthusiastc women. ;)

Re: Proximic does better than Google at contextual info delivery

Nicole Simon — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:18:10 -0000

Adsense works in German and with local adaption - do they too or do I need to go through the whole interview just to find out they don't? tip: include that info for your international readers next time. ;)

Re: Blog business opportunity: overseas blog networks

Nicole Simon — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:27:35 -0000

About being first - haven't you guys learned anything about that from your wifes and girlfriends? ;)

Techmeme is not about breaking news, it is about news which are written about at the moment. Well, the algorithm is based on news submissions running especially around the valley business, as well as the english based sphere, we have known this for quite some time, not that that is going to change any time soon.

Robert: To bad you will not be able to hop over to the Expo in Berlin next month where you could meet a lot more of the European sphere and make a lot of video. Anyone else coming over from Podtech?

In case it is a women, she might actually attend the Girl Geek Dinner. ;)

Re: Ways bloggers get paid by Amazon

Nicole Simon — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:01:37 -0000

I dont get how people compare it to a tablet or an iphone. Has anybody a) seen the size of it which is much bigger than an iphone and b) seen the battery life?!

Markus, you know it will take some time until it will arrive in germany for the simple fact that part of their deal is the way you are able to download content - and you know that this is not available over here the same way.

Now, if there would be a kindle for let's say 100 dollar only usable via USB, that would be something I would order and ask Robert to bring over in in December. ;)

[btw Robert be careful to not set your Amazon Associates programm to dynamic earning, as such it should cut the bonus to $10 per sold unit ;)]

Re: Great list of Office 2.0 apps

Nicole Simon — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:46:19 -0000

For me it still is about better syncing mechanisms rather than having everything just online. Because additionally to what I said above, I do not always have online access.

Even worse: Most of the applications do not work for me due to missing localisation. Default example for spreadsheets? My numpad has a , and no . - because 1,000 is one to me.

Plus with an offline app, I at least can fall back to something, as in my case to an Office 2003 instead of having to use this stupid new interface of Office 2007 (working surely great for normal users).

I guess it very much depends on your level of expertise and what you are doing with that (and where you are from).

I get it that most customers do not need what offline apps have to offer. And that is fine - for them.

Problem for me? If people stopp buying the offline app, and the online apps come not close to what the offline app does, then I loose the offline app. As people like myself are not buying as much as the ones using the online one. ;)

Re: Will new Blog Council help big companies get small conversations?

Nicole Simon — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:58:20 -0000

I disagree. It is also about engaging what we call blogging, but just applying what normal users and small businesses experience, is not enough.

There is a different need in these organisations, and 'any blogging experience' is not the place to learn from, they need specific, different help.

Which is not offered much, hence the need to go on with that.

Now if they are successful with this, is yet another story. ;)

Re: Will Fav.or.it get me off of Google Reader?

Nicole Simon — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 12:52:53 -0000

Looks interesting - especially that FINALLY somebody is realizing that minus / not is a relevant feature when slicing and dicing .

For example I would not have the need for a dozen blogs (okay, two) if you could just filter out everything I write in German. Because you would just tag "only include the following languages" in your selection.

Also from the pictures it looks like you can go through the relevant parts of your newsfeed first, but also slice and dice it to get rid of all the crap.

I still like to be able to work in folders for structuring (but that is a nn / river of news versus tin / techmeme display argument); but it pushes the agenda in the right direction.

What I am missing from the screenshots is the possibility to work better with mark read or not, but I assume that lies in the keyboard shortcuts. :)

Re: Scoble is insecure, researchers say

Nicole Simon — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:04:50 -0000

Well, _just_ having a profile with that many friends and nothing more, yes, that could very well be seen as insecure, but backing that up with more than just the facebook page? I do not think that the answer is as simple as the quote makes it.

(I also would like to see the questions behind that; because depending of that, it might explain why they get to this solution.)

Re: What I was using to hit Facebook — unreleased Plaxo Pulse

Nicole Simon — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:49:49 -0000

One reason I have always been so insisting with Xing to be downloadable is exactly what you said - you want the data in the system you want, not where somebody else wants you. Which is why I was very happy that they did come back with an export contact data button.

And if everything fails, you just pay somebody oversees to type it in manually, you will get your data.

Because let's face it: I always will have data which is not in the systems by personal effort plus not all data will be in those systems.

Plaxo is the least of all evils at the moment for syncing (thought they did screw up most of my contacts and got rid of the mail address - hu?), and it allows me to take the data with me on my mobile phone.

As long as facebook is not giving the data, we will just get it somewhere else, basta. Deal with it, or just go back to being insignificant for that usage.

Will have a look at FriendsCSV now. :)

Re: Why we’re going to FastCompany.tv

Nicole Simon — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:14:00 -0000

Congratulation to your move, I think it will be a win win for everyone. As you said: You need to be happy with it. And at the moment Fast.TV _is_ much more compelling than doing a startup to yourself.

Especially with your two boys, who will want to see something of their daddy - not to speak of your wife.

Outsourcing: You will need to spend a bit more though than Tim is suggesting in his book as his numbers are quite optimistic ;) Though it will be totally worth helping you move forward.

Nicole

Re: I’m going to “Bil,” not TED

Nicole Simon — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:14:21 -0000

You could not have posted that like 2 weeks earlier, before I booked my flights for Mix? :) It would have been easy to pop in to Monterey as well, now I doubt I can change flights.

International travellers need advance notice, guys! ;)

Re: What made me cry: Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope

Nicole Simon — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:42:11 -0000

Seeing how much fun and excitement I already had with Google maps satellite view, I can only wonder how it will be zooming around in the universe. :)

Re: Flickr’s fourth birthday “adults only”

Nicole Simon — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:48:29 -0000

Just a reminder: adults only is not enough. It should explicitly say 21+ - because for international visitors this may come as a surprise if they do not know about the strict requirement to be 21.

In Germany one is considered adult by 18 - and I know more than one story where people had a bad time in their visit to the states because they could not enjoy their time because suddenly they where "childreen" again.

Wether or not an evening pary (it was, right?) is the right space for somebody like Patrick, it should have said so on the invitation just to avoid problems even with some older guys who are like 20. :)

Re: VC admits he hates boring PowerPoints

Nicole Simon — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:47:42 -0000

Of course they hate boring slides, who doesn't? (btw slides - powerpoint is just the name everybody uses)

You _can_ produce nearly as easily good powerpoint presentations as you can do with keynote, you just need to want to.

In case anyone ever want to look into how to make nicer slides with more meaning and impact - get yourself "presentation zen". a beautiful book.

Re: Era of blogger’s control is over

Nicole Simon — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:10:33 -0000

Robert, this is also because you do have a lot of content which is not high in 'value' as some other content is. You rarely write about topics which are expensive in the sense of people can make money out of it, nor do you have a lot of content which really is 'effort' in the sense of information people cannot get somewhere else.

A lot of site live of the fact that people visit their site for one reason or another. Take sites like freelancefolder or alike. They live on stumbleupon links / social media links going back to *them* and not to other sites.

This is not saying that you do not work or have 'not valuable' content, au contrair. just in term of monetizing. I would suggest you have a look at our shared items. What if I take that, rebrand it and sell advertisement to your work without giving you any credit back and such? Sell it for money?

As much as it annoys me that the tools are splintering up, it is not so much the control I loose in regard of the comments etc, it is more the "control" I loose when for example I make a mistake, what to add something whatever - I cannot change the ones who are out there.

Plus the tools for aggregating the discussion are not coming back to me without effort. I would not mind so much if I had easy tools to SEE that discussion, to be able to work with them without spending my whole day working it.

Where I draw the line about republishing my content is simple: Unless I get something valuable out of it, I am not okay with it. Especially not when you do get a lot of value out of it. Period.

Re: The Silicon Valley VC Disease

Nicole Simon — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:55:15 -0000

Different people play different roles in this ecosystem. And Vcs are not in the business of making the world a better place, but in the business of making money with sells / exits.

'Normal' companies are in the business of having a business modell and making money. Web 2.0 companies to me have the desease in that their business modell is the exit instead of having a real business modell.

The iphone is not the platform to concentrate on because of just the iphone it is because of the ecosystem. Up until the release of Apple running windows, the platform was doomed to be a niche market, now it is accessible to everyone and I think sales numbers show how much that worked out well.

The iphone takes that even further. Seamless integration with flatrates for mobile usage without pain, hooking up and syncing to the computer, as well as one central easy payment system for apps. Mobileme, once it is working, will be another fatal blow to all other plattforms and services who had time enough to make that happen.

In that, concentrating on the iphone from the dev side can be a good choice. But I rather ask if you as a company want to lock yourself into this one vendor controlling and milking you. The expertise you build up will most likely be iphone centric only. Iphone ecosystem only. Limited to the rules of the market as Apple sets and change them.

That is what you should be aware of when you commit yourself to iphone only.

Re: The most important Google Tool for businesses (that you probably have never used)

Nicole Simon — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:44:21 -0000

Erica it may be easier to use, but the difference in quality of predicted searches is extrem. Wordtracker and co are good for nice searching around and synonyms but other than that, combine googles tool with other systems if you want results.

Re: Use Twitter or FriendFeed and win a new Seagate Drive

Nicole Simon — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 11:23:28 -0000

I think if I bring yet one more device through customs they will not let me pass. this time every security scan was done twice and I had to remove my bag with 'the tech stuff' to be inspected. I think a hard drive will be pushing it, but looking forward seeing you again in NY ;)

Re: 10 reasons why Twitter Direct Messages suck (and so do Facebook’s)

Nicole Simon — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 10:20:46 -0000

I tend to send DM to people but only if I know they read them and if I dont know them, I do inlcude my email address. If I do not get an reaction I'll try to get out the mail address of that person, which btw is often hard to do.

Personally I do receive and read ALL of my DM and FB message in my mail inbox as they are forwarded. Depending on the content of the message I do invest more or less time to find out how to answer.

not being able to reply in DM is a reason not to reply at all, etc.

btw @amanda - every single good email client has a decent search feature. if you rely on fb for having search, you have a whole lot of other issues.

Re: Twitter Scraps SMS Updates; Should it Have Offered a Paid Alternative?

Nicole Simon — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:27:53 -0000

The only time I used the international number for sending messages to twitter is a) when I was verifying my phone or b) when I needed to send a message from my phone while being in the US without data access. All other times? mobile data only.

Would I pay a per SMS fee for delivering DM? probably. And many users have said so from early on that this day will come and twitter needs to think about a kind of prepaid model or they will fail. In trying to get the mobile phone providers to talk to them they are overlooking the fact that SMS is not that kind of business like it is in the US in most cases.

So it was clear that it is either pay or go away. And this will not change - from my point of view I cannot imagine why a mobile phone provider should team up with them for this kind of service, there is no value in them for it.

Re: Twitter Scraps SMS Updates; Should it Have Offered a Paid Alternative?

Nicole Simon — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:44:35 -0000

Well it is not as if setting up a prepaid and accounting mechanism is a walk in the park either, but they have been told a long time ago that this is what they will probably face and that people are willing to pay. As in not only saying, but really willing.

Now, with the behaviour they have lost out on it and people just will start discovering the beauty of complete management through mobile web - as I said, everybody has mobile phones now, and nobody uses the hotel phones anymore ..

Re: Twitter Scraps SMS Updates; Should it Have Offered a Paid Alternative?

Nicole Simon — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:46:33 -0000

James, there are so many ways you are missing the point - if you want to make a pitch, at least read what product you are claiming to be able to replace?

Re: The Great List Of Ways To Get Traffic To Your Blog

Nicole Simon — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 07:45:29 -0000

Oh one important aspect is missing - work with your analytics to see where you do the best results from and enhance that.

If it is search engines, improve your texts with variations; if it is one of those submit engines try to find out what it is that makes you popular there and so on.

Initiating is just one thing, but if you say "go for this kind of work" the easy part of increasing traffic should not be forgotten ;)

Re: The Great List Of Ways To Get Traffic To Your Blog

Nicole Simon — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 15:25:18 -0000

Thanks, that makes me happy now. ;)

Re: 2008 Top 10 Buzzwords

Nicole Simon — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:47:42 -0000

Nice list. ;) I disagree with "Someone realized they didn’t understand things like Twitter and decided to give it the phrase micro-blogging. " If it would be just twitter you would be absolutly spot on. But especially in situation like inside a company, you do not use twitter (you should be shot for _that_ if you do) but a tool like twitter.

Microblogging implies the limitation of length and quite frankly for me also the limitation to text. That is something you do need a separate term for. Make the test: With the above in mind about why it is not just about twitter, if somebody tells you "we have started microblogging" do you have a precice idea what somebody is doing? I would bet yes. And as such there is a need for the term.

Re conversation: Cluetrain Manifesto is having its 10 year aniversary in 2009 - and still most people dont get it. I am afraid you will hear about conversations for a bit longer. ;)

Re: Forget Disintermediation, Focus On Open Data Exchange

Nicole Simon — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:52:21 -0000

For me there is a difference between comments and postings - I value postings higher. And I like to see the opinion of one person in one place - their blog.

Re: Podcast Downloads Dominated by Men in iTunes?

Nicole Simon — Thu, 17 May 2007 06:36:28 -0000

Re: mobile zeitgeist Adventskalender Tür #6: Buch 'Twitter. Mit 140 Zeichen zum Web 2.0'

Nicole Simon — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:31:38 -0000

Das kommt davon wenn man in das Twitterlose Ausland fährt, man vergißt zu posten das es den Adventskalender gibt, sorry! ;) Den Gewinnern auf jeden Fall viel Spaß mit dem Buch - und es ist besonders geeignet für Leute die zwar schon twittern aber noch nicht alle Feinheiten beherrschen.

Gerade bei den mobil interessierten Teilnehmern freuen wir uns auch Rückmeldungen für bessere mobile Twitternutzung! :)

Tip eins kann ich schon mal geben: Verflixt noch einmal vor Abreise in Länder wie Frankreich schauen gehen, ob es eine Datenprepaid gibt, sonst verpaßt man alle Twitterer um sich herum ;(

(Ich hoffe alle Interessierten tragen sich dann auch in unserer Liste von Twitter-Usern aus Deutschland mit ein.)

Re: Rent-Your-Mobile mit Rentobile

Nicole Simon — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:09:35 -0000

damit könnte man endlich erst die geräte im alltag ausprobieren bevor man sich für teuers geld 'verkauft' - gerade bei den großen preisen lohnt sich das besonders. ;)

Re: Gewinnspiel: Android Phone G1

Nicole Simon — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:49:58 -0000

Scheint ein neuer Trend zu werden mit dem Follower kaufen, aber dafür hat man ja mehrere Twitter-Accounts ;)

Re: Rezension: 'Twitter - Mit 140 Zeichen zum Web 2.0'

Nicole Simon — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:09:54 -0000

Um zu zeigen, daß ich es ernst meine mit dem mobilen Teil habe ich schon mal ein kleines "Howto: Twittern mit dem Handy" angelegt. ;)

Re: Announcing the Newest Social Media Prince

Nicole Simon — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:56:19 -0000

Herzlichen Glückwunsch for the little one and you. Happy to hear everything is fine and healthy. :)) Enjoy!

Re: 20 Analytics Tools For Blogs

Nicole Simon — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:36:55 -0000

Why don't you consider Google Analytics to be a good tool on blogs?

I have to wonder if you really had a look into what it can do for you, especially with featurs like automated mailing of reports, export of all kind of data, shared access, dedicated visitor trecking down to geo region, clicktracking etc ...

yes, it is a bit more work to set it up due to its complxity, but so far the only reason I use an additional tool (tdstats, free) is because I want to track real times sometimes. But other than that, it is GA only for me, everything else falls flat.

Re: 20 Analytics Tools For Blogs

Nicole Simon — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:29:48 -0000

I assume Google will at some point allow me to see the feedburner statistics in GA, in regard to comments and trackbacks I agree - then again I am on a tool what does not provice an easy count of that anyhow.

And if you go into that, I would say you cant stop with just counting them quantitavly (sp?), you need to go into quality as well.

But most of what I would call real interaction with a blog does not happen on the site anyway, that would be read in a feedreader, external linkcount from different sources (and not trackback), links in the bookmarking service fitting to your system etc etc. :)

Re: Anatomy of a Mob: The Lacy/Zuckerberg Interview

Nicole Simon — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 08:57:56 -0000

Your analysis does not seem to take properly into account the delay of the wireless network. Putting the output of the messages at a time stamp suggests that it happened exactly at that point, which it may not have been. At the same time of course many people where using it through their mobile phone carrier in real time. This is not so much your problem, but as you build up the many nice graphs to show what happened, it should be more visible.

The second, more serious: You imply at several points that this is a behaviour which is remote and what people do not live up to in real life as a fact. Which is not true. Of course there are people who do have a second (or third) persona online, but with most of the people attending the keynote and commenting I would expect a direct connection. Several of the commenters are known names with established personas which meet online and offline as one entity. To suggest otherwise makes me wonder how deeply you looked at the data and the connected identities behind it.

You mention quite frequently how inappropriate the behaviour is and imply that the only way I (as a participant of the session, as well as commenting) should behave in the end is to apologize and to be 'nicer' in the future, because I fell for being part of a mob.

I reject this implication strongly.

I left the session after 30 minutes without being able to see much on twitter (no real connectivity in the room), but to get a very good feeling of the room. The feeling btw started like 5 minutes after the 'chat' began.

I was not the only one to leave, several others before did so shaking their heads, sometimes even collecting friends on the way. I left because I had no intention to waste more of my time after waiting for something interesting to happen.

The videos available online do not include the sounds of the audience nor the headsheaking nor the faces of disbelieve and annoyance (and how could they) so it does come at no surprise that most people who just see the interview dont react the same way as part of the audience.

To sum up my point: Your analysis is a good start, but it needs to go further than that to explain what happened.

Just stating "mob" and "you should not behave this way!" is a simple answer to a more complex question. An event like this has more social dynamics than just people sitting down and listening, analysing it by separating one part out of it does not do it justice.

Re: Web 2.0 Expo Europe Blogger Outreach Programme

Nicole Simon — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:35:01 -0000

Six languages? God, even if I count my school experiences in french and latin I only get to four, with french on holiday niveau and latin non existant any more. ;)

plus welcome ;)

Re: Podcast Downloads Dominated by Men in iTunes?

Nicole Simon — Thu, 17 May 2007 06:36:28 -0000