OliverG [das archiv von 'typo']

- auf Deutsch bei: http://typo.twoday.net/stories/931641/ -



After listening to 'Getting Things Done' by David Allen (Amazon US) on tape in my car I am now also reading it - something I recommend.

I kept asking myself how to get hold of the Manila folders which Allen mentions - you can't get them in Germany. I also remember chatting with Ralf Graf who also complained about this fact. Allen also mentions you should not save scribble paper that has been printed on one side.

One morning while in bed I wondered if I could use all my old scribble paper to make folders.

The first design was composed of 2 A4 sheets kept together with far too much Scotch tape. This was awkward and slow and not stable enough.

The version in the flickr-set hipster folders is Model 3 (or 5) from the series ' 3 sheets and 3 staples'.
The flickr-set also has a description in English.

You need:
- 3 sheets of A4 paper - or any other size. 2 of the sheets should have 1 unprinted side.
- 2 hands
- 1 stapler with staples
- less that 1 minute per folder

0)


Take 2 sheets of A4 paper. Any other size will work, too.
At least one of the sides of these two sheets should have no printing on it. This side goes to the outside.

1)


Fold them so that they form an A5 sheet and position the ' broad opening' upwards.
This will be the base of our folder and we use 2 sheets for stability.

2)


Now add the 3rd sheet and fold it lengthwise. Opening to the right, unprinted side outside.

3)-4)
This is just for illustration. - The three leaves are joined to form an L.
'Manually' you can just insert the 'lenghty' sheet to the 'fat rectangle' bit so that both flaps of the lengthy bit are 'between' the flaps of the 'fat rectangle'.





5) +6)
Now we have an L with both the upper and outer rims of the 'fat rectangle' on the outside. We need to add stability now.

My first attempts were with Scotch tape but I found the production process too slow and awkward. Your mileage may vary.



Apply a staple to both sides at the inner angle of the L.
This is the thing that gives eveything stablity.



7)
Apply another staple on the outer left rim. Try to catch both 'flapping' ends. Alternativley you can apply Scotch tape.



8)+ 9) Fold the edges of the 'tip' of the L.
Use your fingernails to give the creases a clear cut edge. At about 1/3 of the height of the L-bar.
This prevents inserted material from getting caught between the sheets.




10)


Finished

You can now write on the outside what you wanna use the folder for.

'to read'

Numbers from 1-31 and months from January to December for our tickler file.

Project names.

I punched holes in some of my folders so that I can file them in a binder (if their contents also are punched) or attach a binder clip to them.

I also made an experimental folder that is closed on the lower right side, but that design needs more refinement.

I'd be glad if you give me feedback on how you use the folders and maybe on how you make them differently. This is my third or fifth version of the folder and I imagine it will not be the last one. I'll keep you posted.

English also is not my native language. If there is anything amiss with sentences or terminology: Pease point it out :-)

For all you left-handers it might make sense to do it the other way round. Please give feedback ;)

My thoughts were:
* I don't want to throw away so much paper (which I printed on by accident).
* I want the folders to be cheap so that I don't hesitate to scribble on them or actually open an new one.
* If I don't have a folder I want to be able to produce one quickly - if need be also from unused paper.
* The material should be available everywhere.
* It has to be a quick process. It takes me 45 seconds or less to make a folder - time I can use to figure aout a next action... If you do 5 or 10 folders at a time (while your computer boots or while you are on hold at the phone - you might be even quicker.

I might even make a folder on the spot if I need one.

I store my folders in a stand-up box so that I can see when I need to make new ones. When I clean out odd collections of paper I set stacks of single-side printed paper aside for my folder-paper-stack.

Thanks to Ralf Graf / das-netzbuch.de for beta testing this while we were on a chat this morning. His positive reaction prmted me to go ahead and publish this now. I hope for some suggestions for improvement from y'all.

Again: All feedback is welcome.

Opera Community Journals:

Inspired by the popularity of blogs, you can now get your own journal on my.opera.com.

Something with the grammar is broken in the above quote. Who is inspired? opera.com or 'you'?

It's a journal, and a community, and a community journal, or a blog. Be a little confusing, your community will confuse along a little ...

Some people don't like blogs because they are diaries. Some people don't like blogs becaus they claim to be journalism. Some don't like blogs because they are hyped as PR-tools or for SEO.

Some others just blog, or community blog or so.

Andy Bayo started it with Wordpress Website's Search Engine Spam and a long thread of comments followed. All the blogosphere is buzzing about it.

The ethical question is: Is a behavior like this acceptable? Is it acceptable without disclosing it right away? Is it acceptable if you run an open source project? Is it spam?

Jonas Luster says: Nope, no spam. Let's touch this first as it seems one of the central questions to be answereed before we tackle the rest.

Jonas says (among other stuff):

Spam involves other, involuntary, carriers. No comment boxes were contaminated, no mailboxes, no Usenet forums, and certainly no one spent a single byte of extra bandwidth (with the exception of the links from Wordpress.Org) on it. It’s not spam.


The point of the links in the case of Wordpress was to bring up pagerank and thus position in search engine results.
The point was to get results there that did not really deserve the position they got and were thus to be considered "noise". The involuntary carrier is of course the owner of the search engine and the searchers have traffic with content they do not wish to receive. A crystal clear case of spam: "(advertising) noise on a channel that hinders communication".

Don Alphonso sees an indicator for the fact that Matt knew he was ding something wrong when he hid the links via CSS 'outside' the viewport. (His entry is in German.)

Now some people argue that this behavior would have been ok... had Matt been open about it.
If it was spam for cash it was unethical. Being open about it beforehand would not have made any sense.

That dealt with we have the connection between spamming for cash and open source.

Does running an open source project imply vowing ethical behavior in all other net matters? Will unethical net-behavior damage the open source project, the piece of softare itself or the movement in general?
Ralf Graf seems to think that way, cause he states that (article is in German) this behavior is not acceptale for someone working in an open source project.

We already found out the behavior was not acceptable, but why this connection to the nature of the license the software the person is working on (and that not alone)?

This is complex.

The basis for the spam-deal was the high pagerank of the site. This pagerank was gained through "automatic" backlinks from each installation of WordPress (and through all inds of backlinks on articles in the blog(s) of course). so the basis of the deal was a 'capital' that was 'transferred' to wordpress.org for it's work. and this 'capital' was abused for spamming.

Now Jonas and others argue that, while getting money for this specific action was a bad idea the money had to be earned, for the 'greater good' of the project. The argumentation on many blogs is, that an open source project also has to be open about the ways its acquires it's cash.

Why exactly would that be? (and this is a different question from the one about whether it was spam or not)

On the one hand there are companies who distrubute their software with open source licenses. Do they have to disclose how they make their money (beyond thos restrictions imposed by stock exchanges or tax laws)? If they don't have to do this, why should individuals?

Well: Usually open source projects have central figures. Other developers give input to OS projects not only because they like the piece of software or becase they use it and want it to do something specific.
So 'trusting' the key persons in an open source project is also a key factor for the success of the software. If the person shows unethical behavior in connection to the software... ok, that is the end of it.
But how about this case?
The disappointment was not created in direct context to the weblog system WordPress but by (ab)using the popularity of the site connected to the software.

Now, the site also has a donation button, and we are arriving at a key point there. Obviously the donations were not enough to keep the costly services (including Ping-o-Matic) running and this was one of the reasons to accept the money and to not think TOO hard about ethics. There is often the argument that we have to pay politicians better to make then unvulnerable to bribery. If we don't donate to open source software (and open license content) we can't really throw the first stone.

Now openness about the 'bad deal' would not have helped, but openness about financial requirements would have. In order to receive 'justified' amounts of money maybe open source worker will have to be open about how much they need to get in order to serve the community. They need not disclose other sources of income, but I see no problem in saying: Hosting and traffic cost ..., donationas are at ..., I put ... hours into this in the last month, donations are at ...$/hour at the moment. Why not? It would not give away the total earnings of single exposed developers but it would show the users of 'open services' how little their 'heroes' receive. It would be a news basis for trust. Not onaly in this case.

Matts own blog has a first staement (being the promise of one) and lot’s of supportive comments.

And finally I agree with Robert Basic that humans err and should not be 'executed' (also in German).

---

If you want a German summary, please comment and I will try to write one ;-)

Yahoo! 360� - My Page: http://360.yahoo.com/carpe_com

I am planning a 'private' blog there for ideas, brainstorming and for honest feedback on some of my crazier ideas.

Heiko Hebig writes about 'Nationalzeitung' being included in the Google News digest:

I think it's good that Google News is including sources from a wide spectrum. Nationalzeitung is available for sale on many German newsstands. It's not an illegal or indexed publication.
Google News might contain crap. So what? by Heiko Hebig | hebig.com

Well, that might be. But on the other hand Google is excluding webpages with 'controversial content' from its AdSense program.

It seems OK to make money with controversial content, as long as it is Google who makes the money and not the provider of the controversial content. (How exactly does Google News make money? They have no ads there - not even if you search the news. Are they just attracting eyeballs or solidifying their brand?)

Cause of course the advertisers don't want to see their ads on the pages of right wing (or maybe left wing or whatever) activists. But it seems ok to take the texts away from these opinion groups and put them on the 'well balanced' Google page. Uh huh.

Does Google also have a 'balance' ranking to make sure that all its news-pages and search results are politically, religiously etc. balanced? That would be an interesting formula for once.

We have means to make you talk...
... but did you ask the right questions?


ONLINE USER POLL
Are you interested in VoIP products?

E-Vote

( ) I already use a VoIP product from Siemens.
( ) Yes, but the products are too complicated.
( ) No, I am not interested in.
( ) What is VoIP?

(Questionnaire at my
'Personal Startpage' @ https://communications.siemens.com/)

What If I am interested, know what it is, have no idea how complicated the(ir) stuff is cause I have not tried?

As I sometimes comment on content in English or trackback to English content I thought I should offer a 'seperate' channel with seperate RSS. (I cannot (yet) do multiple categories per entry.)

RSS: http://typo.twoday.net/topics/english/index.rdf

Many people used Google Translation to figure out what I am writing and it might be better to put up with my English than using this crutch.

What I am planning is
a) Post summaries of the German content on the English RSS-Channel. (aggregated every week or so)
b) Post summaries of the English posts on the German categories. (aggregated every week or so)
c) Point from German articles to their English summaries and vice versa.

Scott Golder e-mails:
Because people seem to be enjoying using [Webbed Footnotes], I've decided to NOT limit it to a two week run, and so I am going to keep it running for the foreseeable future. Please feel free to keep using it and conversing with your fellow readers.

I tested the system a little and it looks promising.

What is it?
* It offers New York Times articles for commenting (if i remember correcly: 'plucked' via RSS)
* You comment via a FireFox-plugin directly on the article (but not directly on the NYT-webpage)
* You can see, "approve of" and comment other commentators

You can see in an overvew which articles already have comments. You can also make all comments invisible and read an article totally 'comment free' before you go and check what people have to say.

My comments:
* When I tried it I only saw one other commentator.
* You can approve of other's comemnts, but they (or you) get no feedback of this 'approval'. At least I could not see any. ONly seems to go to the admin.

If this system continues to run it might be developed a little more, be extended to other news sources and be made more reader-friendly. It could also become a 'central' service for heated discussions on press articles or blog posts. People could 'point' to their comments within this system on their blog or blogs without trackback or comments could transfer their discussions there. Newspapers could offer this servce to their readers to get more detailed feedback on articles (Cause now you can comment on single statements and sentences within their original context! I even commented on the use of quotations marks in one case :-)).