Author: Daniel Mettler

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August 29, 2008: tweakGrill @ informatica08

The innovative guys from tweakfest.ch will present what they call The first digital BBQ in Switzerland, aka the tweakGrill. It will take place on August 29, 2008, starting at 6 PM on the Turbinenplatz (that’s Zurich’s biggest place (*cough*) right in front of the Technopark building (which some call the “Swiss Silicon Valley” ;) in Zurich-West/entertainment).

According to the newsletter they’ll have several multimedia performances, serve sausages from USB-Grills (I wonder how that will scale ;) and open source beer brought to you by [project 21].

tweakfest group on Facebook

Flyer (PDF)

More information in German in this post on the tweakfest home page..

[UPDATE 20080802: I probably can’t be there due to military service :( At rather short notice as they managed to send the march order to an address that doesn’t exist. No comment.]

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TechCrunch Meetup Zurich

Well, there are quite a few blog posts with reviews of the recent TechCrunch Europe Tour Meetup in Zurich already. Instead of writing an extensive review about it, I’ll thus try to keep it short.

Personally, I highly enjoyed the TechCrunch Meetup in the Bluewin Tower in Zurich West and the gathering in the “Besame Mucho” lounge afterwards and met many interesting people. I wasn’t quite ready for releasing news about my company Printscreen GmbH (iG) yet, but it was nonetheless a great opportunity to network and chat with other entrepreneurs, organizer Mike Butcher, some of the co-organizers and media people. All in all I had the impression that a lot is going on again in the Swiss IT/web startup community (not limited to the roughly 40 startups officially presenting).

So, many thanks to the organizers (TechCrunchUK, Wuala, Doodle, NewsCred, Sandbox) and sponsors who made this all possible! Of course I hope there will be a second edition of the TechCrunch Meetup Zurich soon (it was so well organized and such a nice event, I’d like it to become a recurring, regular event in the Swiss IT and startup scene).

Links to some other posts about the meetup (incomplete and in no particular order):

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Citizen Space Zurich – home page up and more details

[UPDATE 20080720: See also the comment from Chris Messina (the co-founder of Citizen Agency, LLC (blog) and one of the two master minds behind the original Citizen Space in San Francisco)].

By now, the home page of the new coworking location “citizen space Zürich” (see my previous post) is up and gives some more details about the (currently) planned offers and pricing [1]:

An excerpt (in German):

[…] citizen space vermietet Arbeitsplätze an unabhängig arbeitende Menschen in den vier Meter hohen Räumen der ehemaligen Steinfelsfabrik in Zürich West. Tageweise, wochenweise oder unbefristet. Allein oder in Gruppen arbeiten? An fixen oder mobilen Tischen? In der Lounge? Alles ist möglich. citizen space ist von Montag bis Freitag von 9 bis 19 Uhr offen, ab 19 Uhr Barbetrieb oder Events, Infos auf www.citizen-space.ch
Tarife: Tagesticket für 30 Franken, Wochenticket für 170 Franken, flexible Monatsmiete für 450 Franken, fixe Monatsmiete mit Schlüssel für 680 Franken, Friendshipticket für 15 Franken pro Tag und Person.
Verpflegung: Kaffee, Getränke und Snacks im Haus. Take-outs, Restaurants und Bars in unmittelbarer Nähe. Zur Josefwiese oder zum Unteren Letten sind es drei Minuten zu Fuss. Öffentlicher Verkehr: Bahnhof Hardbrücke und Escher-Wyss-Platz befinden sich in drei Minuten Gehdistanz. […]

So basically, this boils down to:

  • Opening hours: Monday to Friday daily from 9 AM to 7 PM for work, after 7 PM, the bar opens or events are taking place
  • Offers and pricing:
    Day pass: 30 CHF (in about 30 USD, 19 EUR)
    Week pass: 170 CHF (167 USD, 105 EUR)
    Flexible monthly ticket: 450 CHF (441 USD, 279 EUR)
    Fix monthly ticket with an office key: 680 CHF (667 USD, 421 EUR)
    Friendship ticket: 15 CHF (15 USD, 9 EUR) per day and person
  • Coffee, drinks and snacks in-house (but there’s no hint whether these are included in the price of a pass)

At first sight, this looks quite pricey (more than double the price) compared to its namesake in San Francisco (citizenspace.us). Further, there doesn’t seem to be any “24h access”[2] option (not even for keyholders?) and whether coffee, drinks and snacks are included remains to be seen. Conceptually, there’s also a difference in that there are no free drop-ins (it costs 30 CHF for random drop-ins and 15 CHF for friends), but in addition to monthly tickets there are also weekly tickets. I wonder particularly what influence the “no free drop-ins” policy will have on the idea of mingling people (well, the mingling will probably be less spontaneous and less heterogeneous and coworkers likely more commercially oriented and less willing to contribute to the idea of coworking or do things for free. Which might well cost more in the end [3]).

BTW, office space in Zurich West isn’t as cheap as in less central and less trendy districts, but this also applies to many areas in SF. The thing that’s generally somewhat more expensive in Zurich is food and beverages.

Let’s see how this develops.. my guess is that these offers and prices aren’t carved in stone and will probably also depend on the feedback they get (i.e. on supply and demand). Will ask them ASAP..

Thumbs up for starting it, in the first place :)

[1] Please note that these figures have not been officially announced or confirmed yet. They’re just published on the public web site (which has not been announced yet either).

[2] Some coworking space providers even guarantee 24/7 access and are open for public access on Saturdays, too

[3] I’m currently reading a great book that, among others, deals with the very thin line between social norms and market norms. And it also discusses the (predictably irrational) appeal of anything that’s for “free” (knowledge that can be leveraged for marketing purposes and profit, of course). (Book: “Predictably irrational” by Dan Ariely; 2008; HarperCollins. I’ll probably post about it in more detail later..)

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Real Thought for Food for Long Workouts – NYT

BTW, I’ve just stumbled upon this NYT article, which basically states that “normal” food is just as suitable for recovering from workout as “protein drinks”, “power bars” and all that stuff. IMHO, that’s no surprise. The interesting thing however are the numbers they give[1]:

“10-15 grams of protein is probably adequate for any adult” (one egg has 6 g of protein, 2 oz [about 57 g] of chicken has >12 g)

Personal Best – Real Thought for Food for Long Workouts – NYTimes.com

[1] [EDIT 20080720: For comparison: The Isostar nutritionists recommend 0.8-1.5 g protein per kg of body mass per day, i.e. 64-120 g for an adult of 80 kg]

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Citizen Space Zürich for Digital Nomads soon to arrive?

Finally, Zurich starts catching up with its partner city San Francisco (and other Californian cities like Berkeley, Stanford/Palo Alto etc.) in regard to shared workspace for so called “Digital Nomads” and the like: According to these great news, a “citizen space” will soon be opened at Heinrichstr. 267 in Zurich:

11.07.2008 13:19: Ich bin daran ein solches zu eröffnen:
NEW: citizen space zurich. start: 18. Juli 2008
Auf 150m2 und einer Raumhöhe von 4 Metern völlig flexibel arbeiten.
Mietpreise ab CHF 30.-. Freie oder fixe Plätze. Komplette Infrastruktur.
Reingehen – arbeiten, besprechen, relaxen.
Im Steinfelsareal, Heinrichstrasse 267, 8005 Zürich

and

16.07.2008 11:36: Hallo
Das citizen space Zürich eröffnet am 24.7.08, wer Interesse an weiteren Informationen hat, kann ein E-Mail an [see below] senden, die Informationen sind natürlich kostenlos. Gruss in die Stadt. JR

The e-Mail is info at type and more remove spaces dot ch. The homepage of type’n more: typeandmore.ch

I really like this new groove here in “my” neighborhood.

Looking forward to it! :)

P.S. The domain citizenspace.ch is registered already, I don’t know though whether this is related to the citizen space to be opened in Zurich. Let’s see..

(Source: Ronorp.net)

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Why did the line spacing change in Word 2007?

Did you ever wonder why Microsoft changed the line spacing in Word 2007? Well, here’s the answer:

Why did the line spacing change in Word?

And the “fix” is here:

Make my document look like a Word 2003 document

Some general information about how to adjust the line spacing and paragraph settings in Word 2007:

Adjust the spaces between lines or paragraphs

Personally, I like the new GUI approach in Office 2007 and its improved usability, but the new styles (with this very unusual line spacing) kind of overshoot the mark.

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Gentoo: Pebble 2.3.1 on Tomcat 5.5 and Tomcat 6 (using JDK 1.5)

In Gentoo, a couple of manual configuration steps are required in order to make Pebble run on Tomcat 5.5, using JDK 1.5. So, apart from the obvious (like emerging Tomcat, a JDK, fetching pebble-2.3.1.zip etc.), I had to do the following:

  • In /usr/share/tomcat-5.5/lib, add the following two jar libraries from the pebble-2.3.1.zip archive (they’re located in the lib subdirectory):
    activation.jar
    mail.jar
    Further create symlinks to these two jars in /usr/share/tomcat-5.5/server/lib:
    o2 # cd /usr/share/tomcat-5.5/server/lib
    o2 lib # ln -s ../../lib/activation.jar .
    o2 lib # ln -s ../../lib/mail.jar .
  • Make sure these two jar files are in Tomcat’s CLASSPATH. Astonishingly, placing them in the above directories is not sufficient in Gentoo, one needs to explicitly add them to the CLASSPATH too. Thus, in /etc/conf.d/tomcat-5.5, edit the CLASSPATH to make it look as follows:
    CLASSPATH=${CATALINA_LIBDIR}:${CATALINA_LIBDIR}mail.jar:${CATALINA_LIBDIR}activation.jar
  • In /usr/share/tomcat-5.5/common/endorsed, add symlinks to xalan.jar and serializer.jar (in order to get rid of the “javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactoryConfigurationError: Provider org.apache.xalan.processor.TransformerFactoryImpl not found” error message):
    o2 # cd /usr/share/tomcat-5.5/common/endorsed
    o2 endorsed # ln -s /usr/share/xalan/lib/xalan.jar .
    o2 endorsed # ln -s /usr/share/xalan/lib/serializer.jar .
    These two files are part of Xalan (’emerge xalan’, if necessary)
  • On my Gentoo server, I had to explicitly set the dataDirectory property Pebble uses, as by default, the variable ${user.home} seemed to point to /dev/null in a secured Tomcat environment. So, make sure the property file ./WEB-INF/pebble.properties in the pebble.war file defines
    dataDirectory=/var/pebbledata
    (or whatever directory you want pebble to store the actual blog data in) instead of
    dataDirectory=${user.home}/pebble
    Important: Make sure this directory (here: /var/pebbledata) exists (create it, if necessary) and is writable by Tomcat (i.e. user tomcat or group tomcat)
  • I’d suggest you rename pebble.war (from the pebble-2.3.1.zip archive) to something more generic, e.g. blog.war or news.war before deploying it to Tomcat. Like this, the relative URL for accessing the blog will automatically start with /blog or /news accordingly (instead of /pebble). The naming is a matter of taste though. To deploy the war file, simply copy it to /var/lib/tomcat-5.5/webapps and restart Tomcat (which might not even be necessary, actually):
    o2 # /etc/init.d/tomcat-5.5 restart
  • If you want to use the Tomcat Manager web application in order to monitor, start and stop webapps like pebble (you probably want to do this), make sure you define a user with the role ”manager” in /var/lib/tomcat-5.5/conf/tomcat-users.xml (this file is empty by default). E.g. add the following user:
    <tomcat-users>
    <role rolename=”manager”/>
    <user username=”tomcatmanager” password=”t0tallySecretPassw0rd” roles=”manager”/>
    </tomcat-users>

For Tomcat 6, the required changes are analogous. ASAP, I’ll verify these steps with Pebble-2.3.1 on Tomcat 6 using Sun JDK 1.6. Stay tuned..

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Firefox 3 – suggestions for GUI design improvements

Some suggestions for improving the GUI of FF 3:

  • Why does the forward button have a very different shape than the back button (round vs. rectangular)? On IE 7, both have the same shape (round) which is more consistent and more user-friendly (as they’re both navigation icons, just for opposite directions). BTW: Yes, I know the official answer, but the different size is still no excuse for different shapes.
  • Why does FF 3 try to squeeze as much information as possible into the URL text field? Instead of combining the security certificate information with the favicon display (a fact that likely confuses users, particularly Joe Average), one should rather reserve a dedicated place just for displaying the security information (like IE 7 does).
    The star (bookmark??) icon within the text field is also disturbing as it doesn’t behave the way a sane user would expect it to. Instead, clicking on it creates a bookmark (without asking for confirmation), clicking on it again doesn’t just silently remove it again (without asking for confirmation), but rather displays a dialog box with bookmark properties (and another button to remove the bookmark, eventually). Further, the bookmark icon behaves quite different than the analogous magnifier/search icon in the search box.
  • Why isn’t it visually more obvious to the user whether (or not) a connection is properly encrypted and the server properly authenticated through a certificate? Why not use a light-green (or light-yellow) background color (again) for the URL text field of properly secured connections? Instead, all the user is left with now is an almost unnoticeable background color change of the favicon display area and a “secured lock” icon in the status bar. (Note: IE 7 does it better, but only a bit.)
  • Why did they choose blue as the color to indicate a secured connection (the same goes for IE 7)? I’d rather choose green (or maybe yellow, but definitely not blue).
  • Why does the drop-down icon in the URL text field look different than the drop-down icon in the search field (mouse-over tinted vs. permanently tinted)? Only God and the GUI designer know. But it surely confuses users as it isn’t consistent. (BTW, IE 7 is also inconsistent in this regard.)
  • In my view, placing the reload and abort icons after the URL text field (as in IE 7) instead of in front of the URL text field would be more natural.
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Easy user navigation on mobile GUIs

Getting mobile UIs right

BTW, I have a rather unconventional (but probably the more interesting) idea how to make user navigation on small, mobile devices (such as mobile phones) much more user-friendly. Particularly in those cases, where current approaches lack the most (e.g. with mobile web browsing). And guess what, it doesn’t even require any new sensors or any other hardware that isn’t there already :) (Contact me, if interested.. ;)

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Setting up postfix for virtual mail hosts

After setting up name-based virtual web hosting for Apache, I’ve just set up virtual mail hosting for my new company, Printscreen GmbH, using postfix – and it was amazingly simple! :) For some basic virtual mail hosting using normal UNIX/Linux user accounts, all you need is a plain-text file (‘/etc/postfix/virtual’) that maps virtual mail addresses to the actual user accounts and two additional lines in main.cf:

/etc/postfix/virtual:
postmaster@example.com postmaster
# Uncomment entry below to implement a catch-all address
# @example.com jim

/etc/postfix/main.cf:
virtual_alias_domains = example.com
virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual

Then just execute

# postmap /etc/postfix/virtual && /etc/init.d/postfix reload

Voilà!

The nice postfix readme file for this and some more complicated virtual mail hosting configurations:

http://www.postfix.org/VIRTUAL_README.html

Another, possibly helpful howto (search):

http://www.freebsddiary.org/postfix.php

For setups using a MySQL database as a backend for storing the mappings, see Google. I currently don’t need this and hence don’t like to introduce any unnecessary MySQL dependency to my postfix server – remember the KISS principle ;)