eufeeds.eu update

Daniel added a 100 extra feeds, so it’s now a whopping 400 feeds instead of 300 that we started with. Now up to 500! So it’s about time add some functionalities: distinct local and national newspapers + sorting settings.

Also fixed a CSS bug for Safari and alike which was messing up the navigational flags…

Posted on April 6, 2008 by .
Filed under development.

THAT’S the power of the press, Joe

Today I was looking at Will Sullivan’s Journerdism blog, and he linked to the funny Beastie Boys remix video featuring All the President’s Men, which I’d seen before. However… What I had not seen before was this Newsies ‘music video’ featuring Eminem!

It’s entirely embarrassing to admit, but ever since my dad came home from Blockbuster one night in 1992 with the Disney musical Newsies in tow, it’s been a favourite. I was 11 at the time… and am now more than a decade older. But I still love the movie which is about the New York newsboys strike of 1899. No joke, I can recite just about all the lines from this movie, including the intro text:

In 1899, the streets of New York City echoed with the voices of newsies.
Peddlin’ the newspapers of Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, and other giants of the newspaper world.
On every corner you saw ‘em carryin’ the banner, bringin’ you the news for a penny a pape.
Poor orphans and runaways, the newsies were a ragged army, without a leader.
Until one day, all that changed....

I also found a hilarious AnchorMan spoof: Will Ferrell auditioning for ESPN, the ubiquitous 24-hour American sports network. I love the part when he says, “Wait, it’s ALL sports? That will never work...”

Posted on March 13, 2008 by .
Filed under .

Youtube was down

Youtube was down from 3:01 - 3:13 GMT Time. 

Posted on March 7, 2008 by .
Filed under news.

DNA Conference

The DNA 2008 Conference starts on Monday in Brussels and Wilfried, Kathlyn, Arne and me will be there. And you can be there too! Because we will stream the event live using mogulus.com. Mogulus is a free streaming software that mimics a small TV studio. The entrance fee for the conference is almost 1000 Euro and students get a reduction that is not worth talking about. So be aware and live with us (if everything works out). In order to test the streaming system in advance I will place the mogulus Studio interface in the Blog.

Posted on February 28, 2008 by .
Filed under blogging.

Thoughts, 2.0

In preparing the post below, I stumbled onto what I think is a worthwhile, professional use of Flickr - which I recently learned came into being during the development of an online video game/virtual world.
I wanted to find pictures of people celebrating (or protesting) the recent independence of Kosovo. And I wanted to be able to re-post those pictures here at EJC.net – i.e., I didn’t want the pictures to be under strict copyright.
First I went to Shutterstock, which we’ve used occasionally for stock photos. But of course, if you enter “Kosovo,” you get pictures of really gorgeous scenery… and old ladies in babushkas! These image banks don’t contain current events photos or ones which give a realistic depiction of everyday life.
After Googling around a while and not finding what I wanted, I went to Flickr and used their advanced search option. I narrowed down the dates to the three days surrounding 17 February, when Kosovo declared its independence. Then I chose to see only photos marked with the “Creative Commons” logo.
Bam! I found about 500 pictures, taken all over the world. I was impressed. This seems like a great way to get re-usable photos from news events attended by a lot of people.

Second thought, this on privacy: While working for the EJC, I’ve heard a lot of adults puzzle over the amounts of previously well-guarded information which youngsters are giving away for free on platforms like Facebook.
I have been a Facebook user since 2004 and find it the best way to keep in touch with my friends back home in the States – and network with new friends I’m meeting throughout Europe.
But the only people below the age of 21 I liaise with via Facebook are relatives: my three younger siblings and some cousins. And I have to say, their behaviour on Facebook is a lot different than mine.
I must admit – I did at one point have my phone number listed on my profile. And I continue to use Facebook to look up friends’ phone numbers when I’m somewhere away from my own computer, where I have everything stored (if I stay late at the office and want to use my Skype account from here, for example).
But I saw an interesting thing on my brother’s page just now: He’s part of a group that says “sorry new phone and new number, 630.699.3875 so I need your numbers.”

I clicked on the group, and 55 people have posted their numbers – all right there for me (or telemarketers, or potential stalkers, or whoever) to see and use!
I always thought it was OK to list my phone number on my profile page because I thought, “What if someone wants to call me and they are somewhere they don’t have my number but do have the Internet?”
Given that only people who are my approved friends can see my profile page, this seemed like perfectly sound logic.
Plus, in my last job I was working at a newspaper, so I was always trying to be as available as possible. My personal cell number (sorry, mobile phone!) was given on my work voicemail also… and my work number was published each day in the paper. So it wouldn’t be difficult to reach me…
But I have to say I never got any creepy calls… So maybe Mr. 699.3875 won’t either… Still, it’s interesting to note that this group of upcoming Digital Natives (I would call myself one… but maybe a grey-haired one, especially compared to my siblings. My youngest sister, who is 16, can’t remember not having a computer. Nor can she remember when “computer” wasn’t simultaneous with “Internet”) has a completely different point of view on privacy and information sharing.

Posted on February 21, 2008 by .
Filed under blogging.

A first letter from independent Kosova

Iliriana Kacaniku is a citizen of the newly independent state of Kosovo (Kosova in Albanian) who lives and works in Pristina. She sent this letter to many international friends on 19 February to share her joyful reaction about Kosovo’s independence. EJC project director Josh Laporte passed it along.

The following is her letter, illustrated with photos taken by a Flickr user called Arianit. The popular photo-sharing service has many photos taken during various celebrations.

Dear Friends,

As of yesterday, my KOSOVA is independent and I am a citizen of the newest state in the world. A new state is born, and for all of us a new life and future are born. This is the moment for which we have all long been dreaming, waiting, and fighting - even though this struggle came to be known only in 1999, when the NATO air strikes made it known to the world. We are very excited and the joy we all feel has no end.

I have spent the last three days mostly in the streets of Prishtina. I literally felt three waves of joy taking us over during this period.

The first wave began on Friday. The very preparations for celebration, taking place all around the city brought a new look to people’s faces, and the joy was already radiating from their faces. Red flags and balloons, emblazoned with the double-headed eagle, already waved from the balconies of the city center, lifting up further the festive spirit. The overflow of the numerous journalists from all over the world, all going in and out of the media center set up in the Grand Hotel, which is located at the very heart of Prishtina’s city center, ensured every one of us that the Declaration of Independence was coming; this time, for real.

On Saturday, the first wave of joy continued to gain strength with each moment. The flags, posters, and congratulation notes were already taking shape in Mother Teresa Square. Carrs passed buy, the buses transported people, and balconies of the surrounding buildings, displayed the people’s endless creativity as they made their joy and feelings known. “BAC, U KRY” (BAC, it’s over) poster was already hanging from the balcony of the Illyria hotel, while on another balcony across the street one could read a huge poster saying “INDEPENDENCE: LOADING ………… 100%”.

The official announcement of the government’s agenda for the D-Day was made during Saturday, even though the exact timing of declaration was not mentioned. Did it matter at this point? I don’t think so. It sufficed to every one of us that what we’ve been fighting for all these years is finally coming true. And it sufficed to know that it was finally taking place this Sunday, as since 10 December, 2007, everyone was wondering, guessing, speculating, about the date of declaration.

In the evening of Saturday night, the festive fever was at its highest. The city streets were fled with cars, this time not only from Prishtina, but from all over Kosova, displaying the most diverse flags, paying tribute to all the countries of the world that have supported us during all these years. The national Albanian and the flag of the United States continue to dominate these days.

The celebrations continued all night long all over the country. Bars and restaurants of Prishtina were celebrating along with their guests, and the Albanian traditional, folk, and hip hop music kept everyone fully awake and highly spirited throughout the night. The special edition of Peja Beer, named Independence, added a distinct flavor to the celebration.

The sunrise of Sunday morning opened the second wave of joy. When I got to the city center at noon, there were already thousands of Kosovars. More people had arrived from all Kosova sides, and their number was increasing each moment. The low temperature (somewhere around -5C) of this sunny winter Sunday could hardly stop anyone from joining the crowd and being a part and a witness of this important moment in Kosova’s life. Many businesses were already distributing food and drinks for free to the celebrating crowd, while at one end of the Mother Teresa Square, the setup of the stage for the later-on concert was being finalized.

While the crowd was patiently awaiting and celebrating on the streets, the Prime Minister, Mr. Hashim Thaci, invited the Parliament to an extra session and presented the declaration to the Kosovar Parliament, declaring Kosova an independent, sovereign, and democratic state. All the political party members were present beside the Serb representatives. When voted, all members voted for the declaration with a show of hand, and as a result, the Parliament declared Kosova an independent and sovereign state.

At that moment, I had already left the crowd on the streets and joined the one in one of my favorite Prishtina bars, the Strip Depo (the Comic Books Depot). It was already packed with celebrating youngsters; I hardly got in. People in there were carefully following the developments in the Parliament on the TV, placed in one of the bar’s corners. Of course, not everyone could see it at this point, but again it did not matter. The outburst of cheer and cry at one end of the bar made it clear to the rest of us what happened. And the emotions, pride, joy, and happiness I felt at this moment cannot be described. Tears were running from my eyes in the meantime. I cried, happy that our dream came true, but I also cried because I wished I could celebrate that moment in my home in North Mitrovica.

When I woke up this morning, I thought I woke up in the ‘morning after,’ and thought that now we are to continue our lives as each other regular day, but focusing on building our new state. In a way, this is true. But watching the news and listening to the first recognitions of independent Kosova being announced. I cannot stop and not feel the third wave of joy. And at times, I feel that this one is the most powerful. This slow process of bilateral recognition is as becoming as the important stamp on some important document, something that makes it valid, something without which you cannot use it. And it makes it certain to us that the bitter history that we’ve survived is truly over, and that a new age for KOSOVA is being born. After decades of Serbian rule, that long chapter has just closed, once and for all.

And that’s why celebrations had to continue today and tonight as well. The city continues living and celebrating as two previous days, and I have a feeling that we’ll continue like this for few more days too.

By the time I am writing this email 15 states have already recognized us, while 38 of them have declared that will recognize us soon. We’re aware that the full international recognition will take a while, but what matters is the fact that we’ve embarked on this process and there’s no way back.

I feel reborn, I feel new, and I feel that a new chapter is being opened for me and my Kosovar fellows.

And now I have to go because I have to build my KOSOVA’s European future.

Independent Kosovar love to all of you,
Iliriana

Posted on February 20, 2008 by .
Filed under personal.

Between Barcamp und Jeecamp

Sitting in a room full of geeks, small investors and marketing agents is not everyones thing. Especially on weekends it is something that others would want to avoid. But not Kathlyn and me. We where at the Barcamp in Riga which was announced as the “biggest Barcamp in the former Soviet countries” with over 1000+ registered participants.

Humans are by nature very bad in identifying the number of individuals in a crowd. But my best guess is that there where about 400 of them on both days quarreling through the hallways and seminar rooms of the Rivera Hotel in Riga. I have no complains about the (self)organization of such a event but must say that it turned out to be self referential to a degree that is unhealthy. Bloggers talk about the way they blog and how there blogs are situated in relation to the network of blogs - the blogosphere.

One of the most interesting things for me was the attitudes of the participants towards technical developments. According to their view new technologies develop because people share ideas and create products and services. The very process of developing is seen by them as something that is caused by people but not under their control. Nobody can control the way in which new technologies
develop is the attitude of most of the participants. This is reflected in the answers I got when I asked them what they think is the driving force of the internet? What is it that keeps the internet spreading and infiltrating the globe and societies all over? The people, one said. And he belongs to the naive ones. Sex, said another. And he might be quiet right. But this conclusions seems inappropriate to the fact why the internet developed in the way it does and not in others.

If I develop means to make butter out of milk I need first of all milk. Than I need something that performs an action on the milk. For both, the milk and the tool, I need money. And if I do not have money to develop means to make butter out of milk, how am I able to put butter on my slide of bread? Or in this case develop services like blogging platforms, flickr clones and mobile translation applications.

It seems that people are very unaware of the things that totally surround them. It is like with the water and the fish. We do not know who discovered water, but we are sure that it was not the fish.

Once used to the internet as part of daily life, its artificial nature is invisible. It is not, as the naive might think, that people are the driving force of innovation. It is the environment that enables an individual to innovate new technologies and spread it to the community. And this environment is the social, political and economic sphere in which individuals play, communicate and do business.

It is not an accident, that a network of free associations, which evolved out of the “highway of thought”, came into existence and spread out from western democracies towards totalitarian societies and not the other way around. In a feudal state, or what we would now call a dictatorship, the idea of creating a network where every user is equal and can communicate with everybody else about whatever they want, would hardly find any support by those who own the country. And in such societies those who own the country also wish to make the decisions that determine the way the society is running. Decisions over investment for example. In this respect democratic countries have much in common with totalitarian regimes.

So the notion that the internet is something that grows naturally in the sense a flower grows the way it chooses to grow is hard to sustain given the fact that technological development are not subject of natural selection ala Darwin.

One factor that determine technology and its evolution or development is the price. If access to the internet is about the income of a middle class worker in a western democratic society than it will get hard to reach a internet penetration rate of even 20% in such a nation. What made the price for access decrease over the last 10 years here in Western Europe was the liberalization of the telecommunication sector. Competition is the name of the game. A monopoly -state owned or private- would keep the prices up to keep its profit up. Technical development is expensive and investments shrink the profit. But if you have a competitive market with companies forced to innovate and invest in order to stay in the market, prices drop.

Besides the price it is education that determines technical developments. The question here is a rather simple one. Why would someone buy something if not for a reason? The reasons vary depending on what someones interests are. But they vary also to the degree of the skills someone has in order to use technology for a given reason.  These skills are hardly acquired in formal education given the speed and scope of the development of the internet. So non-formal education, life long learning and other forms of skills acquisition procedures have to be in place.

If both variables, price level and education level, are in favor of ideas individuals come up with in an act of creativity and innovation, the practical application of these ideas become them self environments. It is only too clear to see especially Eastern Europe countries lacking behind western Indicators for an innovation society. The reasons for this lack cannot be explained in a lack of creativity of individuals in these societies but rather by the driving factors outlined above.

But the understanding of technology as something natural, which has its own way to grow and evolve, is widely shared among the people I met at the Barcamp in Riga. This makes me wonder what happens if Tim Berner’s Network get challenged by something new and the web as we know it will take a step backwards to make place for a new environment.

Yes, and what I want to say is that in march Kathlyn and me will be in Birmingham at the JEEcamp. 

Posted on February 15, 2008 by .
Filed under blogging.

Publications to read

The madness of carnival is its incapability to attract me. So I think it is time to highlight some papers that I think people here, especially in Maastricht should read and discuss. The first one with the title “Towards a Grand Strategy
for an Uncertain World” can be found here. The second one is a usual subject. The Humans Right Watch World Report 2008 can be found here.
I hope that my coffee is finish and this madness over.

Posted on February 5, 2008 by .
Filed under personal.

Not even a little bit, not even at all

There are two reasons I sit in Maastricht with my former employer, McClatchy Company, on the brain.

The former is more pleasant than the later, so we’ll start with the good news. My friend and former colleague Shanda Cook was kind enough to contact me via Facebook this week to let me know I won a writing award from the South Carolina Press Association. Clearly, good news.

The second reason is because of the first item in today’s Romanesko e-mail roundup of media news.

The Charlotte Observer, a McClatchy Company newspaper, will lay off 25 of 14 jobs in its ad design group. It will instead, as the article details, hire employees of an Illinois company called Affinity Express… whose facilities are in the Philippines and India.

Also, the Raleigh News and Observer (another McClatchy paper) will also cut employees and begin doing business with Affinity Express.

First off, a disclaimer: As an American working for a Dutch company, I of course understand that I am not in a strong position to critique the idea of foreigners working for domestic operations.

On the other hand, I wonder how many of these employees were offered the chance to move to Philippines or India. If you gave me the chance to relocate to either one of those places, I would certainly consider it. But I highly doubt any of these American citizens were given that chance.

On another note, I must admit I grew up enchanted with the idea of newspapers. As soon as I abandoned the prospective career paths of Olympic swimmer and physical education teacher, I wanted to be a journalist. A lot of my life has been about pursuing (and sometimes achieving) that goal. But, part of the reason I came to work at the EJC was to broaden myself professionally. I know the profession is changing. Professionally, I recognise and accept this.

Emotionally, though, not really. From my negative gut reaction to today’s news out of Charlotte, maybe So maybe a psychologist would tell me I’m in the second stage of grief: Anger.

Sure, I understand that this is about a McClatchy decision to lay off advertising staff. Of course, as a (former?) news-side person, I am glad that these cuts are not on the newsroom side. And heck, maybe these cuts have to happen to save news-side jobs.

That said: Despite the recent change of course at The Miami Herald (again, McClatchy Co.) which decided against a proposed attempt to outsource part of it’s copy desk to a group called Mindworks, based in New Delhi, India, I see this as a slippery slope.

Are page designers next?

I can understand why the copy desk experiment failed - you wouldn’t want your journalists and editors to be geographically separated. But thinking back to my own experiences with McClatchy Company (at a paper with a circulation of about, I think, 20,000) most of the page designers are doing their thing in the latter half of the day. Typically without discussion with reporters or story editors, many of whom were never around in the evenings (I know this because I worked in sports, often till around 12 a.m., or later).

In the sports department, for example, a page designer would come in sometime around 4 p.m., confer briefly with our section editor, and then be on his own for the night.

So really, he could be sitting anywhere.

Maybe this was possible because my former section editor is one of the most organised leaders I’ve met. And maybe that’s the way things worked because the newspaper was small.

However, thinking back, I do really think newspapers could outsource some of their page design work.

And I think they could save money doing it.

But, I don’t like this idea. I am sure there are wonderful designers in the Phillipines and in India. Truly, I enjoy the design of foreign newspapers, finding them to be more colourful, exciting and innovative.

But I think there’s something to be gained for designers and reporters working together. There is a lot of cohesiveness that can be achieved in newsprint (and online) products when there is synergy, people working together. I used to meet one-on-one with the sports design guys to discuss layout concepts I could help them implement. And our section always fared quite well in contests and in local courts of public opinion.

Then, looking at this from another angle: What about human rights? This deal is going to save about 40 percent on labour. Which I would imagine is because wages will be lower in India and the Philippines – and benefits will be less, insurance expenses will be less. Maybe hours worked will be more, who knows.

But isn’t this starting to get at the heart of what has so many people feeling conflicted about the upcoming Olympic Games in China? Human rights abuses? Government systems with few labour laws? Governments who close down information tracks?

I can’t imagine myself, at my former job, walking to the other side of the building and telling the very nice ad folks, “Sorry, time to go home. And please don’t come back. I’m giving your job to someone in India. And no, you can’t move there to have the job. It’s just gone.”

I can’t imagine this any more than telling my friend, Shanda, that her job as a features designer was being outsourced.

These are reasons why I am fully in favour of politicians levying taxes against American businesses which fire their employees and outsource work like this.

Because what about all the money and time American taxpayers put into educating and training this white collar labour force we’re laying off?

In the end, I find this trend both scary and sad – sad because I don’t want it to continue, but scary because I think it will.

Posted on January 31, 2008 by .
Filed under personal.

Writing tips in 2008

After almost 3 months of work without a pause it is time to write a little bit about what is going on behind the iron curtain of the EJC. Until the end of the last year most of our time and afford went into a tender to reinvent the online as well as print appearance of the European Commission. This was so time consuming that I forgot to change the featured video on the website almost ten times. Apparently nobody is watching it anyhow and so, I guess, it does not make any difference. Other things that kept us busy where this website and all the others we maintain and come up with. Our digital mastermind also released his baby called eufeeds. This site aggregates over 200 news sources, ordered by country, and give them a shiny look and feel.

We also won a tender for the European Parliament and our mastermind behind all our tender application, who also writes articles on our magazine page (I do not know if somebody who reads this has ever seen the magazine section on the website because our statistics show us that it is the nobody-clicks-it section of our entire website), is working on new tenders all day and night long.

For my part, I do now the “Europe a week ahead"-video for our eu4journalist website together with Anne Autio, our in house voice of the week. She was the news anchor for Finnish Broadcast and the best one I know. Beside that I also start writing for our magazine that is so unpopular that its save to gain some writing skills without. Here is what I learned so far from my writing like a journalist teacher Kathlyn:

THEIR – possessive… I went to their house. I want their dog.

THEY’RE = “They are” They’re going swimming. They’re really hot. They’re going to Israel. They’re wonderful!

THERE – I want to go there. We are there. Who is there?

Only and just – NONONONOONONO! These are judgemental words.

On/of/with/for/by/ don’t end (these are prepositions)

The declaration of independance made by the man is really cool.

The Declaration of Independance made by the man is really cool.

http://suspense.net/whitefish/cliche.htm --> Do not use them.

In two weeks Kathlyn and me are going to the BarCamp Baltic and get in contact with some good looking bloggers:)

Posted on January 30, 2008 by .
Filed under work.