About Hopelesscom

Posted on May 31, 2010 by Timo Zimmermann

I received some feedback and I think I should comment it. Before I start let me say that I always appreciate comments and feedback. I don’t need people to always agree with me – even if I know that I’m right ;) – if you think that I wrote something wrong or if you have suggestions how I could improve hopelesscom feel free to send me a mail, write a comment, contact me through a IM service or send a carrier pigeon.

More posts please

Yes I know. My posting schedule is far away from regular. But the last year was crazy. I moved in a new apartment, I moved my office and I had a lot of work. Running a company is nothing you do between two blog posts in 4 hours a day.

The good news are that things are back to normal. Now I can keep up with a regular posting schedule and even get some projects done.

Theme / URL changes

Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

I tried running my own blog software and content management system written in Django. Writing a CMS and seeing how it goes in production and powering my site was great. But there were two things I didn’t think of.

  1. Maintaining software that depends on a third party framework can really suck
  2. If there is a error or bug you should be able to fix it in time

One pissed me of, two broke my neck. That’s the whole story.

I just didn’t have the time to maintain my CMS. And through software changes my themes changed a lot.

I tried to keep my URLs working. It looks like it didn’t always work. Again. Mea culpa. I try to fix it so you won’t see many broken links from external sites.

You will see a new theme in near future. I’m working on it but due to non existing Photoshop skills development slowed down.

You’ll also get my old posting with comments back. Even if I’m not sure how I’ll do it, I’ll find a way :)

More reviews

I don’t really like writing reviews. First of I have a strict rule in buying gadgets.

Only buy them if you really want and need them

I don’t know how much stuff I had in my basement or just gave it away as present because I never used it. Most gadgets are not worth the money. And since I really feel tired of playing with useless stuff (hardware, software – you name it. Nearly everything related to computers) I won’t write reviews in near future.

If you really want me to review a gadget send it to me. Don’t expect to get it back if I like it. Send it on your own risk!

iPhone OS 4 / iPad

I didn’t write much about the iPhone OS 4 because I am not interested.

It doesn’t provide any features I’m looking forward to. I don’t need multitasking on my iPhone. Maybe on the iPad. But not on the iPhone. And that’s it.

As long as my 3g runs well, as long as I can Twitter, call people and write mails I have nearly everything I need. As I said in my previous post I’m sick of all that 2.0 stuff and I won’t upgrade my hardware just to run more IM clients and Twitter in background.

Maybe I’ll get the new iPhone because I can extend my contract. It would be pretty dumb not getting the new iPhone for free.

iPad? Yeah. Got one. Nice little toy. Only got it because I’ll get some work related applications and because I think it is a nice presentation device while in a client meeting.

I am still not used to writing on the iPad, even if it isn’t troublesome I prefer a real keyboard. Beside that it integrates well in my day. Reading news, writing one or two emails while not on my computer,… no big deal. It saves some time, it gets out of your way but it doesn’t replace a computer, laptop or iPhone. You have decide on your own if it fits in your day or not.

Really sick of 2.0?

Yes.

I think I answered everything that was asked several times and wasn’t private.

As I said: if you have suggestions or comments just drop me a line.

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Goodbye 2.0

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Timo Zimmermann

I slowly get the feeling that I don’t like web 2.0 anymore. Could we please go on to 3.0? I don’t know when I first got this feeling but it is there for a long time and now I cannot ignore it anymore. I have to change something, even if I don’t exactly know what.

2004

I think we all remember this time. It was in 2004 when everyone started writing a blog. YouTube became famous, flickr spread and everyone started publishing content. Wasn’t it a great time? You finally were able to see kittens doing funny stuff. Hilarious.

2006

Let’s be honest. 2006. Year of Twitter. No discussion. Since 2006 you know when your friends and strangers go to the toilet.

Twitter changed everything. You got live updates from events you were interested in but couldn’t participate, news sites were nearly useless since everything was on Twitter if you followed the right people.

I think Twitter is one of the sites that had the biggest impact on me.

EMails

I think it was around 2006 when I stopped writing EMails. You could reach everyone using ICQ, Jabber and other IM services. It was fast. It was web 2.0. You could do that before. My ICQ accout was created 2001 I think. But as always it took some years till the last non tech people adopted the “new stuff”.

Most of my friends went to school or university. They always had time to check IMs and they always had a Internet connection at home or university. So it worked out fine.

2008

Facebook or “when your private data started to spread around the net without you knowing it“. Wasn’t it great. You could present yourself to all your friends. And even people you didn’t know became your friends. A girl I met once at a party – 3 years ago – added me as friend so I could see her full contact details, photos and everything about her life.

I mean we met 3 years ago. That means something, doesn’t it?

My opinion about Facebook

Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with your friends and people you know. But you should really be careful with your private data.

Sometimes I don’t understand people. They publish interests, photos and other stuff on a platform that is supposed to make profit and they are surprised that they use their informations.

If you really have a problem with Facebook and care about your informations so much: Don’t publish them! No one forces you to enter every last detail about you. No one forces you to play Farmville. No one forces you to click those “get a larger ***** in 3 hours” links.

If you are too dumb to take responsibility for your actions and informations you published stop using the web.

Please don’t get me wrong. I know that there are many older people that just don’t see the big picture because they lack background knowledge. This was just a wake up call to those who know the web but use services blindly and start crying if something goes wrong.

IM

It was 2008 when I stopped using IM. It was easier to send my friends a message on Facebook. They could check it from everywhere and they could instantly reply.

IM just didn’t work anymore since we all left school. We started working, earning money, having less time to sit in front of a computer and click every link on Google to look if there is something on the Internet we didn’t already see. We grew up and we don’t work in professions allowing us to use the computer the whole day.

Time in front of  your computer

I believe that there are actually two camps of people.

  1. Those who work in front of a computer all day and can run every software they want as long as they get their job done
  2. Those who don’t or cannot.

I believe that instant messaging as a communication replacement is only viable for camp one. IM using your mobile phone was never great. No matter what phone we talk about.

IRC and bulletin boards

Did you notice that IRC and bulletin boards are dead? Well at least kind of? Back in 2008 it was when most tech discussion was moved from BBS and IRC to blogs and wikis. Of course there are developer channels and BBS but looking at how they are used is nothing compared to 2000 – 2008.

Mailling lists, blogs and wikis just have one big advantage. You can always look back at a discussion. It is persistent.

Last time I checked some IRC channels I liked – channels with many competent people – I nearly started crying. Back in 2006 someone asking how to install Linux 9.1 would have been kicked and discussion went on. Today the same people became Ubuntu users. Explaining everything, solving nothing being boring and not innovative. A discussion about a Perl script? “lol what’s perl? Use Flash.” “this doesn’t fit here anymore.” “who cares? did you see Lindsay Lohan last night?! Aweeeeeesooooommmmeeeeeeee”

Don’t get me started on bulletin boards. In 2004 you could already answer every second thread with “turn your monitor on“. It didn’t become better.

EMails

It was 2008 when I started writing EMails again. You know – they are great. You send someone a message and when the other person has some time he or she sends a reply. And so on. It’s like IM only that you don’t have to run strange clients and you don’t need to sign in different services.

Thanks to Push and IMAP it is instant and usable from everywhere. Great stuff right?

It was great

I had a lot of fun. Discovering new services like Plurk – seeing new services fail like Plurk – discovering new services that actually made it. Let’s be honest for one moment. Every geek, every hacker, every IT dude is a kid that likes to play with new shiny stuff. And we got a lot of it since 2004.

No matter what service I tried it was fun and I met a lot of great people. And that’s what web 2.0 is about right? Publishing stuff and meeting people.

There is one rule that – sadly – works: the more you publish the more people you’ll meet. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter what you publish.

Participate

Look at what you have to stay in touch with people and how you can participate. Let’s take a ordinary iPhone. You always have the web with you.

  • You can tweet form everywhere
  • You can tell people where you are so they can break into your house
  • You can upload photos from everywhere
  • You can upload videos from everywhere
  • You can instantly reply to comments on your news or updates on 14 services
  • You can read news all the time with your feed reader

And that is only a small selection of stuff I did.

My problem with it is that I don’t feel to get something back. It is just a duty to update everything so people that “care” know what’s going on in my life.

If I am honest – I don’t care if everyone always knows what I am doing. My friends don’t need a instant update and pictures form my last trip. I can also just show them the pictures when we meet next time.

There is no point in using 2 or 3 sites like Facebook. One is enough to stay in touch with people – especially since I don’t care about most of them. I am in touch with those people I really like. I don’t need Facebook.

I don’t always have to know about the last news. It doesn’t matter if I read my news sites in the morning or all day. Informations like “Patch 3.3.5 is released” and “VirtualBox 3.2.0 is finally stable but you are not allowed to run OSX on Windows” are good to have. But it is not important to have them 3 minutes after they are published.

What will I use in future?

only a hand full services / sites

  • Twitter. I like it. News I care about and updates from interesting people.
  • Emails. They just work. I can write and answer them whenever and wherever I want.
  • Blogs. Informations I care about. No matter if I publish them or someone else. And if I want to look something up it is there (most of the time)

What I wont use anymore?

  • Flickr. I am not photographer. I have some pictures of birthdays, vacations and other stuff and I nearly never look at it. I sometimes search flickr for inspiration but that’s it.
  • YouTube. See Flickr.
  • Everything but Facebook.

Facebook is a special case. I am not sure if I continue using it. On the one hand I like it on the other hand it is meh.

iPhone?!

I have an iPhone. And without all that social stuff it is just a phone, a calendar, a address book, a Twitter client, a browser and a Battle.net authenticator.

I have a paper calendar – great stuff. Works always. No synchronization needed.

A phone? It has some great features. I have to admit it.

Twitter client? Runs on nearly every phone I’d consider buying (iPhone / BlackBerry / Nokia maybe an Android if I start drinking)

Browser? It was fun but I stopped browsing the web while on the road. I do it one or two times a month.

I currently have some trouble with T-Mobile (that’s another story). There are two options.

  1. I need / want my iPhone <- I have to find an arrangement with them
  2. I just buy another phone from a provider with cheaper contracts and service that also sucks <- I save money and have no disadvantage beside no iPhone

My decision to say goodbye to web 2.0 is maybe one of the most important factors to consider option two. Why should I pay a lot of money for a great device that I don’t use in a way that it justifies the price? Style? No thanks.

It was a great  time

but it is over. Farewell web 2.0. We had a lot of fun. We did awesome stuff. But everything has to come to an end.

Appendix: reading this article a second time I feel old. Sucks. I’m 23. I got a great job. Shouldn’t I be one of those pink polo wearing hipsters that are too cool for this world using everything they get from Apple because it has style, even if they have no idea what they are doing and publishing everything they have?

Posted in it, life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Ein <3 für Blogs

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Timo Zimmermann

Heute ist es so weit. Ein Herz für Blogs. Zum 3ten mal. Ohne mir ganz sicher zu sein und ohne nach zu schauen ist dies der erste Post in Deutsch hier im Blog. Und doch wurde hopelesscom ein paar mal verlinkt.

Danke

Auf diesem Weg ein Dankeschön an all meine Leser aus Deutschland. Es ist schön, dass Ihr euch nicht von den etwas unregelmäßigen Updates und dem nicht immer perfekten Englisch abhalten lasst hopelesscom zu lesen.

Auf ein paar Kommentare die ich erhalten habe werde ich in einem anderen Post weiter eingehen, aber da ich nicht zu viel Inhalt in deutsch verfassen möchte (ein nicht unerheblicher Teil der Leser versteht es nicht), werde ich es hier kurz halten und nur noch die Links anhängen.

Deutsche Blogs

Hier meine Liste

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/

Sehr viel und qualitativ hochwertiges zum Thema (Open)Solaris

http://silbensaat.de/blog/

Solaris / Linux / OSX / uvm

http://blogs.interdose.com/sebastian/

Wer Ihn nicht kennt sollte sich ganz schnell auf die SysOps.tv Seite bewegen und die ZFS Videos ansehen.

http://strcat.de/blog/

Lesen

http://pebcak.de/

Inzwischen zwar eher auf den Fotoblog und Twitter verlagert aber wer weiß, wann wieder was kommt :)

http://michael-prokop.at/blog/

*grml*

http://www.ende-der-vernunft.org/

Erkannt, was EDV wirklich bedeutet

http://www.m4gic.net/

Immer wieder aktuelle Dinge rund um Technik und Internet

http://www.calaelen.com/

dickes Bärchen

http://vowe.net/

Lesen

Ich weiß genau irgend einen hab ich vergessen,… -.-

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Just a little update

Posted on May 3, 2010 by Timo Zimmermann

The last two weeks were crazy. I had a really small list what I’d want to do in my free time. My most important points were finishing my theme for hopelesscom and creating a logo.

After everyone, and I really mean everyone, went mental I had about 3 hours spare time when I didn’t raid enjoy some free hours raiding two nights.

The only thing that keeps me believing that I’ll really get it done is that we’ll have a weekend with formula one. This basically means 14 free hours.

So on Friday my epic battle against Photoshop will start again. This time I’ll show it who’s the boss. And what I’m really looking forward to is the system I’ll be using. A sweet Mac Pro with two 30″ Cinema displays.  8 cores, 16GB RAM, two graphic cards and a raid5. I only know one expression that fits this system “next best thing to sex”.

Btw. if you didn’t see the presentation – you should check a new feature in Photoshop CS5 called Content Aware. There are several videos on YouTube. I currently don’t have my link list with me so I have to link it later.

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Why web applications are (not always) the answer

Posted on April 16, 2010 by Timo Zimmermann

There is one thing web2.0 brought us except bright colors and a lot of animations on websites. And I believe we will see much more the next few years.

How we use and control computers changes. Look at the iPhone and iPad. Two great examples. You have nearly no storage, you have no real hardware interfaces except some buttons and a touch screen. And yet you can do everything with those devices.

No matter if we talk about spreadsheets, image editing or games. There is a web application that is capable of most stuff you need. And most of the applications – those that are developed by established companies – provide nearly all features your current desktop application has.

Why web applications became famous

That’s a easy questions to answer. At least for me. You get – most of the time – a free application that is a real alternative to your desktop application when we talk about features. Sometimes they even provide more options like PDF export – something Microsoft Office cannot do.

If you even start to pay for some additional services you get a lot of stuff you probably don’t need.

You don’t have to worry about updates, if the software works with you new operating system, how to install your new application and where you should store your files and how to create a reliable backup.

Operating systems are an important point. You can use your web application from every system with a current browser. While your friend works on a document using Windows 7 with Internet Explorer 8 you can use your iPad and when at home your Linux box.

Applications always look the same, feel the same and have access to the same files without the trouble of synchronization.

Sounds like web applications are awesome, right? No.

Storing your files

Your files – most of the time – are stored on a server you cannot access. You don’t know what the company will do with your files or if they are encrypted or at least stored in a way that no everyone can access them.

Backup solutions are not really practical nor given in every application.

You have to trust the provider that he is able to handle your files. This also means that storing files concerning your clients or files with internal informations about your company should not be created using web applications.

Security

You don’t know how your files are stored. But a bigger problem is that you don’t know how secure your connection is. Even if you use https – only one person editing or downloading your file that doesn’t use a secure – let’s pretend https is secure – connection and your files maybe gone.

Security problems with web browsers? Never heard such a rubbish,..

Usability

Most web applications are designed by people that are great programmers. Sadly you get something like vim or emacs if you let those people make usability decisions.

“hey hitting [crtl]+[alt]+[x] [d] [f] [e] [b] [crtl]+[alt]+[b] to save a file is totally logical and practical.”

Just a random sidenote: Never ever let programmers make decisions about user interfaces. There is a reason why interface designers earn a lot of money.

One big advantage of most applications – and a reason why the iPhone became so successful – is that you have the same widgets, shortcuts and designs in every program. Yeah it is cool to build a custom UI. It totally makes your application stand out. But it sucks.

And that’s what most web application designers do. They open Photoshop, add a lot of Ajax and after they are done, they brighten colors. Tada: something that is supposed to be a user interface.

How to use web applications in your company

That’s a tricky question. If you already have a server you just setup a webserver and tell your development team or the company you hired to create your application that you want a web application because your employees should be able to work from home using their web browser.

Remote access will be easy. But this isn’t solving usability problems. Even if they create a great interface. Your people will always need a Internet connection to work. This is not always possible. I know that Gears exists. But I didn’t see one big project using it. And I don’t believe I’ll see many.

Using web applications on your own server should solve the security problem. Enough money should solve the usability problem. But after all that fixed: you could just have paid for a real desktop application written in QT, Java or whatever and saved some money.

Small companies

If your company only has one or two employees or if one or two people will work with a program and maybe even use the same workstation you’ll definitely save money if you get a desktop application, especially if you don’t even have a server.

Big companies

I don’t believe that there will be a big difference.

  • Server: used for both types
  • Administration: clients need administration. Applications are managed in a central place. No difference.
  • Network: desktop applications win. You know, I can write a document without a Internet connection.
  • TCO: about the same I’d say

There are no real advantages for big companies. At least none I see.

One man businesses and private users

Give it a try but be sure that you don’t post your client informations on your Facebook wall or the naked pictures if your girl friend on Tweetpic.

The smaller and less business orientated you are, the bigger is the chance that you’ll be happy with web applications.

Hybrids

In my opinion “hybrids” are superior. You have a web interface for some stuff and can accomplish basic or advanced tasks, depending on how important it is to be able to access data without your desktop application that will synchronize with your web service.

A great example is Google Reader. You get a web interface that works and you get desktop applications if you want a application that integrates in your working environment. If you are not on your system you can still use Google Reader.

Conclusion

I don’t see everything moving to web applications as some people do. They are fun and they are useful but they don’t work in every situation. If I’d have to guess I’d say that we’ll see much more hybrid applications the next few years.

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