Anders Pollas

To the poor excuse of a man that insists on play­ing the pin­ball machine at the local water­ing hole incred­i­bly loud with that stu­pid ‘all men are just lit­tle boys’ look on his face every sin­gle time I set foot in the place: Get a life. Stop being so noisy. Play your machine some­where else or later in the day

. When I’m in the process of wak­ing up, inject­ing cof­fee into my body, I don’t need stu­pid noise from stu­pid trou­ble mak­ers. Yes, that’s what you are.

Trav­el­ling cam­era con­cept:

That’s me in the first cou­ple frames, and appar­ently one of the women in it posed in play­boy.

My mail­man told me so, and as I recall, it’s not the one you’d suspect.

[via nsop]

After read­ing Rus­sell Beattie’s post on lis­ten­ing to pod­casts while he com­mutes and see­ing the iPod click-wheel illus­tra­tion I thought of some­thing: Wouldn’t click-wheel hub­caps be a nice way to tell your fel­low com­muters you’re totally clued in? A decent photo of such a wheel on one of those hub­caps that stay sta­tion­ary while you drive and you’re good to go…

So, the tsunami came, a lot of peo­ple died and now peo­ple all over the world are help­ing the best they can. Which is great. The blo­gos­phere has proven its worth once again, com­ing up with var­i­ous cre­ative ways of rais­ing money.

What is quite a prob­lem how­ever, is that while a true dis­as­ter, the tsunami isn’t nowhere near our biggest global prob­lem when it comes to peo­ple in need. “Africa? Yeah, I know, but they’ve been like dying since the eight­ies, right? Aren’t they more used to it?” So, while help­ing Asia, please keep in mind, that more peo­ple could use some help as well.

Media cov­er­age rules. Media cov­er­age needs pic­tures and sto­ries. Sad but true — and a bit under­stand­able. Goal for 2005: Why not see if we can get the same trac­tion focused on other impor­tant issues? We need good sto­ries, oth­er­wise the ‘blog­ging thing’ seem mis­placed? No, we make stories.

Update: After finally read­ing today’s Infor­ma­tion I’m shocked and sad­dened to learn that most of the promised con­tri­bu­tions by dif­fer­ent coun­tries, the UN etc., often don’t make it to the receiv­ing coun­tries. Call me naive, but I sort of thought most it got there… For instance, after the 2003 earth­quake in Bam less than 2% of the money promised were actu­ally payed mean­ing that no rebuild­ing has really taken place. If this is true, there’s a much bet­ter way to help than to donate small amounts your­self: Just make sure your gov­ern­ment prac­tice what they preach. Here, the estab­lished media could make a dif­fer­ence; they got the resources to reseach, fol­low up etc. And I don’t like my tax money being given away more than once but never deliv­ered — and I sup­pose a lot of peo­ple would feel the same. That said, I still think the blo­gos­phere is capa­ble of quite a lot. We col­lect money for soft­ware devel­op­ment, new power­books and what­not. And if some­one can raise $1300+ to help trans­port dogs from one coun­try to another after being screwed by their car­rier just by being men­tioned on The Daily Source Code (I won’t link either as this isn’t point­ing fin­gers in any way!), I hope we could raise a lot more than that for the really impor­tant prob­lems of the world. And this isn’t the usual “oh, so we can just cut any sup­port to the arts for five years as this isn’t sav­ing lives anyway”-discussion. That’s not what it is about. If that was true, I shouldn’t be writ­ing this on an expen­sive lap­top sit­ting in my comfy chair. But if dog lovers can sell their story to peo­ple who care about dogs, peo­ple lovers should be able to sell the story about star­va­tion in Africa to peo­ple who care about…people.

OS X Flickr users, go take s1001 for a spin. It’s a desk­top client for man­ag­ing your photo stream allow­ing you to upload, blog etc. It comes with a screen­saver (that’s how I found the app) capa­ble of down­load­ing images based on pre­ferred tags. Neat. I had a bit of trou­ble run­ning it for the first time, but some­how it fixed itself. Which is neat as well.

Also of inter­est, the Flickr Export Plu­gin for iPhoto. Great func­tion­al­ity. Only trou­ble is, I can’t get it to accept my password…which means I can’t play. Devel­op­ment seems to have pretty much stopped, but I’m hop­ing it will pick up again soon.

…when the local pole dancers stop tak­ing money from car­pen­ters but instead hand it back in order to get their win­dows cov­ered with plywood.

Happy new year everybody.

Man tror næppe graden af opfind­somhed hos Jens Ris­gaard, it-boss hos vores alle­sam­mens Post Dan­mark, iflg. denne artikel hos Com­put­er­world:

Tro det eller ej, men fore­trukne red­sk­aber er lap­top, mobil­tele­fon, Word og Out­look. Argh, hvor­for tænkte jeg ikke på det? Og fanme, om ikke han får en sms, hvis noget går galt med driften… For­band­ede smar­tass early-adopter.

Com­put­er­world, I er ikke just spæn­dende i forve­jen, men hvis der ikke er flere pressemed­delser I kan paste ind som egne artik­ler, og bevæger jer ud for at skrive selv, så sørg lige for at jeres interview-ofre har noget spæn­dende at sige. Man er i sin gode ret til at bruge nøjagtig de værk­tø­jer man vil, hey — måske de egner sig per­fekt til opgaven…men det er jeres opgave at overveje, om det kan have nogen værdi for andre overhovedet.

I næste uge på denne kanal: Anders cyk­ler

til arbe­jde og spiser frokost med kniv og gaffel.

Minor changes in the Base­camp pric­ing struc­ture (which is just fine and not the point), com­ments from the customers.

While old news in the won­der­ful com­mu­nity of the inter­web, that ‘mar­kets are discussions’-thing sure is some­thing, huh? When was the last time your tele­phone com­pany dis­cussed their pric­ing model with you? How come cer­tain com­pa­nies (like the Dan­ish post, pub­lic trans­porta­tion etc.) increase prices by a lot more than infla­tion dic­tates and don’t explain them­selves to you? It’s so sim­ple, yet I con­tinue to be amazed how noone expects to be informed. “Oh, so you’re chang­ing my cable-tv plan, caus­ing a 34% increase in price? Ok, I’ll just pay.“

I guess it’s hard run­ning a larger busi­ness, decid­ing how to run cus­tomer ser­vice, what to charge peo­ple, when to speak and when to shut up. Oh, that last one was easy — speak up — always! And you might make the wrong deci­sion once in a while. But as long as you com­mu­ni­cate, I’m sure peo­ple will for­give and for­get. If you wanna play hard­ball, pro­duce bad prod­ucts or what­ever AND don’t wanna talk, well then I guess you just don’t want my money.

I hereby declare 2005 ‘talk to the wallet’-year (think a ‘talk to the hand’-kinda ges­ture). Cap­i­tal­ism is here, so get that polit­i­cal consumer-thing going; let the wal­let do the talking.

It takes time, yes, and I imag­ine it’s pretty damn hard find­ing a decent sneaker com­pany, a well-behaved major record com­pany etc. etc., but I’ll give it a try. I’ll put on my Nikes and run out to my SUV and go change bank this very minute. I don’t like the way they han­dle online bank­ing from my Mac.

Fine lit­tle project over at Flickr, A day in the life of…

A one day only event.

Sub­mit a min­i­mum of five pho­tos and a max­i­mum of fif­teen.

All pho­tos must be taken on the spec­i­fied date and should doc­u­ment your life that day.

And it’s tomor­row, Decem­ber 21st. [via jill/txt]

Zefrank’s at it again: the carol maker. Drop your elves in the grid and watch the lit­tle ani­mated movie. Or lis­ten to what other peo­ple made. Favourite so far: “Music for elf­ports”. [via zeld­man — so you all already know]

So, you’re think­ing: How can this guy Pol­las afford all those flashy cars, fat golden ear­rings and pedi­gree dogs? After 9/11 that cer­tainly isn’t easy, but I’ll let you in on my secret as I actu­ally stole the idea from some of the big (Dan­ish) play­ers in the busi­ness, Jubii and B.T.

See, with all these ter­ror­istsearly-adopters using every­thing but Inter­net Explorer, pop-up adver­tis­ing isn’t pay­ing off any­more. So what you want to do is to tar­get other parts of the web­site. And as you want to dis­play your logo as much as pos­si­ble, why not go for tiling? That’s right: The background.

With­out ruin­ing the over­all graphic design of your page, a sim­ple logo in a colour you don’t con­trol, gen­tly takes over your back­ground. My cur­rent back­ground helped me buy a yacht; Folke­ti­dende, a regional news­pa­per from where I grew up, didn’t hes­i­tate when I offered them a non-clickable, lo-res ver­sion of their logo as a back­ground tile. Notice the work that went into lit­tle details like mak­ing sure the over­all colour blends smoothly into the site and the tiles don’t get cut off by the cen­ter container.

Get out there, make money. Let’s cel­e­brate soon.

Iflg. Media­mac er jeg nu offi­cielt en vit­tig grafiker. Hvilket jeg altid har drømt om, men aldrig tur­det hÃ¥be pÃ¥ at blive.

Stavgang eller Nordic walk­ing med tilhørende walking-stave er blevet den store motions­dille i Dan­mark, og det har nogle vit­tige grafikere brugt til en sjov vittighedstegning.

Som en ser­vice (Media­mac tænkte ikke pÃ¥ at linke til teg­nin­gen, og overtræder teknisk set min cre­ative com­mons licens, men lad sÃ¥ det være, hvad det er) er her et link til den oprindelige post: Nordic walk­ing.

From pub­lic­mind:

Maybe Jason didn’t know, and maybe it’s a coin­ci­dent that Sony is play­ing hard­ball. But the sit­u­a­tion in which Jason is landed is a reminder to the rest of us to think before we publish.

The free­dom of speech is a sen­si­tive one – and it requires respect for the par­ties involved. A sort of……

Respect, sure — goes with­out say­ing. How­ever, this is not that clas­sic “Free­dom of speech”-thing. What I really don’t under­stand is what Sony risks los­ing. Will the num­ber of peo­ple wathc­ing their shows drop due to the post­ing of the sound clip? Hardly. Doesn’t the post­ing of the sound clip (and the many posts about the show before this last sound clip post) indi­cate pub­lic inter­est in their con­cept, some­thing I imag­ine they would want? I can’t see what they gain from play­ing hard­ball — except a pos­si­ble boy­cot, less inter­est in their prod­ucts and leav­ing a feel­ing in their cus­tomers that they really aren’t that impor­tant as human beings; they’re just expected to go by Sony’s rules and pay up. No mak­ing fun of stu­pid DRM (it’s called dia­logue), no dis­play of gen­uine inter­est in a show — just shut up and pay so they can con­trol the info flow sur­round­ing them.

Sony, Apple etc: Please remem­ber that you’re in a damn for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion when you have peo­ple all around the world talk­ing about you — good or bad — long­ing for your prod­ucts, try­ing to guess your next move, prais­ing a lot of the stuff you do, keep­ing your brand alive. We all dis­cuss, engage in con­ver­sa­tion — how come you think you can act com­pletely dif­fer­ent, com­mu­ni­cat­ing through gun­slinger lawyers, expos­ing your fear of not con­trol­ling a sit­u­a­tion that’s really not that bad, but that of course might show room for improve­ment? Lis­ten, learn, engage in the conversation.

It’s that “blogs are like a room full of peo­ple talk­ing about you — do you want to be in the room or not”-thing — only in this case, they don’t stay out­side. They come in and stand in a cor­ner look­ing angry. Have you ever been to a party where peo­ple who wouldn’t say who they were or why they had an aggre­sive look on their faces or why they were there in the first place were treated with any kind of respect? No, they were asked to leave. Sorry guys, we don’t want to play.

Stuff we’ll see soon — if it’s not already there somewhere:

Bud-casting: Bud Spencer video sub­scrip­tion

Slut/smut-casting: Remem­ber how the inter­web got funded?

P.O.D.-casting: Crazy teenage fans take over the tech­nol­ogy.

Slot-casting: Com­ing to you from Las Vegas.

SCUD-casting: Wanna know where they’ll hit next?

Rut-casting: Dr. Phil wants to know if you’re stuck in one.

Shot-casting: Audio snuff.

Sod-casting: Punk’s back.

MUD-casting: Old-skool gamers unite!

Schott: Sur­bur­ban apparel-oriented white trash radio

Hut-casting: [insert racist Tal­iban joke here]

Snot-casting: Oh, please, no.