Kim Bach . Org

As you might have noticed, I’ve recently begun using “Storify”, and I like it a lot.

From the About page on Storify.com

Storify helps making sense of what people post on social media. Our users curate the most important voices and turn them into stories

This is my “Storify”-profile

A common use case would be to “Storify” all tweets tagged with a specific tag, or all tweets from a given user, creating a macro blogentry out of micro blogentires in a blink of an eye.

I’d like to describe another use case, which is how to enhance an article, by extending it using” Storify”.

This week VisitCopenhagen published a nice article about the famous philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s Copenhagen, it was great, but as always, they only link to articles within their own portal, I felt that “something” was missing”.

This is the article on Søren Kierkegaard that VisitCopehagen has on their website. I’d like to “Storify” it by adding more “stories”, or what I’d like to call that micro-blog entries, to the article.

Søren Kierkegaard Storify

I used “Storify” for iPad, which is great, so I just selected the Globe icon and entered the URL for the Wikipedia article, now I could add the article.

Here’s a screenshot after I’ve added links to both the VisitCopenhagen and Wikipedia articles

I added links to Foursquare too, as well as my own comments.

I think this resulted in a nice macro-blog article, that adds significant value to the article from VisitCopenhagen, but I’d let you be the judge on that.

For convenience nothing really beats “Storify”, my main concern is that you buy into their file-format.

You can choose to save your story to your blog though, and it looks like Storify exports everything to HTML.

This was just one example of a workflow that enhances articles written by others, another example is knowledge sharing, a good example of that would be my article on #postPC, my experiences trying to replace my laptop with an iPad and a mobile.

Wishlist and a warning

The only thing I really miss with “Storify”, is the ability to collaborate on stories online, and I discovered a major problem with this. Since “Storify” doesn’t really support collaboration, I experienced that I, after finishing editing a story on my Mac lost that version because I had the story open on the iPad too, so auto-save replaced my final copy.

Best practice is not to leave a story open in the iPad editor, by always selecting “My Stories” before editing on another computer.

“Storify” is fun and makes it easier to create blog-posts, which is good, I’m not sure if the readers agree 4.5/5 stars!

Kim Bach . Org: Kim Bach . Org Colophon

Kim Bach . Org >> Blog Archive >> Danish Survival Guide

flickr.com: kimbach

EnAnden

da.wikipedia.org: Bruger:Kim Bach

Karnak – Wikipedia, den frie encyklopædi

commons.wikimedia.org: User:Kim Bach

Picture of a statue of the Egyptian goddess Hathor from the Luxor Museeum, Luxor, Egypt. The statue is from the period of the XVIIIth Dynasty and was found at the Luxor temple. The statue is about human size. The picture was taken by Kim Bach, Copenhagen, Denmark on the 17th of October 2004

en.wikipedia.org: User:Kim Bach

Pyramid du Louvre – Wikipedia, the free encyklopedia

Jaiku: @kimbach

kimbach posted to #reboot: finally arrived…

twitter: @kim_bach

Still looking for my first tweet – I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, but twitter doesn’t really give you access to your full history

Google+: kim.bach

Jeg er ikke alene, der er folk der følger mig//Har det helt på det René//Jeg har det ligesom mig

With all the talk about g00g+ (Google+), and the comparision with facebook, I came to think about a regular usecase on facebook, can I do that on g00g+ – today?

1. Create a page for an organisation
2. Create an event for that organisation
3. Invite people to the event
4. Update the people of the organisation
5. Update the attendees of the event
6. Create a campaign to promote the event and/or the organisation

All of the above, is possible to with facebook in approx. 15 minutes.

So take the Pepsi-challenge g00g+

Crossposted to | g00g+ | twitter | facebook | Illustration from the brilliant comic XKCD – Fanø you Mr. Randall Munroe for luring me to Google+, guess I made a splash though

ps.

I’ve included a link to a discussion about the challenges businesses are facing with g00g+ from Advice Digital (in Danish) advice digital: Google+ udfordrer virksomheders digitale position by René Clausen Nielsen and Birgitte Raben. They have answered my questions: “you can’t do this – yet”. I really doubt g00g can top facebook on this – but we should all embrace, and welcome, the competion, and g00g are good at “stealing” ideas.

Update: July 19th 2011

I’ve included a link to a discussion from “digitale tanker: Thoughts on Google+ and links to great reviews” – someday I might “get” “circles” – I’ve focused on a business oriented use-case here.

Update: July 25th 2011

I’ve included a link to an article by Henriette Weber “The social network on steroids – my first thoughts on Google +” – she’s also talking about “circles” – which I still don’t get. BTW, the only reason I noticed this article was because she shared it on…Google+

This blog-post documents the process involved in solving a strange problem in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.

When I say “worked for me”, it means that it might not work for you, but the problem is likely to be caused by another missing DLL.

Frustration
For days I was struggling with an error that meant that I couldn’t debug web-applications from Visual Studio 2008, if I tried to debug a web-application, it would simple show a stack-dump that stated:

The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)

What made it even more strange, was that we had a completely identical computer, in terms of hardware and operating system (Windows 7 64-bit), that didn’t show this behaviour.

The most wonderful thing about the error was that it stated that a specified module could not be loaded, but it didn’t tell me which? Great!

Google to the rescue? Not really! Since this is a very generic error, and a lot of people seem to be experiencing it, and I couldn’t see any pattern in the answers people came up with.

First I tried to reinstall Visual Studio 2008, and, as I expected, that changed nothing.

From Google the evidence was piling up, some file(s) was missing, but why was it working on the other computer.

I clearly needed the help from some tool A tool called “Dependency Walker” (http://www.dependencywalker.com/) was suggested, and it told me that I was missing the files GPSVC.dll and IEShims.dll, but both files were present on the system. GPSVC.dll in a 64-bit version though, IEShims.dll was present in both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version.

After strugling with this problem, looking for 32-bit version of the DLLs, I came to the conclusion that “Dependency Walker” was showing false positives, the two files seems to be hidden, at least when using the method of inspection that “Dependency Walker” uses. “Dependency Walker” might be useful to locate missing dependencies of other files, so I’ll keep it in my arsenal of tools, for this particular problem, it sent me looking in the wrong direction though.

Process Monitor
My next idea centered around the fact that a file was missing (DOH ). I knew of a utility that can monitor file-system access, I just couldn’t remember the name, and Google wasn’t immediately helpful, eventually I found a mention of “Process Monitor” (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx), and that seemed to be what I was looking for.

“Process Monitor” shows that there’s a lot going on, so I started experimenting with the filters, the easiest way to configure a filter is to right click on a message that looks irelevant, and then select “Exclude”, the right click is context sensitive to the column you’re clicking on.

I quickly focused on the events with the Result: “PATH NOT FOUND” and since I was looking for file-system access, I excluded all events where the Operation was begining with “Reg”, meaning a Registry access.

I suggest that you look for attempts to load a file by traversing the “PATH” environment.

Solution found: MSCVR71.DLL was missing
There was a lot of activity going on, but ended up focusing on a particular file: MSCVR71.DLL, and it was indeed missing

This screen-shot from Process Monitor highlights the problem when the MSVCR71.DLL file is missing:

After I copied the MSVCR71.DLL file to a location where it could be found by Visual Studio, the problem disappeared.

So why didn’t we see the error on other computers, with a seemingly similar configuration? It’s because the MSVCR71.DLL is distributed with several other software packages, and on the computer where Visual Studio 2008 worked, MSVCR71.DLL was installed with two packages: “Java Runtime Environment JRE6″ and “DropBox”, and the installers had added these to the PATH environment variable. Since these packages might be found on many developer-machines, this could explain why this problem is not showing up more often.

BTW: Now that I know the solution, it is, of course, very easy to find a post that gives the solution DOTNET Spider: .NET Error: the specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E). Number one hit when Googling for “The specified module could not be found” msvcr71.dll.

External links

• DOTNET Spider: .NET Error: the specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)
• Windows Sysinternals: Process Monitor v2.91
• MZ-Tools.com: HOWTO: Using the Process Monitor (ProcMon) tool to diagnose Visual Studio add-ins problems
• addictive tips: Fix Msvcp71.dll And Msvcr71.dll Missing Error In Windows 7

Hvad er en Amazon Kindle
Amazon Kindle er en kompakt enhed der minder om en computer, men er beregnet til at vise tekst, f.eks. digitale bøger – eBøger/eBooks, på en skærm der bruger en teknologi der hedder eInk. Denne teknologi adskiller sig fra traditionelle computerskærme, ved at den danner billedet med magnetisk blæk, og at skærmen virker med reflekteret lys, som papir, oplevelsen minder derfor meget om papir, og i øvrigt gør det at enheden bruger meget mindre strøm, da det kun er når billedet dannes på skærmen at der bruges strøm, den relativt langsomme opdateringshastighed skærmen arbejder med, gør at man ikke kan vise ting som video.

Kindle har en 6″ skærm med en opløsning på 800×600 punkter, dette giver en meget tydeligt skærm, som skal ses før man tror det. Teknikken gør dog at skærmen ikke kan vise farver, men det er noget der bliver arbejdet på det, og netop i dag afholdes der en konference i Frankrig, hvor der efter sigende er rigtig mange brugere af de nye eBogs læsere.

I denne artikel, som nok bliver en artikelserie, vil jeg fokusere mere på visionen bag, så der er ikke rigtig tale om en anmeldelse, og alle de steder der står Amazon Kindle, kunne der lige så godt stå noget andet, f.eks. “Tölva” – som en fremtidig enhed kunne hedde – “tilfældigvis” er det netop det jeg har kaldt min Kindle

Hvorfor!
Så hvorfor købte jeg en Kindle? Først og fremmest så var jeg så heldig at få en i hænderne til reboot11, og jeg ønskede mig straks en, så da Amazon annoncerede at Kindle ville bliver lanceret internationalt, trak jeg straks et nummer. Den officielle lanceringsdato var den 18-oktober, den blev sendt den 19-oktober og jeg havde den den 22-oktober, hvilket inkluderede en nat på DHLs lager – den moderne internationale handels evner til levere imponerer mig altid.

Visionen
Den virkelige grund til at jeg anskaffede en Kindle, var nu også at jeg længe har haft et erklæret ønske om at læse noget mere, og her synes jeg Kindle giver os et glimt af fremtiden. Bøger og aviser er utroligt “upraktiske”, jeg glemmer dem, synes de er uhandy og tunge, og dette gælder også paperbacks – jeg føler at det er en af grundende til at jeg ikke læser så meget som jeg selv ønsker. Nå ja, jeg er jo glad for dimser, og da Nikolaj Sonne fra “So Ein Ding” så min Kindle til Copenhagen Cocoa Development Camp et par dage efter jeg havde fået den, stoppede han helt op midt i sin “procedure”, jeg havde en Kindle før Mr. Ding himself.

Når jeg ser en Kindle tænker jeg i øvrigt iPod anno 2001. Kindle er ikke rigtig en dims (gadget – savner dansk ord), det er en platform. Som iTunes og iPod, udnytter Kindle en eksisterende infrastruktur, nemlig Amazons, og husk at iTunes Music Store ikke var i nærheden af at være klar da iPod blev introduceret, Amazon er klar, og har allerede 360,000 titler tilgængelige, og Amazons vision er rent faktisk at samtlige (skrevne) værker der er udgivet i menneskehedens historie, skal være tilgængelige på Kindle. Jeg synes dette er en smuk vision, som det undrer mig at man skal høre fra en privat, kommerciel virksomhed fra USA.

Unboxing
Det første jeg bemærkede, da jeg pakkede min Kindle ud, var at den viste nogle instruktioner på skærmen, jeg prøvede at fjerne den plastik jeg antog var placeret på skærmen, sådan plejer det jo at være, ude af stand til at finde plastikkens kanter, gik det op for mig at Kindle viste et billede på skærmen! eInk skærme er virkelig anderledes, sammenlignet med traditionelle computerskærme – når skærmbilledet først er dannet har det ikke brug for strøm, så selv om enheden var slukket viste den et billede.

Whispernet, trådløs adgang der bare virker!
Jeg var godt klar over at Kindle var en opkoblet dims (wireless device), så jeg var meget overrasket da jeg ikke var i stand til at finde en eneste reference til opsætning, det værende sig SIM-kort, WiFi eller lignende, i den korte dokumentation der følger med – underligt – hvordan kommer den så på nettet?

Så jeg var yderst overrasket da jeg, efter at have været en tur forbi MyKindle websitet på min computer for at ændre navnet og e-mail adressen for min Kindle, og efter en kort lur, opdagede at Kindle havde opdateret sig selv, og at der nu stod “Tölva” i stedet for “Kim Bach’s Kindle” på skærmen.

At se en opkoblet dims der bare virker så snart man har pakket den ud, burde ikke føles som en fantastisk ting, det er sådan teknologi burde virke, men vi er anderledes vant – knockout sejr til Kindle her!

24-November-2009 sendte Amazon i øvrigt en opdatering til version 2.3 af Kindle softwaren, og den virkede perfekt, og blev sendt automatisk – endnu et eksempel på hvordan teknologi burde virke – ingen iTunes og computer nødvendig – tak og lov!

Jeg er dybt imponeret over den aftale Amazon har fået med AT&T, der er nemlig tale om intet mindre end en gratis, global, mobil data-roaming aftale.

Passioneret fællesskab
Naturligvis skrev jeg om Kindle på twitter, og der gik ikke lang tid før jeg fik et svar. Det kom fordi jeg undrede mig over hvor jeg ville finde åbent og frit indhold – det andre kalder gratis – altså bøger der allerede findes på Internettet – f.eks. gennem Gutenberg projektet.

Disse bøger findes som regel i nogle standard formater der hedder .mobi, og dem kan Kindle læse direkte.

Svaret jeg fik på twitter, og jeg havde ikke formuleret et spørgsmål, bare luftet en undren, var at jeg skulle få fat i softwaren calibre. calibre og det er et must hvis du har en eBogs læser. Der er tale om et open source program som fungerer lidt som iTunes til eBogs læsere, det kan konvertere mellem mange formater, og sidst men ikke mindst, importere RSS feeds og overføre dem til Kindle og andre eBogs læsere.

Der er iøvrigt flere muligheder for at overføre data til Kindle, man kan enten gøre det via. Whispernet (e-mail), men det koster så $1/megabyte, så det er bedre at bruge det medfølgende USB kabel, som er standard mikro-USB.

PDF – ikke en eBogs standard
Mange er nysgerrige for at høre om Kindle understøtter PDF. Det korte svar er ja, det lange er noget mere kompliceret. De fleste PDFer er sat op til at blive udskrevet på A4 papir, og det passer ikke ret godt til Kindles 6″ skærm. Et af problemerne er at PDF er mange ting, skannede sider f.eks.

Dette skuffer sikkert mange, men problemet er altså PDF, ikke Kindle, man er simpelthen nød til at omformatere sin tekst så den understøtter variable “papir” størrelser, og der bliver nødvendigt at “teste” sine udgivelser på mange enheder.

En lidt sjov ting jeg har brugt PDF visning på Kindle til, er at jeg har lagt billetter på den, og brugte min Kindle som billet to gange under CPH:DOX – desværre havde de ikke stregkode skannere til nogle af arrangementerne, men jeg synes det ser sandsynligt ud at det ville fungere.

Amazon Kindle Store – impulskøbsalarm
Amazon Kindle Store virker som det skal, gå til forretningen, søg efter den titel du er intereseret i – her er det smart at Kindle har et tastatur, køb og titlen er klar på din startside i løbet af 30 sekunder – imponerende. Kindle bruger din Amazon konto, så hvis du har one-click slået til, så er din Kindle, effektivt, et kreditkort. Samtlige bøger kan i øvrigt hentes i en prøveudgave med adgang til udvalgt indhold, så man kan se om det er den rigtige titel, dette fungerer virkelig godt, men det er lidt for let bagefter at komme til at trykke køb, da det er standardknappen – derfor har jeg nu en kopi af “Pigen der legede med ilden” på engelsk. Det skal dog tilføjes at man straks får muligheden for at fortryde sit køb.

Der er også mulighed for at abonnere på en lang række aviser og tidsskrifter, jeg valgte straks International Herald Tribune og Asimovs Science Fiction. Det smarte, og farlige, ved aviser og tidsskrifter er at man får den 14-dage gratis.

Kindle som browser
Selv om Kindle umiddelbart er en “iPod for bøger”, altså har sin egen hukommelse hvor indkøbte bøger bliver downloadet til, så er Kindle også en computer der kører en speciel version af Linux. Der er også indbygget en browser, som tilgås gennem Kindles menupunkt “Experimental features” – her finder man “Basic Web”, og her får man adgang til en webbrowser, der, i den internationale version, ser ud til kun at give adgang til Wikipedia, men det er da heller ikke så tosset, gratis adgang til Wikipedia uanset hvor man er i verden.

Jeg har testet hvordan sider med f.eks. matematiske formler viser, og det ser virkelig godt ud.

Kindle er bestemt ikke verdens hurtigste browser, men det virker, og er gratis.

One Kindle Per Student (and Teacher)
En vision jeg får når jeg ser en dims som Kindle er at en dims som denne burde være tilgængelig for hvert eneste barn, eller rettere hver eneste “studerende” og lærere, og hvorfor nu det?

Kindle er enkel, virker robust, og kan allerede i dag, indeholde en kopi af alle de skolebøger man har brugt i hele sit aktive studieliv, det er lige fra Folkeskole til Universitetet.

Jeg synes at Kindle ser meget bekendt ud, og den minder mig om Alan Kays vision – Dynabook – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. “A Personal Computer For Children Of All Ages.”

Hvis samtlige børn (“studerende”) havde en platform som Kindle, ville det også skabe et nyt marked for skolebøger, hvilket burde være med til at forbedre kvaliteten – hvis man ellers tror på markedsøkonomi.

I dag bliver innovationen indenfor uddannelse bremset af ophavsretsloven, det er, f.eks., meget svært at hjælpe børn med ting som matematikopgaver over Internettet, fordi det ikke er muligt at dele skolebøgerne online, eller som downloads til en eBogs læser.

Lærer er i øvrigt i den brede definition, fordi vi alle vil blive, potientielle, lærere hvis denne teknologi blev gjort tilgængeligt for alle.

Rent faktisk er vi også alle studerende, nutidens samfund kræver af os at vi fortsætter med at uddanne os hele livet, er det ikke vidunderligt, og det er også sundt! Få din hjerne til at “pumpe jern”.

Hvor er verdens førende IT land?
HVORFOR kan jeg ikke få lov til at betale for min avis (og heller ikke BØLGEN ) – der er nemlig ikke en eneste dansk avis der synes det var umagen værd at levere aviser gennem Amazon? Tilgengæld kan jeg, via. RSS og den uundværlige calibre software, hente Information, og det koster helt gratis.

At ingen danske forlag har fundet det nødvendigt at kunne distribuere via. Amazon var mere forventet.

Rygtet om litteraturens død er stærkt overdrevet
Kindle kombinerer vision og forretning, Amazon har leveret en dims der er så let at bruge som jeg mener det er muligt med nutidens teknologi, og der er en klar forretningsmodel. Amazon har en vinder her.

Hvordan går det så med at læse noget mere. Jeg er f.eks. nu halvvejs gennem min første bog, “The Raw Shark Texts”, som blev indkøbt til mig af min veninde @anetq fra den fine Undr! blog – tusinde tak for “gaven”.

Igen virkede twitter på mystisk vis. Da jeg roste bogen på twitter, og skrev forfatterens navn, gik der ikke mange minutter før jeg fik et “thanks” fra @steveha11 – forfatteren af the “Raw Shark Texts” – en bog jeg nyder meget. Det er fantastisk at forfatterne nu kun er et tweet væk. Så vidt jeg kan forstå, så arbejder Steve Hall på en filmatisering af “The Raw Shark Texts” – noget der ikke bliver helt let.

Jeg tror virkelig at Amazons vision kan få os til at læse mere, hvilket også vil få os til at skrive mere, så rygtet om litteraturens død (Information 2059: Amatørerne har gjort en ende på litteraturhistorien) er stærkt overdrevet. Hvordan det kommer til at gå med “bogen” – jeg tror personligt at bogen, som vi kender den, forsvinder, men at vores enheder vil blive så gode at vi slet ikke kan se forskel.

Her er et tip til hvordan Danmark kan blive nummer 1 på rigtig mange af de lister Statsminister Lars Løkke Rasmussen snakker om – sats på åben og fri digital distribution af alle skolebøger, og vi kan få en renaisance for læsningen og viden.

Bogen er død, længe leve bogen!

Tidligere dækning:

• Kim Bach . Org: Amazon Kindled KISS
• Kim Bach . Org: Opsigelse af abonnement på WeekendAvisen Knr. xxxxxxxxxx

Eksterne henvisninger:

• Calibre: http://calibre-ebook.com/
• Kindlevixen: http://www.kindlevixen.com/
• Danske tegneseriekritikere : flere gode historier, mindre amatørisme: http://www.dansktegneserieraad.dk/2009/11/18/danske-tegneseriekritikere-flere-gode-historier-mindre-amatoerisme/
• Sammenligning af eBogs læsere – Google Spreadsheet der sammenligner de forskellige eBogs læsere http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AqviyYIMMRNRcnFfc2xybGNOcWRxOFEyZEp5SXI3R3c&hl=en

Her kan du hente gratis eBøger

• epubBooks.com http://www.epubbooks.com/ – et bredt udvalg af eBøger i ePub formatet. Skal konverteres, f.eks. med calibre, før de virker på Kindle, noget calibre gør automatisk
• Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page – her er der over 30.000 gratis eBøger
• Planet eBook.com: Free eBooks – en række klassikere i PDF format

Litteraturliste:

• Wikipedia contributors, “Dynabook,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dynabook&oldid=321410897 (accessed November 26, 2009).
• Wikipedia contributors, “Alan Kay,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alan_Kay&oldid=326401531 (accessed November 27, 2009).
• Wikipedia contributors, “Amazon Kindle,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopdia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amazon_Kindle&oldid=327967659 (accessed November 27, 2009).

Hej WeekendAvisen,

Jeg ønsker at opsige mit abonnement Knr. xxxxxxxxxx, prøvede at gøre det online, men det lykkedes mig ikke at oprette en profil.

Det er ikke fordi jeg er utilfreds med avisen, jeg glemmer bare altid at tage den med mig, og så fylder den for meget.

Venlig hilsen

Kim Bach

ps. Jeg tegner abonnement igen, når/hvis jeg kan få den leveret til min Kindle

Order Date: October 7, 2009
Order #: xxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxx
Recipient: Kim Bach

Items not yet shipped:
Delivery estimate: October 21, 2009 – October 23, 2009
Shipping estimate: October 19, 2009
1 of: Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6″ Display, U.S. & International Wireless, Latest Generation)
Sold by: Amazon Export Sales, Inc.
1 of: Patagonia Kindle Case (Fits 6″ Display, Latest Generation Kindle)
Sold by: Amazon Export Sales, Inc.

I’ve been waiting for the Kindle to be launched in Denmark, I’ve wanted one since I laid my hands on one at Reboot 11 in June. So now I know what I’m getting for my birthday.

Yes, the Kindle has it’s problems, and I fear that it will end in my hardware graveyard, alongside my Palm Vx (which I loved, and read books on) and my Compaq PDA (which I loved, and read books on), but the Kindle is a different creature, much like the iPod, it’s focusing on a specific application and has connected that with a clear business model, I see it as a connected object, a beautiful combination of form and function, something Microsoft has never understood, and that Apple has abandoned, except with the iPod Shuffle.

KISS!

For those oblivious to what a Kindle is, it’s an eBook reader developed by Amazon. Amazon’s vision is to make all books ever published available in digital form, and Jeff Bezos can repeat after Steve Jobs: “we have xx millions of accounts, AND they come with creditcards”. I believe that it will take talent for Amazon to fumble this.

Yes, today I’m going to talk HTTP instead of shit.

This post will be updated throughout the day

https://twitter.com/timeline/home#search?q=%23talkhttpday
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/

HTTP/1.1 200

The fun thing is that this little game started on Facebook, right now I’m using a combination of Facebook and Twitter to co-create the revolution of the mellemrumssingularitet .

ps. it’s unfortunate that I have to use twitter and facebook, because Jaiku can do it all…

http://www.jaiku.com/channel/talkhttpday

March the 24th 2009 is Ada Lovelace Day, the brainchild of Suw Charman-Anderson. Suw pledged to write a blog-post about a woman in tech that she admired, if at least 1,000 would make the same pledge, and since I’ve admired and been fascinated by Ada Lovelace since childhood, and especially after I read the wonderful book The Difference Engine, so I embraced the project, but at the same time I knew that it would be difficult for me to find just a woman in tech that I admire, that is because the list is long, and I’m happy to say that it’s actually getting longer.

In the end it turned out to be quite simple to name one single woman in “tech” that I admire, a woman that I’ve admired for 2,5 years since I met her at the wonderful BlogForum 2 – an initiative that we really need to revive – and almost did at Copenhagen Twitterfestival.

Since 2006 the woman I have in mind has become quite the celebrity, due to her uncompromising and relentless pursuit of the truth in the murky waters of the Danish tech-business, and this year she’s the natural selection, she’s the woman behind the mainstream breakthrough of the blog-media in Denmark, she is – of course – Bizzen/Toften: the journalist and blogger par excellence Dorte Toft.

Love/hate relationship with “tech”
I have a love/hate relationship with my field, the field known as “tech”. Tech is definitely one of the places where change is happening today, and I feel blessed that I’m involved in bringing this change.

But “Tech” is a field that is riddled by paradox. On one hand it’s crawling with greedy snake-oil salesmen, on the other it’s home to the most revolutionary, idealistic and altruistic people ever as well as some of the most wonderful concepts that humankind has ever come up with.

The problem with the snake-oil salesmen, is that, until now, they’ve pretty much got away with cheating their customers, the authorities, the business community and worst, their employees, and a lot of the snake-oil has been sold under the heading that Denmark is number one in tech.

It’s been a constant embarrassment to me, and I actually left the business four years ago, and it took me two years of “repenting” before I felt that could return to “tech”, and today I’m luckily to be employed by a tech-company that doesn’t carry any snake-oil.

Emperor’s new clothes
I’m just going to, briefly, mention the fact that Dorte Toft was the woman that noticed that Stein Bagger and IT Factory didn’t wear any clothes, thus exposing one of the biggest scams the Danish tech-sector has seen to date, but thank you Dorte for exposing these people, so that we can be protected against these predators and making it possible to feel proud about working in “tech” again.

Feminism isn’t “low-status”
What I’d rather celebrate today is that Dorte Toft is a self-proclaimed feminist, even though it’s – in her own words – a field that is “low-status”, and her labour of love “Nærmest Lykkelig I Nørdland” (“Almost happy in Geekland” – something got lost in translation sorry about that), where Dorte Toft has been writing and writing and writing about the benefits young women would have if the choose to join the so-called “though” fields, technology and science, a very noble cause.

I noticed that Dorte Toft also wrote a blog-post in observation of Ada Lovelace Day today. In this blog-post Dorte is pledging to return to “Nærmest Lykkelig I Nørdland”, I’m so, so happy to hear that, Dorte Toft has been toiling away, trying to ease young women into the fields of tech and science, and her work deserves so much more attention than the perpetual Stein Bagger saga.

To all the wonderful women that I’ve worked with, am working with and will work with in the future, thank you so, so much for putting up with us, we need you, and remember how far you’ve come.

When I mentioned to my father how much I loved having female managers, he simply said that he could never ever imagine have a female manager, I was appalled.

Women, “tech” is too important to be left to men
Women please don’t stop now, so that next time I’m in a position where I’m hiring tech-staff, I hope that I’ll receive applications from women. Looking at the number of students at the IT University in Copenhagen I’m quite optimistic that that would be the case.

DORTE TOFT: Please go work on “Nærmest Lykkelig I Nørdland”, I’m waiting for it, unlike the book about “Banditterne i habitterne” (“The Bandits In Suits”) – and remember feminism isn’t “low-status”!

YOUNG WOMEN: We really, really need you in the tech-sector. Tech is far too important to leave to us men, and listen to, and get inspired by Dorte Toft!

Celebrating the Enchantress of Numbers
I’ll close this post with these wonderful quotes.

We may see aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves
Lady Ada Lovelace

Forget this world and all its troubles and if possible its multitudinous Charlatans – everything in short but the Enchantress of Numbers
Charles Babagge, inventor of the Analytical and Difference engines

Notes
If you want to learn more about the fascinating life of Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, by many considered the inventor of programming languages, I’d strongly recommend “The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron’s Daughter“, “Zeroes and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture” and “The Difference Engine“.

I’m also building a “shrine” to Ada Lovelace on Algorim.dk, a result of “mellemrumssingulariteten” which was inspired by a young woman I know, this woman is, BTW., working in the purest field of them all