Although it's still in beta, the Web 2.0 bullshit generator works quite well already. All I have to do now before founding my next company is deciding whether it'll "harness citizen-media wikis" or "reinvent long-tail life-hacks". It will certainly "incentivize semantic networking", of course. Next steps: Generate the company name and make a nice logo Et voilà, another business to sell to Yahoo!

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We're not talking dentistry here; FLOSS is all about Free Libre Open Source Software." "FLOSS Weekly is a podcast hosted by Leo Laporte and Chris di Bona, where they interview well-known people from the Free Software scene. Today, I sat in St. Stephen's Green[1], listening to the latest episode of FLOSS Weekly with Rasmus Lerdorf of PHP fame as a guest. They talk about the genesis of PHP (back then named PHP/FI), about security flaws and their impact on PHP's reputation, and about Rasmus' favourite PHP applications, which include Serendipity, the software used for this blog. Another interesting episode I liked was (of course) FLOSS Weekly episode #9 with Perl guru Randall Schwartz. He talks about the early days of Perl, Web Application Frameworks like Catalyst, his famous conference parties and about big websites made with Perl, including IMDB, Amazon and Ticketmaster. Another hot topic is the upcoming Perl version 6. Leo and Chris are great hosts with a solid background in Open Source Software and their interviews are as interesting as entertaining. Get FLOSS Weekly into your podcatcher! fn1. ...forgetting the time and getting late for my date with Carolin. I'm sorry, darling!

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Cedric is a funny and beautifully animated short film made by students at german University of Applied Sciences Lippe-Höxter. The plot: Der Tod als globaler Dienstleister? Undenkbar! Das dachte bisher auch der Tod. Doch dann kam sein Neffe Cedric auf die wahnwitzige Idee, während der Abwesenheit seines Oheims das Unternehmen AFTER LIFE zu gründen. Diese Firma übernimmt mit modernster Technik das Handwerk des Todes und vermarktet es weltweit. Hilarity ensues. You have to watch it! And then get back to work, please. (via Indiskretion Ehrensache)

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Recently, I posted about my search for Linux system administrators!.html, and it's continuing! The first Linux admin position is filled, but there still are free ones! Additionally -- and this may be shocking to those who know me better[1] -- I'm looking for Windows admins that know their ways about IIS and .NET. All positions are full time, located at 1&1 headquarters in Karlsruhe, with high expectations and responsibility, but with a fun and learning factor that I would rate at least as high. So keep the CVs coming and tell your friends! BTW: I can only second Matt Asays article about hiring decisions Hiring unproven talents that are shapeable over performers that may be hard to bear is a strategy that worked out well for me every time. fn1. It surely was shocking to me.

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"Who the hell made that update and forgot to change the configuration?" "Notme." Notme is a coworker that has been here from the start, years before I came aboard. Curiously, I get his email. A lot of email. That's why I created a mail folder especially for Notme. Seriously. In a company like ours, email is probably the most essential communication medium. It goes as far as that when someone has visitors waiting but can't be reached on the phone, a tracing email goes out to all employees. And that's hundreds of employees. There actually are a lot of such emails every day that catch our attention and waste our precious time. But on the other hand, we're supposed to respond quickly to every important email... I don't have many email filters (only a few for mailing lists), but there's one that really helps me focusing on important emails, and that's the Notme filter: every email that is not directly addressed to me (such as mailing lists or cc's) is moved to the "Notme" folder. When I look at my inbox, all I see is email that is especially meant for me which I process the Getting Things Done way: those actions that require two minutes or less are done immediately, and all other emails are moved to appropriate action folders. Then I start over with an empty inbox. Notme's mail, though, is only dealt with when I have the time to read FYI's and mass mailings.

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I'll be seeing Carolin from Friday to Tuesday next week. As I always say, "Timing is everything": Of course, I'm also looking forward to visiting the Queen Of Tarts and to having some pints of freshly drawn Guinness!

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When I was a teen, I had posters of her on my walls as well as all of her LPs in my collection: Kim Wilde, the blonde singer from Britain I was a fan of for her looks and her Synclavier-backed songs[1]. During the early nineties, her success faded and she began focusing on her private life. In 2003, she had a comeback with a duet she did with german singer Nena and her song "Anywhere, anyplace, anytime". And now, sitting in the McDonald's restaurant in Karlsruhe, I hear a new remix of the Kim Wilde hit "Keep me hanging on". I think it's being released as a promo song for the casting show "Popstars". She may be far from being a Madonna, but I'm happy that she's still in the music business, reminding me of times when "Love blonde" or "The Second Time" were the soundtrack of my life[2]. fn1. Samantha Fox was another british export I liked, but for two other reasons. fn2. Update: I listened to "The Second Time" song this morning. "I've every reason to believe there's still a man in you -- you done it once so come on go again"? It seems it actually took me 20 years to get what she's singing about...

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I'm still trying out my Nokia E61 and its ability to fully replace my trusted Time/System management book. One thing that I found a bit cumbersome is the menu navigation with the joystick that I have to do when I want to use applications that are not on the active standby" screen. On the "E-Series blog, I found a nifty hint today solving that problem pretty much: every position on the main menu has its correspondig number key. So, by strategically positioning the menu entries and using the number keys, you can quickly choose the folder or application you need without being reminded of Decathlon[1]. fn1. Is there a Competition Pro for the E61? ;-)

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Perlcast is a podcast that is obviously interesting mainly to Perl developers. But the newest episode, Practices of an Agile Developer, doesn't actually focus on Perl. It's an interview with Andy Hunt of the The Pragmatic Programmers I recommend it to all developers regardless of the language they're using, because Andy has some interesting insight into software development in general.

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As I don't get weary to point out, there are Skype handsets coming like the Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype They may be handy, but they're also kind of boring. <img width='200' height='140' style=float: left; border: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;" src="/uploads/verballs.jpg" alt="" />Not so the "Verballs! These little Skype monsters not only act as a speaker and wave their hands when you get a call, they also lip-sync to your callers! That's so cute. And funny. And utterly useless.

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