In Theres no such thing as the one-hour meeting, Jason Fried points out that a meeting of one hour with 5 people is a five hour meeting. I've had my share of frustrating time-wasting meetings, but there also are colleagues I'll meet with gladly because I know that we'll be productive. In the MLP magazine FORUM, I found some basic hints how to make meetings successful. I wish everyone inviting me to meetings would have read them. Preparation: Make clear the goal of the meeting. Define date and participants. Invite timely in writing. Prepare the room and visualization tools (e.g., flipchart). Goal: Express goal and agenda clearly. Prioritize agenda items. Time frame: Start punctual presenting the agenda. If the participants don't know each other, include an introduction round. Participants: Define who has to participate necessarily and for whom a copy of the minutes suffices. Inform the participants in writing. Moderation: The meeting leader takes on the moderation: he/she guides verbal contributions, attends to the time and structures the meeting. Visualization: Use a flipchart to visualize the most important issues. That way, the course of the meeting can be followed. Pauses: Long meetings need periodic pauses (at the latest after 90 or 120 minutes). Disturbances: Switch off mobile phones. The meeting leader has to firmly moderate distinguishing behaviour. Trouble makers should be addressed directly without marginalizing them. Summary: The meeting leader should summarize the results regularly, thus preventing misunderstandings. Minutes: As soon as possible, participants should get copies of the meeting minutes including an exact action plan: Who is supposed to do what until when?

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The Germans obviously are good in organizing and participating in the football Worldcup. But they suck in designing for it. At least, that's the opinion of Erik Spiekermann, one of Germany's most respected designers. In an interview with Deutsche Welle,2144,2049898,00.html, he stated that both the mascot and the logo are a poor result typical for "too many cooks in the kitchen". It's a shame because when people come in from the outside world they think this is how German designers are and for me, it's personally embarrassing. I want to go away and hide and pretend I'm a brain surgeon or something.

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Every second website wants to know who you are. And we all know why. So what can you do to protect your identity from spreading around the web and your mailbox from getting flooded with even more spam? Easy: invent fake data. Even easier: the Fake Name Generator does it for you! This web service not only invents a new name for you, it also provides you with residential data (US-based) with plausible zip code and phone number, and it creates a public mailinator mailbox where you can receive confirmation emails. I just feel like being someone else today...

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(If you haven't noticed yet, I'm cleaning up my "blog this" todo list.) After purchasing the iPod nano, I had to get a few other accessories: the Ipodome protective overlays, the Sennheiser OMX 70, and the XtremeMac SportWrap. All are just great, so I thought of letting you know. If the iPod Nano has one weakness, then it's that it's so prone to scratches. It's almost like even watching the thing gets it scratched! I researched all the options for protection and decided to get a Ipodome&products_id=495 foil. After all, what's the use of buying an Apple product and then hiding it in some silicone or leather case? ;-) The Ipodome foil wraps all around the Nano, so not only the display, but every surface (except the small ones with the hold switch and the connectors) is protected. I actually managed to apply the overlay correctly, so it's almost invisible and I can now show off my player in all its shine without worrying about the latter getting lost. The original Apple earbuds may help in signalling Hey, I can afford an Apple player!", but if you care about wearing comfort and sound, there are better alternatives. Because I wanted to use the iPod while running, I chose the "Sennheiser OMX 70 sport headphones recommended by iLounge Since you wear them over your ears instead of inside your ears, they feel very comfortable even after having them on for hours. The cable is long enough to put the iPod wherever you want without risking of yanking it out by moving your head or torso. And the sound is just as you can expect from a Sennheiser product. Since pants pockets are not the best place to put the iPod while running, I also bought the XtremeMac SportWrap It comes with two straps of different length, so you can strap your player either onto your biceps or onto your wrist. Since it's made of neoprene, skin irritation and sweat shouldn't be a problem. Having written this, I realize that being part of the big iPod community really has its price, granted, but on the other hand also the big advantage of having a huge supply of experiences and recommendations helping you spend your money well. I hope my article adds to that.

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Best Practical, the company behind the widely used trouble ticket system "Request Tracker", "RT" for short, added another productivity enhancer to their portfolio: Chia-liang Kao, developer of SVK, joined Best Practical as a partner. SVK is a versioning system based on Subversion that allows distributed repositories. For example, you can pull a copy of the main repository onto your laptop, use that local repository while you're moving all over the world, and wherever you have internet access, you can synchronize your local repository with the main one. Since SVK, like RT, is written in Perl, Best Practical enforces with that move its position as a small but successful business specialising in Perl-based productivity tools.

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It really can get a vicious circle not having enough staff for the challenges rising. You get buried with work, planned and unplanned. So you don't have the time reading applications. So you don't invite applicants. So your team doesn't grow. So you'll keep drowning. I'm glad that this week, I could break that circle. I got some really interesting applications, and I also met some people that might fit the job. At WEB.DE IT, we're looking for sysadmins&page=jobs&action=displayJobs&cat=1#job297 that have "Linux" written all over them. We're running hundreds of Linux servers in a high availability environment, so there's much to do and much to learn, too. If you're inclined to and feel fit to do system administration in a real enterprise setting or if you know someone who does, then I'd be happy to get your application! (Contact provided in the job ad linked above.)

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Years ago, I made the effort of regularly blogging news about the allegations brought forward by SCO of Linux containing thousands of lines of stolen code. But after some time, I got tired of all those continuously repeated but at any time unsupported claims and their all the more plausible refutation by the open source community. It got just plain boring and ridiculous, and I stopped wasting my time writing about it. Now, judge Brooke Wells issued an order confirming IBM's reproach about the lack of specificity in SCO's claims. GrokLaw has the full text It contains a quite evident analogy for SCO's way of reasoning: Certainly if an individual was stopped and accused of shoplifting after walking out of Neiman Marcus they would expect to be eventually told what they allegedly stole. It would be absurd for an officer to tell the accused that "you know what you stole Im not telling." Or, to simply hand the accused individual a catalog of Neiman Marcus entire inventory and say "its in there somewhere, you figure it out." As an open source aficionado, I gleefully enjoy to see SCO's butt kicked in court, but I cringe thinking about the amounts of money and time this useless court actions are burning.

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The Skype client for Linux is unfortunately way behind its Windows counterpart. So far, only chat and phone functions are available for the free operating system; if you want video conferencing or "Skypecasts", the Windows client is your only choice. But it's even worse: until this week, Skype for Linux didn't even support the ALSA sound system that has been the common way of dealing with sound hardware on Linux for years. Finally, Skype now released a beta version of Skype 1.3 for Linux with ALSA support. Additional to this desperately awaited feature, the Changelog contains a long list of bug fixes and functions letting Skype for Linux catch up at least a bit to its Windows sibling.

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Maybe I should rethink my plans of moving to Ireland. At least Dublin is among the 20 most expensive cities in the world to live in. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Dublin holds place no. 18, following Paris and Singapore. Curiously, not one German city is among the top 50!?

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In no. 8 of Bernie Goldbach's 10 Questions on Sunday, he states that according to the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation almost half of the Germans visiting Ireland during their vacations are dissatisfied. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a detailed substantiation why Germans are so dissatisfied with Ireland as a holiday country. I'd be very interested in details, because I don't understand that dissatisfaction at all. I like both the rural and city Ireland -- I even think about moving there. The people are much more relaxed than here, the cities are bursting of culture and the landscapes are marvellous. Granted, the prices aren't low, but you can find both accomodation and food to decent prices if you care to shop a little. BTW, being both enthusiastic about Ireland and interested in education technology is the reason why I subscribed to Bernie's blog.

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