For a while, I wanted to give the service of FeedBurner a try. This tool is converting an Atom feed to a RSS feed “on-the -fly”. Blogger is still only generating Atom feeds…

FeedBurner is free and still in a beta-mode. But the service is quite convincing: great interface, lot of options, very stable, good availibility, and so on. On the other side, I don’t think that publishing Atom feeds is seeing actually as a limitation. A bunch of famous newsreaders are supporting Atom feeds. And one big annoying thing in using FeedBurner is that you shift a part of your traffic on another platform. It is very difficult (although FeedBurner contains a statistics module) to track correctly your overall blog traffic and to analyse it.

That’s the reason why I de-activated the RSS feed. Sorry for the inconvenience, if any!

I read this post on the Google blog, it’s about the Google store.

I decided to have a look and I was quite impressed by the new design and buying process of the Google store. All worked fine and I bought some “very important things” ;-) The only limitation is the quite high shipping price…

[Via vowe]

The answer of anakata is …umh… an interesting kind of prose. anakata is “polite as usual” and completely politically incorrect. I must say I like this answer. Advice: read the full text of the answer :-)

Dreamworks’ lawyers:

As you may be aware, Internet Service Providers can be held liable if they do not respond to claims of infringement pursuant to the requirements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In accordance with the DMCA, we request your assistance …

Response:

As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe. Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here. For your information, no Swedish law is being violated.

I was in Frankfurt (Germany) today for a very interesting business meeting about Offshoring and Nearshoring (Software development). I will publish an article in the coming days. In the meantime, some pictures of some towers in Frankfurt.

Tomorrow will be the first day for our little boy in the kindergarten. I’m completely stressed…I know I don’t have to, billion of children have already managed that, including myself. But, you know, he’s our little boy ;-)

[Via vowe]

1. You work for the client, not the consulting firm. No matter who cuts the payroll check, the client is the one paying for your services. Do the right thing for the client, not the consulting firm (or anyone else).
2. Your network of consultants is your most important asset.
3. Consultants should keep a blacklist of firms and other consultants that should be avoided, and why. Share this list with your network of consultants but not to the general public.
4. Do not make negative comments about another consultant within ear shot of an employee of a client, and especially around the sales and marketing people of a consulting firm. Negative comments are fine between consultants, but, keep it “in the family”. But, never break rule # 1. When dealing with non-consultants, do like your mom always told you, “if you don ‘t have anything nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all”.
5. When your consulting firm takes you out to lunch, remember, you are really the one buying lunch. It is coming out of the consulting firm’s cut out of your rate, so just pretend you are picking up the check. Would you really want to pay to have lunch with this person? The same thing holds true for all events and gifts you may get from the consulting firm.
6. Avoid giving consulting firms information on possible leads without first getting everything in writing (especially your commission). And even then, the contract usually isn’t worth the paper it is written on. Don’t expect to get any money for info on leads, so be careful who you give them out to.
7. When referring another consultant to a consulting firm, expect a finder’s fee. $2 per hour is the minimum that they should offer. Flat fees typically benefit the consulting firm not you, so try to avoid them. Remember, your finder’s fee is coming out of the consultant’s pocket. So if the consultant is part of your network, you should waive the fee. Your network keeps you employed.
8. If you didn’t negotiate your rate starting at the consulting firms billing rate to the client don ‘t try to find out what it is, unless you are prepared for the consequences. That knowledge will usually just make you disgruntled.
9. Never tell the client what the consulting firm is paying you. If they need to know, it is up to the firm to disclose that info (see rules #1 and #8).
10. Avoid professional days. You don’t bill for hours you don’t work, so you shouldn’t work for hours that you don ‘t bill. A good project plan, with a budget to match it, is a must. Unless of course you created the project plan, then you should live with the mess that you created.

I was very positively surprised by the last music DVD I bought, i.e. a live from INXS, the Australian band, shot in July 1991 (!) in the London’s Wembley Stadium. About 72’000 fans were present and were actively participating to this band’s landmark – in the documentary, you feel that this concert was a turning point for the band and a kind of peak in their career. I rarely saw so many people (about two third!) dancing, shouting and applauding during the whole concert. Impressive!

This live version of the tracks is really more “rough” than the studio ones. Some are also very funky. All in all, I was quite impressed by the musicians, and specially by the rhythmical part (drummer, bass player).

The DVD is remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1, with a good quality and volume distribution between the channels, which is definitely not the case with all the remastering. It also contains some very interesting documentaries about the concert, its preparation and the evolution of the pressure, stress and mood of the band.

[via Secunia]

Description:

A vulnerability has been reported in Winamp, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user’s system.

Solution:

Update to version 5.05.

Our little boy (2 1/2 years) discovered this week-end two simple joys:

[Via the Financial Times]

Interesting :-) About 200’000 people (source: protesters, United for Peace and Justice coalition) are demonstrating in the 7th Avenue in NY against the Bush’s policies. The Republican National Convention opens on Monday, also in NY. It seems that Mr Bush wants to use the symbol of NY to establish his “leadership”. Some of the New-Yorkers don’t really agree with this usage. One of them said: “I’m furious that they have the nerve to come here, and use the emotion and pain of 9/11 for politics.”