Willy Dobbe - Social Software

Fresh Likes.. My famous 15 minutes

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 04:44:30 +0000

There must have been a glitch in the matrix. Yesterday I did a tweet that got autosend to Facebook. Somehow with a couple of hours, I got 12.000 likes and 130.000 comments on it. The picture up was one I took when the likes-storm just begun. The post it self is now WSOD for me but maybe it will work in die time, http://www.facebook.com/bertboerland/posts/2231777543
. Weird to see.

But then, think about a CMS that can handle 130k comments on on single post. And then that there are zillions of post per second. Wordpress anyone? ;-)

Drupal conference for CxO's in the EU

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:46:31 +0000

Two years ago the Drupal Association organised a meeting for the local Drupal "leaders" in the EU during the DrupalCon Copenhagen. This meal paid by the DA might have been one of the best investments they made. A lot of events were organised as a direct result of this meeting including the DrupalDevDays and the CxO days as well as the Frontend United conference. I am co organising this Frontend United event and will post more soon, just be sure to be in Amsterdam, The Netherlands during the end of march:-) And follow @frontendunited.

On a related note, there will be a Drupal process meet-up in Amsterdam as well. After last years extremely successful CxO days there is now the process. Be sure to sign-up for this event sponsored by and held at the venue of Microsoft and meet your peers.

On 27, 28 and 29 January we are organizing the next Drupal executives meetup (CXO) in Amsterdam. This meetup aims to facilitate peer-to-peer learning about business processes between leadership of Drupal shops. What are the best practices? What kind of processes do you need? How do you grow from a entrepreneur centered culture to a process driven culture?

Robustness Principle voor Twitter, de paradox van de contekst

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:43:49 +0000

Femke Halsema is een redelijk goed twitteraar. Dus toen ze ok bezoek was in den vreemden schreef ze over de misstanden die daar waren in

Vervolgens twitetrde ze een deel twee en zie de reakties hierop (omgekeerd lezen)

Voor lezer is de les:
lees de context

Voor schrijver is de les,
wees bewust van het feit dat de lezer de contekst niet ziet.

Klinkt raar maar analoog aan
"Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.", het Robustness Principle van mijn held Postel

Bert Boerland moet worden nagekeken volgens facebook

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:44:11 +0000

Bert Boerland moet worden nagekeken. Volgens Facebook.

Sommige vertalingen....

111111 on twitter

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:43:47 +0000

This video shows in waves how twitter users mentioned 11.11.11 (no Americans, it is not 11.11.11 but 11.11.11 :-)

A palindrome waving over twitter.

If you cant access Google Plus using Chrome

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:20:50 +0000

((c) Jeroen Bennink

If you can not access Google Plus, have multiple Google account (eg: hosted work,, hosted private etc) and are using the browser Chrome: you might experience an eror like:

This webpage is not available

https://www.google.com/accounts/Login?hl=it&continue=http://www.goo... etc

Error 101 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET)

If this is the case, try this trick. Open a new tab and type

about:flags

This is a configuration screen for developer flags. Go to the last option on the page (should read something like "multiple accounts") and enable this. Now restart the browser and you should be able to connect to Plus with the other account you wanted to use.

What happens when you enable this "flag" is that eacht tab has its own Google Universe. Should be solved now. Happy plussing.

Timeline of my Linkedin data

Thu, 26 May 2011 20:02:50 +0000

I love data visualisation, check my delicious account.

And I am a big Linkedin user, check my LI account

And I love what LinkedIn is doing recently with their LI labs. Checkout for example this timeline of my linkedin data:

For some background, read the LI blog and make your own at http://timeline.linkedinlabs.com/

Hoe ik Twitter uitvond....

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:08:02 +0000

Hoe ik twitter uitvond. Linkbait titel maar wil verhaal er achter vertellen.

Elk congres waar ik kom, elke klant die ik zie, hoor ik wel een verhaal over hoe iemand een geweldige bestaande dienst 10 jaar eerder heeft uitgevonden. Dus over hoe iemand 8 jaar geleden foursquare verzon "maar te vroeg was". Of over hoe iemand twitter eigenlijk gemaakt had, maar de markt nog niet rijp is. Ook ik, ik heb het internet nog niet uitgevonden, maar wel twitter.

In 2001 ging ik naar een klant die actief was op het gebied van "portal" en mobiel integratie en legde hem voor hoe korte status meldingen verstuurd zouden kunnen worden via mobiel en getoond op "de portal". In 2002 besloot ik -toen klant niet op in ging- het te bloggen, zie deze posting:

Creeren een blog space voor end users of een connectie naar een blog space en maak het mogelijk dat al die tieners met hun mobiel via sms hun blog live in de klas kunnen updaten (ik heb duits. en de leraar stinkt uit zijn mond. nou, doei!).

Het voorbeeld ("de leraar stinkt uit zijn mond") maakt dat iedereen er wel de kwaliteit van Tweets in dit voorbeeld kan zien :-) In 2003 schreef ik er nogmaals over. In 2003 bestond twitter nog niet, maar werd er al wel met "microblogging" geexperimenteerd.

Goede ideeen worden op heel veel plekken ter gelijke tijd uitgevonden. Sterker nog, het is mijn stelling dat als je iets uitvindt wat niet bestaat in een vorm, dat je je zorgen moet maken. Maar het gaat niet om het bedenken van iets nieuws, dat is eenvoudig. Ik en vele anderen worden in hun hoofd gehinderd door het hebben van duizenden ideee-en. Maar de hinder is dat we er niets mee doen, omdat het volgende idee er aan komt. Het gaat er om dat je het ook daadwerkelijk bouwt en daadwerkelijk tot succes kan maken. De rest is borrel praat.

En meer dan dat, het gaat er om dat je iets kan bouwen wat op meer en andere manieren gebruikt kan worden. In een goed boek kan je meer of iets anders lezen dan de auteur voor ogen had. In een slcht boek volg je de gedachtes van de auteur.

In een goede tool kan je op andere manieren gebruik maken van de functionaliteit, anders dan dat de bouwer voor ogen had. In een slecht tool, doe je wat anderen doen. Juist het aanpassen van de bouwer van de tool naar de nieuwe mogelijkheden, is de kracht van de tool en de bouwer. Twitter heeft vele vormen gekend voordat ze is geworden wat ze nu is, omdat mensen het anders gebruikte dan de bouwers hadden bedacht. Hashtags, RT's maar ook hoe mobiel / SMS en bijvoorbeeld chat integratie werkte, was vroeger heel anders op twitter.

Mijn punt is niet dat ik twitter uitvond. Iedereen weet dat Al Gore twitter heeft uitgevonden. Maar wel:

Focus is de sleutel, leveren is goud. Het gaat om uitvoering: een goede uitvoering van een slecht idee kan nog steeds succesvol zijn. Geen uitvoering van een goed idee niet. Goede ideeen zullen altijd op verschillende plaatsen door vele mensen worden verzonnen. Het verschil tussen een goed idee en een goede implementatie is uitvoering en het claimen van een succesvolle uitvoering waar men (ja, ook ik) is blijven steken in een goed idee, is prietpraat
Succes heeft vele vaders, mislukking is een wees. Zelden horen je mensen zeggen dat ze orkut, myspace, plurk, buzz of een andere dienst met potentieel die het niet heeft gehaald hebben uitgevonden. Toch hebben ze het tijdens de opstart fase van plurk, myspace, orkut, buzz wel degelijk gezegd, maar de prietpraat verstomde.

Ik? Ik ga denk ik het internet maar eens uitvinden. To snel op een congres.

What is the buzz Google?

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:08:13 +0000

APOSTLES

What's the buzz?
Tell me what's a-happening. (Repeat 8 times)

JESUS

Why should you want to know?
Don't you mind about the future?
Don't you try to think ahead?
Save tomorrow for tomorrow;
Think about today instead.

Google cant make waves anymore like they used to when people were bidding for free gmail accounts. To buzz has not been orkut for a long time.

Will it be a "silo integration", a flop like wave, a Spanish orkut or indeed a hit like gmail? Time will tell.

On Push Technology , or why Push companies will never get it

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:28:52 +0000

In 97 wired had an article on how push will make a browser obsolete. On why everybody should want to watch, listen, breathe, eat what other pushed at you. It was on of the last isues (if not the last) I bought.

Push never made it. Push is "one point ooooh". Push is radio. Push is TV. Push is not the internet. The Wired article was wrong:

As everything gets wired, media of all kinds are moving to the decentralized matrix known as the Net. While the traditional forms - broadcast, print - show few signs of vanishing, the Net is being invaded by new media species. The Web is one. Yet with each additional node, each new T1 line, the media the Internet can support become richer, more complex, more nuanced. The Net has begun offering things you simply can't browse.

Very wrong. The old media are dieing. The web is not one, but a diversity of nodes, people and information. And even if you do not browse the net anymore (plexapp is a very cool way to see that non browsable traffic is still browsable and without being pushed) the net never became a push medium.

People want to be in control. And control is more then flipping a page, using a "remote control" or changing a radio channel. People want hulu, plex, a real browser, be interactive on facebook, twitter or any other social medium. And this can not be pushed away.

So my law is:
Push companies will never get it.

Google FriendConnect module for Drupal

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:03:13 +0000

On googlesocialweb.blogspot you can read about a nice module that Google made for Drupal, Friendconnect.

Friendconnect is

"... an Open Social application offered by Google that started in May 2008. Google Friend Connect main focus is to simplify the connection between social and non-social websites and standardize the handling and presentation of social applications and content. It uses a blend of open standards, such as OpenID for signin, oAuth to control data, and Open Social for applications."

(Wiki)

More information about FriendConnect can be found on Google's site and a live demo can be found at globant.

Though this is a nice open standard and a nice module, there are two downers IMHO that show that Google doesn't really get the Drupal community or has another agenda:

They house the code on their own servers, with own issue queue at code.google.com. Sure they are free to do so but the strength of Drupal is that all modules are on one place, not all around the web.
They have licensed this code under the Apache license. All Drupal code and thereby all Drupal modules -and to some extend themes- are released under the GPLv2 or higher. Read this FAQ about the license on d.o for some background. The Apache License 2.0 is compatible with the GPL v3 (not 2!) and since you can accept version 3 of the GPL when downloading Drupal, legally they are in teh clear but it would have been best if they released this under GPLv2 IMHO

Still, nice work Google!

update
Heine Deelstra (hint: lead Drupal security team) warns NOT to use this module on production site at his blog. Something about the quality of code, tweetsource. See Google, if you would have used GPL and drupal.org we could have solved this issue via the proper channels. Now we have to use the public issue tracker of google.code.

Layar, Drupal and Geo tagging

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:25:56 +0000

Some time ago I saw Layar, a Dutch product from SPRX Mobile; a mobile uugmented reality browser. It basically is an application for a phone with a GPS, camera and compass where you can add a layer of information on top of your real world view; the camera. Right now it is out for the Android platform and soon it will hit the iPhones' appstore (3GS). By combing digital information on top of your real world view you can see geotagged information, for example prices of houses in front of you, ATM's or friends at a festival as is demo-ed in this youtube movie.

The possibilities of combining geo tagged information in combination with your real world view might not be new, but this application sure makes the most of the combination by using the GPS, compass and camera.

So I started wondering, apart from the application on the phone, this could potentially be rather easy in Drupal. You could expose your database / content via a webservice to the phone that displays them. All you need is Drupal core and CCK to add a longitude and latitude information in a content type and maybe use the services module. It is rather easy to do and I would love to work on something like this for a customer.

Oooh. And you need lots of information. Lots of local information since content seems to be king for this kind of functionality. But it sure would be nice for a DrupalCon to find your friends, get information about what is the current and next track in a room by pointing at it or get more information about the sponsors booth. The possibilities are endless, also outside DrupalCon's. This since DrupalCons should probably be held outside due to the lack of GPS reach inside :-)

But then again, if all rooms and people were tagged with the mobile codes the problem would be solved :-) And even the first gen iPhone can read them. Something to keep in mind for the next con... But first: vive la France!

Pat Patterson wrote an OpenSSO module for Drupal

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 08:10:41 +0000

Dear friend Pat Patterson (twitter) pinged me the other day to let me know he actually wrote a module for Drupal. If you do not know Pat, he is the leading authority when it comes to all things "Identity Management"; process, vision and actual code in Sun's OpenSSO project (Sun's open version of the previous proprietary Sun Access Manager. And now Pat released OpenSSO module for Drupal.

Identity management is complex, it is more then 1 slide per second or a technical solution. The biggest problem in ID management is trust, procedures as well as installed base. Migrating a corporation with thousands of employees that is fully AD based (like most enterprises are) towards something like OpenID is impossible. And OpenID by itself only solves parts of the AAA problem. Where OpenSSo might for a corporation migrating towards a more open way of dealing with identities ("persons") a far more better way.

Logging in to a website with Single Sign On (or more often: Single Log On) is only a small part of the problem of an enterprise. Sure, an increasing part since more and more applications are webbased; AJAX replaced RDP and ICA for many tasks. But still, only a small part. So if one wants to push Drupal into the heart of an enterprise as an Intra- or extranet, one needs to understand that OpenID / OAUTH might be good for an all webbased company, but not for any company that is older then 10 years.

OpenSSO however is. And Pat's work to integrate this into Drupal sure helps. Thanks Pat!

SAML and Drupal

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:43:14 +0000

If you do not think that OpenID or LDAP is a good solution for you identity management solution, you might want to take a look at SAML.

I was triggered to look at SAML again beacuse a

DrupalCon's lead to DrupalCon's

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 13:28:23 +0000

There is an old Dutch saying that roughly translates to "Weddings lead to weddings". And though attending a DrupalCon is not the same as getting married, it does share some characteristics. It's about sharing, passion, learning and helping without xpecting anything back. DrupalCon's are great places that reach farther then just the Drupal code, the Drupal site, CMS-es or even Open Source. Drupalcons are about people, about technology, the future of the combination of these and how we -as the community- can build this future in our products. Without DrupalCons, Drupal would not have been what it is today. And without future DrupalCon's, Drupal will not be where it should be.

So there are many reasons to make sure we will continue to have DrupalCon's. I do not know what holds the future for DrupalCon (bigger, smaller? separate business con's? one per continent?) but I do hope that the sharing, passion, learning and helping will continue in some form in the future. Maybe you would like to make this possible. By attending DrupalCon's and maybe even by organising a DrupalCon. If this is the case, do not feel intimated by the extreme quality of the DrupalCon DC09 but do tender for organising a DrupalCon. The next stop of DrupalCon will be in europe, Paris. After that we are looking for people that want to organise the Con in N-America. All you need is time, passion, a location, some fellow Drupalaars and .. a bit of time... If you are interested, do contact the Drupal Association. Let's make sure "DrupalCon's lead to DrupalCon's".

Mind you, I'm living together with my better half for over a decade and have two of the sweetest kids on earth I am not married myself. So I atually do not know if attending a DrupalCon is the same as geting married. But I know I will tender for organising a new DrupalCon in the EU anytime.. again .. ;-)