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Google Portal: RSS is missing

Now it´s there, the logical consequence from google´s approach to portal business. Combining most of their services on one landing page is usefull to my mind, though I can understand purists who expect simplicity! I like the concept of making your own web: arrange all in a way you like and need it. For that purpose one can arrange all the information one wants in ones own way. Design your web! I´m missing an RSS Reader though, but that is surely planned…Now, I´m wondering how google´s network seems to be very very performant – the increase of traffic, through more graphical elements and the aggregation of the news feeds, don´t seem to slow it down – though we can expect a rise in traffic-costs.

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Mediatuner.com is quite cool

Mediatuner.com is a webbased Flash-All-Media-Feed-Aggregator. What does that mean? It scans all kinds of mediatypes (Videos, texts, Pictures, etc.) and combines them all in a bloglines-style webbased frontend. You can add your own feeds, though there are some preconfigured. All in all I like the idea, but somehow it doesn´t work that properly: I tried it on my mac with camino, and the pop-up, in which the quicktime stream of a movie should play, didn´t  work properly. The window wanted to resize itself somehow. When they are using Flash – why not playing all media in Flash? It´s the perfect technology for "All-Format-Playback". One is able to convert all incoming formats and streaming them on the fly. motionet has done so quite a time ago. All in all I like the idea – though anonther problem, which could be solved but isn´t right now from mediatuner, is the problem of resizing the sections of the frontend: What about long feed names? They aren´t readable anymore, and when there are more than 12 items in your list, you have to start scrolling – in bloglines e.g. one can resize the window (which is oure html of course). This is possible in flash generally, too. (via gigaom.com)

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What does it take to make your employees feel lucky?

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Yesterday was the nicest day since weeks here in Cologne. The weather was superb (appr. 30 C) and we´ve been out to the park with friends in Düsseldorf. There were hundreds of people, feeding goats, sheep and just laying out in the sun. It was a great atmosphere, seeing all the kids playing together, people speaking, playing football, having barbecues. Now it is monday morning and I had to drive to work straight through town and looked into peoples faces: you have to know, the weather is not that good anymore, rain is in the air, and people are going like sheep through the streets. Their faces, mostly unlucky, are trying to catch the next highlight – when will it be weekend again? People don´t need much: when the sun is shining, and there is just a little lake somewhere, if there´s just a beergarden, if there are fields for their children to play football, people are comfortable. These are just small things – no need for the big events like amusement-parks, warner-brother-movie-worlds or disney-lands. Why don´t politicians understand that? They are closing one open air bath after the other because there´s no money anymore, they are closing theaters and don´t clean the parks. People are getting fed up with this. But how to translate this to your employees – I´ve made the experience that the small things are what make them more passionate, more motivated and loyal to the company. Never forget their birthday! Ask them to take a free day during long weekends, maybe organize a nice barbecue in the park with all the families. Of course, these things don´t deceive bad things like paying them not in regular ways etc. But this will help. It´s just the small things people need to feel comfortable.

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