It comes a time when a social site reach its maximum attention span and everybody tends to ignore why they came there in the first place. The place becomes unwanted for people that actually cared for what the social sites stood in the beginning.

A little bit of history

Before Twitter, Flickr was the only social network I needed. I was using it for everything: designs, posters, mock-ups, photographs, sets, experiments, even embarrassing updates from time to time. Then Facebook came along and promised to be the best at it. After some time I was disappointed by two facts: people joined Facebook because it was cool, not because they wanted to be part of a community. Second reason was that Flickr was acquired by Yahoo! — they didn’t get the fact that Flickr was a network of small communities that could interact between each others.

Nowadays we have another monster in the house which is called Google Plus. I was using it for a few months. It was really cool and addictive in the beginning because I could create myself some small communities called “circles” and interact nicely with each of them. But suddenly people are joining Google Plus in masses and all those small communities are now dispersed and they will increase to sparse to the point when nobody will give a crap anymore.

Dash and moving forward

Dash comes to cover a need for people that are interested on my online activities. There is a girl that was trying to be up-to-date with everything I did on the web. I created the “dashboard” to make her life easier. Strangely, it makes my life easier too. Because now I’m aware of what services I really need, the usage on various social networks and the openness of others.

Regarding the usage, I noticed that I no longer need Tumblr to showcase photos I take because its functionality was replaced altogether by Instagram. Also noticed that Flickr back in its glory days is now replaced by Dribbble, Instagram and Twitter.

Regarding the openness, I would have liked to include a feed of my favorites on SoundCloud. But they didn’t provide this basic feature. Instead you have to create a developer account, receive a token, understand the API and then get a XML of those bloody favorite tracks. This is not how the future should look like. The “big guys” of the industry should be the first to promote tools like RSS feeds for their users. Only a true open social network has a future, the others will cease to exist at some point.

The thing is that we are afraid of making wrong choices. It’s not a bad thing to always be right, but in the long run it can be a burden and it won’t get you too far. Making wrong choices from now and then can relax your thought, freeing you mind like they say in the Matrix. Can you remember that scene from the movie when Neo tries to jump from one building to another? He focuses on doing everything right and as expected, he fails harder.

Be stressed about the right choices you already made and don’t be worried that you gonna make some wrong ones too. The right choices are the ones that get you far, bring you satisfactions and you will almost die for to make it through. The wrong choices are there to keep you focused on what is important. I won’t tell you what is important because in the end, I’m not you.

After all that being said, he made the right wrong choice to write this entire article on his iPhone using Simplenote app.

Today, air planes won’t fall from the sky. Today is Romania’s National Day. The picture was taken at the parade. The push of a button makes you realize that you can save the joy, the excitement, the dreams of all people that are watching the event. Then you go home and feel lonely, insignificant, like nothing ever happen. The only thing you got is the moment you saved, the picture that lives in your mind, a memory that fades away slowly.

There is a saying: you can’t see the sky from the trees. What I’m gonna say is that without trees, there will be no sky. Without people, there will be no heights, no expectations from you. You have to climb on the back of other people to reach those heights — there is no other way around.

This future everyone talks about doesn’t really exist and it will never will. It’s just our imagination wanting to do more with less possible resources and more technology. But nothing changes, society is and will be the same, no matter how connected or educated we are, no matter how advanced technology will be in the future. Modern society won’t advance by playing World of Warcraft or by learning online Artificial Intelligence courses from Stanford, it needs an external threat that will bring us together, it needs something called “love” and it needs power to change.

Seeing technology as a threat is not the way – technology, the Internet, connected devices are just tools, tools that were here for thousands of years. When humanity discovered fire, it didn’t know what to do with it. That’s what technology is today, a sparkle for the future — a future were we need to learn to use intelligent machines for our own good. A future were we give up on wars, were we give up on being divided by cultures and traditions, a future totally different from what we imagine today.

Actually, I think it all started back in 2004 when I got a Sony Handycam, a consumer friendly camcoder with a really small sensor. I will always hate that small resolution clips. The same thing happen with the K800i and I promised myself not to get a camera with a small sensor ever again, but I did, because good cameras are for rich persons. Who in this world has money for a Leica X1, FujiFilm FinePix X100 or anything full-frame from Canon or Nikon? I know that quality comes with a price, but I think the price is too high. C’mon, it’s 2011, the glass is still made of SiO₂ and the sensor technology didn’t change much in over a decade — I know this because I study it in college. Why the prices didn’t go down? Is it all about keeping a brand alive even it’s dead in the water? Or do these brands think photographers are stupid enough to pay a high price for a brand new camera?

My new camera is like my old camera, it’s light, black and has that small sensor that makes pictures dirty when you need them clean and sharp. Nikon Expeed 2 doesn’t exceed my expectations at all. The water looks like plastic, people faces are so smooth you can’t see the pores even if you take a macro shot. I really hope for a new firmware to disable some of these insane noise reductions features. The 1080p recording feature of the camera is actually great and you can even record directly in an high contrast black and white mode.

I started a new photoblog on Tumblr to show case the pictures I take from time to time. I will try to keep my journal free of photos so I won’t disturb my readers with dirty pixels when all they want to do is to read my thoughts. Some people where hoping for a detailed review of Nikon Coolpix P300, but DPreview already took care of that for me. People are starting to follow me on Tumblr, I hope you do to, if you have an account there.

Berlin is called the City of Stones and the City of Smoke by Jason Lutes in two of his comic books. I will use the same names to describe the Berlin I saw and I liked and somehow, disliked.

The City of Stones

This is the bright face of Berlin, the one that can make you think that this big city can change your life once and for all. The truth is that it can change your perspective of seeing things.

From the impressive Fernsehturm, the TV tower, down to architecture of each church and cathedral, Berlin has lots of things to offer to its visitors. There are lots of museums, but I didn’t have the chance to visit them because of the short time I stayed in the city. All those museums looked great from outside; I still wonder what amazing things they were hiding inside. I can go on and describe everything I saw, but that wouldn’t be much fun.

The City of Smoke

What I didn’t like about Berlin is maybe the american influence. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against americans, I’m against their influence in some parts of the world. What I wanted to see in Berlin was people coming from multiple parts of the world and get along with each other. But, I didn’t like the fact that all those people were embracing the american culture, instead of joining the german culture which in fact has more to offer that the other one.

Walking down the streets of Berlin I was amazed to notice muslims, jews, black people and going to Alexanderplatz there was very few people speaking German. I was listening to people speaking French, Italian, Spanish and lots of people speaking English. I was thinking… how many Romanians are living in Berlin?

I also took some pictures along the way, which are in fact two collections posted on PicPlz: Berlin and German Countryside. For those pictures I used just a cellphone, a Sony Ericsson K800i — I think I pushed it to its limits. That’s the reason why I wanted to buy myself a real camera when I went back home.

The Book

Newscoop 3 Cookbook can already be order from Lulu and will be available for free on FLOSS Manuals. I wrote a full section describing the best practices for designing websites. Here I talked about templates grids, golden ratio, typography, article and comments design for Newscoop. I also wrote a few other sections regarding Facebook, HTML 5 and best practices for SEO.

I designed all the diagrams used in the book. I used a black and white style on a math paper. I tried to simply and clarify every step showed on each diagram. It’s not an easy process as it seems. You have to conceptualize the whole process and then create each step displayed in the diagram. Of course, the team helped me where I got stucked and in the end, I manage to finished them all.

The Team and the place

Each member from the team was from a different country. New Zeeland, USA, Romania, Belarus, Serbia, Columbia and Germany were the countries that we originate from. We stayed at Schloss Neuhausen where a few black cats entertained us and blossoming trees put some light on our faces. I’m not sure if it’s important, but I got the biggest room and I enjoyed each moment spent here.

After 10.6.6 update of Mac OS X, I looked to see if this was fixed, but for my surprise, it wasn’t. How come a company that emphasis the design of its products as a feature, doesn’t care for small details like this? I looked to see if this bug was reported on any Apple related blog and I didn’t find any related stories. How come nobody noticed it and report it to Apple?

I thought Mr. Gruber will be the first person to report this, but lately he’s more preoccupied with what Google or Microsoft does. Also, I wonder if this bug will still be present on the next version of Mac OS X named Lion.

In the picture above you can see what we call Romanian Airmen Heroes Memorial, located in the Aviators’ Square, on Aviators’ Boulevard, Bucharest.

This photograph should have been posted five days ago, but somehow I manage to forgot about this draft. Yes, I started writing a new draft for my birthday which, guess what, was also postponed. Now let me explain. Great Union Day is the national holiday of Romania and it’s celebrated on December 1st. My birthday was five days before this event, enough time to lose track of the things I have to do and care about.

Autumn has the power to bring people back together, to bring nature closer to humans hearts. It feels like crying inside and laughing outside — and in the same time, enjoy everything in between.

November has definitely something special, that electrical feeling that makes everything stand up by itself, no matter if it’s just a sign posted on a wall.

Even buildings don’t remain indifferent when this month makes its appearance. It’s like watching that drama film that you saw tens of times in the past. But now you’re feeling like you are watching the same movie again like it’s the first time and you’re seeing those peculiar details, here and there, in almost every scene. November is marvelous.

Last month I started working on a different kind of project, namely Peculiar. An icon package that is made only in CSS with the purpose to help designers create user interfaces for the web without use of software programs and to help developers achieve as few HTTP requests as possible, thus speeding up web applications. This a challenge for me and for anyone interested in the future of user interfaces for the web, to make use of CSS as intelligently as possible — creating designs in Adobe Photoshop, slicing images and putting them as backgrounds in CSS doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore.

I want to say thank you to a couple of blogs for spreading the news about the development of this peculiar project. In no particular order, here they are: Think Vitamin, Echo Enduring, Faruk Ateş, Matthias Schütz and those Chinese blogs. I also want to thank to the man that bought the first license for Peculiar.

After all that being said, he wants to change things that we accustomed to for the worst better.

I wanted to get rid of the static pages, it was hard to update those. I wanted the new site to be lighting fast, so there are no images for the layout, all details are made in CSS and there’s no JavaScript at all. Pictograms that you see here and there are made in CSS too. I will release these icons for public use in a package called Peculiar.

You might noticed that there isn’t a logo anywhere. That’s because I have new ideas about how a new logo should look like.

Comments are disabled because they are the only thing that makes a journal to be a blog. I don’t want a blog, I want a journal of my online activities. I may also want feedback, but I think a short and interesting e-mail will do it better—of course I will answer to any of them.

After all that being said, he wishes he was born in a country where Romanian English was the official language.

Sometimes you just have to have the ball in order to play. Can I have some ball, please? Or should I go all over the place web for a slam dunk?

Edit (Feb 20, 2011): I got a prospect account. Is there anyone willing to draft me?

Edit (Dec 22, 2011): Finally, one year and a half later I got an invite from Artem Lapitski. Never say never.

From the start, I want to say that the idea, concept, examples and eventually writing the specification, are all mine. So, go ahead, read the lines below and blame me for things that aren’t the way they should be.

The name, Amatl, comes from a form of paper that was manufactured in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. There are more details about it on Wikipedia, of course. My Amatl is based on HTML5 and CSS (2.1 now and 3.0 in the future), two standards that raised the bar with what we can do in terms of layout, embedding fonts, typography, grid and images or blocks positioning. Basically, Amatl is actually a file format that wants to display paper documents inside browsers without any additional tools or software. The format isn’t intended at replacing Adobe’s PDF format or Microsoft’s XPS; it should be used as a complementary format, open and supported by the entire industry. The closest resembles to it can be EPUB format but they are two completely different concepts.

Compatibility

The good part about this format is that it can be recognizable by old browsers too, I name Firefox 2 and IE7 here. It’s just HTML after all, right?

Differences

There will be no differences when it comes to HTML5 syntax, maintaining the current specification is very important. Still, I recommend not using meta attributes because they will be present in a CSS metadata header.

The most important differences to CSS is introduction of a DPI value and a CSS metadata header. It will be used to write documents at a higher DPI than 96, which is the standard to all web pages on Internet today.

Structure

The Amatl document files should be packed in a ZIP container, having .am extension (like Document1.am) for offline usage and not only. Browser support will be needed for reading HTML files packed inside a ZIP. It can also be served directly from a server with the following structure:

index.html
page-2.html
page-3.html
|-- styles
   |-- screen.css
   |-- print.css
|-- fonts         /* embeddable fonts should be placed here */ 
|-- languages     /* support for multi languages documents */
   |-- index-en-us.html
   |-- index-en-gb.html
   |-- index-ro-ro.html
|-- images
|-- videos
|-- audios

Writing, printing and scaling the documents

It should be very easy to write an Amatl document, like writing a blog post with basic HTML tags: p, a, strong, etc. This is because the HTML5 structure of the format is very easy. You can view the source of this example: Document 1. Printing documents can use a print.css file or the browser should interpret the screen.css (remove styles for body and article tags) and print the pages exactly like they are displayed on the screen.

As I said before, Amatl will supports writing HTML5 with custom DPI through CSS. You can understand how this works by viewing the Warp example from Firefox (or any other browser that supports zooming) at minimum zoom. If browsers will adopt this format, you can view higher quality web documents right in your browser, including higher DPI images and graphics and you can print them right away without needing any other software.

Amatl can also use a single HTML file, that embeds CSS, fonts and images and separates pages accordingly. You can see this in the Document 2 example. This can be dropped from the specifications since I prefer a more standard structure for the format.

License

The format should and will be open since it’s based on open technologies, but it will require a commercial license for software products or web applications for writing, managing or printing the documents. More about this in the future and don’t forget there is an Amatl page dedicated for this very project.

Google approach to the web is to rank everything. But on Twitter we all are equal to each other, we have the same number of characters to write a message (140, remember?), the number of followers doesn’t matter, time when you joined Twitter is not important, lists or favourites won’t help either. So basically we don’t need a rank system on Twitter.

Dave Winer votes for ranking on his blog. But, what we really need is an exclusion system. First, we need to exclude spam. Then exclude retweets and reposition the original tweet instead of last retweet with the number of retweets for a possible importance level. Favourites could also matter in ranking tweets up, but again, keeping them sorted by dated is more important.

After all that being said, he thinks that will be impossible possible to rank real time information, but it won’t be that clever.