Monthly Archives: Februar 2008

Microformats

hcard microformatMicroformats contribute to the principles of a semantic web in a very useful way. With microformats any structured or unstructured information on web pages can be given a meaning. Name and address information anywhere on the page can be tagged as belonging to personal contact information. Words like “Walter Soldierer” are meaningless to a program, but they can be turned into something the program can deal with by tagging them with microformats. Continue reading

Bux schneiden

Buxkranz“Bux schneidet man im Februar”, sagte man uns im VHS-Kurs. Im Frühsommer 2007 hatte ein Nachbar uns seine ca. 20 Meter lange Buxbaumhecke geschenkt. Wegen des späten Umpflanztermins hatten wir auf einen Schnitt im gleichen Jahr verzichtet. Die Hecke ist gut angewachsen. Bei einem Teil der Pflanzen verfärbten sich zwar die Blätter gelb bis braun, dennoch brauchten wir bisher keine zu ersetzen.

Wir haben mit Bux den Nutzgarten vom Rasen getrennt. Da man ständig über die Hecke steigt, muss sie entsprechend niedrig sein. Der Schnitt war also eine ziemlich radikale Maßnahme, nicht nur für den Bux. Eine elektrische Heckenschere wäre wirklich nicht schlecht…

Buxhecke schneiden

Buxkranz

VHS-Kurs Obstgehölze schneiden

Obstbäume schneidenEndlich hat das Gartenjahr angefangen! Nachdem ich vor zwei Wochen bereits einen Kurs der Volkshochschule Goch über das fachgerechte Schneiden von Sträuchern besucht hatte, waren heute die Obstbäume dran. Ein solcher Kurs ist sehr empfehlenswert. Zunächst standen zwei Stunden Theorie auf dem Programm über den richtigen Schnittzeitpunkt, das richtige Werkzeug, die Schnittarten usw. Danach ging es auf eine Obstwiese um das gelernte “am lebenden Objekt” anzuwenden.

Continue reading

Enterprise 2.0

Meet CharlieWeb 2.0 hit company intranets, too. In 2006 the term Enterprise 2.0 was coined to describe the implementation and use of Web 2.0 technologies (”social software”) in an enterprise. Working in a big international cooperation involves lots of communication and collaboration. Some of the social tools offer great solutions to facilitate the working together.

At a conference last week I met Simon Revell, a Pfizer UK employee who had successfully helped implementing enterprise 2.0 in his organization, mainly blogs and wikis. Very interesting presentation.

First of all I was surprised that he is an IT manager, so the IT department brought this project forward, not Marketing, not Communications. I guess it would not have been possible otherwise because there was no social software available in the organisation, Simon’s team simply set up a LAMP open source environment using Drupal and hooked it to the network. Nobody but IT can do this in a company where everything is running on Microsoft technology.

Simon had an interesting story to tell about the difficulties of kicking off enterprise 2 (”Who gave you permission to do this?”), marketing the new “corporatepunks” culture, and getting their blog known to UK and international colleagues to make it a lively communication medium.

You can find out more about Simon.

Definitely check out the “Meet Charlie” presentation created by an IT colleague of his.

Now that Sharepoint 2007 is running more and more corporate intranets, enterprise 2.0 is easier to implement, at least technology-wise. Sharepoint supports blogs and wikis, not feature-rich but good enough to get started. What are we waiting for?

How the Internet changed my life

WWWA few days ago I was asked how the Internet has changed my life, apart from it being the reason why I no longer work as a veterinarian. I spent 35 years of my life without having access to the Internet, so there are indeed a few important changes that I can talk about. If you wonder why this topic is worth a blog post you probably grew up with the Net and therefore have no idea how life would be without it.

So how did the Net change my life? Continue reading