Sending a Balloon into Space
Via the Noisebridge Blog
Do you want to get more from social networking? Do you want to increase the level of conversation and interaction with your followers? Then start chopping down, not adding more of them.
I’ve reduced the number of people I had on Twitter from 185 down to 50. I was getting hammered by so many tweets that I didn’t care that some of them had to go. Over the next weeks I will be selecting 50 persons that I will follow and interact with. That means those 50 better be good or they will be replaced.
Information overload. That’s a big problem. Our heads are overloaded with information and simplifying all that information into a digestible form is a big challenge. What’s the solution? Selection.
These guys are just great, I’m in love with them. They’re called Pomplamoose and are from San Francisco.
We call “internationalization” to the process of setting up software so that it can be used in different languages. In my case I had a plugin with text strings in English and I wanted to add a Portuguese translation. In wp-config.php I set up the WPLANG variable to pt_PT:
define ('WPLANG', 'pt_PT');
I then used poEdit, a localization tool that works with Mac OS X and that can be downloaded from the poEdit download page. In poEdit, from the File menu select ‘New Catalog’. Fill in the information there and in the ‘Paths’ tab put the plugin directory. In the ‘Keywords’ tab add the missing entries so it looks like this:
At this point it should recognize all the text strings in your code and present a screen where you can add the translations. After that be sure to save the file as pluginname-pt_PT.po, preferably in a directory called ‘translations’ or ‘locales’ (but anything will do). After that you’re all set. In your code you should load the translation like this:
load_plugin_textdomain ( 'your-plugin-name' , FALSE , '/your-plugin-name/translations' );
And strings should have the form:
_e('Choose a Category','your-plugin-name');
That’s it. Let me know if you run into troubles :)
Resources & Further Reading for the Geeks:
In this video Jason Calacanis talks about his experience as an entrepreneur and also what it takes to succeed in creating a successful startup company. It starts off a bit slow but after warming up Jason really nails it: “you go through the world as a Samurai, you just walk through all this noise, with a huge sword right on your belt, which you know you can take at any moment and just cut someone in half”. A must watch if you’re into startups.
Via MV
I’ve installed Wordpress MU on a fresh Apache httpd and I go to try it out. I start by clicking on the ‘hello world’ post that comes as default and the page returns a 404 “not found” message. What is happening? This keeps happening to me all the time so I might as well share it here for others.
This can be fixed this by setting “AllowOverride to All” in the httpd.conf file, in the relevant Directory directive section where MU is installed.
Este fim de semana foi o Kickstart 1H10, um Weekend Bootcamp para empreendedores, organizado pela SeedCapital em Lisboa. Correu muito bem, recebemos boas sugestões e foi muito útil. Os projectos que vão receber financiamento ainda não são conhecidos mas posso dizer que estamos super entusiasmados com o nosso projecto, mais motivados que nunca e passámos da fase do “ah e tal temos de acreditar que isto vai funcionar” para “agora sabemos o que fazer e como se vai processar”. Temos riscos que estamos a correr claro mas sabemos quais são e isso reduz a incerteza de todo o processo.
Durou Sexta e Sábado o dia todo. Sexta falou-se sobre Estratégia, Modelos de Negócio, Gestão Financeira, Contabilidade e Fisco. Sábado falou-se sobre Criação de Negócios e Marketing.
Já tinha feito o Kickstart Mini-MBA com o Mário Valente e portanto algumas coisas não eram totalmente novas para mim. A parte sobre Marketing ficou a cargo do Patrick van der Walk e posso dizer que simplesmente adorei a talk dele. Claramente conhecer o Patrick e poder trocar impressões com ele é uma valia extremamente grande.
No Sábado à tarde as equipas fizeram o seu “elevator pitch” e também uma apresentação de cerca de 30 minutos sobre os seus projectos ao conselho consultivo da SeedCapital, constituído por pessoas da área financeira, propriedade intelectual, advogados, etc.
Algumas coisas que deu para perceber:
O que a SeedCapital está a fazer é diminuir as barreiras à entrada que existem em Portugal para os novos empreendedores tecnológicos. A maior parte das iniciativas do género (IAPMEI, bancos, etc.) são extremamente burocráticas e tratam tudo da mesma forma, seja o vosso negócio uma carrinha de cachorros ou uma coisa tecnológica. Normalmente é logo exigido um plano de negócios e não há ajuda para o elaborar.
A sensação que tenho é que o processo na SeedCapital é mais gradual e faseado. Tendo uma ideia que à partida parece ter potencial aprende-se a que perguntas é preciso saber responder para analisar a sua viabilidade, em oposição ás outras iniciativas onde é preciso responder ás mesmas perguntas (possivelmente mais), sem estar consciente da sua importância e de como chegar ás respostas, e isso é fundamental.
Obrigado por partilhares a experiência que tiveste no Kickstart. Parece ter sido muito bom. Agora resta saber mais sobre a ideia que apresentaste :)
E já agora, qual é o projecto que estás a desenvolver??
I had this fantastic idea the other day. A web site where people can watch live concerts. I’m talking here about:
High-Quality Audio Streaming
High-Quality Wide Screen Video Streaming
Don’t you just love it?
DVD-Quality like.
But then I found out about Fabchannel.com, now closed after 10 years in business, and moved on.
and all because corporate greed and short-sighted people run the industry.
There is really nothing like free advice..
What I mean by this is the following.
Right now you might be struggling with something. Your startup, your thesis, your project, whatever.
Have you thought of all the experts in the world that can help you? They are all at the distance of an email. All the entrepreneurs, all the scientists, all the teachers in the world. It might take just one email to change what you’re doing to be something awesome. Why not take the action?
João Leitão 4:39 am on March 3, 2010 Permalink
This is a important issue in life. Nuno you are so right about this subject and indeed QUALITY = GOOD RESULTS. It is kind of hard to actually follow people on Twitter now since there’s so many people. I’ll definitely look that out and I’ll do my own clean up soon! thank you.