Category Archives: I.T.

Even more easy money?

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Easy Money!In the recent past I was approached and asked if I would consider placing a link with an add on my website. At first I declined the offer but when they made me a better offer and explained the terms I got interested. Now, somewhere on my website there is a little line of text containing a little add and a link to the advertisers website. To find the add you will need to search a lot on my site.

I figured I had gotten lucky and the money I received I transferred to the account of little Pek, thus cleaning my conscience. That was it, I thought.

The next offer followed surprisingly fast. Another company also wanted to place an add on my website and politely asked my what were my tariffs for the various options. They were interested in these possibilities:

  • Text link from the index page
  • Text link on every page of my website
  • A sponsored post

The problem is that after my previous experience I did some research and found out that in Holland it is more or less illegal to advertise any gambling related thing. Of course living in Spain probably make these rules not apply to me.

The article from the law for games of chance:

Article 1
Subject to this Act it is prohibited::

a.
give opportunity to win prizes or premiums, if the winning takes place by chance determining which participants win and with participants generally having no influence, unless authorized under this Act;
b.
give opportunity, promotion or have such documents intended for publication or distribution to stock for participation to items referred to under a;

Just stimulating gambling is illegal, and placing a simple link maybe falls under this scope.

I’ll just see what happens.

Another miss with Google+; I want integration!

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Puzzle!My digital life started a long time ago with a small website of a server of the University. Afterwards the website moved to xs4all. Later it moved to the Digital City Leiden. Followed by Geocities and finally to my own domain ajebe.com. The last few years my site has been located on leiden365.nl.

First the sites were just static HTML. Afterwards PHPnuke, and afterwards WordPress for my blog and Gallery for the pictures. Now I just use WordPress and am looking into a combination of WordPress and Drupal for the future.

This is my current situation. My own blog, and various profile pages and publications, messages, software, pictures, movies, etc. all over the place. A lot of things have their own little spot and are located in a specialized part of the internet. To me it seems logical.

Information should be available everywhere but right now the fragmentation this causes makes it very difficult to get a clear over all picture. I want integration! There are a lot of tools online that don’t integrate at all. The problem is that everyone wants to keep the things they have and the things they get. The same with information. Once I type something somewhere this becomes an asset for the company where I wrote it. Sharing this information makes it loose some of it’s uniqueness and consequently some of it’s value. When you loose value as a company this will probably translate into loosing advertisement dollars.

There are a lot of different places on the web to leave content of value behind. Facebook, Hyves, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Drupal, Reader, Gmail, etc. All these sites have little integration and they all strive to keep the consumers on their sites. It is not uncommon to have similar discussions going on on different sites that are not technically related. This sometimes requires people to create (write down) the same content (or opinion) on different places.

The new social web 2.0 is a nice step upwards from the old information web but the next web needs to change to survive. It is weird but everyday I visit the same list of websites to keep up to date. Sometimes I add or remove a website, but the new web foremost needs to integrate services. The social web needs be really get a single face. We need to take away the need to post the same opinion over and over. We need to take away the confusion about where the most recent discussion is taking place and who are leading the discussion. The new Google+ is exactly the same as all the stuff we already have. We are still at 2.0 and we’re not moving forward.

I don’t want to visit the same list of sites every day to see partly the same information spread all over the place. All this searching and checking is a tremendous waste of effort. I want a single way to find information and find all related information at the same time.

I don’t want my software, pictures, opinions, messages all in different sites with all of then their own counters and comments. I just want all in one!

Drupal module – Access Unpublished

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Drupal!For some time now I have been involved with Drupal, creating quite a few websites. Recently my involvement with the Drupal community increased and I published my first module. The module is called ‘Access Unpublished‘ and it can be used to allow people to view content which is not yet published/public.

Normally when you create content for a Drupal site you will either want to make it public for the whole world to see, limit access to some users or user groups, or keep the data only for yourself. But what if you want to share some content and not require registration of the people you want to share with?

This is where my module is useful. It will provide you with a special URL that you can send to others, to allow them to access the content you created. The special URL can be shared, and only the people who have the URL can see the data.

Easy money

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Easy money!Snel verdient. In ruil voor een regeltje reclame bij een oude post op dit blog heb ik flink wat dollars verdient. Jammer alleen dat de wisselkoers niet echt gunstig is.

Ik ontving een mailtje met het verzoek of ik reclame op mijn site wilde plaatsen. In eerste instantie had ik daar geen interesse in, want ik irriteer mij mateloos aan al die reclame overal. Twee maanden later werd mij nogmaals gevraagd of ik interesse had en besloot ik toch maar eens navraag te doen over de voorwaarden. Hieruit bleek dat ze me een grote hoeveelheid dollars beloofde als ik in één van mijn 700+ oude berichtjes een regel zou toevoegen met een linkje. De kans dat iemand deze tekst tegenkomt is erg klein, dus besloot ik dat het geen kwaad zou kunnen.

De regel reclame mocht ik zelf aanpassen zodat hij goed in de tekst paste. Alleen de link moest een specifieke bewoording hebben. Zaak is nu om de tekst een jaar te laten staan. Het geld werd direct op mijn rekening bijgeschreven (en zal ik overmaken naar de rekening van Pek). Erg netjes.

Android update April

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After a long wait finally all the pieces are falling into place. I expect I will be able to finish the game soon. As always the final details and polishing up take the most time. Last month I already introduced the entire cast of the game. I also showed you one of the specials you can find in the game. The rest I leave for you to find out playing the game.

I enjoyed creating this game a lot. It is my first Android program, and it was very useful for me to get some hands-on with this new media, and with programming for mobile devices. I expect the announcement for this new game ‘Cats and Dogs’ to appear on this blog, and the android store, somewhere in the next few months.

Dropbox

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Dropbox!Meer en meer gebruiken we de computer alleen om een verbinding te leggen met het internet. Mail checken, bankzaken regelen, betalingen, bellen, videobellen, eventjes iets opzoeken, muziek beluisteren, films kijken, series downloaden, een boek lezen, een recept nakijken.

Wat nog ontbrak voor mij was een harde schijf die ik overal kan gebruiken. Ik stuurde wel eens bestanden naar mijn eigen email, zodat ik ze altijd bij de hand had, maar het kan toch gemakkelijker. Met Dropbox kan je gratis een harddiskje van 2GB maken, die je vanaf een willekeurige plek kan benaderen. Zelfs vanaf je smartphone!.

En extra leuk is dat je met allerlei zaken extra diskruimte kan verdienen. De tutorial doorlopen is goed voor 250MB extra. Zorgen dat iemand anders zich aanmeld via een referentie zorgt er ook voor dat de nieuwe persoon en ikzelf 250MB erbij krijgen. Erg goed bedacht.

Android update March

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Time to introduce the entire cast of the game.

Cats and Dogs, Boys and Girls.
Cat!Dog!Boy!Girl!

There are still quite a lot of details to work out, but things are progressing. Maybe in a few months there will be a big announcement. One detail more that I will reveal in this post is the name of the game. The name will be quite simple: ‘Cats and Dogs‘.

Floorplanner

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Lope de Vega - Floorplanner!
In the end the floorplanner website did turn out to be very useful. I was able to quickly make a nice layout of our apartment. The measurements are all off, but the result looks very much like the setup we have at home.

Android update February

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Sometimes you just need to give your mind a break. Stop thinking for a short while and just enjoy yourself for a minute. This is exactly what I am trying to create. A short break and a way to enjoy yourself for just one minute. The game I’m creating will be playable for 60 seconds. After which you can continue your life.

Pepper!60 seconds is all that is needed for the game to be played. In this 60 seconds you will be introduced to the already familiar dog and girl, but you will also encounter a red hot pepper every now and then.

More information next month.