tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31969655276426498512012-02-22T13:18:19.325+01:00Articles about topics ranging from technology and software to scientific research. Occasional book reviews. Topics of general interest such as lifestyle, and nutrition. Exploration of blogs and the technical side of blogging.Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-19049984852762351872010-12-22T15:01:00.018+01:002010-12-24T11:15:29.476+01:00

Flattr is a relatively new social bookmarking and micropayment (or rather: microdonation) platform. After Paypal, BAC, and Visa and Mastercard bent down to political pressure, Flattr is currently one of the very few options left for people if they want to donate money to wikileaks and consequently Flattr is getting a fair share of exposure. In this post, I explain what flattr is, how you can use

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-3572891223161259722010-12-20T00:54:00.009+01:002010-12-23T16:08:51.752+01:00

If you own an iphone or an android phone you may know from your own experience that the information transmitted by applications can be disturbing. I think you should know what data applications transmit about you, so that you can make an informed decision on which applications you want to have. I compiled a table of applications and which data they transmit. Even though free and open-source

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-40428351838496836652010-12-14T00:00:00.011+01:002011-01-08T23:10:45.253+01:00

After wikileaks published the diplomatic dispatches, Politicians and political commentators around the world and from all parts of the political spectrum unsurprisingly use wikileaks to profile themselves for their voters and to get attention. Some reactions are quite shocking to some people not used to American politics. Some public voices call for assassination of Julian Assange, the founder

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-57670440985314628302010-11-30T00:20:00.006+01:002010-12-04T13:55:59.809+01:00

Wikileaks is releasing 251,287 documents of U.S. diplomatic dispatches (as of November 30th, 272 are released). They reveal a lot about American views of the situation in different countries, about world leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Silvio Berlusconi, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, and Angela Merkel. Interesting reads provide also U.S. strategies concerning North Korea and Pakistan. This

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-48416583740380378922010-01-29T00:52:00.013+01:002010-01-29T11:15:13.879+01:00

I just received a mail by digg.com celebrating their 5th anniversary and I thought it was worth commemorating this event with a post. Digg is one of the biggest social bookmarking websites. Inspired by slashdot, Kevin Rose, then 27 years old, founded digg on December 4th, 2004. Since then the site overtook slashdot in popularity and spawned itself many imitations. In this post there is more on

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-66049496590171180452009-11-17T17:14:00.003+01:002010-12-18T01:16:00.789+01:00

Social bookmark sites can be great to find articles to read when you are at leisure or bored. They are also a great way to promote your website and attract traffic. This article is about how to promote an article at a social bookmark site. Digg is one of the most popular social news sites and it has been scientifically studied often over the last years. I looked through some articles and found

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-33160687767145743552009-11-03T23:30:00.006+01:002011-01-04T15:40:23.688+01:00

I compiled a list of useful internet resources for blogging. Categories for blog tools include page design and cross-browser testing, testing page loading performance, seo tools, social media tools, and post editing. If you think any page should be added, please comment. Page DesignCombining Color Palettes and FontsTypetester provides a comparison tool for different fonts. Color Scheme

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-77311146980741298322009-10-11T17:36:00.000+02:002009-10-11T17:36:19.257+02:00

Augmented Browsing refers to systems that allow to customize the look and function of web sites. It allows to customize web pages on-the-fly and make the changes persistent, so that every time you enter a website, the site gets automatically adapted to your need. In this article I give a short introduction to augmented browsing. Augmented Browsing allows you to change the feel and function of

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-39957722720411318382009-10-04T00:55:00.002+02:002009-10-04T00:59:31.705+02:00

If you have a blog at blogspot you might have been annoyed by it before: the navigation bar. In blogger, by default, the navigation bar is on top of your blog in the browser window. Leaving the navbar has often been criticized as looking unprofessional and not many people find the navbar useful, although blogger is adding some functionality such as social bookmarking. It is easy to get rid of the

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-84497193387442270612009-09-04T22:06:00.015+02:002010-01-02T22:47:23.999+01:00

There has been a lot of fuzz about cloud computing. This IT service concept involves hosting of data and applications on remote servers. However, the concept "cloud computing" is very fuzzy and has been stretched a lot. In this post I will take a look at eyeOS, an open-source cloud operating system, developed by a small team mainly situated in Barcelona, Spain. The company makes money on

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-18493233597654789872009-07-29T13:43:00.013+02:002009-11-30T17:21:37.471+01:00

Microsoft's search engine Bing, released this year, has been promoted heavily and it's market share is on the rise, now at about 5-7 percent. After the failed attempt at an acquisition, Microsoft now reached a deal with Yahoo to provide their search results. Yahoo will profit by taking over some ad-sales (see article). This agreement - if approved by regulators and when ultimately implemented -

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-27246351045583443542008-09-28T12:29:00.006+02:002009-12-09T01:09:01.752+01:00

On Thursday morning a Chinese spacecraft launched. Part of the astronauts' mission was a spacewalk, the first spacewalk in the history of Chinese space missions. Dialogs between the astronauts in space were also published. However, these were taken down after a day and we were told the agency had had technical problems. After all what other reason could there be for posting the dialogs while the

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-84924485825856377852008-09-21T17:46:00.006+02:002009-09-15T18:11:31.504+02:00

After the last two weeks of summer school, with the last weeks spent on two summer schools, I feel completely exhausted and near stupor. To do something useful, I was listening to an audio book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. The author, Bill Bryson, states that he became aware that he knew nothing about science and there was a lack of material which was accessible, puts it all together,

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196965527642649851.post-52305480529297302422008-08-30T03:26:00.024+02:002011-10-23T15:55:06.714+02:00

Smart bookmarks are similar to other browser bookmarks. The idea of smart bookmarks is that you enter a keyword and some search text in the location bar and on pressing enter you get the result from the search engines that you defined for the keyword. That sounds easy and fast and it really is. This post shows how to define a smart bookmark and gives several examples of smart bookmarks that can

Benjamin Auffarthhttps://profiles.google.com/118440342400845052454noreply@blogger.com0