Férias: from the latin feriæ, days dedicated to rest.

I’m going on holidays (férias). Real holidays spent away from day-to-day life. Next sunday we’ll be leaving for Vallée de la Loire, France. In the summer holidays 2 years ago we went to Brittany for a 15-day tour (visit plisson for a nice gallery).

On the way to Brittany we passed through the Vallée de la Loire to visit some castles. Among other things we visited Amboise and it’s famous Clos-Lucé where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last 3 years of life and also the amazing Châteaux de Chenonceau.


The Loire is a beautiful river with plenty of castles and small villages on the margins worth a second and third visit. So, this year we’re back in the valley this time more on the Angers and Nantes side. I’ll be back in the beginning of September with some pictures.

August 19, 2004 | Tags: | 2 Comments 

Brands That Think

“Companies that become culture brands usually have an opinion about something that people value.”

Shubhankar Ray, Student, INSEAD quoted on FastCompany.

August 11, 2004 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

One-Product-a-Day Business Model

Woot’s business model is based on the idea that your site can sell only one product per day but in big quantities. This way they get very low prices buying also in big quantities from suppliers for a very low price. For this business model the winner site is the one that can spread it’s daily product more effectively. So Woot has an RSS feed that adds another communication channel while also improving the customer experience.

Another important point is the community feeling of such a site. There is a look-a-like Forum where users can express themselves. Even the copyright (read the FAQ) has been carefuly tought to make the site as confortable and trustful as it can be.

One thing I don’t like is the User Interface of the registration/login process. When you press the I Want One! button you must fullfil a form in order to register or login. The problem is that this form is way too complicated. The layout hasn’t got an ordered flow and has too much noise making it difficult to take an action for the common user.

Woot’s discovered via Signal Vs Noise (37Signals blog)

August 11, 2004 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

Niklas Zennstrom (Skype’s CEO) on VoIP

Niklas Zennstrom half-hour presentation about the VoIP market. Subjects include VoIP business models, how does it works and many other related issues. An interesting talk from the founder of Kazaa and wannabe-big-player in the VoIP market.

August 11, 2004 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

What if Doom 3 Were Open Sourced?

Doom 3 has come out. After a long wait it’s finally here. In the past ID Software has open-sourced every version of it’s most popular releases each time a new one comes to market. The question is “What if Doom 3 Were Open Sourced?”. An article analyses how different it would be if ID Software took that option from the beginning. (via Gildot)


Technically this option would bring a big step forward in the development stage of future games. But from the company point of view this option would lead to change in business model. For this cases where changing from a hugely profitable business model to one where your margins are lower and your competition is bigger may not be advisable. Every scenario can be built upon this option and certainly strategic moves must be thought in order to stay ahead of the competition but nevertheless I think this is not the time nor the game to make that move.

August 10, 2004 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

Bricolage Review in eWeek

eWeek has published a Web Content Management Face-Off which includes a full range of CMSs from low to high-end markets. One of those systems is Bricolage which I’ve been practicing with for a couple of months.

The eWeek Bricolage review is fairly positive about Bricolage.

“Bricolage is quite possibly the most capable enterprise-class open-source application available. The Web content management application features excellent administration capabilities, and it is highly extensible and capable of managing even the biggest and most complex Web sites. As an open-source product, Bricolage is free, and companies can now purchase support and development services from Kineticode.”


From my experience I can say that the power of Bricolage lies in it’s flexibility. Bricolage can be configured for almost every need you may have from a CMS. It works very much the same way for small or big content/news/stories-driven websites. Because of that the learning curve is probably one the longest. Bricolage may be hard to start working with but in the long run it is definetly worth the effort.

August 4, 2004 | Tags: | 2 Comments 

Celebration Time!

Last week there were lot’s of reasons to celebrate:
We had a really nice week at log. We’ve been working on very interesting projects and there are lot’s of good projects coming soon. And Pedro got his Computer Science Engineering degree and his 29th 28th birthday on friday.


So we all went to lunch together as we always do on fridays. But this time we went to a nice Pizzeria near the river in Lisbon. It was a really good time.

August 1, 2004 | Tags: | Leave a Comment