A small guide to Lisbon

SHiFT is only a few days away. Some of the speakers and participants are not from Portugal, so I decided to write A small guide to Lisbon to help them on this visit. It’s small so don’t expect everything to be written here and it’s supposed to be a guide written by me so expect my personal opinion every now and then.

(the Electrico is beautiful and still used in Lisbon - photo by Monguinhas)

Arriving in Lisbon

by air: airport is close to the city (too close in fact). There’s no underground so the best way to get to the center it to get a taxi. It will cost you around 10 euros (extra fee for luggage). You can also get the bus (#44 or #45). It’s cheaper but less convenient.
by train: you’ll probably arrive at Santa Apolónia train station. Get a taxi or a bus to the center.
by car: avoid rush hours (8-10 am and 6-8pm). Find a public park and use the underground or the bus.

(Lisbon is a beautiful city, full of nice people - photo by ivogomes)

Traveling in Lisbon

The best way to get to know Lisbon is to walk. Lisbon has a few hills but nothing is more beautiful than walking the old streets. Sometimes you may need to catch an elevador but that’s just part of the fun.

If you need to, use the underground which is cheap, fast and clean. A journey ticket will cost you 0,70 euros for zone 1 which covers most of the city center. There also a bus network that might be more useful if you’re visiting something not in the underground’s way.

For transport directions get the underground and bus map or access the Google Maps Lisbon Underground mashup.

What to visit in Lisbon
Bairro Alto

Bairro (as it is shortly called by the Portuguese) is one of Lisbon’s trendiest neighborhoods. During the day its narrow streets have a very friendly athmosphere and you can shop around the design shops. But when night comes, the neighborhood gets full of life. Restaurants (some with Fado), bars and discos make this area of the liveliest in town.

September 24, 2006 | Tags: day to day | 17 Comments

Trust your friends not the Wisdom of Crowds

Social Shopping is still in its infancy because it hasn’t reached the mainstream audience, yet. It has come a long way this year and after the first innovative experiments - like the successful Etsy (my view here) - it is finally getting more attention.

Following this, new services (Wists, Kaboodle, StyleHive, ThisNext, Crowdstorm) have been created and a lot more are on the works. But I’m doubtful of the focus of some of these services.

What is Social Shopping ?
Wikipedia describes

Social Shopping to be based on the principles outlined in the wisdom of crowds where a large group of users can recommend products to each other and between them work out what to buy and which ones have the most buzz.

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion thinks that

Social Shopping can take several forms, but in sum it means creating places where people can collaborate online, get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services and then purchase them. It shrinks the research and purchasing cycle by creating a single destination powered by the power of many.

I agree with recommend products to each other and get advice from trusted individuals but I’m not so keen on the idea that most buzz and power of many are valuable Social Shopping definitions.

Trust your friends
James Surowiecki’s book on the Wisdom of Crowds explores the simple idea that

large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

There are a thousands of examples where this is certainly true. But there are also a few ones where this idea does not apply. Product recommendation is one of them.

A practical example: if you have 10 reviews on a bottle of wine and 9 of them were negative (from unknown people) and 1 of them was positive and from a friend, which recommendation would you trust ? Of course it depends on how much you trust this friend, but in general I would follow a friend’s recommendation over the people’s choice. So the focus should be on the friends side not on the crowds. This leads me to another point, niche oriented sites.

Niche Social Shopping Sites provide a much more interesting user experience than generic ones. By focusing on just one type of object: books at LibraryThing, Photos at flickr, sneakerplay for… well, sneakers (and, hopefully, wine at Adegga) these communities are more prepared to serve the specific needs of each of these products. And, because the user is using a niche interest oriented service it is more likely to find (or make) friends there and decide who is trustable to him.

So I guess that by not being niche and not focusing on friends each of those Social Shopping services fail in serving the users needs. And if users find a place where their individual motives are better fulfilled then they’ll change to the new service.

What do you think of these sites ? Have you used any Social Shopping site ?

September 22, 2006 | Tags: business | 11 Comments

SHiFT Workshop: Designing the Next Generation of Web Applications

SHiFT is happening next thursday and Friday. But first on next on Wednesday it’s Workshop day. There’s a lot of good stuff happening on this day and now that prices were reduced there’s no excuse for not coming.

There are 3 scheduled: Ruby On Rails (195 Euros), Creativity Workshop (170 Euros) and Designing the Next Generation of Web Applications (245 euros).

I think that they are all interesting but I’m looking forward to go to Designing the Next Generation of Web Applications given by Peter Merholz, partner at Adaptive Path.

In this workshop Peter Merholz will explore the topics of of openness, trust and relinquishing control that are so close to Web 2.0 ideas. He will also argument how these are not threats to business but opportunities to be explored. During the Workshop Peter will also talk about some details on designing for the next generation of Web applications.

Here’s a small view of the Workshop program:

Introduction: Examples of next-generation web sites, Principles underlying next-generation web success, The impact of broadband and rich internet applications, The change in user behavior, desiring control, authenticity, and participation, Introducing the Elements of User Experience - Surface, Skeleton, Structure, Scope, and Strategy.

Surface: Visual design for maximum understanding, Visual cues and Ajax, MySpace - ugly but effective, Developing visual standards.

Skeleton: Introduction to Ajax, Ajax Behaviors: Incrementality, Everything is Alive, Implicit User, Actions, Prefetching, Action at a Distance, Multivariateness, Ajax UI Patterns, Wireframes for Ajax.

Structure: Interaction Design: Principles of interaction design, Single-screen design, Design for the ecosystem.

Structure: Information Architecture: The New Order, Algorithmic Information Architecture, Tags and folksonomies, Wikis.

Scope: Functionality for free, Feature stinginess, Feature sufficiency, Feature extensibility
Develop a platform mindset.

Strategy: Know what problems you’re solving, Invest only what’s necessary to (dis)prove and improve your offering, De-risk the commercialization of your ideas, Relinquish control, Seek differentiation, not parity.

This is a unique opportunity to learn from someone who has been involved with some of the most interesting projects happening on the Web. I’ll try no to miss it. Are you interested ?

Update: I’m now sure that I’ll be at this great Workshop. Who’s is coming too ?

September 21, 2006 | Tags: peter+merholz, shift | 6 Comments

Social Value from Individual Motives

Tom Coates presentation for the Future of Web Apps conferece - Greater than the sum of its parts - explores the models behind Flickr, Wikipedia and other tools (like Adegga) that gather social value from individual motives.

In his own words:

The talk is about how to generate systems and models wherein large groups of people can publically create something together that’s more than the sum of its parts. It’s about Wikipedia, Flickr, motives for social engagement, how to derive value from innumerable small contributions and what challenges this form of creation may be causing in a world of proprietary data.

I think Tom Coates captured the topic very well. It’s an effective presentation that gets the message through.

If you like this topic, check out last year’s presentation - Native to a Web of Data - where Tom advises on the use of good URLs. A theme that I like a lot and have been using extensively on the development of Adegga.

September 21, 2006 | Tags: day to day | 1 Comment

Simplified Wordpress Case Study

Last week I’ve spent some time helping Batixa (my girlfriend) to update her blog da batixa (located at cor.delaranja.com) to Wordpress’s latest version. By using K2 as a template and a few plugins we managed to create an easy to manage personal space that explores some of Wordpress’s easy-to-use features.

Easy to manage sidebar with Widgets
K2 supports widgets. This widget thing is very useful because it lets the blog owner manage the things on the blog’s sidebar without knowing how to edit a web page. Previously she had to edit the template and mess around the html and php stuff. Now it’s much easier.

Pages
Using the Pages functionality of Wordpress we created a Photos page by getting all the javascript code from her Flickr account. And we also created a Library page based on her LibraryThing catalog. Because the data is on the services (flickr and LibraryThing) each time it is updated the blog is also updated. By using the K2 template all new pages are automatically added to the top menu.

Header image
Updating the header image is another thing that K2 makes very easy to do. We can choose to upload just one picture (via admin area) or several making it possible to rotate between all of them.

Plugins
To get tags on Wordpress we used the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin and to manage the blog’s RSS feed (and get readership numbers) the new feed is now hosted by FeedBurner.

Removing spam comments automatically
Akismet is one the most useful Wordpress plugins. It’s a plugin but it comes by default when you download Wordpress. Akismet is a collaborative effort to create an effective comment and trackback anti-spam tool. I have also used in another blog and I can say that it works almost perfectly.

Wordpress as a Content Management System
Wordpress is such a powerful tool and has so many plugins that some people have been using Wordpress as a light Content Management System. The results are very good. Just look at the VentureBeat website. Besides the beautiful design, VentureBeat has all the normal features that such a publication needs.

If you’re looking for the ease of use of Wordpress but can’t (or don’t want to) install the source code from wordpress.org, then register for the hosted version at wordpress.com.

If you’re looking for more flexibility and customization, download the latest Wordpress version and install it on any simple shared hosting account.

September 21, 2006 | Tags: tech | 2 Comments

London Photos

All the photos from the time spent in London are now online at her flickr.

She made this lovely badge using Mosaic Maker.

September 21, 2006 | Tags: day to day | Leave a Comment

BloggerView

I have been interviewed by Hugo following his very interesting BloggerView initiative where he has been doing interviews with bloggers from blogs (Portuguese and abroad) that he usually follows on his newsreader.

The interviews are published in Hugo’s blog which is in itself a very interesting resource.

This was my turn and I thank him for the opportunity and for making sure that this week I would finish the interview. I hope you like it.

September 14, 2006 | Tags: day to day | 1 Comment

New blog design

For those of you that read this blog via RSS feed* or via aggregators like Planeta Asterisco, I’ve changed a few things around the blog to make it worth the visit not just for a post.

The design is now 3-columns wide to be able to fit more content on the top part of the page with less cluter. I have added a badge with my recent photos, a list of ramdom books (with covers) from my library and links to some of the projects I’ve been playing with like Adegga and wineCrossing. On one of the columns I’ve also added a tag cloud so it’s now easier to see what kind of subjects I’m writing about and access the articles in an easier way.

I’ve taken advantage of the wonderful Wordpress templating system which let’s users save time on maintaing their blogs, I’ve choosen a template found on headsetoptions that uses pictures from the colorful art of Mandarin Musing.

Update: I have restored the full contents to the RSS feed which is what I think makes sense now as Carlos pointed out on the comments (thanks!). I was making a test but it doesn’t make sense anymore. People shouldn’t have to come to the website to have content served. Full RSS feed on the same url as always: http://feeds.feedburner.com/delaranja/blog.

* if you don’t know what RSS is read this.

September 12, 2006 | Tags: day to day | 4 Comments

Volver

After a long time away from cinema, I went to see Volver, the new film from Pedro Almodovar featuring Penelope Cruz and Lola Dueñas.

Volver is the kind of Spanish film that I like. It’s the kind of film that shows real life with passion and with some pain.

I also like and recommend Los Lunes al Sol (one of my favourite films), Mar Adentro and Hable con ella which are all good examples of such intensive films.

September 12, 2006 | Tags: day to day, volver | 2 Comments

Perl Best Practices Course

The busy month continues. A few weeks ago I was able to participate in a very interesting BarCamp Portugal (see more here and here) where I spent a weekend sharing and learning among a group of very talented people wanting to do and show their stuff. I hope we can repeat it soon.

In the next 2 days I’ll be in a course on Perl Best Practices given by Perl architect, author and lecturer Damien Conway. Besides the well known contributions to the Perl community, Damien is the author of Object Oriented Perl and Perl Best Practices, two reference books to the people who use Perl.

I have Perl Best Practices in my library so I’ll just take it with me tomorow as a course manual.

September 11, 2006 | Tags: barcamppt06, damien+conway, perl | Leave a Comment

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My name is André Ribeirinho, I'm an entrepreneur who lives in Portugal
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Adegga is a social wine discovery service. The idea is to take the complexity out of wine and allow people to discover wines based other people's choices.

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