No smoking, finalmente

Amanhã vamos todos deixar de fumar. Involuntariamente.

no smoking


A lei diz:

A nova Lei visa proteger os cidadãos da exposição involuntária ao fumo do tabaco, nos locais públicos, espaços de trabalho e lazer.

Eu digo: finalmente.

December 31, 2007 | Tags: | 2 Comments 

Slice of the day: Invest in you

Redefine success to be any good learning experience

Invest in yourself and your future.

A startup is like school, but you actually learn something.

All said by Paul Buchheit (Google’s Gmail creator) on Startup School and his blog.

December 28, 2007 | Tags: | Leave a Comment 

The Happiness Factory

When you combine advertising and animation the results are normally amazing. If you love animation you’ll love Happiness Factory. The campaign was made by Psyop for Wieden+Kennedy and Coca-Cola and lots of information is available online.

It all started as a coca-cola ad:

Then a documentary (6 min) was made to make you intimate with the characters. The voices are done by actual Coca-Cola employees and the result reminds me of aardman type of magic.

And now a movie is coming. Here’s the trailer (3 min 30 sec):

If you are interested in this campaign take a look at this great related article, this interview with ad directors Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulich or browse through lots of great pictures.

The Happiness Factory

December 28, 2007 | Tags: , | 1 Comment 

Slice of the day: Don’t just give up on life.

If your job isn’t working for you, if it isn’t making you happy and energized, then why are you still there? I can’t guarantee that you’ll find something better, but perhaps you should at least try something new. Don’t just give up on life.

by Paul Buchheit (Google’s Gmail creator) on Is there more to life than money.

December 26, 2007 | | Leave a Comment 

Call Girl - Um bom filme português

Fui à ante-estreia do Call Girl e gostei. Uma história de corrupção política com os ingredientes básicos: (muito) sexo e dinheiro. Nicolau Breyner, Soraia Chaves, Ivo Canelas e Joaquim de Almeida estão muito bem.

Aqui fica o trailer:

December 19, 2007 | Tags: | 4 Comments 

psd2html - you design, they code xhtml

In a consulting project I was doing last month I had the site’s design but had to cut it into xhtml to able to use it. While I was researching for an easier way to do the slicing I found out that there are a couple of companies doing it online at a very competitive price and providing a great set of features:

  • 8 hours to finish
  • $150 (yes, dollars!)
  • Valid XHTML
  • Table-less CSS markup
  • Compatibility with IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari
  • a bunch of other options

My experience
After looking at a couple of available services I decided to give psd2html a try. I filed the online order form where I added 2 different pages (homepage and article page) and selected a couple of different options like Flexible Layout Width and Dynamic Rollovers for the menus. A few minutes later I received an email saying that they were checking the code and then another one with the final time estimate.

Only 14 hours later I got my standard-compliant design. Under-promise and over-deliver is always a winning strategy. I was definitely surprised by how quick and good the service was. Support is also very quick and is done via a ticketing system which is basically a direct communication channel between you and the developer doing your code. I have since used the service again with the same good results.

psd2html logo

A commodity = opportunity for companies
While I can imagine various situations where using a service like this would not be suitable, most of the times it is just what a most people are looking for. Quality code done in a short time frame and at a very competitive price is turning xhtml coding into a commodity and reducing the overall price of getting a website launched.

Portuguese services
With so many Portuguese web designers / xhtml coders competing for work how come no one is doing something similar. There are hundreds of companies needing these services (myself included) so it wouldn’t be difficult to come up with clients. Anyone out there?

December 17, 2007 | Tags: | 24 Comments 

Slice of the day: Knol

Google using its page rank system to its own benefit. Think of it this way: Google’s mysterious Page Rank system is what Internet Explorer was to Microsoft in the late 1990s: a way to control the destiny of others.

By Om Malik on Google’s Death Knol For Some?

December 14, 2007 | Tags: , | Leave a Comment 

Slice of the Day: Curiosity about the world

Having that kind of curiosity about the world helps anyone succeed, no matter what kind of work they decide to pursue.

Bill Gates on The skills you need to succeed.

December 14, 2007 | Tags: , | Leave a Comment 

Adegga on BusinessWeek

Adegga on BusinessWeek

The article - Building a Facebook for Wine - talks about the entrepreneurs that are trying to create viable wine businesses through social networks. Adegga is profiled:

Three Portuguese entrepreneurs launched a beta version of Adegga in October. Billed as “social wine discovery,” the site allows users to create watch-lists to see what their friends, wine producers, or shops are tasting and talking about. Users can also search for wines and compare prices. The trio’s biggest challenge was sticking to their original concept while listening to suggestions from potential investors and people in the wine industry. “We could be tempted to change our project to please everyone. Thankfully, we have listened to everyone, but ended up doing what we thought was the right path for our project.”

WineZap, OpenBottles, Bottletalk, Snooth, Corkd and Vinorati are the other social wine sites mentioned in the article. On all of them there’s an interesting story behind.

This is one of the conclusions of the article:

It’s growing fast—many of the companies, which rely on social media tools to build communities of users, are less than a year old—and no clear market leader has emerged.

Everything in online social wine is only starting to develop. It is a fast growing area with lots of opportunities coming up. I hope that 2008 will unveil some of those opportunities. Adegga will certainly be there to take part.

December 11, 2007 | | 9 Comments 

Vote for Adegga

TechCrunch, GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb and VentureBeat are organizing a competition and award ceremony - The Crunchies 2007 - to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year.

We are going for “Best bootstrapped start-up” nomination. The Best Bootstrapped Start-up is for a company that has raised less than $100.000 from individuals, angels or others which fits us like a glove. Adegga is completely self-funded and has been bootstrapping a lot.

Crunchies2007

If you want to support us just visit the Crunchies and nominate us!

If you want to nominate us for other categories (Likely to succeed would nice) vote there. Thanks for the all support!

Congratulations to Webreakstuff for the design and development of The Crunchies.

Update: adegga didn’t make it to the final nominees but I would like to thank for the support of everyone that voted for us. Thank you very much!

December 6, 2007 | | 1 Comment 

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