(in no particular order)

Kristina Halvorson

In 2014 one of my favourite speakers was Kristina Halvorson. I really look forward to hear her again talkin about content strategy.

Manu Lanvin

I never thougt I would enjoy french blues. But it’s never to later to wise up.

The Comedy festival

If Sixth street gets too dirty and loud, and you need a quiet(er) evening, the the comedy showcases are what you need. A good laugh with a smaller crowd of people.

Treat your developers as artists

This session about how to treat your developers sounds really great.

The SXSW Art Program

Diverse and centered in digital media.

Sessions involving NASA

From live-interviews with ISS to featuring astronauts at the stage, NASA seems to be involved in SXSW. This time it’s Mars and (other) Alien Worlds

Austin

Nice people. Good weather(much better when compared to Copenhagen). Great food – breakfast tacos ought to be a bullet by themselves. What’s not to like?

Eric Tessmer Band

Don’t ever visit Austin without listening to Eric Tessmer.

The series starts with an almost HBO-like intro of a withering metal-snake turning into a tattoed snake belonging to the main character, Takeshi  Kovachs (Joel Kinnaman, Will Yun Lee). And yes, the main character is played by more than one actor, as the premise of this science fiction series is that resleeving is not merely a distinct dream, but the harsh reality of the world. Resleeving is the act of downloading the mind of a human and inserting it into another body (called a sleeve).

Your body is not who you are

This is possible as long as the cortical stack, which is a chip inserted into ones neck, isn’t harmed.

Of course new  bodies aren’t cheap, exemplified by the family of three, where the seven year old daughter was killed. The government gave her a new body, but a body of a middle-aged woman, leaving the family between the hard choice of letting her grow up in that, buy a new body they couldn’t afford or put her mind back into the darkness..

Takeshi Kovacs was a freedom fighter who was killed and had his mind imprisoned in Alcatraz for 250 years. After  being resleeved into a new body (Joel Kinnaman), he was released as property of Lauren Bancroft (James Purefoy), a wealthy meth. Meths are methuselahs, wealthy people living hundreds of years by resleeving to a new body when necessary.

Kovacs, still reliving his memories of his violent murder 250 years ago, is brought back by Lauren Bancroft to solve the murder of Lauren Bancroft.. Bancroft was murdered and his cortical stack destroyed. But being a filthy rich, he regurlarly uploads his mind to a satellite, from which he was resleeved after his murder, but now lacking the last 48 hours before his death. And Bancroft wants to know who killed him and why..

Altered Carbon is exposition heavy in the pilot episode, but cyperpunk Bay City looks great, and Joel Kinneman and especially Wil Yun Lee are good in the role as Takeshi Kovacs, and the story is interesting, although a typical detective-noir story (besided being hired by the murder victim after his death).

(all images are from Nørreport Metro in Copenhagen where all the ad spaces have been bought by Netflix at the premiere of the series)

Since 2016 they have released a new album, Visions of a Life, which is heavily featured at the setlist, but without forgetting about the great songs from the debut-album “My Love is Cool”.

The setlist has a wide range, from atmospheric songs like “St Purple & Green” to the raging riffs in “Yuk Foo” and “Moaning Lisa Smile”.

Ellie alternates between singing and roaring, using two mics showing off the dynamic range of her voice.

Wolf Alice is a energetic band, which they proved from the beginning of the setlist with Heavenward and  Yuk Foo with bassist Theo Ellis heavily gesturing to the crowd. They lost a bit of the energy in the middle of the setlist where Ellie Rowsell seemed a bit distanced to the crowd and the music, but their snarling energy returned a little later  with renewed power.

Wolf Alice is a great live band and despite seeming a bit distanced (or maybe tired) for a few songs in the middle of the concert, the band is entertaining and gave a rousing performance tonight.

My favourite Wolf Alice song

Figured out I’m good
Turn me down like I knew I should
Punch drunk, dumb struck, pot luck happy happy

Don’t chicken out, it’s all good
You’re allowed to be what you could

Blush is my all-time Wolf Alice favourite song and they played a beautiful rendition of it as the first song of the encore. It’s low-key which is a great contrast to the energic songs ending the ordinary setlist.

Support: WY

Support was the swedish duo WY. The short seven song performance proved their songs to be good, although the live versions had muddled bass and some of them were a bit too sample heavy to my taste.

WY would also profit from a bit more stage presence although that improved a lot in their last song.

Better sound, less samples and WY is a good live act.

Setlist

1. Heavenward
2. Yuk Foo
3. You’re a Germ
4. Your Loves Whore
5. St. Purple & Green
6. Don’t Delete the Kisses
7. Planet Hunter
8. Bros
9. Silk
10. Lisbon
11. Beautifully Unconventional
12. Formidable Cool
13. Sadboy
14. Space & Time
15. Moaning Lisa Smile
16. Visions of a Life
17. Fluffy

Encore

18. Blush
19. Giant Peach

Gogle Play Music Playlist featuring the setlist

I downloaded Lego Digital Designer and built a prototype of the rack with it and then used the “Pick a Brick” option at lego.com to buy the bricks I needed.

My design can be found here. This design has room for 7 Pis (my current build only has room for 3).

A few images of the process:

After a few days my bag of bricks arrived and the really fun parts began.

First of course, I needed to sort to bricks. Nobody builds lego without sorting the bricks first, right?

The finished rack with room for 2 Pis. The blue tiles are meant to make it easy to write the names and the purposes of the different Pis on the rack. I covered them with transparent tape before writing, so I can easily change the text without having to clean the tiles first.

The finished rack with Raspberry Pis. Next time I buy bricks, I might need a few extra bricks to keep the Pis in their place.

This blog entry shows you how to utilize Open Graph or Schema.org meta tags to ensure the right content is presented in social shares.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Google+
Pinterest
Full example

Facebook

(Reference: http://ogp.me/ )

In order to help Facebook select the link, image and text you want to display in your shares, you need to utilize the Open Graph meta properties. Put these in the header of every page on your website.

An example of this is the following snippet:

<meta property="og:title" content="Title of your article" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.example.com/canonical-url-of-the-article.html" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/image.jpg" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description of your article" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name" />
<meta property="fb:app_id" content="APPID"/>
<meta property="fb:admins" content="Facebook Admin ID" />

og:title is the title of the webpage.

og:type is usually article, but could differ for audio, video, books or profiles. Read more about Open Graph Object Types [http://ogp.me/#types]

og:url should be the same as the canonical URL of the webpage.

og:image defines the image you want to share (should be an image URL). Besides the og:image url, you should also set the og:image:secure_url to an alternate HTTPS image URL. If necessary, use og:image:height and og:image:width to set height and width of the image (in pixels).

You should use og:description to create short description of the webpage.

The og:site_name property can be used for the overall site name.

If you want to view facebook insights for the webpage, you should also include the fb:app_id tag. fb:admins defines the facebook administrators, who are permitted to view the facebook insights (numerical id of the admins comma-separated if you have more than one).

Title, type, URL, Image and description should always be present.

You can test your Open Graph data by using Facebook Debugger, https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug

Twitter

(Reference: https://dev.twitter.com/cards/overview)

Twitter uses Twitter Card data to select the right data for shares. After implementing the meta tags, you can validate the meta tags with the validator found here: https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator

<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary" />
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@twitter_handle" />
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Title of your article" />
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Description of your article" />
<meta name="twitter:image" content="http://www.example.com/image.jpg" />

twitter:card is the type of the Twitter Card. See [https://dev.twitter.com/cards/overview] for a list of cards.

twitter:site is the Twitter username the card should be attributed to. You need this meta tag for analytics [https://dev.twitter.com/cards/analytics]

LinkedIn

(Reference: https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/share-on-linkedin )

Like Facebook, LinkedIn uses Open Graph metatags for presenting the right content. Following is an example of what you need for LinkedIn:

<meta property="og:title" content="Title of your Article" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description of your article" />
<meta property="og:url" content=" http://www.example.com/canonical-url-of-the-article.html " />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/image.jpg" />


Google+

(Reference: https://developers.google.com/+/web/snippet/ )

Google uses Schema.org microdata for social shares. This means you need to add the following attributes to your head tag.

<head itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Article”>

The schema.org uses the following meta tags:

<meta itemprop="name" content="Title of your article" />
<meta itemprop="description" content="Description of your article" />
<meta itemprop="image" content="http://www.example.com/image.jpg" />


Pinterest

(Reference: https://developers.pinterest.com/rich_pins_article )

Pinterest uses either Open Graph like Facebook or Schema.org semantics like Google to display the right data (called Rich Pins).

Open Graph

The 3 required fields for Pinterest are the following:

<meta property="og:title" content="Title of your Article" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description of your article" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />

Besides those, the following are strongly suggested to add as well.

<meta property="og:url" content=" http://www.example.com/canonical-url-of-the-article.html " />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Name of the website" />


Schema.org

Just like Google+ you can use Schema.org itemprops for Pinterest.

<meta itemprop="name" content="Title of your Article" />
<meta itemprop="description" content="Description of your article" />
<meta itemprop="image" content=http://www.example.com/image.jpg />
<meta itemprop="url" content="http://www.example.com/canonical-url-of-the-article.html" />

If you want to validate your Rich Pins, you can use the following URL: https://developers.pinterest.com/rich_pins/validator

The validator is used in the approval process for enabling Rich Pins as well.

Full Example

The following is a full example of what needs to go into your <head> tag to make sure the social media are displaying the right data.

<head itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Article >
<!-- Open Graph Meta Data for Facebook and LinkedIn -->
<meta property="og:title" content="Title of your article" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.example.com/canonical-url-of-the-article.html" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/image.jpg" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description of your article" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name" />
<meta property="fb:app_id" content="APPID"/>
<meta property="fb:admins" content="Facebook Admin ID" />

<!– Twitter Card –>
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary” />
<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@twitter_handle” />
<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Title of your article” />
<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Description of your article” />
<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.jpg” />

<!—Google+ and Pinterest Schema.org annotations  –>
<meta itemprop=”name” content=”Title of your article” />
<meta itemprop=”description” content=”Description of your article” />
<meta itemprop=”image” content=”http://www.example.com/image.jpg” />
<meta itemprop=”url” content=”http://www.example.com/canonical-url-of-the-article.html” />

</head>

I have used articles as an example, but all 3 annotation types allows for other types of data, like for example products or persons.

See also my first blog entry on Seo Key Elements for developers, 

The following is a list of some of the things, we always should make sure are applied to the web page.

Title, Keywords and Description

Elements like Title, Keywords and Description metatags should be easy to edit. As of 2015, the Title should be no more than 55 characters and ideally no less than 40 characters. The Description no more than 115 characters. The CMS should count the characters for the editors and display the number when editing.

Examples of title, keyword and description metatags:

<title>Example title</title>
<metatag name=”keyword” description=”keyword, another keyword, important keyword too” />
<metatag name=”description” description=”description of the content of the current webpage” />

URL

The URL should be less than 90 characters, although this is not a hard limit. It is far more important to make sure the website has a SEO-friendly URL structure that is meaningful and not dependent on a page URL. For example, www.example.com/topic/page is better than www.example.com/?page=9999 . This often depends on CMS, but is sometimes customizable, for example in WordPress.

Header tags

Even if the opinions differ on this, make sure that the header tags are optimized for SEO. One H1 tag only per page. This means better web accessibility as well). In addition, Bing prefers one H1 tag only. Of course, you can allow any number of H2 and H3 tags.

The next SEO for developers blog entry deals with Social Media tags

.sln

The .sln file contains the Visual Studio Solution, for example the projects, project items and solution items. It also contains source control settings and other global level settings. It is a text-based file.

The .sln file is shared between developers and should be included in source control.

If the .sln file is deleted, the solution can’t be opened at once anymore, but the individual projects can still be opened (via the .csproj files, see below)

.suo

The .suo file contains the Solution User Options, for example user level customizations such as breakpoints. It is a binary file.

The .suo file is user-specific and should be ignored in source control.

It is safe to delete this file, and deleting it might help problems with hanging debugs.

.user

The .user file is another user option file. It contains things like start options for debugging the project and the last configuration, such as open tabs. It is a text-based file.

The .user file can be included in source control if the developers need the same debug settings, but most often should not be.

.csproj

The .csproj files is project files, and populates the hierrachy with that project’s items. It wraps relevant references etc

The .csproj files should be included in source control.

Langt hen ad vejen ser det fint ud, men der er især en ting, der driller mig, når jeg skal bestille billetter. Billetter i flertal, for problemet er værst, når jeg skal bestille mere end en. Hvis jeg for eksempel vil bestille to pladsbilletter, så klikker jeg to gange hurtigt (ofte har man jo travlt, når man er i gang med en billetbestilling) på counteren – de to pile op og ned – ud for pladsbilletter.

Men i stedet for at tælle op med to, så ser billedet nu bare sådan ud efter et kort “blink” på skærmen.

Der er stadig ikke nogen pladsbilletter, men counteren er blevet rød.

Et enkelt klik på den, viser hvad problemet er.

‘

I virkeligheden er det ikke en counter, men en dropdown, så man skal kun klikke en gang på den og så vælge det antal billetter, man ønsker at bestille.

Men ved at bruger et billede, der forbindes med counters (pile pegende op og ned), så bliver man som bruger let forvirret – og billetbestillingen bliver gjort mere besværlig. Ærgerligt, når DSB nu netop har gjort det rimeligt simpelt at bruge.

Update: Jeg har fået en tweet fra DSB, der fortæller de vil ændre dette, næste gang de opdaterer siden.

Selvfølgelig havde HBO brugt det generelle hashtag #got på twitter, men til kampagnen havde de desuden taget to andre i brug, #beautifuldeath og #takethethrone .

Som alle, der har set tv-serien eller læst bogserien bag, ved, så er serien kendt for at ingen af personerne kan vide sig sikre – alle kan dø. Og beautifuldeath kampagnen spiller på dette, da den er en serie af flotte tegninger af alle de dødsfald, der har været i de første 3 sæsoner af tv-serien. Kampagnen fortsætter iøvrigt under 4.sæson, hvor der hver onsdag kommer et nyt billede fra weekendens afsnit.

#takethethrone kampagnen er i stedet centreret omkring kongetronen, hele serien handler om.  Udover at HBO selv har brugt tagget, blev det også brugt af en del andre under fx SXSW i starten af marts, hvor der var en Game of Thrones udstilling. Her kunne man få taget et billede, hvor man sidder i tronen, hvilket blandt andet både Seth Meyers og Grumpy Cat benyttede sig af.

Piggybackers

Men en del andre benyttede også hashtagget til deres egne formål.  Som man kan se i dette screenshot fra Twitter (fra d. 7 april – dagen efter den amerikanske premiere på 4. sæson), så hoppede både Burger King, Benji Madden og InStyle på tagget også.

Både for Burger King og InStyle er det lykkedes at dreje tweetet, så det handler om deres egne produkter, samtidigt med at det er i hvert fald lidt relevant for #takethethrone interesserede. Nok mere relevant i InStyles tilfælde end i Burger Kings, imens at Benji Maddens tweet mere er et “se mig” tweet i et forsøg på holde sig selv relevant.

Hvis man kigger på #takethethrone tagget nu, så er det desværre blevet en del forurenet af en masse tweets, der lige som Benji Madden mere er et forsøg på at blive set, end på at dele relevant indhold. Så HBOs succes har nok ødelagt det hashtag for dem, men da deres kampagne ikke har været enstrenget – og da deres fans nok skal følge serien lige meget hvad – så kommer det ikke til at betyde så meget for dem. Og mon ikke de finder på et nyt hashtag til 5. sæson.

Efter udleveringen af badge og en pose med guides, var der et par timer til den første session. Vi gik en tur rundt for at få et indtryk af hvor langt der var mellem Austin Conference Center og de hoteller i nærheden, hvor de fleste sessions foregik. Ca 5 minutter inde i den tur stødte vi på nogle, der stærkt argumenterede for at vi skulle møde op en halv time senere og stå i kø selvsamme sted. Hvis vi var blandt de 25 første der gjorde det, ville vi “vinde” en bustur med Grumpy Cat.

I Conference Centeret var der udover en Deloitte bod med 3d-printede modeller en Subway Flatizza (pizza) bod, hvor man kunne prøve et spil. Umiddelbart ligner det et helt almindeligt konsolspil, men styremetoden er lidt speciel – man styrer det via hjernebølger – de to spillere har en lille ting på hovedet, der måler deres hjernebølger.

Som nævnt havde Deloitte en bod med 3d-printede modeller. Men ud over plastikmdodellerne, som i sig selv var ganske imponerende, så var det, der trak folk til deres bod, det 3d-printede slik. Det smagte måske lidt kedeligt og var lidt for sukkeragtigt, men udseendet på slikket fejlede ikke noget! De kunne printe en bakke på en time på en enkelt printer.

Om søndagen åbnede Trade Showet som er en noget blandet landhandel. Ikke alle har lige meget at fremvise og lige på det punkt vinder Gaming Expoen, for selv om den ikke var stor, var der en masse forskelligt udstyr – fra Oculus Rift til et digitalt poolbord.

På trods af boder, trade show og gaming expo samt diverse fester hver aften, er grundstenen i SXSW de forskellige sessions.Det er ikke svært at finde på noget at gå til – men det er svært at vælge i det meget brogede udbud. Mit personlige mix endte med at indeholde noget fra rigtigt mange kategorier: Development, Design/UX, Content og Social Media – samt et par WTF & Beyond (alene det at man har en kategori med dette navn er jo fantastisk  ).

Derudover er der keynotes. Jeg nåede desværre ikke at se det hele af Neil DeGrasse Tysons keynote, som ellers var meget populær. Tyson er en astrofysiker, som gør en del ud af at gøre science tilgængeligt – og interessant – for alle.

Anne Wojcicki brugte desværre det meste af hendes keynote på at gøre reklame for hendes virksomhed,23AndMe, imens Chelsea Clinton var en positiv overraskelse for mig. Hun fortalte levende om teknologisk udvikling og især om at bruge den til at gøre noget godt, for eksempel skaffe rent drikkevand i Afrika.

Joi Ito er simpelthen en kategori for sig selv. Jeg var så heldig at se ham i to forskellige sessions. “The Future of Making” og “Infinite Future of Cyber and Hyper”. Hans beskrivelse af hvordan de på MIT Media Lab arbejder med produktionsformer i fremtiden og hvordan de lader sig inspirere af science fiction forfattere (som til gengæld har sværere og sværere ved at skrive sci-fi, da nutiden hele tiden overhaler dem), var meget spændende.

Downs

Enkelte sessions var ikke så gode. Jeg har nævnt Anne Wojcicki ovenover, men udover den ramte jeg et par andre der ikke var helt hvad jeg havde forventet eller håbet på. Men det gode ved SXSW er at så kan man altid forlade lokalet og finde noget andet, der er mere interessant.

Ups

Jeg kendte ikke noget til ham på forhånd, men Joi Ito var en stor oplevelse for mig.

Hele konferencen er i sig selv en stor optur. Der er hele tiden noget spændende at gå til og høre om – lige meget hvad man er interesseret i.

Og ellers er et hvert sted, hvor det er næsten obligatorisk fra tid til anden at sætte sig ned og genoplade ens smartphone eller bærbare, fordi man har brugt alt batteri på twitter og andre sociale medier, jo per definition fantastisk!

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