2008 is near its end, so we thought it’s time for a little compilation of this year’s Genau events.

Internship
2008 was a break-through for Genau in many ways. We had our first intern, Sara. It was great for us so if you are considering something like an internship in a small internet company with a lot of edge then just contact us or drop by for coffee.

English
Around May year we did a language shift here on the blog, and most of our blog posts since then have been in English. We are not sure if we should go on with the English. It makes sense to write in English since we often work with people that don’t understand Danish, but on the other hand most of our readers are Danish and it would probably feel odd for you/them to comment on something in English. Let us know what you think.

New office
In July we moved into our office in Mikkel Bryggers Gade in downtown Copenhagen, and we are still here. We share the office space with five other people, mainly journalists and other writing people. It is great to have a real work place with nice people around. Every second week we get a big box of fresh fruit delivered, and we have even hosted a few parties. We probably have some film nights coming up soon.

Commercial projects
During 2008 we made about 15 websites and two or three consultancy jobs. You can see some of the websites in the about section. Regarding the webdesign we are looking forward to continue with WordPress solutions for small websites and Drupal for bigger projects, but in 2009 we want to have a better balance between practical webdesigning and consulting.

Own projects – 200 DJs and CCMS
In August we arranged a second version of the 200 DJs project. Organizing the event was quite tough this time. The biggest problem was finding a location. The one we had in mind turned us down after months of waiting because of problems with authorities. And the managers at our back-up location managed to do a double booking and told us only two weeks before the date of the event. Then we were offered a great place in Kødbyen but Københavns Ejendomme stopped it because of “too much partying” in the area. Finally By og Havn saved us by offering us the old terminal for the Poland ferry in the northern part of the central harbour. A very cool location but our crowd couldn’t fill up the vast space, and the great feeling from the first 200 DJs event never really materialized. We ended up with some financial hardship after the event but we learned so much.

The first version of CCMS – creative content management system – was launched in February. And the second version of CCMS launched gradually during November. Improvements are huge – lots of jquery, design improvements, user inputs, in-browser audio playing, video etc. And you can simply start using it on the hosted version at www.ccms.nu. So far it is in Danish but most people will understand it. We presented the beta version at the course “learning and IT” at the IT University of Copenhagen – thanks for having us and thanks for the feedback.

So what’s up for 2009?
Apart from our webdesign jobs and concultancy work – the commercial branch of Genau – we have one particular project in mind for 2009. We want to buy an old bus just like these Swedes did. Then we want to paint it and create a space for getting things done. More to come. Get in touch if you want to participate.

Happy new year!

Som opfølgning på den lille vejledning til RSS i sidste uge kommer her et relateret indlæg om bogmærkedelings-værktøjet Delicious. Delicious har eksisteret i fem år, men vi har indtryk af, at der stadig er ret få ganske almindelige internetbrugere, som gør brug af det.

I første omgang kan Delicious ses som et online alternativ til at organisere bogmærker/favorit-hjemmesider i stedet for at bruge browseren. Man logger ind på sin Delicious-side, hvor man har sine samlede bogmærker, som man kan tilgå fra hvilken som helst computer. Men Delicious er meget mere:

• Bogmærkerne på Delicious er jo offentlige – alle andre kan se dem. Det betyder måske, at det er nogle andre typer af bogmærker, man bruger Delicious til, end dem man kun selv kan se i browserens indbyggede bogmærkefunktion.

• Bogmærkerne sorteres kronologisk i takt med at de bliver “bogmærket”. Dermed danner der sig en strøm af nyt indhold – noget helt andet end traditionel brug af bogmærker og favoritsider.

• Delicious bruger såkaldt tagging, som fungerer sådan, at man tilknytter et eller flere valgfri nøgleord til et bogmærke. Man kan søge på alles bogmærker, som er blevet tagget med et bestemt nøgleord.

• Man kan se hvilke andre brugere – og hvor mange – som har tilføjet de samme bogmærker til Delicious som en selv. Hvis en hjemmeside er bogmærket af rigtig mange Delicious-brugere, tyder det på, at det er en spændende eller på anden måde brugbar hjemmeside – et eksempel på det man på engelsk kalder the wisdom of crowds.

• Man kan føje interessante brugere til sit netværk og abonnere på et RSS-feed med seneste bogmærker fra ens netværk.

Prøv det! Det er et oplagt værktøj til grupper af folk, der interesserer sig for samme niche. Her er en video, som forklarer detaljerne ret godt.

RSS har efterhånden nogle år på bagen, men her i 2008 er det stadig ikke haft det store gennembrud hos folk, der ikke kender så meget til internet. Og det synes vi er ærgerligt, for RSS er altså ret smart. Derfor har vi lavet en hurtig guide til at komme i gang.

Men hvad er RSS? Det er et slags format, der gør det muligt at abonnere på en hjemmesides indhold, så man automatisk får besked, når der er publiceret noget nyt. På den måde behøver man ikke bruge unødvendigt meget tid på at tjekke hjemmesider, som alligevel ikke er blevet opdateret med nyt indhold.

I dag har alle nyhedsdrevne hjemmesider RSS, og ofte er det emneopdelt, så man fx kan abonnere på fodboldnyheder fra en bestemt avis, og på den måde kan man sortere uinteressant indhold fra.

For at abonnere på et RSS-feed kan man bruge et gratisprogram eller en internettjeneste. Vi bruger programmet NetNewsWire, men der er også mange som bruger internettjenesten Bloglines – se evt her http://www.bloglines.com/ hvor fidusen med RSS i øvrigt står ret godt forklaret.

Hvert RSS-feed har en bestemt adresse på internettet, og det er denne adresse som programmet eller Bloglines skal bruge. Hjemmesider som har RSS-feeds kan man kende på at der i adresselinjen står et ikon for RSS – det blå ikon ude til højre (til venstre for stjernen):

Det ser lidt forskelligt ud alt efter hvilken browser man bruger. Man skal så klikke på ikonet for at nå frem til adressen på feedet.

Vi håber denne korte introduktion hjalp med at komme i gang. Vi følger op snart med et indlæg om anbefalingsværktøjet Delicious.

One of the recent cool trends in webdesign is the javascript library jQuery. It is accessible to everyone and makes it easy to create nice interactions that previously required strong flash skills. But since jQuery is so open and accessible we are witnessing an explosion of very innovative solutions for enhancing the experience on the web. Look here for examples.

Watching website statistics can be fascinating. When making websites quality statistics can be really valuable for optimizing the site’s attraction with a target audience. Most web hosts offer built-in statistics, but they lack the detail found in tools like Google Analytics. Another great thing is that Google Analytics does not count spam traffic, so you get a very realistic picture of your visitors. When we compare our webhost’s statistics with our Google Analytics account we find that there is a huge difference – our webhost says eight times more traffic than Google.. Maybe other webhosts are better than ours but it is certainly difficult to compete with Google’s impressive and free service. And if you are reluctant using google services there are plenty of other alternatives out there.

Vi er nu næsten klar med version nummer to af CCMS. CCMS står for Creative Content Management System og er et system til at publicere og administrere podcasts med.

Vi søger omkring 10 testpersoner (“betatestere”). Den nye version af CCMS vil både være et online community på ccms.nu og en pakke til at downloade og installere på andre websider. Vi søger derfor både almindelige surfere og folk som arbejder som webredaktører og lignende. Som betatester får du adgang til betaversionen af det nye CCMS, og du bliver inviteret til eksklusive receptioner etc.

Tag et smug-kig på ccms.nu – design af Sandra – og kontakt os fx på info@genau.dk, hvis du er interesseret.

We have been making websites with the blogging tool WordPress for a while. The most recent ones have been static sites and not “blogs”, but we used WordPress anyway. With features like static pages, alternate front page, built-in galleries and much more, WordPress has developed into a great content management system. And with a little knowledge about php and css it is pretty easy to make a unique design. Here you have our recent projects:

Personal website for Sandra Odgaard working with graphic design and illustration. Take a closer look at http://sandraodgaard.dk

Asger Svendsen – teaching the bassoon.

Rumah Saga Guest House – a nice place to stay in Indonesia.

Anne Lass – a great photograper based in Berlin. By the way this is our second website for a photographer – we made the first one back in January 2008: http://alexanderhala.com

How far do you want to go to promote a night club? These days an interesting campaign can be seen on the streets of Berlin. The campaign is disguised as a poster for a missing person. It is clever done and looks very real and has a compelling website attached including a very touching video, www.findingdino.com. Everybody is talking about whether this is real or not.

But of course it is an advertising campaign. Some people are disgusted by this type of advertising because it is so manipulating. It will be interesting to see how the night club will handle the situation if a bad karma should develop. Maybe bad publicity is better than no publicity, and in that case we have helped a little by writing here..

After a closer look at the video it seems that much of it has been recorded in Denmark? At 2.26 there is a Danish sign “frokost” and “tilbud”, and at 2.34 a Carlsberg beer in a Danish bottle. hmm

Yesterday the popular Swedish musician Timbuktu suddenly turned up on the front page of www.thepiratebay.org – the search engine with three million registered users and an average of 16 million daily peers. Timbuktu has a new album coming up, so this is a very clever move. We are not sure but probably Timbuktu realized that why stop “piracy” when you can embrace it?

The Pirate Bay sometimes do campaigns like this but of course not every artist can be lucky to get this kind of exposure.

One could argue that in the Timbuktu case The Pirate Bay has become a mass medium. An interesting discussion follows whether the bay is falling into traditional structures where only very popular content of lowest common denominator is findable. The pirate bay is much more though – we know – but there is some truth in it since most people go to other sites for more niche content.