In the spirit of the time honored tradition of new year’s resolutions, I thought I’d share what I’ve decided to STOP doing for 2011 and beyond.

So without further ado, let’s indulge in some modern day voodoo / sympathetic magic / psycho-cybernetics / egotistical self-justifying cathartic mumbojumbo, shall we:

In 2011 and beyond, I will:
 

1. STOP underachieving to stay within my comfort zone (see 2.)



I guess you could say that I’m a notorious underachiever. It’s a lazyness an energy conservation kinda thing, I venture. Thermodynamics and all that. I guess being “really good” doesn’t make you “remarkable”, though. I don’t blame anyone but myself, but school and being a slave salaryman for years certainly made me lose the will to live reinforced the path of least resistance in me.

START stepping way out of my comfort zone by going back to being self-employed, founding and bootstrapping a new startup – and moving together with my long-time girlfriend.

 

2. STOP working hard at waiting for someone else to pick, deputize, knight or crown me (see 1.)



START taking matters back into my own clammy hands and leave the greasy pole salaryman rat-race. Who’s the boss now? Well, I am. I alone am now responsible for my success – or failure.

 


3. STOP only doing what I’m good at (see 1.and 2.)



Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you should be doing it. Have you ever thought about that?

START throwing myself off cliffs, forcing me to learn how to fly whilst falling.

 

4. STOP not focussing my time and energy (see 1. 3. and 5.)



Passion comes easy – I seem to have unlimited amounts of it. Focusing it is hard – I have seemingly unlimited interests and fleeting distractions.

START focusing, disciplining, killing all but one of my pet projects (or at least put them in suspended animation or better yet – put them up for adoption, delegate them or give them away), working towards ONE goal doing ONE thing at a time on ONE project, putting my skin in the game, committing the time and resources, going out on a limb, sticking my neck out and risking failure.

 

5. STOP criticizing (see 3. and 4.)




START giving, helping, praising more than receiving, criticizing, chiding. It’s easy and cheap to be negative and criticize or comment without taking the time to reflect and suggest solutions and improvements. But, as Carnegie reminded us: “Be lavish in your praise and hearty in your approbation.” and as Lincoln said: “A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.”. I’m OK, you’re OK. I guess not everybody’s OK, but we’re both OK, OK?

If you catch me relapsing, feel free to verbally abuse and humiliate me in public and on the Internet.

What are you going to STOP doing in 2011?

In the spirit of sharing, here’s an alphabetic list of the books I read and lectures listened to in 2010. I think I learned something from each and every one of them, so I can recommend them all.

I’d love to learn more about what you’ve been reading lately. What did you read in 2010? Do you have any ideas on what I should be reading in 2011? Did you read any of the books on my list too? What did you think? Tell me in the comments below!

All Marketers Are Liars
by Seth Godin

All people tell stories. Marketers included. Better get yours straight.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
by [drumroll] Benjamin Franklin

Nice to know more about Ben Franklin and what Dale Carnegie was talking about. Spoiler: There’s no kite in it.

Project Gutenberg
Amazon
Kindle
Audible
Archive.org

The Black Swan
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You will never be able to view after-the-fact explanations the same again after reading this one. At least I can’t.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Blink
by Malcom Gladwell

On the adaptive unconscious – or intuition, or the power of thinking without thinking, if you will.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Business Model Generation
by Alexander Osterwalder (@business_design), Yves Pigneur (@ypigneur)

HackFwd Build 0.2 – Mallorca July 2010

Don’t marry your business plan – it’s going to be thrown out the moment you get funded anyway. Focus on your business model if you must. Here’s some help to do just that.

Get it:
Amazon

Bursts
by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

The hidden pattern behind everything we do. Barabasi is a great storyteller.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Click
by Rom Brafman, Ori Brafman

On why we seem to instantly connect with some people. On why we ‘click’, see?

In the video above, Ori Brafman “[...] talks about the power of oxytocin in making instant connections with people, and how it affects our personal and professional relationships. Vulnerability and proximity are both important factors in making lasting connections and relationships, and affect workplace efficiency and collaboration.”

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Critical Mass
by Philip Ball

On how one thing leads to another. Better insights in this one compared to “The Tipping Point” mentioned later. Thanks to @kitblake for recommending it!

Get it:
Amazon

Crowdsourcing
by Jeff Howe

On the wisdom and power of crowds.

Get it:
Amazon
Audible

Crush It!
by Gary Vaynerchuck (@garyvee)

Gary’s highly personal (and after-the-fact) advice for success. But if you need to learn how to hustle, listen to Gary. He’s awesome! I recommend the audio version to hear the author read it himself with added bonus materials. Contagious energy and passion.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

The Dip
by Seth Godin

On when to quit – and when perhaps not to. Or on “bad quitting” and “good quitting”.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

The Facebook Effect
by David Kirkpatrick (@davidkirkpatric)

The rosier version of the story behind Mark Zuckerberg’s “Social Network”. Highly interesting. Set in this light, you really get to love and respect “The Zuck”. No, I’m not kidding.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Engage!
by Brian Solis (@briansolis)

The survival guide for businesses and brands in the [communication and information] world of today.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders
by The Stanford Technology Ventures Program

Are you into entrepreneurship like me? Are you thinking of starting your own venture? Your own startup? Not exactly a book, but who cares. You should listen to every single one of these 130+ awesome talks with lessons learned by the superstars of the entrepreneur world. I know I did and I am eternally grateful for the insane amount of time it has already saved me by learning from other people’s mistakes.

Get it:
http://ecorner.stanford.edu

Here are some of my favorites:

From Harvard to the Facebook
The Art of Negotiation
Secret to Successful Negotiation
Negotiations On and Off the Field
Research Lens on Understanding Entrepreneurial Firms
Phases of a Startup
A history of venture capital
A Panorama of Venture Capital and beyond
Stimulating innovation and creativity in the workplace
Fall 2009 Quarter Roundup: What did we learn?
Getting to Plan B
Honest Advice on Starting a Company

Fascinate
by Sally Hogshead (@SallyHogshead)

On discovering the triggers of fascination behind yourself and your brand – and how to tweak them to better communicate your values and position yourself.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Flip the Funnel
by Joseph Jaffe (@jaffejuice)

On how to use existing customers to gain new ones.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle

Fooled by Randomness
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

More awesomeness from Taleb on rethinking of common (mis)conceptions and after-the-fact explanations.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Freakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

On rethinking common (mis)conceptions and raising new questions by applying economics.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

ECON 159: Game Theory

Because everybody should remember to put themselves in the other people’s shoes, know never to play a dominated strategy, use iterative deletion and know about best responses and the Nash Equilibrium. And because Prof. Ben Polak is an amazing teacher! And it’s free from Yale.

(Aside: Yale University uses the Plone CMS – An awesome and humbling factoid for me personally. Yay!)

Get it:
Open Yale Courses
Also available on iTunesU

Getting Things Done
by David Allen

Nah. I still practice my own Inbox Zero version to get my things done.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

How Pleasure Works
by Paul Bloom

Interesting facts about why we (or at least some) attach value to and desire mundane objects that has been owned by or in some case were only in the vicinity of a famous person; how under some conditions an object is thought of possessing some sort of “essence” of the famous person, but I found it going here, there and everywhere rather shallowly without arriving at any particular place.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
by Dale Carnegie

I’d say just stop worrying because you’re going to die and you can’t stop it. Period. Being curious about other works [than described further down in this list] of Carnegie’s made me read this one (so you probably won’t have to).

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

How to Win Friends & Influence People
by Dale Carnegie (re-read)

If you’d ask me, I’d still say this is a must-read, relevant as ever. It’s the Web2.0 handbook, how to get ahead, the guide to being a better man/woman/rathernotsay. Read, learn, do! Rinse and repeat.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum
by Alan Cooper (@MrAlanCooper) (re-read)

On why and how you should get serious about software design and why programmers shouldn’t design software. Not as fresh as when it came out, but it holds up nicely.

Get it
Amazon
Kindle

Linchpin
by Seth Godin

On rethinking your mindset, value generation, your role and position [as an employee] in the modern work place. (I personally think linchpins should quit and start their own businesses, though).

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Linked
by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

On how everything is connected to everything else and what it means.

Get it:
Amazon
Audible

The Long Tail
by Chris Anderson (@chr1sa) (re-read)

On why the future of [or actually current] business is selling less of more.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Meatball Sundae
by Seth Godin

On why you shouldn’t and wouldn’t make and sell a meatball sundae – although some corporations still seem hellbent on making them.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

The (Mis) Behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward
by Benoit B. Mandelbrot

A fractal view on financial turbulence. Provides interesting insights on market mechanics, or rather the actual lack of empirical insights to such. Do not let the math aspect scare you: It’s a [relatively] math phobic safe book.

(Aside: Mandelbrot unfortunately died in 2010.)

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle

The New Psycho-Cybernetics
by Maxwell Maltz

This one really put me off by referencing pseudo-science as science-fact. Aside from that fact, it says something along the lines of that you can program yourself to be and behave like you want to. Simplistically speaking, just tell yourself “you are the kind of person who does x” or “you are NOT the kind of person that does y” in front of a mirror and you’re on your well on your way. It’s all about self-image, see?

It’s also talking about the tortoise mind or the lizard brain; the power of your brain processing problems without your active thinking, better explained here:

(Aside: I’d really love to read more about any scientific research on the “Tortoise Mind”. Perhaps you know of any?)

Get it:
Amazon
Audible

Outliers
by Malcom Gladwell

More on why the gaussian distribution model doesn’t tell you the whole story and why 10.000+ hours of practice actually counts for quite a lot.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Permission Marketing
by Seth Godin

It’s the opposite of Interrupt Marketing. Which one is the most successful? Yes, you get it. But why do so many companies still not get it?

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

The Power of Pull
by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, Lang Davidson

On rethinking business and innovation in a fast moving and globalized world. Mostly for suits, so there’s a good chance you know and live most of this already.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

The Prince
by Machiavelli (re-read)

This classic was a fun re-read whilst experiencing, shall we say managerial turbulence, this year.

Get it:
Project Gutenberg
Archive.org

Social Media 101
by Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan)

Enough talk about social media. Here’s something that you can and perhaps should do.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions
by Gary Klein

A cognitive psychologist’s research on “naturalistic decision-making”. Ever wondered why you as an experienced professional make (good) decisions in seconds that you find hard or next to impossible to explain to say, you boss or even to yourself? Enter RPD (Recognition Primed Decision):

From Wikipedia:

Recognition-primed decision (RPD) is a model of how people make quick, effective decisions when faced with complex situations. In this model, the decision maker is assumed to generate a possible course of action, compare it to the constraints imposed by the situation, and select the first course of action that is not rejected. RPD has been described in diverse groups including ICU nurses, fireground commanders, chess players, and stock market traders. It functions well in conditions of time pressure, and in which information is partial and goals poorly defined. The limitations of RPD include the need for extensive experience among decision-makers (in order to correctly recognize the salient features of a problem and model solutions) and the problem of the failure of recognition and modeling in unusual or misidentified circumstances. It appears to be a valid model for how human decision-makers make decisions.

Hah. Stick that to the next person requiring you to explain and/or have you follow the next theoretical decision processes du jour based on evaluation and elimination of total options based on explicit input: “It’s RPD, mofo!”. Another case for intrinsic knowledge beating explicit knowledge, I wager.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle

Superfreakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

Challenging even more common (mis)conceptions and raising even more interesting questions with applied economics. It surprised me as being at least as funny and provocative as their first book, Freakonomics.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

The Tipping Point
by Malcolm Gladwell (@gladwell)

On how, why and what things lead to another. Providing less substance and answers than I had hoped for but Gladwell is an entertaining read as always.

Get it:
Amazon
Audible

Tribes
by Seth God

What is a tribe, why do you need one and how and where do you find it?

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Trust Agents
by Chris Brogan, Julien Smith (@julien)

What is a Trust Agent and why and how would you become one?

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

The Wealth of Networks
by Yochai Benkler

On how social production transforms markets and freedoms.

Get it:
Harvard
Archive.org

Understanding Media by
Marshal McLuhan (re-read)

Interview

I think I read it the first time back in 1994 or 95 understanding little but being highly intrigued. As I read it again in 2010 I don’t know if I actually understood much more but it sure as hell raised a number of interesting questions and provoked a lot of new thoughts so I guess I found it even more fascinating now as it’s arguably obvious to most that we’re living smack in the middle of his ‘prophecy’. Spoiler: The Medium is the Message.

Get it:
Amazon

UNMARKETING
by Scott Stratten (@unmarketing)

Unthinking, unlearning, relearning marketing, helping small and large businesses master the art of (un)marketing with example stories in this day and age: Listen and engage, do not interrupt and try to find better ways of cold calling because you know it sucks.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

Wikinomics
by Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams

How mass collaboration changes everything.

Get it:
Amazon
Kindle
Audible

I mostly listen to books these days to make better use if my time. I use a Sony DR BT-50 stereo Bluetooth headset with the iPhone for audio quality and wireless convenience anywhere.

Get it:
Amazon

Disclaimer: The links to the books are not affiliate links. I’m not getting a cent from anything you might buy. I’m just lazy and didn’t bother to list all the stores on the intarweb.

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Like I mentioned at the beginning, I’d love to learn more about what you’ve been reading lately. What did you read in 2010? Do you have any ideas on what I should be reading in 2011? Did you read any of the books on my list too? What did you think? Tell me in the comments below!

I thought I’d give you guys a heads up on how I’ve fared with my Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh so far.

Yesterday the Hackintosh asked me to download an Apple update and – fully acknowledging the risks – I installed it. Needless to say, the Hackintosh would not boot afterwards. As of yesterday I’m running Windows XP on the netbook again so be warned – you may not want to be as stupid adventerous as me.

That notwithstanding, the following issues would need to be resolved for me to be running OSX on the netbook permanently:

• No audio out (of the stereo jack that is – the speakers worked)

• No audio in (OSX could not find an input device, no mic!)

• No second monitor output (crashes when cable inserted in VGA port)

• No standby (needed to disable standby as it would crash, need reboot)

Some of you pundits out there may already know how to fix these issues, but I didn’t have the time so far to research and apply them myself.

Perhaps I’ll give OSX a second try on the netbook, but for now Windows XP will have to do – although it certainly is a rather drab experience after a couple of weeks with OSX.

Please do let me know how you’ve fared so far! Did you have any issues? Did you manage to solve them? How did you do it?

So I went to the DNA digital workshop at Deutsche Telekom (DTAG) in Bonn following up the previous workshop in Berlin and yeah, I finally got to see the man – René Obermann – CEO of (DTAG).

The workshop partnered young tech and Internet savvy people from the DNA digital initiative with DTAG decision makers to discuss how their corporation could potentially benefit from and deploy new strategies for e.g. corporate culture and product development.

Sure enough, Obermann is every bit the charismatic leader that you’d expect him to be, but with 30 minutes of his precious time allocated to listen to the summary of our workshop, the possibility of a proper dialogue and discussion was accordingly limited. It was nice to see him take the time, though. Kudos.

It was slightly fascinating to observe the depth that some of the participating employees of DTAG would sink to in the presence of their top dog. It was like a sudden lapse of personal integrity, as if the teeth of the previous biting discussions had all but fallen out. I guess it’s all natural – the presence of the Alpha male and all that jazz – but slightly embarrassing nonetheless. I can’t help but think it would have been more productive for the discussions to not have Obermann present.

My personal conclusion of the workshop was that – although highly interesting topics and people – the Enterprise 2.0 is not my battle. I’m unfortunately not passionate enough about the topic. I have other fish to fry, bones to pick. It was an interesting ride. So long and thanks to everyone for the experience.

As long as enterprises see, in the lack of a better word, Web 2.0 as a trendy afterthought that can be tacked onto existing and outdated models of thought – it’s thanks but no thanks for me.

It is my view that Enterprise 2.0 (whatever that may be to you) involves radical paradigm shifts, by and large incompatible with current enterprise paradigms. Furthermore, I’m convinced that I as an outsider cannot change an enterprise; The real revolution and innovation comes from highly innovative and passionate individuals within the enterprise.

Here’s some more images from the workshop.

Disclaimer: I work for a company that does business with DTAG. However, I'm not getting paid nor am I instructed to write this blog or to participate in the Enterprise2.0 discussion.

The night before Christmas 24.12.2008 I lost my only uncle by blood – Torodd Olsen (52) – in an utterly horrible and utterly tragic accident.

My uncle was the role model and inspiration in my professional life – Highly accomplished and highly respected in his field.

It’s of little or no comfort that I at least got to tell him that before it was too late.

Contrary to my uncle’s humble beliefs, he will never be forgotten. He will be loved and missed forever.

[tags]family, uncle, tragedy, death, accident, mandal, norway, torodd, olsen, torodd olsen, toroddolsen[/tags]

1.  No time

Don’t we all just love this catch-all excuse for just about anything? It’s a poor albeit very convenient crutch; Of course I never have the time to do anything if it’s not planned and prioritized. I’m very guilty of omitting blogging from my time management.

(Time and task management and prioritizing in itself is another very interesting topic I will save for a later GTD post.)

2. No focus or general topic

All the blogs I read tend to read focus on some general or specific area of interest. The topics interest me, I know I can expect more of the same and hence I keep coming back. Makes sense. My blog varies wildly in width, quality, depth and (ir)regularity – probably to the point where my close friends and even my mother have lost any vague novelty interest by now.

Perhaps it’s descriptive of me as a person. I’m interested in a whole bunch of confusing things, chatty have a lot to say and a lot of biases opinions about most things. I’m probably hard to conveniently tag.

3. Lack of incentives

My .com biz already had a very high page rank even before SEO and SEM entered the vernacular (ATH 9/10, currently 7/10) and asking Google for my name returned relevant top results pages long before I started blogging. I never intended to make money from blogging. I have no books to flog, no conference talks to pimp offer, no sponsors, no ads, no agenda, no brand, no product, no concrete goals behind the blog. I do not have anything to sell you – other than myself, if you will.

I did have a vague notion about sharing my thoughts and ideas with the world and participate in a sort of global conversation. (No, seriously.) I’m not going to pretend it was all well thought out, though.

Twitter is now catering for my conversational needs in more and perhaps better ways than my blog. That is perhaps a topic worthy of a separate post in itself.

4. No experience with the blog format

I do write professionally on a regular basis. It does not come particularly close to blogging, though. I do not have to consider that the whole world – or as the case may be no one – is going to read it. In my profession I get paid to deliver a well informed and professional opinion; Palatable or controversial, witty or droll.

On a my personal blog, I tend to end up with long winded blog posts like this. That post takes too long to read and took too long to write. Not surprisingly, it didn’t make for much of a conversation either.

My lack of experience with blogging probably leads to a lot of lost opportunities. A successful blogger sees a new post whereas I’m still stuck in an old mindset. As an example, I enjoy taking pictures and shoot videos and upload them to flickr viddler youtube and or vimeo to share with you. It very often ends there.  Now, someone with a different mindset than myself would probably have made a small story to go with many of those uploads and recycle blog them.

5. No lab experience

According to social media oracle niceguy Chris Brogan, a lab is something you could need.

It’s not like I had no web exposure prior to securing this painfully long and stupid cleverly named URL, but i never conducted any conscious lab experiments before entering the fray.

On the other hand, this probably is my lab – my soapbox.

[tags]blogging, writing, lessons learned, list, suckage[/tags]

In my previous post I tried to provided an explanation for my involuntary online hiatus. But what did I learn from entering and escaping a black hole?

A. I made mistakes
B. See A

1. You can never prepare early enough for changes in personnel and/or workload.

Get involved with appropriate universities and other places of education to keep ahead of the curve.

Engage and be present in the relevant professional communities.

You can never start to soon to look for your next rock star employee(s). Think of it as a mandatory continuous process. Commit to the appropriate time for getting involved and engaging.

2. Let your surroundings know you are experiencing an exceptional situation and how and when they can expect a response. It’s OK. It happens.

Post a disclaimer on your blog as soon as possible.

Add an auto responder on your mail, private and/or professional.

Call people personally to let them know in advance.

3. Do not let your personal life suffer unreasonably and over time.

This is hard. You’ve probably been there too. Be very conscientious of your personal life in times of professional duress. You are going to need that personal time with yourself and your loved ones more than ever. You will be stronger from it. Take two or three steps back and plan accordingly. Share with your close ones; chances are they can help you.

4. Don’t even try to catch up on every single piled up correspondence.

Write an honest apology response explaining the situation, making sure that the senders know that they will have to get back to you yet again if they still have open issues in need of your attention.

5. Fess up when you fuck up.

Admit to your mistakes personally, identify possible improvements and move on. This is not the time to be pointing fingers at others or to be playing the blame game. This is the time to be on the offense, taking responsibility.

Just one more thing.

6. DON’T TAKE IT TOO PERSONALLY.

If you are like me, you might find this very hard too, but hey! It’s real life – not Hollywood fiction. Shit happens. You make mistakes too. It’s just business. Cheer up – you’re going to die anyway! :D

I probably failed on several accounts the last three months. Hindsight has 20/20 LOLCAT vision, but I hope I’m now stronger and more prepared to meet the challenges of tomorrow by the experience.

[tags]blacktar, vidar, vidarandersen, work, business, lessons learned, list, lifehack, the show must go on, fail, management, gtd[/tags]

It’s no secret that I’ve been out of the online and offline loop for over three months.

I’ll eventually tell you why, but the theories and rumors surrounding the absence are probably more interesting and entertaining than the actual truth.

No, I was not hired for the Obama Campaign. I did not help establish the future political platform 2.0 to turn America around. Barack should still feel free to call, though.

No, I did not lose it all in the great Crunch. Credit Crunch or Tech Crunch 50, I never get invited. I don’t discriminate.

No, Pownce did not hire me. That fail train already left for euthanasia station without me.

The actual factual truth is that I was busy keeping a company afloat, thinking forward and expanding at a time where time and resources were getting record scarce, saving and securing workplaces and business for the future.

It paid off, though. We’re solid. Golden. Sorted. Awsun, akshully.

However, I’ll drink that glass of champagne with you later.

It’s hard to be enthusiastic left with a head stuck through several brick walls, wondering what the hell life is all about, desperately in need of a timeout.

I do honestly and sincerely apologize to anyone who tried to mail or call me in the last months. I feel like human manure. I’m finally getting around to you. I am so sorry that I did not tend to you earlier.

I am getting back to you. You mean a lot to me. No, seriously. You do. Hold on to that little speck of trust that you may still have in me.

If anything, I’m proof positive that information do indeed flow back out of black holes.

Update: I’ve posted some of the lessons I learned from the experience.

[tags]blacktar, vidar, vidarandersen, work, business, crunch, life, burnout, the show must go on, fail, management, gtd[/tags]

I was reading Chris Pirillo‘s latest blog entry about backup and file management this morning and it inspired me to share what I do to back up and mirror the important stuff. (Watch the show featuring Chris’ dad if you haven’t already.)

The hardware: Two cheap and identical 500 GB external USB hard drives from TrekStor. € 99,- / USD 135,- each.

The software: MirrorFolder for Windows XP from TechSoft. € 28,5 / USD 39,- per computer license. (If anyone knows of a better software solution for mirroring and for other platforms, please leave a comment!)

Important files and folders on my workstation(s) and laptop are set to be automatically mirrored on both of the external disks. Projects, music, settings, etc are all mirrored on both of the disks for redundancy.

Further more, I can take one of the disks with me on the move without worrying too much about data loss.

Works for me ™.

What do you do? Please share your experiences and leave a comment!

[tags] Vidar Andersen, lessons learned, backup, file management, usb, Joe Pirillo, Chris Pirillo, back-up, MirrorFolder, TrekStor, TechSoft, mirroring, windows xp[/tags]

I get to do cool things with Plone. Sometimes I even get to do it together with cool friends. On one such occasion we are using a very capable PDF generator called PDFlib to generate print quality PDFs through Plone. The actual version we are using is PDFlib Personalization Server (PPS) version 6. PDFlib is license based. More precisely it costs money for PPS licenses. Fair enough. In the course of our project (iconic brand customer to be publicized at later stage) we discovered that we needed more production servers to balance the load, so more servers were ordered.

What we then learned is that the PDFlib PPS v6 does not exactly play nice with new dual core based servers; PPS v6 treats each core as one separate CPU, each requiring a separate license. That is to say the licensing costs per CPU per server has now doubled. The standard price of a single PPS license is € 1350,- (ca USD 1852,-) . In the meantime the current version of PDFlib has matured to 7 which requires only one license per server, albeit a more expensive one.

As PPS v6 is already running in a mission critical system, upgrading to v7 is not an option at this time. All the servers in our new data center have at least dual core Xeon CPUs, adding to the dilemma. I called PDFlib Germany thinking they would be sensible, having changed the licensing for the better with v7. No dice.

No retroactive license change for v6. No flexible migration deals. No nothing.

I could either upgrade all existing servers to the more expensive single server license v7 (and additional licenses for each new server) or buy a single v6 license for each and every core. I would not mind paying something for a single server license upgrade for v6, but the limited options provided by PDFlib at the moment are just plain stupid in my opinion; I have the choice between the plague or cholera.

Update: We are currently considering throwing out PDFlib and using Reportlab instead. Reportlab is lacking some features, but the added development needed to reportlab is possibly outweighed by the senseless PDFlib license costs. Further more, it would be cool to be able to add functionality to reportlab and release it back to the open source community!

Do you think this is a lame clever business decision by PDFlib? Let them know. Do you think I’m wrong? Let me know. Have you ever been left hanging from changes to hardware and/or licensing? I’d love to hear about your predicament and how you dealt with it.

[tags]pdf, pdflib, plone, comlounge, licensing, payware, dualcore, development, software, PPS, PDFlib Personalization Server[/tags]