Author Archives: Siim Teller

About Siim Teller

Siim is the Community Manager at Flattr, making sure we get out of our cave, meet real users, and listen to their feedback. He started blogging back in 1999, is an avid photographer, and has been building websites, services and communities in several startups, including Skype. Follow him @teller

Turn ad blockers into supporters – lesson from AlternativeTo

Published by Siim Teller // February 20, 2012 // Discover // 2 Comments

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Ad blockers are a blessing for web surfers and a curse to website owners as it cuts down their ability to earn money from visitors taking advantage of their (hopefully) great content. AlternativeTo has found a very intriguing solution to this problem. AlternativeTo is a website that offers good advice on software - if you’re looking for an alternative to the software you are currently using then they probably have a good idea what that might be, all based on user recommendations. Run by just two guys called Ola and Markus it gets around 70-80 thousand unique visitors every day. What AlternativeTo does is show a special non-banner ad looking block in place of the topmost banner with the following text: Hi! For some reason we can't display an ad here, probably because of an ad blocker. If this ad is not displayed our design gets screwed up. We have full respect if you want to run an ad blocker but we would appreciate if you add us to your white list or consider donating via Flattr or Paypal. The free web is dependent on ads to continue to be free. Thank you, and we hope you find a great alternative! While the guys behind the site haven’t measured how well the banner is performing Ola wrote that it’s gotten them plenty good feedback. Stuff like: I saw your appeal to disable adblock, and I have done so because I appreciate the good work you are doing compiling list of alternative applications. Keep up the good work! When I saw it the first time I was immediately stuck with what a nice way it is in engaging visitors who normally ignore that area of the website and turn the whole experience more positive. For the curious - technically they just look for some div like (#google_ads_div_AlternativeTo_Header_ad_container) and if it can’t be found then they know that the ad was not loaded for whatever reason. Most likely because the visitor is using ad blocker. You can flattr AlternativeTo or you can hear the other side aka the guy who builds ad blockers: Michael Gundlach, the man who’s blocked 100 billion ads (the number is now more like 150 billion by now). If you’re interested in why advertising won over micropayments 15 years ago when the whole internet thing was just taking off and everything was possible then How Stuff Works podcast had a good show on just this topic back in November last year: TechStuff’s Two Cents on Micropayments (iTunes link)

Developer Challenge – rounding up the submissions

Published by Siim Teller // February 14, 2012 // Developers // 6 Comments

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Sunday midnight saw the deadline of our Developer Challenge. After gazing into the middle distance for about 30 seconds we decided to change the rules just a tiny bit and give all the teams an extra week to improve, polish, fix their products. Get user feedback, or approval by Apple to actually be downloadable from the App Store. Here’s your chance to check them out and show them our support or take them apart by constructive criticism (and help create a better solution as a result). Here we go… 1. Improvements to Chrome extension by Eric K - Eric took our original extension and made it better. The new extension started to "sniff" all sites and pages that you visit, looking for Flattr button on them. It was such a good improvement that we actually rolled it into the official Flattr Chrome extension so all Chrome extension users already benefit from Eric’s work. 2. aFlattr has been around for some time and it puts an interesting twist on Flattr users buying goods from stores like Amazon, Endless.com, Javiari and a few others. When you have aFlattr browser extension active it adds an affiliate tag into the link earning aFlattr a comission of 4-10% depending on the product. That money is then transferred back to you so you can flattr more, for example. More info in their FAQ. 3. Flattr plugin for Plone content management system. According to Wikipedia high-profile public sector users include organizations like the FBI, Brazilian government, United Nations, City of Bern, New South Wales government, European Environment Agency. We’re not sure if they’ll ever start using the Flattr integration but hopefully millions of other Plone users will find it useful. Created by Christoph Glaubitz. 4. "Games und so" podcast iOS app - Timo Hetzel who’s one of the guys behind the German podcast "Games und so" decided to put Flattr right inside their podcast app. Although my German skills are somewhat faded flattring a podcast was dead simple. No need to download the app, you can check out a demo video or screenshots. 5. Flattr Video Browser which according to Christopher Käck "allows you to browse through trending videos on Flattr and watch them directly on the site". It’s a great way for killing some time, leaving it up to chance and fellow flattr users to surprise you with fascinating clips. [caption id="attachment_6233" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption=" "][/caption] 6. Flattrama is a Flattr client for Windows Phone 7. It’s currently available for the Windows marketplace beta users but you’ll get a sense of it just by looking at the screenshots Pixel Valley guys posted in their blog and this demo video. 7. Flattr integration in Instacast and Instacast HD (by Vemedio) brings flattrability into the first popular podcatcher application. It does require the podcast publisher to add payment link tags into their podcast feeds (alternatively they can add a simple Flattr button into show notes) but once that’s done it’s a matter of couple of screen taps for the listeners to flattr them. The app is not free and it’s available on iPhone and iPad so Vemedia put up some screenshots as demo. 8. Interesting Things is a simple data spinning by Tom Hukins that pulls the most popular Flattr Things and tags to make it easier to discover the very-very popular stuff. Not much else to say about this one. 9. Perl interface to the Flattr API. This one’s also by Tom and does what it says on the tin. 10. flattr4j - another useful tool comes from Shred and is a Java library that supports almost all of the new Flattr API features. It primarily targets business grade integration e.g. on servers, websites and full-featured desktop applications. It can also be used to build integration into Android devices. 11. Continuing with tools - JavaScript client for Flattr API from Simon Ljungberg. Comes with helpers for authentication and functions for every API resource. Simon says that the goal is to make it work in both the browser and in a NodeJS environment. 12. FlattrPod is an iPhone app for flattring podcasts playing in the default Music.app. You can check out the interaction and screenshots at Boris Buegling’s site. [caption id="attachment_6235" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption=" "][/caption] 13. MntFlattrest - another iOS app from Simon Ljungberg that makes it easy to browse the trending Things on Flattr by category, check them out and open them in mobile browser. You can connect your account and flattr things in-app. So far all we have is a short demo video, hopefully Simon gets the app out by Monday morning when judging starts. 14. Open Aid Charity mashes up live mapping interface that highlights real-time events being broadcasted by civilian reporters, points out the humanitarian organizations in those regions and let’s you flattr them to support them in solving those crisis. It’s created by Petter Samuelsen and Pierre Gomez. [caption id="attachment_6236" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption=" "][/caption] 15. FlatDrop implements Flattr as a soft paywall on Soundcloud meaning that you can listen to the tracks as normal but to download you have to Flattr it. The author Johan says that it needs quite a bit of polish, let’s hope he uses the extra week for that :) You can check how it looks like from the end user point of view on his own track. 16. Fundd.de is a mashup of Quora/Stack Exchange-like knowledge platform where in addition to the usual upvoting there’s an additional motivation of earning flattrs for intriguing and intelligent questions and expert answers. The big question of course is "How does Fundd differ from Quora?". Created by Ahmet Topal. fundd.de - Fund 'N Discover Creativity. from Ahmet Topal on Vimeo. 17. Phlattr is "a proof of concept for integrating text messaging for flattring individual via their phone numbers". Connect your Flattr, add some phones, send some love. Texting gratitude, we like that :) Made by Benjamin Young. Update: Unfortunately Benjamin couldn’t get the SMS part working with Tropo so he dropped out of the competition. However, we’ll leave this up here, maybe someone will get inspired by the idea. Who’s your favorite so far? What’s the biggest idea? Best implementation? Potentially the one that gets the most traction and users?

What’s hidden in our newsletter header picture?

Published by Siim Teller // February 8, 2012 // Discover // 1 Comment

Yesterday I sent out our monthly newsletter that featured a header picture made up of a lot of logos, one scantily clad lady, one cute panda, and a gang of politicians wearing the Anonymous mask. 10 points if you recognized … Continue reading →

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Flattr subscriptions and Popularity Dance

Published by Siim Teller // February 7, 2012 // Learn // 6 Comments

One of the lesser known features of Flattr is the ability to subscribe to a Thing. It’s a simple way of donating to something over a longer period of time without having to remember to do it manually. It’s great … Continue reading →

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6 days left in our Dev Challenge!

Published by Siim Teller // February 6, 2012 // Developers // No comments :(

When we announced the Developer Challenge a month ago we weren’t sure how much and what type of entries we would get. So happy to see that so far quite a few individual developers and teams have sent in their … Continue reading →

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Stop greedy entertainment industry profiting from you

Published by Siim Teller // February 2, 2012 // News // 6 Comments

When I re-read Peter Sunde’s blogpost “Maintain. Hardline. Kopimi.” this morning then something he says at the very end strikes a chord with me personally but also with Flattr “’cause that’s what we do”. Today I urge everyone to make … Continue reading →

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Adding Flattr button to your site – a step-by-step guide

Published by Siim Teller // January 26, 2012 // Learn // 7 Comments

You’ve signed up and want to put a nice friendly Flattr button on your site? This step-by-step guide explains how to get set up – quick and pain free. 1. Visit our Get button page (you need to be logged … Continue reading →

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Developer Challenge, January edition – it’s a GO!

Published by Siim Teller // January 11, 2012 // Developers // 31 Comments

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What better way to kick off 2012 than with a proper developer challenge? We’re inviting all software developers, hackers, code slingers to get their API hats on and mash up Flattr in a new and incredible way. [caption id="attachment_5799" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="This iPad 2 could be yours. Keep reading!"][/caption] Back in November we released a new and improved Flattr API v2. We’ve now rooted out the bugs, written a proper documentation so here’s the challenge: Build something using the new Flattr API, impress us with your idea and execution and take home a top of the line iPad 2. It’s not about just great code, we’re searching for solutions that mash up the mobile/web and Flattr in new ways, in ways that our own development team hasn’t even thought of. Capiche? Put Flattr into World of Warcraft so we can flattr those who help us with that can’t-do-it-on-my-own quest. Whip up a face recognition software that looks for matches between Facebook accounts and Flattr users. Sky’s the limit. You could take it easy and integrate Flattr into your web/mobile/cloud software, but who wants to play it safe? A few simple rules * Competition ends on 12 February, 2012 (midnight, GMT). * You must use the new Flattr API (v2) in your project. * To enter leave a comment to this blog post with a link to where we can find your solution and who’s the person or persons behind the project. Simple. * It’s OK to submit both brand new and existing things. * We at Flattr love and encourage open source but your project doesn’t have to be open source for this competition. * Team submissions are encouraged but it’s up to the team how they split the prize. * All questions regarding technical aspects of our API to be submitted via Stack Overflow. * API and related documentation is up on developers.flattr.net/api/ The prizes 1st place - one top of the line 64GB iPad 2 if it’s a solo project. Two base line 16 GB iPad 2s if it’s a team effort. Not an Apple fans? Winner can switch prize for a comparable Android tablet of their choice. 2 runner ups - Flattr tshirts and stickers Judging During the week after competition ends (13-19 February) our team + a few top Flattr users (Kai "SkaveRat" de Haan, Evan Schoepke, Tim Pritlove, Jürgen Geuter) will try out the solutions that have been submitted and pick the winner. What are the judging criteria? Idea, execution, impact (what is the potential market for your solution, how disruptive it is) - but as we said before - a totally revolutionary idea might balance out mediocre technical solution, just like a solution with a huge impact could trump the fact that the idea in the first place was a very simple improvement. We will announce the winning project and runners ups in our blog. Launch that favorite editor and get cracking!

Completing the circle – thank your supporters

Published by Siim Teller // January 10, 2012 // News // 10 Comments

A simple “Thank you!” (or “Danke”, “Merci”, “Gracias”, “Tack”…) is one of the most powerful things in the world you can say to anyone. Add a smile and you’re ready to make the world a better place. You can now … Continue reading →

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