Disqus - Latest Comments for andraz

Re: I returned to Slovenia after 3 months and I am culturally shocked

Andraz Tori — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 08:58:09 -0000

Welcome! The phenomena you are experiencing is called "reverse cultural shock". Get used to it if you plan to move back and forth :).

Re: Zemanta Hangout with Google: How The Editorial Assistant Helps Publishers

Andraz Tori — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 07:45:32 -0000

As SEO goes, search engines try to think as much as humans, so you should ask yourself "What would a human full of knowledge and authority add (or remove) to this article?". Probably pointing to relevant sources and illustrating the thought with a photo that makes it easier to understand is the right thing to do.

Re: @PiotrWilam — What we do at Innovation Nest Accelerate

Andraz Tori — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 08:21:47 -0000

Yes, yes and yes. This is the recipe that should work. This process works over the deficiencies that entrepreneurs not yet immersed into their target market have.
I would however extend SV stay to 3 or 4 weeks.

Re: Piotr Wilam — Why the European startups don't succeed? (Part 2)

Andraz Tori — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:57:54 -0000

Hi Piotr,

I don't think all items on your list are missing in the same way from European founders. And there are also many with all items checked.

Probably vision and faith make for the biggest difference. Also we're used to doing business (slightly) more humbly in Europe since this is usually better for local success (or at least it seems so here in Slovenia). US market simply needs different approach - often flamboyance is advantegous.

You can probably imagine taking all those capable US entrepreneurs and putting them into Eastern Europe - it would be quite a learning curve to master local ways to success.

Conditions are different and it's hard to breed hunters when you live in a farming community and hard to breed patient farmers when everyone around you hunts big game.

Re: Feature Friday: Zemanta Thumbnails

Andraz Tori — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:45:14 -0000

The drawings are from renowned Slovenian illustrator and comics artist Ciril Horjak.

He did an awesome job and we are very proud to be able to work with him. He does amazing projects including a _radio_ show in which he draws comics.
http://www.ljudmila.org/ciril/

The voices are from our very own Kris Smith and his wife, you can hear the chemistry in there! The final animation production was done by our multi-talented researcher Mateja Verlic.

Andraz from Zemanta

Re: Slovenian startup ecosystem: July 2012 [infographic]

Andraz Tori — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 16:23:48 -0000

I think that Marko is spot on that the way things are counted needs to be more explicit. What it seems you are counting is "how many start-ups did this ecosystem directly or indirectly produce".
I am inclined to say this isn't a bad way to look at the ecosystem. Some of those start-ups have a 'slovenian soul' and are returning a lot back to the ecosystem even if founders are mostly abroad now. Naturally that does not go for everyone, but it's hard to count shades of gray.At the end I understand that infographics are mostly a marketing & link-bait material, but still being more explicit about the data might not hurt.

Re: Slovenian startup ecosystem: July 2012 [infographic]

Andraz Tori — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 12:55:38 -0000

"So far:" as in what date range?

Re: I bet you over-engineered your startup

Andraz Tori — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 06:01:03 -0000

+1 one on this! :)

Re: I bet you over-engineered your startup

Andraz Tori — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:04:21 -0000

Yeah, in retrospective what you are saying makes perfect sense. But in reality we were looking at three totally different groups of people from the start. Also it made sense to separate services by data they needed - Zemanta preferences, advertiser data (analytics) and daily limits data for API developers. They even had completely different user id schemes coming from different requirements.
Then years later they all seem to be interchangable and we'd be much happier if we just had one relatively large database with all the data there (except of things living in Hadoop which have their own modality). We'd be happily doing joins until we couldn't and only then start splitting things out.

Now ... doing single sign on would seem a bit ridiculous at the time when we started building, but looking back, I'd now indeed go that way.

Re: Cloning Successful Startups

Andraz Tori — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:05:42 -0000

That's a hard question - copycat services in the field of high network effects find it hard to survive in any market that is not closed-off in one way or another. So I don't think it's a smart business move.

At the same time - good luck trying to get Slovenian-targeted advertising on Twitter. If you consider this kind of advertising to bring value, then someone bringing it to some other region or country is bringing value there.

When you say "Twitter is available, just not in local language" ... it's only half true, Twitter is not available at the same level as it is in the US.

[I have some successful copycats in my mind. They all brought value to local economy by bringing in foreign innovation earlier than originating innovators would]

Re: Cloning Successful Startups

Andraz Tori — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:55:40 -0000

As someone mostly being based in small European country of Slovenia I'd like to add my two cents. :)

While the entrepreneurs bringing clones to different regions aren't innovating much, they definitely are bringing value. If some new idea works in US market, it usually takes years for that company to decide to take it international. Doing it sooner brings value to local ecosystem (not that of the start-ups, but maybe commerce or whatever the field is).

Re: The uncanny valley of web scraping

Andraz Tori — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:30:06 -0000

yes, but do you get full text for feed that has only first 300 characters of each post?

Re: The uncanny valley of web scraping

Andraz Tori — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:01:47 -0000

does that work even if the feed is not full feed?

Re: The uncanny valley of web scraping

Andraz Tori — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:00:27 -0000

good luck with that one :)
btw: use BoilerPipe as a fall-back, it's good enough

Re: Map-reduce with Disco

Andraz Tori — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:56:05 -0000

We're still using it... However we'd prefer to move everything to Hadoop to standardize our infrastructure & simplify administration. But there's never enough time.

Re: 2011 – Zemanta Year in Numbers

Andraz Tori — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 06:18:40 -0000

Hi Tac,

yeah, you are correct, those are recommendations done to end-users, not 'applied' recommendations. Something like "total number of search results displayed to users".

As for second question, the measure we follow is number of recommendations that get 'applied' compared to all recommendations we make. That measure is between 1 in 1000 to 1 in 50, depending on position, recommendation type and site recommended.

btw: happy 2012 !

Re: Our recruiting experiences

Andraz Tori — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:48:38 -0000

Hi Tom,

looking at your page, you shouldn't have trouble getting a job here. There's a shortage of specialized and experienced talent here. We can have a skype chat and I can get you some intros... just send me an email!

BTW: What's the main reason for moving, girlfriend? :)

Re: Big news: Image settings!

Andraz Tori — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 04:19:54 -0000

Well, probably you are using some plug-in that does not recognize images correctly.

What's your web page and what plug-ins are you using?

Re: Announcing New Article Previews

Andraz Tori — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:39:57 -0000

thanks! Let me know if you have some ideas of how to improve further.

We're currently looking into exposing 'social signal' so people will have easier time deciding what might be interesting enough to check out at a glance.

Re: Spring cleaning release

Andraz Tori — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 03:47:09 -0000

Hi Pete,

Yes, unfortunately there were only handful of users on LiveJournal and when we tried to contact them to find out if we could work more closely together, we got no response. We got very good response from wordpress.com and blogger.com, so we're supporting those platforms.

If you know anyone at LJ that would be interested, let him know we're always ready.

bye
Andraz Tori, Zemanta

Re: Spring cleaning release

Andraz Tori — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 03:44:39 -0000

We'd love to support Ning!

For Zemanta to properly support a platform there needs to be support from the owner of the platoform. We have received this kind support from blogger.com and wordpress.com and integrated deep into their platforms.

With Ning's support we'd love to support their platform. However we can't do it without Ning's involvement and interest in such cooperation. So please communicate your wishes to Ning. We'd love to work closely with them.

Andraz Tori, Zemanta

Re: Spring cleaning release

Andraz Tori — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:04:59 -0000

What would be needed is a real interest from their side to work with us. We'd be happy to establish a strong partnership as we did with WordPress.com and Blogger.com.

I don't know if you noticed - Zemanta is now available as add-on inside those two platforms. We'd happily support LiveJournal in the same way.

Re: My Own 24/7 Photoshop Dream

Andraz Tori — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:36:11 -0000

Thank you for kind words on Zemanta! :)

Let us know any further ideas/comments via http://getsatisfaction.com/... or support@zemanta.com

Andraz from Zemanta

Re: Zemanta Now Native on Blogger.com!

Andraz Tori — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:58:35 -0000

Hi 42,

while Zemanta does offer to promote content, the link you've found is a clear spam link that was wrongly learned 'from the wild'.

Zemanta tries to analyze other bloggers and see where they link to, however this means it is possible that we ingest some wrong/spam links such as this one. The suggestion of that link will be removed in future versions of the engine.

All links that Zemanta promotes are clearly marked as promoted. Sorry for the inconvenience.

bye
Andraz from Zemanta

Re: Why and How to Use Pictures in Your Blogs

Andraz Tori — Wed, 19 May 2010 06:10:20 -0000

That's partly Wordpress's RSS-producing problem, since it should recognize what are image captions and what not.

The work around is to drag the image below first paragraph when you are inserting it.

bye
Andraz from Zemanta