I hope that Western civilization is enjoying Christmas and Winter holidays as I’m fighting the deadlines several days before my holiday and turning off the interwebs.  So it is official: from Saturday, December 27th 2008. – January 12th 2009.,  I’ll be offline and on holidays which means that you have three more days to email, comment, ask, interact with me, after that I am in the analogue world (again proving to those picking up on my geekiness that I am not addicted to interwebs ::smile:: ). I may read only direct messages from BrightKite friends though.

I’m going to focus on people and things that I’ve been pushed back lately because of some current things and hectic life in the past few months, to enjoy some quite time, help those who need my help, meditate, read real books, watch films on my list, practice yoga, contemplate and draft the project(s) that I’ll commence and that will mark 2009.  Hopefully, I’m moving to practitioners way, but it’s too early to reveal anything.

The search for the perfect laptop for my needs, research, conferences, travels is still ”ON’, if you get to some updated information -leave a comment, I’ll get back to you after the Holidays.  Also, I am amazed by ‘The power of Social Web’ action for new laptop as I’ve reached so far 35% of donations for such a short time.Thank all of you who have understanding for the science, research and academic life. There is still few days left till the cause is closed though.

See you in January when I ‘ll be refreshed and ready for new exciting events and travels.

Srećni novogodišnji praznici, nova 2009. i Božić! ~ Happy Holidays and New Year 2009!

Reminder for those who are into science blogging: you have two more days to participate in PLoS ONE  Second Birthday Synchroblogging Competition, it is right time to submit your posts! You can find here how.  Still, you have time to vote in the 2008 Edublog Awards. Check out nominations, there are some great edublogs.

Those who are planning to attend or participate in ScienceOnline09 , you can follow updates on FriendFeed , my Twitter timeline or Bora‘s site.

I know that PayPal issue is painful in Serbia for years – each year I write a post about this and lot of comments are coming my way here, but I just hope very, very soon that people in Serbia can use normally PayPal.

Anyway, these days I got  feedbacks on Twitter, via gmail and here that some people at some regions cannot proceed their contribution to edu.cause for new laptop. The main issue is if you are not logged into your PayPal account you will probably receive page in Dutch (NL -the place where is my PayPal account open). This is because redirection to PayPal is executed by flash inside widget ChipIn (one of the reasons I do not like flash). I wrote today to ChipIn tech support and I am expecting reply.

Until then, you can donate by logging to your PayPal account or when redirected to page in Dutch to follow these two simple steps that I marked on the screen shot. You enter some sum (step 1), and below you’ll get a drop menu with the list of the countries – let’s say you’re in US (Verenigde Staten in Dutch). Next thing you select your country (step 2) and the page will be loaded to your language. Give me some credits for learning Dutch! ::smile::

Creative Commons, which produces licenses implemented in 50 different jurisdictions until now, including  Serbian project, on December 15th  celebrates its 6th Birthday around the world. Regarding this occasion, Creative Commons Serbia, Wikimedia Serbia,  and Free Software Network Serbia, organises at the Faculty of Mathematics, of the University of Belgrade (room 718, 4th floor) on Monday, December 15th at 6 p.m. – presentation and debate about free software and free scientific, education, artistic and media production to emphasise the importance of free licensing in information society. I’m inviting you tomorrow to join CC birthday world wide celebration, and embrace open source.

Last Christmas and Holidays I’ve spent in lovely analogue world receiving updates from Twitter via sms, interacting and communicating apart from (the failures of) GPRS, micro-blogging applications, my browser.  GRPS is not reliable especially for Holidays. I was so happy to have wifi on my PDA only for interwebs and mobile for texting and twittering.

Since Twitter doesn’t support anymore facility of receiving free sms’s on my mobile device, I am testing few services these days, and came to conclusion that the only micro-blogging service that treats you with free of charge sms, direct messages and other notifications is – BrightKite. I found many Twitter buddies there, both International and local (locals should sign up) who post micro-notes, comment under each one of them, post/upload their mobile pics – and it is cool! Service doesn’t charge you any received sms or direct message, if you live here in Europe. You can also send Brightkite notes on Twitter, but I still didn’t figure out how you can receive tweets on Brightkite for free. If someone knows – let us all know!

While I’m testing all micro blogging possibilities for the upcoming Holidays without GPRS or wifi dependence (just in case) – you can sign up and friend me at BrightKite.

Despite the fact that ‘Belgrade and Beyond’ blog exists in other form {digital serendipities}, I am still writing  about interesting events and electronic resources on Belgrade, Serbia. For those of you who are not familiar and you happen to reside in Belgrade for some reason, this information may be valuable to you.

Belgrade Foreign Vistors Club (FVC) presents the online community for foreigners in Belgrade, created by  Jonathan Davis. Beside Belgrade FVC there is Belgrade Foreign Visitors Club Wiki, an online information resource for foreign residents and visitors to the city of Belgrade, where you can find high quality community edited information resources and guided directories with useful links.  Also, check out Belgrade FVC forum where you can interact with other members, Twitter feed, and there is Facebook group informing users with current events, reviews, recommendations. I hope you’ll find this information and links useful especially if you are planning a trip to Belgrade or maybe to move here.