Talking type in Ljubljana

¶ A while ago I was kindly invited to Ljubljana to speak to the local web designers & developers about web typography – how could I resist? My talk last night formed episode 85 of Spletne Urice (Web Hour), a series of weekly talks held in CyberPipe, a café/bar/computer museum/free wifi hotspot in central Ljubljana. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, with a good crowd contributing to a excellent Q&A session, which apparently was quite unusual for Slovenes, who claim to be a very reserved nation of people. The slides are available online.

Reserved Slovenes may be, but they are certainly hospitable too. So many thanks must go to Marko, Marko, Jure, Andraž and the guys at Zemanta for keeping me entertained and connected. Thanks also go to Parsek Interactive for getting me there and putting me up.

Speaking of Zemanta, do check it out – it’s a clever way of enhancing the content of your blog posts. By way of Firefox extension, Zemanta analyses your blog post text and suggests photos, links and tags which you can add or remove by a simple click.

The photos are gleaned from sources of CC-licensed images such as Wikimedia Commons and Flickr; the links from various news sources, Wikipedia and Zemanta-enabled blogs; and the tags by text analysis. Zemanta currently works with Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal, and there’s an API in private testing as we speak.

I should also add the Ljubljana is a lovely city, with the relaxed cafe culture we Brits seem to lust after. The weather was gorgeous for this – my second visit – and I think I’ve been luck enough to see the city in its two best guises: blanketed with snow and bathed in sunshine. The city also has a vibrant web community, with events on almost every night, all run by volunteers. I may well be back again.