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  Since independence, the relations between Slovenia and Croatia were essentially very good. We are one of each others’ main trade partners, Slovenes are welcome at Croatian cost and Croats on Slovenian ski slopes. A few issues remain unresolved after the breakup of Yugoslavia that kept the politicians and journalists busy, but did not have much impact on trade, tourism or friendly personal relationships. One of the major issues was the border. There are a few disputed details on land and a larger chunk of disputed sea. Image: Area of dispute ed area of the sea hashed in red. Maritime Border Issue For the last twenty years the Slovenian position on this was fairly clear, regardless of the political parties on power. Slovenian red lines were the Slovenian contact with the High Sea and the jurisdiction over most of the  Gulf of Piran , as it was under Slovenian control at the time of proclaiming independence in 1991. The positions for the negotiations with Croatia traditionally ...

  Here is a comparison of the tag clouds for the “ Project Europe 2030 ” report of the Reflection Group on the Future of Europe and the   Europe 2020 Strategy . In both cases words like “EU”, “Europe” etc. were deleted. First Europe 2020 then Project Europe 2030:

Each morning, hundreds of planes are landing in Brussels airlifting the politicians, civil servants, researchers, businessmen to meetings in the capital. Since mid last week this airlift came to a standstill. Brussels Airport has been closed and access to Brussels limited to those that can take a train or car. While this could just work for the original EU6, the train is not an option for the EU27. But we are well in the 21st century and when we privately need to talk to someone in a different time zone, we use the Internet; tools like Skype, Google Talk, Messenger or any of the other internet technologies that allow us to see and hear the person on the other end. Researchers use more elaborate collaboration tools such as Adobe Connect, Webinar or Webex or combine voice or text chat with collaborative text editing environments such as Google Docs. None of that is possibe with the officials in the Comission, Council or the Parliament. The first thing I noticed when moving into my office...

We've seen the iPad. The best thing about it is that it will start a trend of cheap, affordable, useful tablet devices. Here is the tablet I am in the market for: Tablet format. It is a good idea, but hasn't been done right yet. It does not create a "laptop wall" at meetings. Draws less attention, makes you less pretentious than if you put a laptop on your restaurant table or open it up on a train. You can hold a tablet while doing a talk, discussion, lecture ... but not a laptop. A4 size exact, like all the paper I carry around. Reason: so that it does not draw attention if I put it with a stack of paper on the desk. 15 hours declared, 10 hours real battery life. I want to make one day trips to Brussels without a power supply. Would sacrifice color for longer battery life greyscale screen, usable in bright sunshine, 720p resolution minimum, 1080p optimum. Pixel density is everything if you want to read books or newspapers. I will watch movies and play games on a ...

We know it as a platform where: website or other on-line source (any web site or media store like iTunes), media (e.g. MP3), local software or client (e.g. Media Player) and device (PC, Mac, Phone, Flash Drive, Netbook ...) are not coupled with each other. Many competing companies are providing products or services for each of the components. This open model resulted in huge innovation over the last two decades, and spawned a lot of competition in creating the websites, media formats, software and the devices, driving the price down and quality up. All this possibly at the expense of the content providers who have huge problems protecting their content, because, to be universally playable, all parts of the system need to be well documented and interoperable, with any kind of security and copy protection clumsily pasted on top of it all. Apple Closing the Web? Kindle, Nook and much of the Apple Store stuff signal a possible end of this model. But with music and videos is it a lot like p...

From time to time I get unhappy with my twitter experience and join the install party, trying out new clients. So far I did not find a perfect one. This is what I want: handle multiple accounts allow me to define groups of people I follow allow the "join" and "filter" operations over streams of tweets (sounds complicated but it is in fact an enable of so many features. Think of filter like Gmail's labels and think of join like Google Reader's folder). example of a "join" would be to show a single stream of all friends' tweets across all my accounts examples of a "filter" operation would be to split a stream into groups, mentions, directs ... notifications should be based on configurable filters too show one stream (per account or not) of all directs, sents and mentions (it is a join). sort messages with new on top OR old on top (I like reading from old to new, top to bottom) display whole discussion thread at a click of a button...

One simply has to love some features of the aluminum unibody MacBooks. Like the magnetic lid "lock". Not only it keeps the lid closed, the magnet has no moving parts, so there is nothing that could break. The design is clean. The magnet is also radiating magnetic energy, bending properly the cosmic waves and preventing the carpal tunnel syndrome. And if you keep the MacBook on your lap, as a laptop, the magnet is well positioned to heel your body. But many users are reporting problems with the magnetic lid lock. Mac simply would not stay shut. If I put it vertically in my trusty Tumi bag, for example, it springs opens for about 5 millimeters. Like on the picture below: This is quite annoying, because you don't know what will happen in the bag. If it opens some more it would wake Mac up from sleep mode. It happened to me a few times, even if it was bumped closed again it stayed on, drained the battery, got hot, very hot ... Not very pleasant at all, because in the bag the ...