Sen No Sen

Deutsche Welle says: Blogs Making Baby Steps in German Politics

“Germany is still a developing country when it comes to blogs,” said Markus Beckedahl, who blogs at netzpolitik.org. “The awareness of blogs as a means of political communication needs to be raised in Germany.”

You said it, Markus.

“Maybe one day the realization will come through that the Internet can lead to a new form of communication between politicians and voters,” Politik Digital’s Dowe said. “That is a long way off in Germany…

No kidding! Maybe one day…

(via Schockwellenreiter)

A QuickTime-VR tour of the Polarstern, a German research vessel: Virtual PS

(via Heise Online)

Spread Firefox quotes the latest worldwide numbers from a French study by Xiti Monitor.

With an overall 14.83% market share in Europe, Finland is at the top with a whopping 31%, followed by Germany at 24.5%. Then comes the Czech Republic, Croatia and Poland, all with more than 20%. Compared with only 11,78% in North America, this is at least one area where Europe leads the way.

Go Firefox!

(via digg/software)

Update: 08.08

Type about:mozilla in the Firefox address box for a little Easter egg.

The recently founded SPREEBLICK VERLAG KG (WorldLingo translation) plans to publish and market high-quality German blogs focusing on a number of niche subjects.

Besides Spreeblick itself, they’re starting out with the following blogs:

• Antifreeze: Indy music and art
• d-frag: Computer games
• lautgeben.de: Politics
• Trashkurs: Music in general
• zoomo: TV and radio

Woah! Way to go guys!

Heads-Up: A Statewatch Report:

Read how the EU-wide Schengen Informationssystem II is being developed into a Panoptic-Big-Brother-Surveillance-Database-Machine behind the backs of the European parliaments.

From the Schengen Information System to SIS II and the Visa
Information (VIS): the proposals explained (pdf)

Taken together, SIS II, VIS and PNR will introduce the surveillance of the movements of everyone in the EU - citizens, legally resident third-country nationals, visa entrants and irregular migrants - and the storage of their personal data on an unprecedented scale.

Real Horrorshow!

(via Heise Online - Google translation)

Apple-X.net
has the lead..

All I can say is: it’s about fsck’ing time!

(via MacSurfer)

The New Communications Forum Europe, originally scheduled for April 5-6, has been postponed.

We firmly intend on holding the Forum once we have judged the market is more ready, hopefully towards the end of this year.

This news has Neville Hobson asking: Is Europe a ‘communications Sahara’ for blogs and other new-media channels?

What an indictment of the lack of interest and willingness to learn about something new by communicators in Europe!
(…)
Or is it? There are little pockets of excellence here and there, with increasing numbers of communicators who are active in using and evangelizing these new channels (look at the new directory of PR bloggers, for example).

Yet these pockets of excellence represent the converted - what the Forum is about is reaching the unconverted: those communicators who haven’t yet experienced these new channels and want to find out how they might benefit them and their businesses. That’s what we saw at the US event in January - lots of PR, marketing and other communicators who didn’t yet know much about blogs, etc, but wanted to find out more.
(…)
Either way, please don’t sit on a fence. Let’s get some balanced opinion on what’s wrong in Europe!

There you have it: although they didn’t yet know much about blogs, etc, but wanted to find out more. Not so here.

While there certainly are “little pockets of excellence” over here, they are small, few and far between.

As far as Germany is concerned, I could carry on all day about the reasons. In essence, though, the difference we’re dealing with is a deeply conservative mind-set, coupled with a widespread distrust and rejection on principle of “trends from America”.

Of course, the severely depressed economic climate plays an enormous role too, as well as the resultant tendency to rather live in the glory days of the past Wirtschaftswunder.

I have no doubt that they will get there, eventually. It’s just that a lot of patience and perseverance will be required.

There are plenty of blogging related jobs available via indeed.com. And there’s even a feed to keep track of them.

Sigh! I’m willing to wager a large sum that it will take upwards of 5 years for the same signs to begin to appear in good ole’ Germany…

(Hat tip to Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion)

Telepolis: The Death of Lisbon. Is eEurope dead? Should we really care?

Yes, it is. And yes, we should (have), really.

But then, I’ll say it again - it’s going to take a generational change for things to improve significantly. In the case of Germany, even more, I’m afraid.

T-Online weblogs!

Noooo!

In order to appreciate the meaning of this development one needs to know a little bit more about “T-Offline” as it is affectionately known here. As soon as I get over my initial horror reaction I’ll try to explain….

In the meantime the absence of any mention on Heise is surprising, to say the least.

(via Loic Le Meur)

Update 13 March 05:

I was going to launch into a flaming rant about the company but, after giving it some thought, I shall refrain in the hope that the service will be a useful platform for clients to report on their experience with such an outfit. For now, I am happy enough not to count myself among them.

It took a while too but today Heise did provide a very short note. LOL!

There’s also a new mobile weblog service offered by o2 called o2 Mobile Diary.

(via Golem)

David Berlind of ZDNet.com: EU to head down the patent rathole?

All I know is that the system is broken. Seriously broken.
(…)
indepedently coming up with another approach instead of dealing with software patents on a more global level is a huge mistake and I fear that no matter what anybody says to convince us that’s not about to happen that this is exactly what’s about happen. Brace yourselves. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets easier.

More on the issue:

• Heise newsticker (Worldingo transl.)
• (FFII) The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure

SPIEGEL ONLINE - International GERMAN PAPERS:

The latest attempt at consensus — an open letter writing campaign — is playing out more like a bad 18th century farce than modern political drama.

A sad spectacle indeed.

Nothing short of a generation change is required for any realistic improvement. By then, I’m afraid, the situation will have become a lot worse…

Different District News:

The organizers of MacExpo Germany 2005 announced today that Apple will be an exhibitor at the upcoming event this June in Cologne, Germany. “Besides a major stand Apple also plans to run a stage program including product presentations as well as info and ‘edutainment.’

(via MacSurfer)

Lots to catch up on, it seems. For instance:

The CScout TrendDay 8th of March in Munich. TrendBlog has the details.

(More fronm Heiko Hebig)

Respect!

The inimitable Schockwellenreiter has just about completed his transition back to Frontier (the open source version).

His latest step has been applying a homegrown rendering script to all his entries which generates the feed.

An interesting side-note is that he now writes all his entries using the built-in Frontier outliner. Cool!

As a finishing touch, now all he needs to do still is to get trackback working.