Kategorie: Allgemein

As slashdot reports, AOL just released new terms of service: Now they are allowed to use all of the content anyone is posting or generating with one of their products (e.g. AIM) and reproduce them for their own purposes. Mh, I can´t really understand that a company does this, I mean, what for? Internet users are *still* concerned about security reasons, and then they want to play BigBrother? An excerpt from the tos: „In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.“

I´ve been to a very cool event yesterday evening: tonecentrale in cologne. Only a small v-card under the ringingbell at a small house in the middle of „Ehrenfeld“ hints to this music-evnt. You go through the first house into the cellar, and you find a small room, packed with people and cool djs. The whole event is for free – which I find fantastic, though I hope, that thereßs something like a cultural found of the town, to make this evening last long…View the small video: it´s´cool experimental music

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Buffet´s letters to shareholders from 1977 – 2003.good work 😉

This is really awesome: Take Flickrs tags and tag them, and tag them and tag them…you´l´l get a kind of „neuronal-connection-web“ – which you can describe through a mathematic model. Imagine this for searches, for Amazon,…

Worth to read!

Found an interesting article on PSFK.com around the British BBC, and their problem with free internet TV. Public TV is, as in germany, financed through a fee every TV watcher has to pay (per month/year). The question is if people are willing in the future to pay for a program they could get for free on the net. My answer is yes and no. No: If I can get the same content via Internet, why should I use my TV – btw. in the future you´ll have a kind of „homeCenter“ where you can choose between SAT TV, Internet, Cable TV or whatelse. And Yes: people will always be willing to pay for GOOD CONTENT. And that´s the key: The BBC made it for years, having a very GOOD WEBSITE! (they are so crazy: if you are coming back for several times, the website recognizes you an highlights your special interest stories). But the quality race will become faster: as for the fact that all budget you need to make a movie is about some thousand euros, the competition will grow. More and more private content will flood the net – and it will be highly recommendable. So please, BBC, you have your chance to do good job, because you have a huge viewer potential all around the world (and the net)

We are just having an interesting discussion over at Om Maliks. It all began with his post about Jeremy Allaire, who has just launched a multimedia start-up. (Yes, he was the guy behind Coldfusion, Homesite, etc.). This is getting a little scary, ´cause we´ve done such things about a year ago – sadly we had no financial power to push it further. But that´s another story. What happened? Jeremy Allaire is going to deliver multimedia content with his startup BrightCove. But he doesn´t tell us how he´s going to manage it. Om Malik has his thoughts about it („XML/FLASH“) and I totally agree with him, though I think it won´t be a new IP VIDEO PLATFORM. It´s a question of putting the right existing components together – the technology is out there! One major issue I see is the question on how to finance the delivery: are customers willing to pay for the traffic (and this is not a minor issue, though Alex is right with saying, that when there´s one fix price out there, there´ll be six others who deliver cheaper.) Alex and I were discussing whether people will want to download their stuff, or just let it stream. Though podcasting teaches me another way, I´m convinced that in the long term there will something like a xyz-flickr be, you´ll tag your data, and get wherever and whenever you want it – you´ll get ip´s everywhere (especially since I got 3G I´m convinced about that). Now this is going into a very interesting direction: what will the UI for the content be? BrightCove is hinting at open standards – now, this could mean something like svg (which is lame) or maybe some self developed java stuff? Let´s see – a lot of problems need to be solved – I´m looking forward to this…

Well, this is one of the finest virals at the moment.

I don´t think this is the final solution to bring broadband internet access to everybody, but it´s an interesting beginning: The CUCWN is an open source wifi network which you can participate in for free – with own internet access either as a node, or with no as an edge. You just net your old 486 with a capable wifi card, and boot it from CD – the OS automates the process of connecting.

One of my favourite things I like to do in my sparetime is: cooking. Trying a lot of different receips, mostly crumbling out of my mind after looking into the fridge and finding some things, I like the receips of jamie Oliver very much. Jamie is a quite young english cook, and he is doing a „rock´n´roll cooking business“. When you´ve watched his TV show (I think it´s on RTL 2 , saturday morning in (germanTV)) you know what I mean: no need for white clothes and tablecloth, he´s just having fun in buying the things you need, and cook them. Now I´ve found his Webpage, and guess what? He´s blogging and moblogging – hell, that´s cool. Additionally you´ll find dozens of fine receips there – all worth a try. This is how I like it: doing a classical business is a passionate „rock´n´roll“ way – WOW!