Released almost 3 years ago and not yet available on DVD…
It’s partly about the the pool where I go once a week. It’s about Hakoah Vienna, a legendary Jewish Viennese athletic club until Mr A. Hitler plus friends arrived here.
Watermarks seems to be a great documentary and I’m really eager to watch it!
In the slipstream of Viacom’s YouTube lawsuit the Austrian Broadcasting is thinking about sueing YouTube because of copyright infringements too. It won’t be a billion dollar lawsuit though, for a company of Google’s dimension the Austrian Broadcasting wouldn’t be more than a tiny breakfast I guess, but there are some other points I don’t get about it:
In my country every household owning a TV must pay more than 20 Euros per month to the Austrian Broadcasting, just for having the opportunity to watch their program, even if you don’t do so. One of their most recent plans is to charge the same fees for computers with internet access too. Because as internet user without a TV set one could find alternative ways to watch their TV shows on the internet. Oh, and not to forget their 6×6cm 40sec Windows Media IPTV service. Now that’s what we’ve all waited for!
So, on the one hand they want my money, arguing that my computer is equipped with internet access (like the majority of computers I suppose), and on the other hand they try to bring services down where I, as internet user and their paying costumer, can, among other things, consume their TV shows the way and whenever I want it.
Instead of finding ways to benefit from web communities like YouTube – strangely enough that super duper DVB-T is threatened by 8×6cm crappy flash video clips – they prefer to fight it. Great.
Asking for creativity in some companies is probably asking for too much.
[youtube _OmuBUUcA2M]
Somebody in my office’s neighborhood got brand new Playstation 3 demo devices delivered today.
I’m not a gamer though, just got a little excited playing Tony Hawk’s Project 8 on my younger brother’s Playstation 2 and of course I’m curious about the supposedly mind blowing graphics of the new wonder machine. If I find it, I’ll give it a try. So expect me on some extended lunch breaks during the next days.
Clearly, a bad public opinion is still better than no public awareness at all. But if your target group starts joking about your product than there is possibly something going very wrong.
[youtube 2yhgvJaO9uE]
Why didn’t CK include bloggers in their campaign?
There are quite a few rather effective ways to commercially create awareness inside the blogosphere. I think a bottom up approach instead of a top down campaign would market that audience much better.
I didn’t even know that this species exists in Austria and today I found out that there was an Austrian Cheerleader Championship taking place. Unfortunately it was sort of an insider event and not very well announced.
Summer is just around the corner and I decided to get some new tee-shirts. No trendy brands but therefore I’d like to see some nice motifs on them. Strangely enough such simple printed tee-shirts are hard to find in Vienna. Well, except those popular rock band T-Shirts, but I think one AC/DC T-shirt in my wardrobe is probably enough.
Last summer in S.F. I saw this hilarious Chuck Norris print and tried to find the T-Shirt somewhere online, but wasn’t very lucky. So I designed it by my own and started a “Don’t fuck with Chuck” collection, incl. a baby bib and a mug, right away. Due to copyright issues not available anylonger…
Public censorship is never a good way when trying to establish democracy and a liberal society. Blocking entire sites, especially a popular web community where a considerable part of your population participates, sends definitely the wrong signals.
Content is still the affair of the web site owner and it’s their business to decide how to deal with offensive contributions in web communities for instance. As state you just define the legal framework and if the web site plays within your legal framework it’s ok, otherwise it’s illegal and can be forbidden based on your laws.
For me as citizen it would be alarming if my government starts banning sites because they politically don’t agree with parts of its content. I still prefer to have the choice which articles I read or what videos to watch, even if they are dumb and stupid, and I certainly wouldn’t accept politically motivated internet gate keepers in my country.
I bet a native OpenID support can be expected soon in one of the upcoming WordPress releases. Meanwhile, and out of curiosity, I tried to turn my WordPress installation into an OpenID consumer. There are a few OpenID WordPress plugins around, but the best I found was the WordPress OpenID Plugin+ done by Will Norris. It’s based on WordPress Open ID Plugin, with some bugs fixed and an Unobtrusive Mode included.
Basically it works well and you should be able to login with your OpenID to this site now. But there are still a few issues left (maybe related to K2) which caused me some headache before I finally decided to go with the plugin:
Instead of a login screen I get only a blank screen. I can only login through the new OpenID input field placed in my header.
If I check the “Comment form” option I get a blank page when viewing single posts.
It obviously doesn’t play well with myopenid.com: I only get an “Error: OpenID assertion failed: Bad signature.” as answer after trying to register a myopenid.com-OpenID.
Anyway, it’s still very experimental and if you experience any problems with OpenID here please let me know.
Summer is just around the corner and I decided to get some new tee-shirts. No trendy brands but therefore I’d like to see some nice motifs on them. Strangely enough such simple printed tee-shirts are hard to find in Vienna. Well, except those popular rock band T-Shirts, but I think one AC/DC T-shirt in my wardrobe is probably enough.
