Simply because I can :)
Just found Get a First Life via MIT Advertising Lab. It’s pretty simple. Go outside, it’s free, and there are over 6 billion members already! Got any more questions? The have an FAQ for things like:
So go there. As they say: First Life is a 3D analog world where server lag does not exist.
Damn cool!
I received the results from the pre DLD survey and I like them. First of all, not that many people took part (228) but it is still interesting and I am happy to know that I am party of the only 25% who also have been at DLD 06 
Congratulations also to Ibrahim to having made the “Other Leading Entrepreneurs of 2006″ list.
The good things for us at Ormigo is really the Important Topics for 2007 part. Obviously it starts with user generated content, going on with communities, social networks, next up online video content, and then at place 4 performance based marketing with 79% saying it is very or somewhat important. This is of course wonderful to hear and something we very much believe in. Then there is the “Best Business Model” which in second place (36%) has providing a platform for customers’ transactions which is again very close to what we do. Allowing local merchants to get new customers on a per lead (customer contact) basis, generated via ad campaigns that they could never run on their own, is really just a platform that facilitates transactions between merchants and users. This is really the mix of advertising, performance marketing, and a platform for transactions.
Well, we’re looking forward to rocking 2007 then
First of all, thanks a lot to Hubert Burda and of course to the entire team organizing the event. I had a great time, I was inspired and I will surely come again. The event was a great mix of people leading to very good networking indeed and some very inspirational talks, for example from Brian Cox about the Large Hadron Collider at Cern seen here showing us the one formula that explains everything . And now I am stuck, because there are too many recollections, like waterball at the party, Henning on the Segway, loads of different people including old and lots of new faces, a great panel on How to be Good, Where are the Editors, The Billion Dollar Bubble (with Marissa Mayer talking live about the problem of the google.de domain from the night before) , and more. I really have to agree with Martin that Arianna Huffington rocks and the panel with Tarik Krim from NetVibes, Craig Newmark from Craigslist (see Martin’s video), Jim Spanfeller from Forbes and David Sifry (see his great photos from DLD. He’s a prime lens freak by the way, which I learned at the party ) from Technorati was very good indeed. Because mentioning NetVibes, I have to also say that meeting Christoph from Pageflakes (and finally talking to him a bit longer after having seen him at MediaTech and Le Web ) as well as a new colleague that will become official on Monday, was great. But that’s it from me and it’s back to working on Ormigo and writing down all the great feedback we received.
You can watch many of the panels here. Check out Arianna’s post about DLD or simply follow DLD at Technorati.
There we go, things are settled, Blu-Ray looses. It seems that the porn industry is supporting the HD DVD standard and Sony seems to have just denied porn on Blu-Ray DVDs. This was the same thing when Sony denied porn on Betamax and then VHS one. It is surely not the only reason VHS won, but hell, it surely made a difference.
As someone once said, who needs several different angles on the same scene anyway? 
Let’s see how this plays out.
The wonderful Robert Basic has together with Klaus Eck organized a Blogger Meetup at DLD. Obviously Henning and me will be there as well as a large group of other people. Who do we have… for one Lyssa, who has the great and hard task to bring WAZ Online to success, Martin Varsavsky together with the head of FON Europe Robert Lang, Cam Basman (Outsourcing Blog) whom I met the first time at one of the first WebMontags in Cologne (he sponsored beer, thanks ), of course Nico Lumma, Oliver Wagner, Robert is trying to get Caterina Fake and Craig Newmark to show up, Heiko (one of the organizers of DLD) is coming, Nicole, Hugo E. Martin (looking forward to have a chat with one of the most interesting guy coming from the print business), Martin Röll, Daniela from OpenBC, and I can finally buy Florian Dargel a beer . And obviously there are lots of other people! All in all a great crowd.
This post goes to Vivanco. We really like their USB Blackboard Keyboard here at Ormigo, at least for those that are none Mac Users, who have the Macally Ice Key. I tried to buy one at Media Markt here in Germany for our latest developer, and sadly they were all out … but one. Sadly that one had a missing key, and a missing fold-out-leg (for lack of a better word) at the bottom. I brought it in and later mailed Vivanco to ask whether there was an option to get the missing key and leg from them in any way, so we had a working product, because we like it so much.
Today in the mail came a new full keyboard with mouse, directly from Vivanco, no strings attached, or so it seems. This simply rocks! Great service and very fast response time. Vivanco will definitely move up in my choice of products when there is a decision to be made!
BBC is reporting about Koopa. Starting this month, you do not need an album in the shops in physical form anymore in the UK. If you have your song as a buyable item in any of the valid online shops, these sales will be counted too and it seems that Koopa is at place 17 of the unofficial UK charts for Monday, poised to break in the top 40 of the official week charts at the end of the week. Unsigned. No record label. Free. If you speak german and want to read a great book about the music industry, check out Tim Renner’s “Kinder, der Tod ist doch nicht so schlimm.” (Kids, death is not that bad).
Planblog is reporting that the StudiVZ Blog has been hacked. While this is not very interesting as such, and can happen, but the story is just too funny. In short, Konstantin Urban from Holtzbrinck Ventures said in an article that the Chaos Computer Club has tried to hack StudiVZ and failed. Then CCC hacked (or so it seems) the blog to say this is not the case. As a small counter point, there is somebody that is part of some CCC club that to our knowledge tried to hack StudiVZ and failed, but that is not the same thing at CCC itself. Still, this is small mistake, and can be forgiven, it is still fun.
Also today, I learned that the contract with Amazon for your shipment only comes into place when the item is shipped, not with the confirmation. Why do I know? Because we just read a confirmation very thoroughly, because this morning, 4 laptops were listed at Amazon.de with prices of roughly 20 EURs instead of their real prices and somebody here managed to grab a 1400 EUR Vaio for 20 EURs. Well 22 something because he needs to pay for shipment He will possibly not get it though, at least Amazon doesn’t have to send it, due to the rules they have set. I am not sure though if they will not do so, because of PR implications. I will update once we know.
Update: The laptop is being retracted and they are just saying its was an error. Damn good rules for them
I have to admit, the iPhone from Apple is an amazing system. But when listening to the Hype Master it is sure to just make you drool. Obviously this is his goal but you will have to try to look through the fog to find out what this phone really does for you. By now, I found some problems with it that are important to keep in mind.
1. No UMTS: Ok people, this is no revolution. I now have a smaller Nokia E70 in my pocket, with UMTS, WiFi, fold-out Keyboard, full eMail client, the works. Doesn’t possibly look so cool but full featured and fully syncing (also over the air and not only with the Mac) and with a memory card slot that currently holds 2GB. I have a mobile podcast client on there that gets me the newest TWiT whenever it is available. The power in this is UMTS! I have a UMTS flatrate and hence am always online. When I am no the train, or in a pub, or at a conference, UMTS is very good to have and it is way faster than EDGE. EDGE never was really 3G, it’s just at the edge of being 3G. UMTS is 3G.
2. No VoIP: The Nokia has a VoIP client and there at least seems to be a Skype client in development. I didn’t hear anything about VoIP in this system. Especially as they are working together with Cingular so closely, with Cingular possibly paying a large part of the fee, I doubt that we will see VoIP anytime soon.
3. OS X: Sure, nice, but as Scot said, where is the SDK? I surely can’t just move my app over. So make sure to understand this correctly. It is _based_ on OS X. Update: No 3rd Party apps will be possible.
4. Visual Keypad: Amazing, this is exactly what the PC did. This is why we all have touchscreen keyboards and PCs. Because tactile feedback sucks big time. NOT! They needed this because they didn’t have place for a keyboard. Smartphones have configurable buttons.
5. Visual Voice Mail: This only works with Cingular. The voice mails are on the network, and are navigated via pressing the right keys. They needed to work together with Cingular to make this work and it will not work with any other carrier. So really, this is great, but it is to be seen whether they will make it work at any carrier or if it will always be locked in on the carrier. I for one will not switch from Base at the moment.
6. Safari: Safari is not the best web browser in the world and I do have a pretty decent browser on my Nokia, ok, also based on the Safari engine. And I do have a special Google Maps app and I do have a special GMail client.
7. IMAP eMail: I have IMAP. IMAP is not push like Blackberry!!! Blackberry means you are not always online and for IMAP push you will have to be always online. I will have to take a closer look at what else Yahoo! does but I do doubt it is Blackberry level.
8. 2 Mega Pixel Camera: A well, good, but I do have 3 Mega Pixels and a new Nokia has 5 Mega Pixels. I also didn’t see video recording or Shozu to automatically Moblog
9. Kill app phone calls: Did you watch closely? Did you see where the microphone is? At the bottom. Good. Did you see where the speaker is? At the bottom. WHAT? Do I listen with my chin? So this is a phone you will have to use with headphones.
All in all, still a great device but I am not sure it’s a phone, which might not be bad.
Update: See comments for the fact that there is another speaker at the top of the phone it seems.
