Back from vacation

von | Apr. 22, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Marketing Trends

Yes, I have been on vacation. I didn’t announce it, that’s right. But you might have noticed, that the last post is rather old. I had 3 weeks, believe it or not. All vacation from last year, which I had to take now in order for it not to be cancelled completely. So I drove around Germany, visiting friends and family in Hamburg, spending some time on the baltic sea and taking a train to Prague to visit a cousin who currently studies there for his MBA. The Fotos from Prague you can find at flickr (where else?).

cimg2986.JPG

Interesting is the fact, that I actually spent most of my time during the three weeks not being online. A novelty for me, since I am usually in danger to „wilfing„. But it was actually very refreshing to read some books or just wander aimlessly through the streets and alleys of Prague 😉
And now (or say, tomorrow), I will return to some more regular posting…

One Day, no Internet

von | März 25, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Social Media Marketing

As I wrote earlier, it was Internet Shutdownday yesterday. And I decided to take part. When I originally wrote that, I assumed I would be on vacation (sitting on a beach, not thinking about the internet anyway.

However, as it turned out, I wasn’t on vacation, as I had to postpone my vacation by a week. So I will be on vacation next week instead. So it could have been a relatively hard day for me, being an internet junkie. But it wasn’t, since I spent a very nice day in Berlin (more on that later) and got back so late, that I decided to wait until after midnight – German time – for continuing to blog…

So what did I do during Internet Shutdown Day? I was sightseeing around Berlin and I spent almost 5 hours on a train back to Germany.

Was it worth it? If I had purposefully done these things in order to not use the internet, it would not have been worthwile. But I had no choice, so it was easy to not use the Internet.

Nice finding, hey? If you have no choice, then not using the internet can be OK…

Yahoo! Pipes – a meshup of feeds

von | März 20, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Marketing, Marketing Trends, SEO / SEA, Social Media Marketing

I know I am fairly late with this, but this is absolutely astounding! Yahoo! Pipes let’s users create their own feeds based on any information on the web. Here is an example of a meta-search-feed:

The pipe you’re looking at demonstrates how to use a few of the more powerful modules. In this example a variety of sources are queried with the same term. The results are merged into one feed. Next, all the items are sorted by what was most recently published. Finally any items with identical titles are removed and a new RSS feed is born.

This is how it looks like:

pipes.jpg

Once you have created a pipe, you can subscribe to the feed via the usual suspects – bloglines in my case.

Apparently you can meshup all sorts of types of information. A popular one for example is a mixture of appartments for rent and google maps.

A fascinating example of how „plattforms“ and „programming“ become less important, because users only meshup what is of interest to them any way. Question is: how can marketers make sure that users still receive marketing messages? (And like receiving them, at the same time – that will be even more important!)

A good article about twitter

von | März 19, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture

… a good article about twitter you can read at the wall street journal.

It is, by all means a very polarising service, some hate it, some use it, and most of those using it, seem to be addicted…

These services elicit mixed feelings in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters. Fans say they are a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But some users are starting to feel „too“ connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they’re having for dinner.