Love it! Werbeblogger just pointed me to a cool siteGet a first life (go outside, membership is free).
And of course it lists total residents (6+ billion), you can get first life clothing for real dollars (at cafepress.com), in a 3D analog world, where server lag does not exist. Hhm, maybe I should try that sometime.
This is an excellent truffle: A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. Excellent source of inspiration. Some visualisations are known, some are inspiring (at least to me). Here are the categories:
And the whole thing looks like this:
But you should really click through to the table (made in Flash) itself, because for each of the squares, the visualisation is shown as a popup.
Martin points us to this PDF by Edelman, which is a report on the state of the blogosphere in 10 countries worldwide. It’s an interesting 40-page whitepaper, but of course I started with the German blogosphere. However, Germany is disappointing:
In comparison to several of its counterparts, the
German blogosphere is still in its infancy. The
Edelman Omnibus Blog Study found that 85% of
Germans never read blogs, which was the second
highest percentage, after Belgium, among the
10 markets examined. Unlike France and the
United States, few of the blog conversations
that originate in the German blogosphere seem
to find their way into offline conversations or into
mainstream media coverage.
Again and again I wonder why this is the case. But sofar, I haven’t found any satisfactory answers. Media influential Geert Lovink says that it is due to the german editors of the mainstream press – not because of a lack of something in our net-culture. But I don’t see how this could be a strong enough influence on the german blogosphere.
Now you thought YouTube is already a bad site for yoyeuristic nerds. But then I stumbled upon Stickam. This is absolutely crazy. It’s almost like YouTube, but there is one major difference: it’s LIVE!
Live video can feel very strange, I just noticed. The only times I have experienced live video streaming were during skype calls with my brothers in Hamburg or my Cousin in Arizona.
But this is different. You click on one of the links and all of a sudden you end up in the living room of a stranger. So while checking out the live feeds, I actually sneaked into one person from Denmark who started – quite openly – to smoke a selfmade hashpipe or something that looked like it. Made out of a plastic soda bottle. There was the option to chat, but quite frankly, I didn’t want to disturb the guy.
The next live stream I visited was the DJ performance of a breakbeat DJ. In the videostream it seemed that there are two people DJ-ing. But neither of them bothered to answer my question if there is any OK, one just answered. A little later, and he admitted that he is quite drunk. (And I just got reminded of the fact that chat syntax is revolutionary: “lol kwl im goin now sum1 else will tlk soon ok c u l8r m8“).
The most surprising live-surprise: the DJ actually greeted me via the stream! (â€wanno make a loif shouuwt ouuwt to roouwlaanâ€)
Very kwl, m8.
(found here)
Steve Jobs has announced the new iPhone. And man, do I want one!! You can check out a transcript of the presentation at engadget, including photos of the new toy. I borrowed some, hope that is alright (let me know when you need them back).
The main thing: the whole phone is a huge touchscreen, except for a homebutton. I mean everything. Even the button lock is unlocked via a move on the touchscreen (one that can’t just happen by accident in your pocket).
You apparently also don’t need a stylus, as you can do everything with your fingers, almost as you are used to it from the clickwheel from the iPod.
All the Buttons you need appear when you need them:
I am absolutely fascinated by this. Of course you can also listen to songs and watch videos with it. Freeking brilliant, really.
So what will it cost?
So how much more than $499 should we price it? We thought long and hard about it… it does so much stuff…†He’s stalling for the drama. Enough Steve! “What should we price it at? For a 4GB model we’re pricing it at $499 — no premium whatsoever.
“We’re going to have an 8GB model for just $599.â€
Unfortunately we’ll have to wait until June 2007 until it becomes available. And that’s probably only in the US. When will I be able to get it in Germany?
Chris Anderson, who wrote “The Long Tail†looks at the question concerning most of the small longtail bloggers: Can you make money in the Long Tail? This post is interesting in itself, as it looks at the different participants of the long tail: producers, aggregators and consumers – and how each one might benefit from the long tail.
But: He also quotes a Valleywag blogpost in which a website owner is cited to complain about Google:
I’m beginning to have my doubts about Chris Anderson’s long tail, the proposition that cultural boutiques can make a living on the Internet. One disgruntled publisher complains she’s owed less than the minimum Google can be bothered to pay her. And, as fast as she makes money, Google lifts the threshold. [She writes:] “When I started with Adsense in late 2004/ early 2005 the minimum was $25. Just when was about to hit the $25 minimum, they raised it to $50. Now that I have $45 in my account, the minimum is $100. Granted, I have a site with very low traffic, but how many website owners are getting screwed by Google? If the long-tail theory holds out, there could be millions of dollars of unpaid Google ads.â€
I can see where this website owner is coming from. I wonder, how much money Google earns with the money they centrally collect from advertisers (I assume, there is no threshold) and invest at, well, 5%-10% on any capital market. It will only be a few dollars each, but the sum of all the blogs probably results in big money.
I guess we have no way of imagining the amount of money one can make by deploying the long tail market. But someone at Google knew and implemented the threshold of payments. Very clever.
Wo ich sonst so bin...