Last tuesday I spent a rather long day in Berlin. Actually it wasn’t exactly Berlin which made the day long, it was - again - Cologne and its black hole called public transportation or short KVB. Coming out of the plane at Cologne airport - by the way: that pilot must have been mental - I went directly to the trainstation. Of course I didn’t really think about the train timing here, as they are just always late, but that’s the Deutsche Bahn and we’re kind of used to it. In the end the train came 10 minutes too late. The signs at the stations didn’t show this, even two Bahn workers who waited for the train looked suspicious at the dark tunnel. A quick look at the iPhone app that has (allegedly) every station in Germany showed the 10 minute late-ness.

If you ever come to Germany and own an iPhone get the Fahrplan app from the App Store. If you’re going to Berlin also get the Berlin Trip Planner. This one even searches for nearby stations. (more…)

So over here in Germany there has been this Facebook clone StudiVZ created in October 2005. The people behind it ran with the template, translated it to German and started their very own social network (another word to add to the ugh-list), with a different color, of course. I’ve been a member for almost two years now and while other services expanded, changed and got better - or died -, this one didn’t really do any of the above. The biggest changes were the addition of more and more advertisments, some privacy changes that got them into the major news concerning selling personal user information, etc., and the ability to share your status. Guess where they got the latter. Yip, exactly.
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While listening to No Agenda #28, Adam and John came accross the subject of the so called user generated content whilst talking about the recent name change of Podshow to Mevio. This change, by the way, resulted in the same reaction for me as it did for John: “Yeah, new name, great, lets move on”.
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(Title courtesy of TWiT)

“It is much thinner” - “It does look different” - Captain obvious, anyone?

So, there we go again. Another fine example how big media in Germany most of the time is at least a few months behind. RTL a few days ago started to make a big deal about showing “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. For all you YouTubers: get your copy here. This “documentary” was first shown in march. Of course the official version for the delay, if anyone over here will notice it all, will be something like “But we had secure all the rights”.

This is just another example of how bad TV is over here. Another sample are all those TV shows: The dubbing generally is so bad that you get the impression they only had one dubbing artist for the whole cast. CSI for example: in my opinion it’s totally unwatchable in the German version. I fell asleep listening to that one monotone voice. Everybody sounds the same. If you watch one original english episode of the series in question you never want to watch another version.

Another matter is the lag between the US and the German seasons of any particular US series. I don’t want to watch a show that remotely refers to something that is happening in the world right now. I’m wondering when that last seasons Simpsons episode criticizing the Iraq war will air here in Germany. But then again, maybe the Bushmeister will then have invaded some other country for whatever reason again. It just doesn’t make sense, I mean the three year old episodes and Skippy.

I refuse to watch a badly dubbed show, that is a few years old and therefore isn’t “new” anymore. I can only advise you to buy the full-season DVDs of your favorite after it aired in the US. No advertisments, the whole show in one package and no stupid German localisations.

First up, I have to say that I’m relatively used to read childish comments in forums, blog posts or even on news articles. Considering I know the crowd who is reading articles of mine and colleagues, the best way is to either ignore them - or if they contain illegal material - delete them.

But what’s happening to Kathy Sierra takes all this to a new level and not only saddens me. The harassment went so far during the last few weeks - after various death threats! - that she’s worried to leave her home at the moment and cancelled recent presentations at ETech. I’m really wondering why people leave such stupid comments?

One can only hope - and I’m really confident - that the police will find this idiot(s).

Some companies are known to be slow. In Germany - and I guess mostly everywhere around the planet - it’s often those big guns that need some time to get into and understand new tools. In the case of podcasting the ZDF, one of those generally slow companies, got it very fast and used the new instrument. Other members of the old media don’t get it although some people are trying to push them into the right direction. Where’s the problem?

It looks like Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff got it right: “Hey big media, get ready for the co**punching you deserve!”

A couple of days ago Casi wrote a post about people only posting (funny) videos on their blogs. Well you can complain about it or you can just use your “voice” and stop reading those blogs. It’s their content and they possibly want you to read it - if it doesn’t interest you, stop the subscription. It’s as simple as that.

In case of my blog: if someone doesn’t like my way of telling what’s currently going on, that’s fine for me and you could complain or just stop visiting. According to GA I have a relatively high rate of returning visitors, for whatever reason. Some days there are more, like when Daniel is linking here, but most of the time there are only the regular visitors and a couple of fly-by’s. I don’t post here to get as many subscribers as possible, I do it because I like sharing my photos and enjoy hearing from people wo like them. Looking at that rather small returning crowd I’m quite happy they come back every once in a while. For some of you I know who you are, either via geolocation, some GA research or because you just told me.

But back to Casi’s point. I personally don’t like the idea of only posting random links or videos either and thus wouldn’t carry on reading or subscribing if someone is just posting that kind of content to his blog. But, of course, that’s only my two cents…

So I went to Hamburg yesterday by train. The most interesting part of that ride was the way back to Cologne. I have never heard the word “apologize” that often on a single day. “We apologize for any troubles you had and hope to see you back in our trains soon.” At every station the same procedure. First in German then in English. And at some point the girl sitting next to me started shaking the head. “It’s the same, everytime. Sorry this, sorry that.” We made some jokes about it, which distracted both of us of the smelly and noisy container we were travelling in.

The best moment however was when someone a few rows in front of us asked the ticket-man if the persons were being trained to speak English at all. The announcers English was really bad. “Ssssssank you very mutch.” That question, again, resulted in some chuckles around our metal bin. That guy had a hard time that evening, but he well deserved it. At some point even his German excuses sounded like he was drunk. “Der Zug in Richtung Bielefeld fährt um 22.32 von Gleis” *inserthiccuphere* short break “18″.

With that type of company even using the train starts to be fun. Thanks, who ever you were, getting out in Düsseldorf yesterday evening :)

Okay, it’s complicated to find a job in Germany, but there are offerings all over the internets. A recent example: this one. A developer job for, I guess, this site.

Come on! Aside from the very weird job-offer - trying to pull something interesting there with that birthday requirement? - if you are searching for people to develop your site at least make up a homepage that looks a little creative and inviting. You want people to work for you, right? Or is all of this just a publicity stunt trying to imitate some kind of viral marketing?