Recieved the ticket for this festival a few minutes ago! So it is final, I'll be there. Listening to all those great bands like Metallica, The Prodigy, Nightwish, Kid Rock and much more. Definately one of the highlights this year.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 13:49 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

They didn't make it this weekend. No glorious end of the soccer season for our "local" team from Nuremberg this year. So once again they'll have to rebuild and giht there way back into the first league. Fahrstuhldrubbn! Ole! Ole.

Let's remember some shinier moments:

Continue reading "Die Legende lebt!"

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 14:25 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

From time to time I realize certain sentences in song lyrics I didn't notice for years - although I might have heard such a song a hundred times. Probably it is the same for you? So I decided to create a little guessing series here. Please don't use google.. But feel free to post your guesses as comments:

And some blond gave me nightmares
I think she's still in my bed

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Lost and Found at 17:03 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

[Trigami-Review]

Prologue

Travelers always have been an interesting target for web communities – they seek information about places far away – and they want information tailored to their specific needs and they want it reliable. All those are requirements an internet community about travel can give them. People writing about all those places – probably people similar to them be it backpacking or staying in 5* hotels can be found in communities. Also you’ll have the chance to make a picture of those people visiting their profiles or following their posts, and therefore be able to judge about the reliability about information.

But I don’t want to write epic descriptions about travel communities in general – just to set up those three features I would seek for in travel communities:

• get information about places far away
• tailored to my needs
• get community functions to connect with other and to allow me to judge about reliability

Depending on the extend those features are fulfilled I might be interested in sharing my own experiences in such a community

The community

Thanks to Trigami, I was made aware of the chance to have a glimpse at the new travel community dodo.com. Choosing the exotic and extinct dodo-bird (not to confuse with the professor at the University of Bamberg, carrying that first name) as an mascot. Dodo.com provides six main navigation sections.

• The first home sections gives an overview about current community activities like new travel tips, new members, new fotos, new videos and new travelogue entries.
• The second section “travel tips” shows user reviews about something the different sections remind me a bit to qype, where you can write reviews about places, restaurants and sights, too.
• “Travelogues” consists of peoples travel experiences. Each entry there is accompanied by a map, showing the location of area it is about, and information about the member writing the entry.
• Then there are two sections with Photos and videos. Each is offering “new” and “popular” items, and a categorization via country. You are also encouraged to upload your own material – but it hast to be attached to a travelogue.
• The last section probably is the most interesting one – the classic “my”-section being the gateway to most of the individual community settings & connections. You can get an overview about your profile there, change your Profile, see all your travel tips, travelogues, photos, videos, bookmarks and of course your friends and messages.
• Apart from those main features there is also the obligatory (?) making of Blog with information about the making of dodo.com. It’s quite interesting to catch a view pictures of the young team behind dodo.com there.

My thoughts

So far dodo.com offers all features, which are quite essential to publish some travel information on the net. All items on the homepage are well structured and easy to understand. Even a total beginner, or people not to familiar with Internet communities should have no problems in getting around at the homepage. The requirements I stated in my prologue are partially fulfilled. I can retrieve infos, I can judge a little bit, by looking into people’s profiles – but how can I tailor them to my needs? Some more categories e.g. “backpacking” or “luxury travel” or at least a basic folksonomy could greatly improve likelihood to find interesting information.

But it is still beta so the features are yet(?) limited. They provide a well working homepage, but they lack some excellence I would hope for, in such a new piece of social software. Things I would like to see there:

• Possibility to link external media sources – connect the community to your feeds on Flickr, Youtube, Blip.tv, picasa, Gallery2
• Connect your personal profile to other travel related pages e.g. Couchsurfing and hospitalityclub
• Make the content accessible via Folksonomy (aren’t tag clouds always a nice gimmick?)
• More options for your profile. If you’ve seen a few facebook profiles, you know how much time people might actually spend organizing there user profile. A portfolio of widgets and the possibility to post own marked up code should be a minimum

I'm really interested in following the further development of the community.

You're chance to win!

In order to encourage users to register and become active members of the dodo.com community the makers are making a draw at the end of the year, giving away a trip worth 10.000 EUR. The more activity and the more persons you invite into the community, the higher your chance to win! So if you sign in to dodo.com – be kind and use my invitation link.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Lost and Found, on subject, Travel at 12:25 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

Sorry, for the German title and attached German song, but sometimes I can't avoid to bring content in my native language I've got us a new header picture yesterday night. It shows the Pacific coast of the US taken from scenic road #1 somewhere south of Monterey. The day it was taken was one of the last hot summerdays I've had in my US holidays. Afterwards, the weather became colder.

Got to admit, that I missed the great wheather, for a while, although the skiing holiday one week later was equal fun. Guess I can't decide, whether I'm a summer or a winter guy. But well - do I have to? At the moment I really enjoy the summery wheather. But for the days the weather won't be so nice, I've attached the video!

Continue reading "Sommer"

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life, Media, Web-Site at 13:27 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

After 24 hours of downtime my blog is back online. Obviously someone messed around with firewall settings at the company this server is hosted

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 22:47 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 01:02 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

... No. Not what you are thinking! Although 90s dance fans might know how the above sentence should be concluded. It goes out to my friend working with vodafone.

I'm subscribed to O2's Internet Pack M since about four weeks - since I had a similar pack before I get it discounted 5EUR/month instead of 10EUR. I'm also subscribed to their Communication Center Pack, which provides e-mail forwarding via MMS or SMS 50 free Web-SMS and a few related services for another 5EUR/month. Today O2 announced, that the features of this pack will be included in a new Internet Pack S - and the old communication center pack's features will be part of all superior Internet packs. So I'll be saving those 5EUR!

I've also subscribed to a new o2 genion s contract through debitel, which provides free call forwarding into the o2 network without a monthly fee. Since I'm subscribed to a Genion L pack on my main contract, with a special rate, I get calls to landlines and into the o2 network for free from anywhere in Germany for 25EUR, I'm also still subscribed to a student rate with 100 free SMS a month.

So starting from June I'll have free calls to o2 and German landlines, 100 free sms, 200MB of data traffic, 50 free web-sms, free e-mail forwarding via sms/mms + reachability under a landline number. For 30EUR/month!!!

Beat this!

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 14:28 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)