No one yet complained about the declining blogging frequency here – but I can’t deny, postings here have become fewer and fewer during the last months. I can see several reasons for this change.

First of all I don’t have a fast internet connection for most of the time. My girlfriend has no DSL and my mobile connection kinda sucks. UMTS comes and goes here. Last week o2 has introduced EDGE here in Bamberg and it is working quite well, but 15-25 kbyte/sec are bad bad bad .

I’m putting content online, but not onto my blog here. My image gallery is still growing with pictures from the most different events, and I’m still taking pictures for Feki.de. But I didn’t take the time to write postings here commenting on those events and linking the pictures. Also instead of putting together travel information, I’ve created articles on Qype commenting on restaurants/hotels/sights there.

And last but not least I just don’t have any boring evenings anymore, where I can’t find a better anything more interesting to do, then to blog.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 12:50 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Starting today I will be guest-blogging in http://www.liveshopping-blog.de/. It is a Watchblog covering offers of Liveshopping Pages. I will go more into details later. Have fun reading my most recent post here.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Lost and Found, Things to know at 00:58 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Yesterday I had the pleasure to attend a meeting of Bamberg's blogosphere. It took place in the garden of Oda's sweet little house, and we also had a barbecue there. Before the whole thing started, I've already to note a lesson learned: never try to buy groceries before a public holiday. I had volunteered to buy the beer and ended up waiting twenty minutes at the checkout lane of Real.- Attending for probably the last time was Jan, who leave us for Hamburg, soon. We had a lot of fun, discussed many many issues, event had a kind of stand up comedy, and even sang some old songs. If you want to get a better impression have a look at the pictures.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 20:50 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Talking with other students in higher semesters about blogging, there is one question that I get asked quite often: Don’t you think that blogging might endanger your job chances? Lately the German business magazine “Wirtschaftswoche” titles “Karrierekiller Google” (Career-killer Google) and talks about a few examples were a search on Google unveiled unwanted Details about persons, who then didn’t get certain jobs they applied for. Martin Röll discusses the article in his blog and criticizes that the “problem” with Google unveiling information is not approached dialectical. Many careers might be initiated just because of information Google unveiled! Jochen Mai, the author of the article also made a posting on the article in his blog.

My personal approach to this topic is very optimistic – searching for my name on Google will get you quite interesting information on me, but so far there is nothing I’d have problems to justify. Most of the links you will get will lead you to sources, which I can influence. So I think blogging keeps me in control of information that is available on the net (I doubt that someone will really "stalk on me" beyond those many many informations given there) – but if you discover a potential problem feel free to inform me.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in on subject at 13:11 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

This year, the 3rd of November was not only my brothers 25th birthday, but also the date of the first meeting of Bamberg's Bloggers this winter semester. This time we met at the Fässla brewery, which offers great Franconian cooking and cheap (2€/0,5l) beer. Since the day was a Friday a few of us couldn't make it, since they did spent the weekend at their parents place. But the "hard core" made it to the meeting. Unluckily I had to leave early for my brothers b-day party, so I could only take a few pictures.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 20:14 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Initially this whole thing was about communicating from Malaysia to Germany, to get my pictures from overseas online and to create some persistent viewable memories. So I started this blog project as my personal Malaysia diary.

I did never question, whether this was the right medium to keep my friends up to date. Guess some would have been happier to get individual emails or some monthly emails with reports about what would be happening abroad. From my personal experience reading such emails, I had decided that at least for me those mails were rather inadequate. When you finally invest the time to read through such mostly long summaries, the events which are covered are already ancient. There are also so many topics covered, that you just don’t know what to say. And if you read such a complex work, you will feel obliged to write back something rather highly sophisticated. Using a blog, you will have more short postings, and there are chances, that some friends would just write something less sophisticated.

Meanwhile I have learned, that blogging enables to far more than just an easier way of communication with friends. Actually it is only suited for this communication if your friends are willing to go this way with you – they need to read the blog and need to comment. I had to make the experience that the first of these requirements can be achieved. It is just a little less convenient. Although your blog might give the reading person many more features than just a simple email it is less convenient. The reason is very understandable – you can’t just force somebody to visit your website, but you can demand that somebody reads your emails. Anyway, if someone cares he will take his time to have a look on your blog from time to time. But the second requirement – to get feedback via your blog from these friends is a really invincible obstacle. Until today the majority of my readers has reservations against commenting on my blog. The number of people commenting on my blog, who don’t own their own weblog moves against zero!

But there are other users that can be motivated to contribute to your blog – people just like yourself – fellow bloggers. Initially I had hoped, that I could keep contact to my friends from Malaysia with the help of my blog – but not all of my friends down there seem to care very much about my writings here. But due to my blog I got new friends in Malaysia – bloggers like me

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Things to know, Web-Site at 09:18 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

I saw this meme a view days ago, and wondered how long it would take to hit me. On Friday Jan got hit and used paule to bring this meme into the blogosphere of Bamberg.

Why are you blogging?
I discovered blogging as a nice tool for self-expression. Initially it was only a tool to keep contact to my friends and family while I was staying abroad but in the meantime it developed to a nice toy which I like to sue to write down my thoughts.

When did you start blogging?
I started blogging in March 2005 in preparation for my internship with Siemens in Malaysia.

Why are people reading your blog(s)?
Probably because they are interested in the matters I’m writing about. But honestly – I’m not sure.

What was the last search result, which got someone visiting your site?
My service column on the right shows the Last Google Searches! But since there is an internet beyond Google, I’ll give you the last Yahoo search: “sgh-x820 language pack german”

Which of your posts did wrongfully not get the necessary attention?
There is one post that immediately comes into my mind.. I wrote a long post about my thought to the world youth day 2005 – and didn’t get a single comment on it (at least now it has its first trackback ). But since this is the chance to promote such an article: READ IT!

What is your favorite Blog?
Actually I didn’t know that I should have one.. I'll think about it.

To which blogs do you want to forward this meme and why?
To Steffanie from Sweden - expecting to see some new German content in her Blog. http://www.steffanie.net/deutsch (Hi Steffanie, the questions for this meme are available in German here.)
To Josh – since I didn’t contribute to his blog for quite a while
To Obelisk Dee - since she always likes distractions from her studies
To the Grützekraftwerk, since I’m really interested in getting this questions answered by Reaktorsicherhet and Supergau!
And last but not least to Feeodora and Deathslayer because I expect some deep insights about them...

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Things to know at 18:40 | Comments (2) | Trackback (1)

For the next days I'll be blogging most of my stuff here.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Travel at 10:34 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)