First impressions from Thailand
Check out my article over at the Twingly Blog explaining why soon even your grandparents will know what you mean when you tell them that you have to check-in at a location. Yep, you guess it, it's all about Facebook Places!
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It's a funny thing: You read an article about some kind of cult/trend/movement, and you realize that you are following the same idea or concept described in the text, but without thinking too much about it.
That happened to me when I read this BBC piece about the "Cult of less". For some years I have been trying to get rid of stuff I don't need, things that only stand somewhere in your appartment waiting for the removal of dust. The more our life is centered around digital content and information, the easier it is to replace tangible with intangible goods. It might sound like a nightmare to collectors and people who love to live between billions of things that have nothing more than emotional value. But for me, it's an attractive lifestyle (for now).
The advantage of the Cult of less: You are much more flexible and mobile, which is a plus in our globalized world. Put all your stuff on a harddisk and back it up in the cloud (or the other way round), and you can go and do whatever you want. And the best thing: Wherever in the world you are, you feel like home when you start your computer or smartphone.
Although I wouldn't want to go as far as some of the people mentioned in the article, who voluntary got rid of their appartment. That's a bit too minimalistic for my taste.
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After a lot of back and forth, Google finally announced that it is about to launch Street View in 20 German cities before the end of the year. But to comply with the requirements of notoriously supercritical German politicians and privacy advocates, Google will give every citizen the chance to prevent the company from publishing photos of their houses. In these cases, Google will blur the pictures shown on Street View.
In order to achieve that, people have to fill out an online form or send a written letter. The Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection is even providing a draft for everyone to print and send to Google's headquarter in Hamburg.
Of course, all this is just the continuation of a tedious debate about the value and importance of privacy in the digital age in Germany.But while the conflicts surrounding Google Street View have been extremely annoying, at least we see some funny ideas to ridicule the exaggerated Street View discussion:
First, we have a movement of users who plan to take, publish and geotag a photo of every house that has been removed from Google Street View after residents have objected. And second, there is another, "unoffocial" letter draft which you can send to Google in order to object possible objections regarding the removal of photos from Street View. So if you live in Germany and have neighbours that you suspect could make the effort to forbid the publication of photos on Street View, you could use that draft.
I'm pretty sure this wasn't the last chapter in the German Google Street View soap opera. A pathetic and sad soap opera that was not nice to watch. And while Street View even made it into the main TV news, hardly anybody in Germany heard about today's really important Google related news - news which could change the Internet forever (for the worse).
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Instead of seeing tweets in my personal Twitter feed updating ever minute or so, they appear in the very second they have been published by users I follow. For some this might sound like a minor feature, but in my eyes it is huge, because it's only with the new API that Twitter has become a real "real time service".
Since weekends are usually calm times on Twitter I look forward to the next hours and days to see how and if the real time feed changes my Twitter experience. But already now I enjoy just sitting in front of my screen and looking at the continuous stream of tweets, without me having to do anything. It's like TV, just much more interesting.
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Swedish marketing and media news site Dagensmedia.se has some interesting numbers on the economical performance of popular music streaming service Spotify in its home country Sweden.
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Even if most Swedish women would tell you that Sweden is far from having gender equality, it is at least one of the countries in the world that has come closest to this goal. For me being from Germany which is definitely more traditional compared to Sweden, it is interesting to observe how Swedes react towards potential discrimination.
Take this ad for example which according to resume.se has been criticized for showing gender stereotypes. It was supposed to be part of an advertising contest but is now being removed from the competition by the ad agency and the client behind it.

Now one question would be it is the advertiser's responsibility to sugar-code reality. And the reality is that most pilots are male. I don't even recall a single flight when the pilot was a woman.
On the other hand, it's not that uncommon anymore with male flight attendants. So having one female and one male flight attended might have been the better choice, and maybe only one pilot.
Furthermore, the ad promotes the Museum of Technology and hence is payed for by the state (= tax payer). The state of Sweden and all organisations owned by the state try hard to be a role model regarding equality, which might explain why the ad is being cancelled.
It's funny how you become increasingly aware of these kind of "incidents" the longer you live in this country.
The other day I was watching the German TV broadcast of a World Cup match. One commercial caught my attention where a successful looking man wearing a suit wanted to buy a car (I don't remember the brand). And one of the first things the dealer asked him was if he planned to buy the car for his wife...
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