My name is Martin Weigert, I am a social web enthusiast from Berlin, living in Stockholm. Here I'll post my thoughts on the web (and life) that don't fit in 140 characters. If you understand German, head over to www.netzwertig.com where I am the editor.
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Amazon, Sweden needs you
I have been living in Sweden for more than 4 years now. One of the few things I haven't get used to yet (and probably never will) is the bad online shopping experience in this otherwise very cutting edge country.
Let me start with what I'm used to from Germany: In one word, it's Amazon! I'm used to Amazon's huge product catalog, covering almost all categories you need. I'm used to competitive prices, I'm used to free shipping as soon as you buy something for more than 20 Euro and I'm used to fast delivery.
Now, let's have a look at what you get in Sweden: There is no Amazon or another player with a similar market power. Instead, you have many smaller and medium sized online stores for different product categories. For the same products, prices are usually much higher at a Swedish store compared to the German (or US) Amazon store - and I'm referring to prices without VAT. In addition, shipping in most cases is not free, at least not for goods in the lower and medium price range. And finally, my personal experience is that shipping takes much longer than what I'm used to from Berlin.
For the record: I'm living in Stockholm, probably the area in the Nordic countries with the highest population density. I would understand if online shopping is more expensive and shipping slower in the North of Sweden, where hardly anyone is living. But in a metropolitan area with a population of almost 2 million, things shouldn't be that underdeveloped.
I think what's missing on the Swedish market is a disruptive company like Amazon that challenges the local players and that at the same time increases people's interest in online shopping. It's just a subjective observation but I don't find Swedes being much interested in buying things online at all.
Of course the question is if this is because of the lack of a simply awesome online store, or if the lack of a simply awesome online store is the consequence of the Swede's preference for shopping in physical stores instead.
To be fair, there is at least one company that tries to improve things: tretti.se, a great online shop for whiteware with a good usability, low pricing, free and fast shipping. Unfortunately, I don't buy a new fridge every week.
So until the day when Amazon or another player will start to disrupt the Swedish online shopping world, I'll find myself continuously searching for products at the German Amazon store first and getting frustrated about that thing's have to be such a hassle when they could be that easy.
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Bizarre North Korea
I have been pretty fascinated by North Korea lately, probably caused by their appearance in this year's Football World Cup.
The way this country is isolated from the globalization, the lack of all the basics that people in most other countries are used to, and the fact that one of their football players was crying in front of them camera when North Korea's national anthem was played creates some very bizarre atmosphere.
With interest I read the remarks of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding travel to North Korea. Some highlights:
- As a foreigner you are not allowed to talk to local citizen
- Electricity and water shortages even in the capital Pjöngjang are common
- You have to leave your mobile phone when entering the country
- Computers are checked for Internet and calling capabilities (and probably confiscated?)
- The currency for foreigners is Euro
- And: Usually you need to be invited by the government to be granted a Visa
Really weird, huh?
On Flickr, I found a photo set of a guy named stephan, who despite the strict photo rules managed to take a few hundred shots of different parts of the country. If you have some spare time left, check those pictures out. They tell more than words.
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How I started to love Reeder
After having read about the iPad RSS app Reeder half a dozen times or so, I finally decided to invest the 38 Swedish crowns to purchase and to install it, even though I was quite happy with the i-version of Google Reader.
Reeder syncs with Google Reader and brings all your feeds to a native iPad app (there is also an app for the iPhone).
After I downloaded it, look how things developed:
First time I tried it I was rather disappointed. Reeder didn't seem to enhance the RSS experience in the revolutionary way I expected after reading all those praising reviews.
The second time, I started to get used to the interface and learned the controls, which are not labeled.
The third time, Reeder began to feel like my new home for RSS.
And after firing up Reeder for the fourth time this morning, I have to admit I start to love it!
I'm not sure (yet) if Reeder is the best tool for a quick scan of your feeds, and it's hardly more useful than the Google Reader i-version for all the RSS teaser feeds that don't provide the full article.
But for consuming full feeds, Reeder is pure pleasure. I like the light colors, especially the beige background, which somehow makes the hectic pace of RSS disappear, bringing silence into the RSS reader - although Reeder is really speedy. I also enjoy the fact that the font is much bigger than in Google Reader and the variety of gestures that are supported for navigating through the feeds.
Reeder on the iPad gives you the feeling of reading a book when in fact switching effortless through your feeds. This is the stuff the iPad was made for!
Now the only thing I need is an integration of Diigo so that I can send my bookmarks directly from within Reeder. Some other third party services like Instapaper or delicious are already supported.
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Mobile operators smell trouble
Mobile operators smell trouble: Data traffic is exploding, but revenue and profit isn't.
Computer Sweden has a very interesting article describing how the revenue per terabyte of mobile data at Telia Sonera - Swedens biggest mobile operator - did shrink from around 1 million Swedish crowns (about 100.000 Euro) in 2007 to less than 200.000 crowns in 2009. The competitor "3" today generates less than 50 percent of the revenue per terabyte of 2007.
On the other hand of course, the amount of terabytes sent has risen tremendously.
According to the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency (PTS), 9 percent of the customers are generating 88 percent of the traffic (I assume this figure refers to mobile usage only). These 9 percent are the so called "power users", and these are the people who mainly will be affected by the operators effort of moving away from flatrates to usage depending pricing for mobile subscriptions.
Another bad news for the fans of mobile data flatrates: Telenor, the only Swedish carrier that has no data cap yet, is the one that lost most revenue per terabyte of all four carriers on the Swedish market.
Times are tough...
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The future of web and location based apps
Over at the Twingly blog I wrote a post about the future of web and location based apps, analyzing and commenting a recent guest article by Robert Scoble at TechCrunch. If you are following netzwertig.com you probably already have read my thoughts (in German), but otherwise, head over to the Twingly blog and check it out.
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Search through webpages on iPad and iPhone
For some reason, Safari on iPhone and iPad doesn't have a function to search a page for specific words. On the iPhone that never bothered me since most iPhone specific sites limit the amount of content to be shown, which means you see at a glance if the word you are looking for is there.
On the iPad that's different, since one usually visits regular websites, not mobile ones. And in this case I find it useful to be able to search a webpage.
In a forum somewhere on the web I found a good solution to this problem:
Just create a bookmark to a random website, choose "edit" and copy the code below into the address field. You might want to change the name of the bookmark to "search" or something. Press "done" and there you go: now you can search a page by using the "search" bookmark.
The code:
javascript:var%20db=document.body,sb='%3Cspan%20style=\'background-color:%23FFFF00;%20font-weight:%20bold\'%3E',tm=prompt('Find%20text:'),sm='/('+escape(tm)+')/gi',se='%3C/span%3E';void(db.innerHTML=db.innerHTML.replace(eval(sm),sb+'$1'+se));
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German web entrepreneurs are business focussed, Finnish startup founders are tech driven... They should meet!
Via ReadWriteWeb, I found this very interesting article by MySites founder Ramine Darabiha about the challenges for the Finnish startup ecosystem. Out of the 10 points he mentions, the last was the most surprising one: According too Ramine, the Finnish startup scene is very tech driven and is lacking entrepreneurs with business/management background.
In my perception that's exactly the opposite of the German startup world, which is dominated by people with a clear business focus, and which could be one reason for the lack of technical innovation and disruptive ideas coming from German web services.
Counting 1 and 1 together, it's clear what needs to happen: Finnish and German entrepreneurs need to meet and combine their business and tech background. It sounds like a perfect match!
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Facebook:Twitter ratio
My estimated ratio of active Facebook vs Twitter usage for today: 1:20
It's like this almost every day now. No need to delete my Facebook account. I just minimize my usage. And in some cases, it is still good to have it. Anyway, waiting for an alternative...Comments [0]
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