Richard Hemmer

It’s quick and delicious.

Cut up three to four scallions and a few chicken breasts. Throw the white part of the scallions into a wok or a similar kind of pan, with a bit of oil. Heat them up on medium until they look ready (that’s usually when they look slightly translucent).

Meanwhile throw your cut up chicken breasts into a bowl with copious amounts of corn starch and mix it up until they’re well covered. That’ll make sure your chicken bits get a good crunch but keep their juice. You’ll want that! Throw em into your pan or wok (with a bit more of that oil). Let them brown for a while, the starch will make sure you can really add some heat without loosing the moistness.

When you feel your chicken bits are brown enough (the scallions will by now be pretty dark, but have added quite some flavour to your chicken already), add soy sauce and hoisin sauce to taste. Stir it up and let it all simmer some more.

Throw some noodles into boiling water and while your noodles are cooking, add the the green parts (commonly also called “leaves”) of your scallions into the mix. Stir it all up at medium heat. Once the noodles are done, throw them in too, add a bit of sesame oil and a few more squirts of the hoisin sauce. AND THAT’S IT!

Enjoy!

Tomato soup on a red table.

Can you believe I ate lobster for the first time only a couple of weeks ago? Well, yes, apparently I did.

It was an apt environment too. During a four day trip to the splendid city of London, we ended up strolling past the Real Food market, which camps every weekend at the Southbank Centre.

Originally in the mood for fish ‘n chips, I opted for the half lobster instead, simply because it looked delicious in its red shell, cut open and ready to eat even for a novice like me.

We got our plastic plates and moved away from the market a bit and that’s when, with a plastic fork, I had my first lobster. It was good. It was really, really good. Buttery smooth meat, with a slight lemon and garlic taste. The only thing missing was the other half.

Death by Martini was on vacation, and this is what it brought, part 1:

Cheesy Spaetzle. Now, you may not be familiar with this specialty from Germany, Austria and, I think, Switzerland, but it’s something you might want to try. These eggy things, sometimes in the form of miniature dumplings or strings, are not only used as a side-dish, but also, mostly in combination with mature kinds of cheese, enjoyed as a main course.

When we climbed the mountains of eastern Tyrol to have a look at the Umbalfälle (a collection of watery falls making their way down from one of the numerous glaciers there) we of course had to replace all the calories we lost in the steep climb with plenty of goodness (and by steep climb I actually mean a leisurely stroll up a gravelly road).

At a place called the Pebell Alm, we sat down, had a beer and I enjoyed Spaetzle with cheese. They came with roasted onions and chives on top. Needless to say, lost calories were replenished and then some. I would have liked to lay down for a nap, but I wanted to spare my girlfriend the embarrassment. And also, I didn’t want to be a pebell without a cause. Get it? Pebell? Ah, well, whatever.

Next time: Pizza in Bozen, the town of the Iceman.

I’m on vacation, so I’ll be updating this here blog on the fly, so to speak. So no fancy-shmansy texts, just a bit of photos and the usual concise wit you love and admire. Enjoy!

So, here’s a Caesar Salad with some shrimps, seen and eaten at Vienna’s Einstein restaurant.

It was surpsingly pleasing.

Summertime is a lot of things, but here in Vienna it is especially Heuriger time. A Heurigen is a wine-tavern where they serve the current year’s wine, which is called Heuriger as well. So basically, you go to a Heuriger to drink Heuriger. Food-wise they serve everything that’s good about Austrian cuisine: roast pork, sausages, dumplings, Wiener Schnitzel and the like.

A couple of weeks ago, just when spring started to make way for summer, the girlfriend and I went to the Heurigen Martin Sepp in Grinzing, a most picturesque part of Vienna, famous for its number of Heuriger. It’s located at the foot of one of Vienna’s hills, the Kahlenberg (translated this means Kahlen Mountain, but coming from a part of Austria where they have actual mountains, I simply can’t call it anythings else than a hill).

Zum Martin Sepp is rather popular and like many others which enjoy a certain popularity it tends to cater a bit to the touristy crowd. Nevertheless, their wine is grand and their food is very solid, especially if you like it rich and greasy (what sane person doesn’t?). What you see above is their Heurigenpfanne, which is sausages, a grilled chicken leg, pork roast, a big dumpling, lentils and sauerkraut.

So next time you feel like drinking white in copious amounts (we did), accompanied by traditional, gut busting portions of food, go there. Just make sure you order their house wine and not any of their special ones, otherwise it might get a tad expensive.

Salzberg, a restaurant in the calmer area of Vienna’s 6th district, serves a great combination of traditional Austrian cuisine and more alternative, contemporary visions (I think I may have that wording from their website). They offer a vast array of vegetarian dishes, one of which is spinach-dumplings (basically a dumpling with loads of spinach worked into it, go figure). Being a carnivore myself, I opted against these (but managed to snap a picture anyway) and decided to feast on another staple of Austrian cuisine, the Zwiebelrostbraten (I’ve written here about it extensively, just have a look at this one posting).

It also features a patio during summer, so it’s definitely a place to go for either full-fledged dinners or a drink after work (their wine-cellar is well-stocked too).

Marvel below at an image of Zwiebelrostbraten.

Rarely, I’m in the mood for something sweet. Since I’m a lazy bum, it has to be quick and easy. Enter semolina pudding.

It works like this: heat half a litre of milk, then add two tsp. of sugar and four tsp. of semolina. Semolina, despite its funky name, is something you can buy at every grocery store. Sugar, not as exotically named but still one hell of a great ingredient, too.

Bring it to a boil, but don’t forget to stir while doing so. You wouldn’t want your milk to burn. Once it’s started boiling, very drastically reduce heat, until it’s on a very, very, very low boil. Stir and wait for about five to ten minutes, until it’s thick but not too thick. If I were hard-pressed I’d say: make sure it’s somewhere between thick and too thick.

Pour it into a bowl, sprinkle it with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon and you’re done. This is literally the easiest pudding ever, but it tastes like a thick slice of heaven. Pudding-heaven, that is.

This is Viennese Beef soup. It’s a great kind of soup for whenever you’re in the mood for some beef. And soup. It’s easy to make, requires only an onion, a few carrots, celery, leek, parsley, a few bones and some beef. To top it off, chives.

Cut the onion in half, place it in a large, heated pot, face down, until it’s dark. Very dark. Then add rinsed beef, bones and copious amounts of cold water. Bring it to a boil, in the course of which you’ll want to skim the brown froth collecting at the top. When no froth is collecting anymore, add the carrots, celery and some peppercorns. Then let this thing boil at low heat for a while. And by while I mean about three to four hours. If you’re like me, you can also add a couple of soup cubes. Just to make sure, you know.

Half an hour before serving, add leek and parsley, remove the bones, cut the beef in easy pieces and throw it back in. Add whatever  you want for substance (I use Vermicelli), sprinkle with fresh chives when serving.

And that, my friends, is it.

For those of you new to this publishing outlet, there is a category which I have dubbed DBMA, Death by Martini Abroad. It’s my attempt at creating the impression that my life does not evolve around the same square kilometer here in Vienna (it actually does). So, here we are. Another installment of DBMA, and again, one from the fair city of London, UK.

I went there for work, but of course visited my delightful sister as well, who, with an uncanny sense for what constitutes deliciousness in the eyes of this glutton, led me to a few interesting eateries.

Let’s start with that ham sandwich at Homemade, a small café in East Dulwich, where ham is cut in exactly the kind of way I prefer (and the way most Brits do, too): big, fat chunks.

It’s a nice place, not exactly expensive, and it does actually taste quite homemade (their bread is most agreeable). If you want to read a more thorough and undoubtedly more eloquent review of the place, have a look at this article on Eats Dulwich (ha, clever!)

Next up was Ping Pong in Soho, an in my eyes rather oddly named, upscale chain of Chinese restaurants. According to some sources on the internet, their service is rather shit, but that wasn’t the impression I had. Except, maybe for the fact that they accidentally served seafood in a vegetarian Dim Sum. Ooops. Fortunately, my sister, who is of the vegetarian conviction, is not so in any religious way. But it’s a mistake which would have others scream in outrage and possibly sue Ping Pong’s pants off (my sister did neither, even though I’d have enjoyed the spectacle of the first scenario, I think). Anyway, to drink I had a Goji berry drink, which was filled to the brim with vitamins, fruit and mint. I think. It also looked pretty.

I’m still not sure what Goji berries are, and whether what swam on top actually was them or maybe just something that fell off a tray. It did however taste most exotic and delicious.

For food we had a selection of their dim sum. I am no big expert on dim sum, but I liked what I had. There was one with big leafs wrapped around it, which I tried to eat just like that, thinking they couldn’t possibly expect me to unwrap this with sticks.

Turns out they did. I kept trying to remove the stringy bits of leaf for the better part of an hour. Next time I’ll know.  The place is not exactly inexpensive, but it won’t ruin you either if you go there from time to time. Which I think you should, especially if you’re not a vegetarian.

I also had a large bowl of fruit at Le Pain Quotidien at the Southbank Centre. I opted against their ham&eggs, because I remembered from my last visit that their ham was a bit too salty. And I think I had had my fair share of ham on that trip already.

On my way out of London I dined at Giraffe, right inside Heathrow’s Terminal 1. I don’t usually like to have sit-down dinners at airports, but I was sort of coerced into it by fellow travellers. What a happy coincidence that was, because the Grilled Minute Rump Steak Sandwich I had was really quite excellent. I still don’t like sit-down dinners at airports, but I definitely like the Giraffe. Maybe they do take-aways too.

Finally, I also included in above gallery an image of a scotch egg. Because I just love this perverse but utterly succulent combination of meat, bread-crumbs and egg. No visit to the the Isle is complete without having at least one. If you ever find a place in Vienna that sells them, do tell me.

I’m usually not one averse to hypes. This blog right here is testament to the fact that I like to sign up to just about everything, especially if there’s been about a thousand people telling me how great it is. I went ahead and did the same thing with Instagram for Android. What you see below is the first picture I shared via Instagram and even below that, in a lengthy rant, I will explain why it will also be the last.

Instagram, popular photo sharing app previously available for the iPhone only, has about 35 million users by now (according to numbers I could link to but that would mean I’d have to actually look up sources, and, seriously, that’s not what I signed up for). Anyway, it is mighty popular and there’s already a number of brands cooperating with Instagram (a sure-fire  sign that a service has gone mainstream).

Yesterday, about a year and a half after its inception, Instagram delivered an Android version. Now, during those one and a half years about a myriad other services were released to satisfy Android users’ hunger for apps that provide the same functionality (namely photo filters and easy sharing). There are some apps, in my mind, which have vastly eclipsed Instagram’s functionality, but – and imagine a long sigh here please – that doesn’t mean a lot today.

You see, it’s the Internets, and here it doesn’t really matter how good you are, all that matters is how well connected you are. And with about 35 million users, Instagram connects the shit out of everything (I don’t believe that’s a phrase yet – consider it coined). Even for vastly superior services like PicPlz, life is hard because they simply don’t get the exposure they deserve. Which leads me to the actual Android app. How much exposure does Instagram deserve, apart from being early? Let’s find out!

I’m far too lazy to actually make screenshots, but The Next Web has a rather thorough comparison between Instagram for Android and its iOS version. And it’s underwhelming as fuck. Firstly: as much as iOS is heralded for its streamlined, simple design, it’s also ugly as hell. I’ve used apps on Android developed simply for the fun of it which looked better. Secondly: There’s an extensive style guide for Android out there. The good people at Instagram obviously spent exactly zero minutes looking into it. What they did is take the iOS version (complete with the no-buttons functionality) and port it to Android. What exactly took them so long, I don’t know, because I’m sure the proverbial monkeys typing away on a keyboard would have created this abomination in less time. Whatever their reasons, I think it shows a certain contempt for the platform and its users. While it’s a shit attitude, I’d have let that slide if the app was packed with exceptional functionality. But is it?

Yes, Instagram lets you put filters on pictures, then send them off to wherever you want. But what the hell is up with the squares? Why does it force me to upload square photos? I don’t really want to get into the whole iOS vs Android thing, but it so fits in the mindset of using iOS that an application forces you to use a certain format instead of the other way round. And I don’t much care for that, no matter how much people rattle on and on about simplicity.

So, what else does Instagram do? Does it have a nice destination page like PicPlz? Well, no. Does it have vastly superior filters, borders and such? No. Is it super fast, doesn’t use loads of memory and isn’t bloated? No, no and no (I admit, this is personal experience and some people may feel it’s about as fast as the Shinkansen, merely nibbles from your RAM and is as lean as a piece of jerky – but I doubt it).

Well, there you have it. Instagram may have millions of users, but it’s not for want of alternatives and definitely not because it’s so good. It just is, and that seems to be enough to spell out success. But it’s not enough for me to actually use it.

PS: Yes, I like dramatic endings to my blogposts, but I’m also aware that they may sound ridiculous and contrived. So let me give you an alternative one:

Instagram is shit, I can’t believe how it got so successful and I’ll gladly leave it to the iOS crowd to fawn over. Who seems to have a problem with Android users getting in on the fun anyway.

It’s the end of the year and for everyone who is publishing something, either for fame, fortune or simply as a pastime (much like knitting only with words and less needles), that’s a welcome time to fill those publishing slots with “best of” lists. It’s an easy way out of a total lack of inspiration, and since I’m as hard to inspire as the next guy, I find this practice quite agreeable.

Anyway, I was asked to contribute my top five Interweb services by the fine people at German tech blog netzwertig.com for one of their end-of-year surveys (the result of which can be seen here, in German). So I decided to let you know what I chose and why, mainly because I think it’s information so pressing, I shouldn’t withhold it from you, and also because I haven’t posted anything here for ages and that simply kills my Google ranking. So, without further ado, here’s my choices, in no particular order:

• Google Music: You heard that right. It’s Google’s Music service, which in its current iteration is basically an online repository for the music you own, allowing you to stream it to your computer or onto your Android device. It’s something I’ve used pretty much every day for the last couple of months and even with the advent of much-hyped Spotify, I will keep doing just that. Mainly because I don’t like Spotify for the obvious reason of more or less coercing people into sharing EVERY SINGLE SONG to Facebook. What a bore! Facebook sharing is so 2010.
• Remember the Milk: 2011 saw me return to Remember the Milk as my number 1 todo-list app. I’d used it for a while a couple of years back, but soon came to hate its lack of simplicity. Fast forward a couple of years and scores of simple todo-list apps and there I am: my life has become sufficiently complex to warrant a complex todo-list app. And I also quite liked the introduction of their very polished Android app. To make sure I keep using it, I decided to become a paying customer. It’s what I call the lazyman’s tax.
• Evernote: Ah yes, Evernote. The good old Evernote, which I came to hate for a while back in 2010, mainly because they so steadfastly refused (and still do) to create a Linux version of their desktop app. In the meantime, Nevernote, an open source version available for Linux, has been released and I realized that I don’t in fact need a desktop version after all. Today, Evernote is where I unload all the stories, recipes, articles, notes and whatever busy and important people like me need to unload into a second brain on a daily basis (speaking of second brain, there used to be a rather interesting service named Second Brain, which covered a lot of Evernote’s ground. Unfortunately, 2011 also saw the shuttering of that service, due to lack of funds).
• Dropbox: There’s no real way around Dropbox. It’s just too good and soon it will be so ubiquitous, people will hate it but still use it, mainly because everyone does (in case you’re not into subtleties, I’m referring to Facebook here). They introduced Dropbox for Teams this year, which is a great way to share space for a rather reasonable price. I received 20TB of free storage for writing that last sentence (disclaimer: that was a joke, I did not receive 20TB of space for writing this sentence – in fact, I rarely accept anything besides cash).
• Angry Birds: It’s a game, it’s addictive, it helps my understanding of physics. And that is all I will say in this matter.

And that is it. You can now return to your reading of the Top-100-HuffPo-Link-Bait-Articles of 2011. Or some such thing. Lady Gaga. Naked. Bieber. Twilight.

RSS, former love-child and poster technology of the social web, is something of an enigma. For some, it’s the second coming of Christ: versatile, indispensable and it can turn one a fish and two loafs of bread into a feast that will feed a million people (disclaimer: that last point is rampant conjecture and might actually not be true). For many others, though, it’s a technology that’s so utterly uninteresting and unattractive, they’d be glad to see it disappear in the depths of that pool where great but unattractive technology disappears to die a slow and painfully ignored death. I’ll just call that the ”Not as shiny as Apple”-pool. In that vain, every year there’s renewed discussion whether RSS is dead or not and it never leads anywhere.

The motivation of the latter is clear: Twitter, Facebook and a myriad of other social networks have replaced personal curating. Nowadays, friends and contacts decide what’s worth a read, while, ideally, you can lean back and enjoy. It’s an interesting, albeit heavily flawed concept (more about why I think it’s flawed either in this article, or sometime later. It kinda depends on how much I still care when I’m done writing that other stuff you see below).

Anyway: Google Reader, after the demise of Bloglines and just about any other full-featured RSS-reader probably the last beacon of original RSS-feed love out there, recently received an update which was meant to streamline it with many other Google products. The update is mainly a facelift, adapting it to the no-nonsense, loads of whitespace, more icons, less text design of recent Google products (closely modeled on Google’s new Google+, that social network that’s a lot like Twitter and a bit like Facebook but pretending to be neither).

In addition to that facelift, they also removed its social elements, that is seeing what people you added within Google Reader shared, and the ability to share your stuff with others in return. Instead, they added a big and shiny +1 button underneath every item, allowing you to send stuff to your Google+ profile.

Basically, Google  turned their reader into another content provider for their fledgling social network, removing what they regard as cruft and detrimental to their goal of reaching world dominance. And by world dominance I mean social network dominance (I’m not THAT paranoid).

There’s a small but outspoken minority of Google Reader sharing fans and they are pissed off (as is, according to TechCrunch, all of Iran). Google doesn’t care and I don’t think they should. You see, Google Reader is, first and foremost, a feedreader. You feed it with feeds, it slices, dices and does its thing and what it spits out is what you consume. I remember quite clearly when after their second iteration (the first one was a dud and everyone simply KNEW that Google’s Reader would fail against the mighty Bloglines), that they introduced social elements. And back then, everyone either balked or was foaming at the changes (there was actually not a single person on earth who liked them from the start – I know this for a fact). Fast forward a year or two, and lo and behold, people actually liked the social elements. Fast forward another few years and people are foaming at the mouth for removing those features.

My point, for all you tl;dr people out there: Google Reader is now what it used to be initially: a tool to read your feeds. If you want, you can share articles to your peeps on Google+. And that, my friends, is that.

PS: So no, I don’t feel like elaborating on the flawed concept of the recommendation system. Fear not, I might have time on my hands sometime in the next few months to actually write something up.

Well, hello there, faithful readers. It has been a while since I published anything on here and the sole reason simply was that there was fuck all to write about. Seriously, I truly think the last thing worthy to grace these walls was that post on my new Android HTC Desire. But, dire times have come to an end, because today I’m going to tell you all about Jetpack.

What is it? It’s a plugin that will supercharge your WordPress installation. Now, I’m not talking about your WordPress.com account, because that one is hosted and if you’re using it, you’ll already be using the goodness that comes with Jetpack. No, I’m talking about your self-hosted WordPress.org installations. While these provide the freedom to do whatever you want with your blogging CMS, they lack the constant updates to its functionality. Sure, there are new versions once in a while, but you won’t wake up one day, wondering why the shizzle your blogging system is suddenly sporting a Gravatar hover card (which is something that appears when you hover over the names of people who have commented and who happen to have an account with Gravatar). And in case you missed it, that is just one of the features of Jetpack. Because Jetpack is, in case you missed that too, a plugin that contains a slew of features that replace a few plugins you might have had to install separately.

These include, but are not limited to, a sharing feature, which lets you add Facebook, Twitter and whatnot sharing buttons to your posts. A URL-shortening plugin, which automatically shortens the URLs of your blogposts to a wp.me-URL. A stats feature, which replaces the old wp-stats plugin. And last but not least “After the deadline”, which is a plugin most helpful to slobs like me who couldn’t be arsed to spell-check their articles, let alone check them on stylistic and grammatical errors. That plugin will do all that for you.

So go ahead, check out Jetpack, have fun and most importantly, don’t forget that while blogging may be fun, there’s a whole world out there where the fact that you’ve had over a thousand page-views today doesn’t mean jack-shit.

As an avid reader of this blog you might have noticed that, contrary to many others of what I like to call my tech blog writing buddies, I am not too fond of Apple products. Now, I am by no means totally against them, hell, I even own an iPod Touch. But I have always seen it as not much more than a rather slick mp3 player which incidentally also allows me to access the Internets once in a while or play that one or other game. I was never really tempted to upgrade this to an iPhone, let alone become so entranced with Apple that I would gladly pay for their albeit slickly designed, overpriced and ultimately underfeatured computer products.

Lately though, I have felt the need to upgrade my mobile phone to something more full-featured. With me using an operating system (Linux) that Apple can’t or won’t support, an iPhone was out of the question (among other issues like Apple’s iron fist when it comes to what shall and what shall not be run on their devices). So instead, I opted for the HTC Desire, an Android powered phone. As luck would have it, I quickly found a carrier that sells it, ordered the beast and a week later my trembling hands were unboxing.

In case you think me calling that device a beast was just a playful way of trying to spruce up my writing, you were only half right. That thing really is a beast. With a 1GHz processor it’s way faster than any other smartphone on the market right now. Which reminds me that not so long ago (approximately 10 years) I was still using a computer that had a mere 300MHz. Yes, you read that right. Today? I’m using a mobile phone that has thrice the power. Hail to the processor gods!

Anyway, as I mentioned above, the Desire runs on Android, Google’s own mobile operating system. There’s a marketplace very similar to the Apple appstore which at the time of this writing holds roughly 40,000 applications. Which is about 39,950 more than I will ever need. But people like choices, and I guess that’s what Android is all about. If you want, you can replace every application on your phone with applications from the market and guess what? Neither Google nor HTC will care. And they won’t even revoke your warranty either.

There’s one problem I have with the Desire and that, of course, is its battery life. If you use all the stuff smartphones are famous for, you know, like surfing, taking pictures, sending emails, watching videos, listening to music and such, the HTC’s battery will crap out after approximately three hours. You can of course use the resources sensibly, in which case I’ve heard people mention battery times up to three days. Be that as it may, I am still wondering what the battery industry is doing all day long. I mean, it’s not as if they didn’t have time work on the durability of batteries for the last fucking century.

At last, you might be wondering what the headline is all about. Basically, I just wanted to lure you in. I don’t think there’ll ever be a smartphone to rule us all. Because there are more important things in life than gadgets. Like drinking, food and daytime television.

In tune with my method of forming headlines that distract from my writing’s lack of any real substance or originality, I’ve managed to summarize the whole point of this posting in a mere eight words. But for the sake of you taking the time to actually clicking through to my site, I’ll elaborate just that tiny bit more to make it worth your while.

Now, the fabled GDrive has been around for quite some time now (check out this news timeline for the last couple of years), albeit only in the wet dreams of tech-journos and bloggers. With companies providing online storage sprouting like the proverbial mushroom from the vast expanses of our dear Internet, everyone expected Google to come out with a solution as well. Which, considering they own roughly 90% of all active serverspace currently in existence, wouldn’t be too surprising a move (about that percentage: this is something I just made up, but feel free to quote me!).

Anyway, Google was largely unimpressed with everyone and their grandma pestering them to offer that kind of service already, but a couple of days ago, in a nonchalant move mirroring the actual impact of their announcement, the GDrive was introduced. Only that it’s not called that and that it adds another dimension to the term “underwhelming”.

Why? Well, here’s what it does. Basically, it’s an extension of Google Docs, the online document collaboration tool offered by Google for everyone with a Google account. Until now, the only files you could upload to Google Docs were those that are, well, some sort of document. As the more detailed announcement on the Google Docs blog says , they will start rolling out the ability to upload any kind of file (provided it’s not larger than 250mb), up to a limit of 1GB, with the option of buying more GB for a certain amount of money.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like it. It’s nice to be able to upload all sorts of shit and have it lounging about in my Google Docs window. It’s just, this isn’t anything they couldn’t have done 2 years ago. Actually, it isn’t anything anyone could’ve done 2 years ago with a bit of server space and some spare time on their hands. And yes, I do get the whole sharing idea, which, as we’re being told 24/7 by anyone who thinks you’re listening, is pivotal to the way the Internets work today. But hey, I’ve known of services that let you upload files and share them for, well, ages.

Which ones, you might ask? Well, there’s box.net, which has been around since the Nixon administration (I think), which does a fantastic job, has a great API and is overall one of the best online storage solutions ever. And then of course there’s everybody’s new darling Dropbox. Which, I might add, truly is one sexy little service (and with sexy I really mean useful, I just thought it might sounds sexier to call something sexy instead of useful – for reasons you might want to file under “trying to attract new audiences by using the word sexy”). Dropbox not only lets you upload files, it also offers to sync them to all your computers and portable devices.

Now, let’s return just real quick to that carefully crafted headline you’ve been subjected to at the start of this lengthy beast of an article. Ever since Google has proved to be not only good at search but also good at throwing money and manpower at anything they think might be a good addition to their services (everything), little startups have had it rough. After spending years developing a service and establishing and maintaining a user base, Google could simply step in, decide they want the same thing and suddenly your business model of charging users for what Google offers for free would seem a bit off.

With the GDrive though, Dropbox, Box.net and their myriad of colleagues have lucked out. Because even though the GDrive might be an interesting enhancement to Googel Docs, it’s nowhere near anything current online storage services offer, meaning that whoever runs Dropbox, etc., can now finally get some sleep again.

But the best thing about it all? People will now finally shut up about the GDrive.

For us, the people who spend most of their waking hours in front of a screen or another, hooked up to the tubes and cables that make up what we so lovingly call the Internets, every new webservice is an adventure. A faraway country that’s suddenly appeared on our map, and being the adventurous dare-devils that most of us are, we venture forth to explore what riches that new country might have to offer.

Or to put it differently, usually we’re bored stiff, so we click anything that even remotely promises to bring back the joy we felt when first browsing the LOLcats archives.

So, along comes formspring.me, which I first spotted in some of my Twitter-followers’ streams. Basically, it’s a website that lets people ask people questions. Yes, that’s it. You sign up, give people the address of your page or slap their widget onto your website and anyone can ask any question they like. Even anonymously! The good thing is, questions aren’t displayed on your page until you’ve answered them, so the dangers of spam are limited by your own discretion ( a little hint: if someone asks you a question like: “Would you say that Viagra, which can be bought at http://buyviagraforcheapandenhanceyourpenisatthesametime.co.ru.cn, is the best product in the world?”, then no, they are not really interested in your expertise).

Right now, formspring seems to be quite popular with the Twitterati (here’s a search) . Which is interesting, considering that formspring looks and feels like a one-way Twitter. Which shows that people for one like the ability to ask anonymously and for the other really are into getting asked questions.

Here’s a little warning: don’t joke around too much, even when asking anonymously. People might not think of funny the way you do. Trust me.

Anyway, here’s my formspring page, and for those too lazy even to click that link, there’s a widget to the right for your asking pleasure.

Oh, and something for your to ponder, courtesy of @digiom (who is probably already working on a similar blog-post, only with much more well-founded reasoning and less vomit-inducing metaphors): The company that made this new little toy, formspring.com, has a tagline that says:

“The smart way to collect and manage data.”

Go on, ponder.

So Amazon has announced the availability of their e-book reader Kindle for, among other countries, Germany and Austria. The reader may be pre-ordered on Amazon.com, and will be shipped after October 19th. Costs? About 190€.

It’s good news for anyone who likes to read and especially good news for anyone who likes to read and be able to automatically download new books for a cheaper price than their physical brethren.

It’s bad news though for everyone who doesn’t feel too comfortable with the possibility of a company barging into your home and removing a previous purchase without warning (but with putting the purchase price back into your purse). Sound extremely weird and paranoid? Well, it’s not, because that’s exactly what happened a few months back.

Apparently a company had offered books on the Kindle marketplace for which it, as it turned out later, didn’t have the rights. So when Amazon discovered that tricky situation, they snuck into the Kindles of the people who had already bought the books and removed them. To add irony to injury, the books were “Animal Farm” and “1984″ by George Orwell.

And even though Amazon promised to not remove books in the future without warning, I’m a far too suspicious mind to really believe that. Because as long as they can, they probably will.

According to research I stumbled upon a while back (and which I’m now too lazy to actually look up, so you’ll just have to take my word for it), the Twitter web interface is still the number one place for people to update their Twitter account. Which to me was quite surprising, considering that the Twitter web interface doesn’t even automatically reload your Twitter stream, doesn’t have built in anything and lacks just about everything other clients have. In a nutshell.

To remedy that situation, Brizzly has stepped in. Basically, it’s a web client for Twitter, the difference is that it includes most of the features the clients we grew to love have had for a while (like TweetDeck). Which features, you might ask? Well, since last week, Brizzly automatically updates your Twitter stream, meaning you won’t have to click refresh in order to see new tweets from your followers. But that’s just the beginning, folks!

Brizzly also automatically displays pictures, videos and full URLs included in tweets, removing the ever so dangerous necessity to click into unknown territory via shortened URLs. And for those who are already absolutely overwhelmed by the number of messages their myriads of followers are shooting into the twittersphere, Brizzly has a grouping feature, which, I must say, really is handy as hell.

Good old Brizzer, as I already lovingly call it,  also includes a rather nifty sidebar tool for direct messages and also displays the newest Twitter trending topics in said sidebar.

To top it all off, Brizzly also supports several users, so if you’ve got a, say, private and corporate account, you can add them both and smoothly switch between the two. Just make sure you don’t confuse them, because, well, you wouldn’t want to tell your company’s followers every detail about your last bowel movement, would you? Come to think of it, I guess your private followers wouldn’t mind being spared that info as well. So please, do keep that to yourself, will you?

Anyway, Brizzly might not be the first alternative web-based Twitter client (there’s Ginx, which has been around for a while but is more bare bones than Brizzly), but it definitely is the most feature-rich. I do have to concede though that the overall design isn’t really that easy on the eye, but I’d rather put function before form, in that case.

Oh, and in case you’ve not clicked over to Brizzly yet, I might have to mention that it’s still in private beta. So if you want to get in right now, leave a comment detailing why you think I’m probably the most talented tech-writer in the long history of tech-writerdom, and I’ll send an invite your way. Good luck!

Tupalo.com, the Vienna-based service for what’s cool around your neighborhood, yesterday announced a partnership with Herold, the Austrian service for business listings.

It’s a great move for the little company and I’m really happy for them.

And while I don’t believe in things like good and evil, I do have a bit of a queasy feeling when it comes to Herold. Not so long ago, they were getting a thorough beating when they announced the availability of a CD-ROM that contained the data of more than 4 million private people. While it’s legal, people were and still are up in arms about it. Which I totally understand.

Now, while I do believe Mike from Tupalo when he announces on their blog that they “will still continue as the lightweight, independent company we’ve always been”, I wonder whether people will still feel the same way, now that a company with such a backstory is part of the game.

I’m convinced that from a business perspective, the partnership between Tupalo and Herold was one of the best things that could have happened to them. Whether it’ll put off users concerned about their private data and how it’ll be treated, remains to be seen.

Merry Christmas everyone. May you receive loads of food and presents.

Please note the attached image of a burning manger.

I’m not much of a game player. I’ve had phases in my life where I played computer games for a while, but I’m not very persistent and I have the attention span of a fruit fly, so most of them I grew tired of after a rather short while.

So to my utter surprise I was finally caught up in a game that turned out to captivate me beyond any other games I’d ever encountered. It’s name – Glitch – is but a tiny indicator for the creativity, the quirkiness, the all-encompassing thoroughness in thought that pervaded this game.

It’s relaxed nature of allowing me to play whenever and to whatever extent I wanted made it the perfect companion for all times and whenever I did play I was lulled in by its charm and general friendliness. Its ever growing massive world and the vast number of quests, items and quirks to explore seemed endless.

Endless, unfortunately, aren’t many things, and as it turns out, Glitch isn’t either. Two days ago it was announced that the game will be closing down. Why? Well, simply because there was no way to turn it into a viable business model. Once again, real-world constraints collided with the vision and creativity of an amazing bunch of people and whether we like it or not, there’s not a whole lot that can be done about it. While they had a subscription service, one of its great advantages, namely that every aspect of the game could be played without having to be a paying customer, was probably the one thing that took them down. It’s a terrible shame and the next time a VC invests in yet another photo-sharing app for the iPad, maybe they should remember that there may be more unique things out there deserving of their money.

The company behind the game, Tiny Speck, handled the situation very graciously, offering ever subscriber a refund for every monthly payment, something they had no obligation to do at all. Fortunately, it was just an offer, so I had the opportunity to give what I had already paid to a charity of their choosing (they did have the option of simply letting the company keep it, but I’m fairly certain that their employees will be paid out with whatever money is still left from their VC rounds).

On December 9th, Ur, the massive world of wonders in which Glitch was set, my little Glitchen, together with his house, the pigs, chicken and butterflies that live outside it, will disappear into that ether of all things that once were. What will remain will be a few snapshots taken during my travels as well as the knowledge that the world isn’t yet ready for something as unobtrusively amazing as Glitch.

Here’s to Glitch and the power if imagination.

PS: The good people at Tiny Speck created a downloads page where you can download artwork and music from the game. Do have a look, it’s all very charming.

I’m not much of a sports nut. In fact, in order to be able to write this entry, I had to go and look up the exact dates for the Olympic Games 2012. You’ll be relieved to find out that they start in pretty much exactly 64 days. Which would be the 27th of July.

Now, why am I writing about an event which I have no interest in at all? Because it’s necessary. You see, the Olympic Games, like any event of a certain size that gets broadcast all over the world, has sponsors. Very powerful sponsors who invest a lot of money so people all over the world can see that these modern-day gladiators do in fact splurge on Coca Cola. All day, everyday (it’s a no-brainer: I know how fidgety I get after a bottle of Coke, I’m sure professional athletes use that to their advantage). Anyway, since these sponsors invested a whole lot of money, they don’t want others, who didn’t unload truckloads of cash into the lobby of the IOC, to profit from the Olympic Games. Hence, they’ve managed to lobby the UK into passing a law which effectively outlaws the usage of “London2012″ or any combination organisers and sponsors deem to be infringing on their copyright, by entities other than official sponsors.

Here’s an example of what that means:

One day, the small espresso shop near the site of the London Games was the “Olympic” cafe. The next day, it was the “Lympic.”

So where did the “O” go?

The manager won’t say. But it’s more than likely the small business became another casualty in the battle against guerrilla marketers – advertisers who try to associate their products with an event without paying to be sponsors.

(This article gives more insight into how the IOC has been cracking down on unauthorized usage of the five rings and whatever shitload of terms they have put their copyright on – read it, but only when you’re done with this one.)

Well, today the media are flush with news about suspended Twitter accounts, one of which was a parody account. Apparently, the usage of the 2012 logo is enough to have an account suspended, for people might actually confuse the account with an official sponsor. Which is the world we live in – warped, but accepted. But it does get a bit worse: Twitter is working closely with IOC to guarantee only real sponsors can buy ads associated with the London2012 hashtag. Now, even that seems ok. It’s about ads, not content posted by users. But here’s the thing: the IOC is always afraid of guerilla marketing stunts, and what better place than social media to do that? There’s no ban (yet) on using #London2012 in a tweet, so in theory, companies could use it to promote their products (a practice all sorts of Twitter users employ to peddle their shit). And they will. And Twitter might start policing the usage of the hashtag, and they might delete accounts of private users and they might reinstate these accounts but they might not. All in all, Twitter might be turning shit within a fortnight and there’s not a whole lot we could do. Or could we? We actually can.

As a pre-emptive strike against what might turn into a freedom of speech issue, let’s have some idiotic fun: starting July 27th, whenever you tweet, add the London2012 hashtag. Ask your friends, followers and/or foes to do the same. And while you might anger or bore your followers, you’ll have done something good and noble as well. For free speech, for people with little cafés in London called “Olympia” and maybe even for yourself (by disproportionally blowing up your sense of self-importance, of course).

Last but not least, don’t forget to share this posting wherever you go, preferrably of course by appending the mother of all hashtags: #London2012

It’s that time of the year again. You know, that time where lists of what was great, what was awful, what was insignificant, what was most pressing during the last year are published.

I’m not  a fan of this, as I’m generally not a fan of compartmentalizing what we here on earth call our existence. For the simple reason that what we enjoy here, on earth, is too much of an arbitrary thing. We have years, which help us create some sort of order when it comes to ending, say, a fiscal year, but these years don’t really say anything about the way we live and the way we are.

Sure, the last year saw catastrophic things, but it also saw great things. It saw hundreds of thousands of people dying, but it also saw hundreds of thousands of people surviving. It was a year – strictly speaking – like any other.

For most people, it’ll be the end of a bunch of months which culminate in one that sees Christmas and ultimately a bunch of fireworks, champagne and some resolutions which will fade as quickly as they have come into existence.

In the end, it all boils down to this: You should worry about the very small and the very big stuff. The small stuff, like what you’re going to have for dinner, is what keeps you happy. The big stuff, like whether we’re really the only planet with life in the whole of the vastness of the universe, is what keeps your mind open. Everything in between is really quite irrelevant.

So if, during the course of that next year, you feel like you’re having a bad day, think about dinner or the vastness of the universe and it’ll all be alright. I promise.

When a few months back I first saw the trailer for Tree of Life, I thought something along the lines of: “If that film is only half as good as the trailer, it must be fucking fantastic!”. If my life was a screenplay, you could file that as foreshadowing in the first act.

I was fortunate enough to get tickets to the premiere here in Austria a few days ago and I was expecting, well, a lot. And as great expectations go, they are bound to go unfulfilled (here’s some more, less subtle, foreshadowing for you). Now, it would have been easy for the film to please me, because I really wanted to like it. I’d been going on and on about the film, in conversations with other people and on my other blog. I’d read about what some reviewers had called the very spiritual aspect of the film, and even though I’m not exactly spiritual, let alone religious, I thought that I could let that slide for the sake of the complete package.

As it turned out, I couldn’t.

The film starts off great, with nuanced performances and beautiful camerawork and even though there was a lengthy piece of creation footage which felt a bit like a high budget version of a National Geographic documentary, I was still sure I could really like that film. But then came the whispering. THE WHISPERING! Off screen voices just kept rambling on and on about nature and grace and every pretentious notion pertaining to these concepts you could think of. And directly addressing the “Lord” too. Which, I thought, was probably just part of the concept. Surely, the nature part, the science of things (and stuff) would get some more weight in the course of the film too. Well, it didn’t. And I’m still mad at every reviewer out there who didn’t pounce on the fact that this is ultimately an extremely and utterly Christian film.

Not just the open verbal references to God, but also the iconography that dominated throughout the film. I don’t want to spoil anything here, but hell, can you really get any more blatantly Christian than portraying the female protagonist as some sort of Mary mother of God?

Now, not everything was bad, and that’s the real shame here. Actually, a lot of things were brilliant. There were great observations of family dynamics, fantastic images and sometimes awe-inspiring work done with the music, but it was all ruined by a sophomoric approach to religion, spirituality and death.

Terrence Malick knows how to make good films, but with Tree of Life, he didn’t give us one film, he gave us two: one about a family in the 50s, which by all accounts would have been a touching piece, and another about spirituality and creation which should have been scrapped and shown in mega-churches all over the US instead. I’m sure that would have been a great success.

I am not much of a sun-person. Actually, that’s not true anymore. I used to be wary of the sun, mainly because its main purpose seemed to me to send glares into my flat which would then put a glare on my monitor, making it a fucking nuisance to use my computer.

I’ve since learned two things:

• One: Drapes are a great thing. The can make sure, none of those rays reach your computer screen.
• Two: The sun is a magnificent thing, mainly because it’s providing us with the light and warmth we need and because it’s a testament to the fact that we are all made of star-stuff

Now, I know how esoteric that sounds, and all I can say is: it’s not esoteric, it’s science. It’s fucking science! Who taught me that? Well, Carl Sagan of course.

I’ve always held an interest in science, albeit in a superficial way, one that doesn’t demand long hours in labs. And, I’d heard about Carl Sagan before, but it was mostly confined to comment sections of Reddit or some other place where people with brains that don’t match their occupation tend to hang out.

Recently, or rather a couple of months back, I ordered Cosmos, the science-series with Carl Sagan, mainly because I’d read so many good things about it. And they were all right. Cosmos is by far the most intelligent, insightful, reflected and interesting show on science I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch. And even though I know that there’s a shitload of people involved in writing a series like that, it is mainly due to Carl Sagan. That man simply knew his stuff but also knew how to convey it.

And just like that, he managed to instill in me an appreciation of the sun like I’d never experienced before. When earlier I was annoyed by too much brightness, today, when I look at the sun, I can’t help but think of how Carl Sagan described where we came from, what we are and where we are (probably) going.

It’s a shame the man died as young as he did, because I think we’d have good use for a Carl Sagan nowadays to remind us of the bigotry and pseudo-science that still dominates public discourse.

Here’s to Carl Sagan and the sun.

I recently, by sheer accident and luck, stumbled upon Sean Costello, a blues-guitarist/singer-songwriter. His performances are so vibrant and heartfelt, I could weep everytime I see them. Well, not weep. But at least move my foot or tap a finger on my desk. There’s a pretty big archive of his fantastic life-performances on YouTube. For example, here he is performing the Otis Rush classic Double Trouble:

Unfortunately, he died two years ago at the age of 28. After researching him a bit, I found that film-maker Sarah Baker is currently in the pre-production of a documentary about Sean Costello and the life of musicians today (Facebook Page). From the blurb:

For Costello, the blues was indeed a calling, and he played it against considerable odds. Using Costello as a protagonist, BLUES MAN explores the livelihoods of modern musicians. How do they survive? How do they get gigs, tours, and radio airplay? What role did Sean play in the development of his own career?

It sounds like a wildly interesting and ambitious project which can be supported via Kickstarter. Please do pledge some money for the project, because I definitely want to see this film someday.

Until the film is out, here’s more from YouTube:

I finally got around to seeing “The Social Network”, a movie about – but only loosely based on – the actual inception of facebook.com. You know, that website you use to stalk people. I am not much of a movie critic, and even though introductory phrases like these should be enough to refrain from actually reviewing a film, I still feel I should mention a few things I liked and didn’t like about the film.

First of all, David Fincher simply is one of the best directors around. Second, Trent Reznor just knows how to write music. Third, the combination of both can be found throughout the movie, but the most poignant one is the scene of the rowing competition. It was actually the first time I’ve seen a scene shot in tilt-shift in a mainstream film (for the record, I haven’t seen one yet in an indie film either). Anyway, if you still don’t know whether to watch the film, do go and see it, just for that one scene (it’s roughly two minutes, but well worth it).

Now, for the rest. Without a doubt, Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay, did a masterful job. There was nary a boring scene throughout the whole film, and considering that the whole thing is, well, about a website, that is quite a feat. As for stereotypes and clichés: yes, they’re all there. Most women portrayed are either demure, slutty or bossy. With a focus on slutty. I guess this simply comes with letting a middle-aged man write a film about college, young people and power (literary similarities are plentiful, go and have a look at Tom Wolfe and his “Charlotte Simmons”). So no, the film will never win a feminist’s award.

Apart from that, there’s the question of historical accuracy. For someone who has read Marshall Kirkpatrick’s “The Facebook Effect”, it soon becomes clear that a lot has been dramatized for the big screen. Fortunately, I already expected as much. Because, well, if it had been entirely accurate, the film would have been an absolute and utter bore.

Which leads me to my final point: “The Social Network” is in fact quite entertaining. Even though you might be wondering at the end what exactly it was you’d just been sitting through, when you think back, a good time was had.

In the end, it’s a film about a guy who’s shrewd, quite brilliant and mildly autistic, who gets sued by a bunch of people for being just that. Managing to make a feature film out of these elements without boring the shit out of everyone and their grandma simply is something to be admired.

Oh, and as much as it pains me to say so, Justin Timberlake is a solid actor.

Here’s to wisdom. Because, you know, I once heard that these outlets we call blogs were once supposed to give us the freedom to voice whatever wisdom we’d saw fit to impart on the masses. So here I am, again, to impart wisdom.

First of all: if you like smoking, don’t quit it (unless for monetary reasons, that is). I know, it’s an unpopular thing to say, and most general surgeons of the world would want my head for even implying that there’s anything even remotely beneficial about the blue stuff, but well, it’s true. If you like smoking, do it.

Second: eat what you like. If you dig fast food, eat it. If you like steaks charred to the black and blue state, eat those fuckers. If cakes are your poison, by all means, have at them. Top them off with some frosting, chocolate sauce and unicorn tears. It’ll be great!

I could go on, but I guess it’s rather clear what I’m going at. In case it’s not to you, let me spell it out:

Life is not a miracle, it’s a coincidence. The fact that we’re able to bash each others heads in over disputes regarding imaginary beings while at the same time creating pieces of art that manage to rock our world shows what freaks of nature we are.

There is no fate. Every constraint we feel has been put upon us by the respective society we live in. We might be able to escape said constraints, if we so wish, but most of us won’t. Don’t worry about it, though, ’cause at least now you know where you stand.

Respect life, but don’t take it seriously. Simply enjoy yourself and make sure everyone around you does the same. There will be nobody to judge you once it’s all over.

Because you know, in the end, there’s just one thing – the end.

And yes, that’s a pretty bad-ass ending.

And there we are. In one gentle but swift move autumn has swooped in and replaced what we like to call summer. It’s not even September and people are already feeling properly dressed wearing scarfs, coats and whatnot. Well, I don’t mind. You see, I like me a weather which dictates not what I should remove from my body but rather what I should add to my body to keep me from freezing to death. It’s just so much more comfortable.

I think that’s why I like places like Sweden that much. Even in mid-August, there’s nothing wrong with wearing hooded sweaters and long trousers. And hell, the people are friendly too. Returning to Vienna after spending some time in Sweden is like returning to the place where people go after they’ve used up all their compassion, optimism and good humour. The best you can do in Vienna is getting a waiter who realizes how fucked up his performance of being a grumpy old asshole is and has to grin in the course of it.

Anyway, my intention is not to make you feel all gloomy so here’s another breathtaking picture to marvel at. Enjoy.