Category Archives: Non Ed Daily

My (almost) daily non educational post.

Old Media vs New Media – Are you with Coco?

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This is the first showdown, Wild West – highnoon style, of this new decade. The fight of the late night titans. Jay Leno vs Conan O’Brien.

It all started with NBC’s decision  to bring Jay Leno back into the prime time slot and hence move Conan and the Tonight show to 12:05AM. And as always when titans fight the smaller ones like in this case Carson Daily get crushed under their feet.

But besides some very funny videos and a big wave of support for Coco there is (as always) something to learn, right?

Continue reading →

1 Billion Views per Day

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1 billion views per day. Yes, per day, not per week or month. That should make YouTube the biggest broadcaster on this planet, right?

They even changed the logo to make sure, we notice it ;)

1,000,000,000 views per day!

1,000,000,000 views per day!

I don’t have exact data yet but I would say that the biggest percentage of videos are made by average people like you and me. Do you see the shift that is happening?

Good bye old world! :)

The biggest Language Learning Community in the World is…

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Facebook.

At least it could (will) be. This week news about Facebook were rushing in.

1. Facebook has now 300.000.000 users

2. Facebook is finally in the positive cash flow

3. Facebook will offer a Voicechat by Vivox

Point two is not that interesting for the regular user. Ok, it is good to know that Facebook is a sustainable business. Rumors even say that there are plans to bring Facebook to Wallstreet in the second half of 2010. We’ll see.

But if you take together point one and point three it should make you think. The potential is just mindblowing!

Think about it.

Mafia Family is NOT a Twitter Worm – Tweeple are just fly-by-night

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Everyone on Twitter seems to be “a bit” annoyed about getting DMs to join the game Mafia World. The message you can read now on Twitter is something like “Mafia Family is a twitter worm. Let ppl know to shut off spam.”

I don’t think that Mafia Family is a Twitter Worm. And I don’t think that the game is the problem. The problem is that the tweeple are thinking that Twitter is detached from the rest of the internet and the basic rules don’t apply.

The problem is: why are you giving away your username and password to a service that writes the T&Cs in small print, dark grey on a black background? If you get a DM “Dude, join me in putting your fingers in the jack!” you go on your knees and join the fun?

Click to enlarge the small print.

Click to enlarge the small print.

Mafia Family offers their T&Cs on the bottom of the login page, as well as a link to not notify your contacts saying “Click here if you don’t wish to invite your contacts automatically“. If it works, I don’t know, because I won’t try it ;) .

And what do you expect of a game, based on Twitter? Of course everything you do will be in your time line. Where else?

Therefore: don’t blame some blokes who want to promote their obviously lame game on Twitter, blame yourself or your followers/friends for not being responsible with their private data.

The Mimic Barrier :-) ^.^

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Or why Asians misunderstand Europeans and vice versa. I came across an interesting article in “Der Spiegel” a once renowned German magazine. Well, from time to time they still publish good articles it seems. As it is in German I would like to share the ideas of this one with you here on my blog.

Anger, fear, suprise, disgust, joy and sorrow are known as the six emotions on the face that are accepted as a global language. But more and more doubts are arising if it is really a fact. A new study shows that Asians have huge problems to read the mimic of Europeans, so do Europeans with interpretating Asian mimic.

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Let me Entertain You

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Ok, today I want to talk a bit about celebrities, politics and education. And yes, they seem to have common ground these days. Us, the consumers and our, can I say need, for entertainment.

I admit, I am slightly addicted to gossip so I learned quite a while ago that there are “rumors”, which basically means evidence in the “gossip world”, Lance Armstrong might be running for Governor of Texas. You know after Conan became Governator nothing seems to be impossible. Some days ago, Brad Pitt joined the “once celebrity – now politician” club by being nominated through a grassroots movement which wants to see him to become mayor of New Orleans and of course he’s denying any interest at the moment.

Even if we take a closer look on world leaders these days, they all have set a strong focus on entertainment. No one is as good as Obama, using the Web and pictures to make his points. Then we have Putin, half naked in Siberia showing the world what a man he is. Sarkozy, public divorce after turning president, then marrying Carla Bruni and flirting all day long. Hugo Chavez even has his own TV show “Hola Presidente”. And the list goes on and on.

Basically, it seems to come down to one thing. People want to be entertained these days. I guess like in the Roman Empire. We want to see change, power or gossip. It’s a social trend.

But I don’t want to say that those politicians don’t know what they are doing. I just think the major factor for their success today is: entertainment. If you are not in the spot light, people don’t see you.

Now back to us teachers. Koichi wrote an interesting article on eduPirate: Why teaching needs to be a form of entertainment.

What do you think?

Face the Change

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Funny, eh? Well, not really but here are some facts about this video.

It was uploaded 2 days ago. Today it has over 1.000.000 views.
The Mean Kitty channel has over 155.000 subscribers.

What would you have said to me 2 or 3 years ago if I told you: “I am taking my video camera, film my cat when he is doing things that cats do and then post it on the internet. And I will make money with it.”

Correct, you would have broken down laughing or called the doctor.

If you are yet not facing the change that is happening every day around you this video should proof it to you. Everything is possible today. So go out and do it. Do a teaching show, a cooking show, a gardening show, whatever you like. But do it.

How the Internet changed our daily Routine

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What is the first thing you do in the morning? I open my notebook, feed the cats until it connects to the internet, teach some lessons online, check Twitter, Facebook, Emails, News Feeds and then finally make a coffee and breakfast. And even then I am connected and read the news online.

3 or 4 years ago I made a coffee first, had a long breakfast, read the newspaper, the wordstress is on paper, and then went out the house to teach. It feels like it must have been in another life.

The NY Times published an article about that yesterday and it is really strange to reflect on how the internet and the cloud have changed the way we go through the day. And there is even more.

In a second article Verlyn Klinkenborg asks herself what she did 25 years ago. Today we are constantly waiting for a tweet, an email, a blog post etc. Being “updated” all the time is another aspect that changed the way we live today. 25 years ago when we left the house we were disconnected. No cellphone. What did we do back then?

The thing is: when you want to be edgy these days, you have to do something crazy like shutting down your laptop and reading a book. Revolution, baby.

Turn back The Times (of London)

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Let’s start with a KRON report from 1981.

They are programming today’s paper, love it.

Quoting the guy from the SF Examiner: “This is an experiment, we are not in it to make money, we are probably not going to lose a lot but we ain’t gonna make much either.” Wise words from the past.

Don’t you love this young cyberkid, or Home Computer Owner as KRON refers to him. He is already planing to copy the newspaper. I think he wants to sell it to his neighbors. The first ever cyber pirate caught on tape!

And 28 years later “the fellow” IS worried to be out of his job, well not him probably but his successor.

But one man came to proove the SF Examiner guy wrong and to save the fellow’s job. A couple of days ago Rupert Murdoch Media Mogul and friend of all mankind announced that he plans to charge for all online versions of the newspapers in his portfolio including The Times of London, The Sun (well, who reads the Sun anyway) and the New York Post.

As you can imagine this brought up some mixed reactions which Eric Etheridge of the NY Times posted in his “The Opinionator” blog.

On the one hand I can understand that newspapers have to make money but I agree with Jeff Jarvis that they had more than enough time to adapt to the internet. When it’s too late, it’s too late. C’est la vie.

If I had to choose between a paid online and a paid printed version, I’d choose the printed newspaper. If I am looking on the internet for information I expect it to be free of charge.

What’s your opinion?

Have a nice day!

Kirsten Winkler
Owns Home Computer

Will Digital Nomads soon become Digital Refugees?

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In Berlin they are called “Digital Bohème”. Their day starts at 2:30pm in the morning and they have their first coffee, sorry I mean Latte Macchiato, in their favourite coffee shop. And there they will work the whole day through.

Infact MacBook and Starbucks was THE pair of the last years, right? But now this love story seems to come to an end. And of course it’s all about bad behaviour and, you guessed it, money.

According to an article in the WSJ New York city coffee shops start to pull the plug on laptop users. Because they don’t consume enough while they’re surfing on the internet. They even take the places in high traffic hours so the more lucrative crowd is turned away.

Why now? All those years it was an endless romance, a hot love affair between steamed milk, carrot cake and chai latte. Well, blame  the economy, like everything these days.

The shop owners struggle with their rent of course. Most of them don’t have old contracts made before the last boom in New York, that’s why there are already over 200 empty shops on 5th Avenue as I learned a couple of days ago.

And then of course what is true for the seller is true for the customer. Instead of a couple of Lattes in the good days he stays with one drink these days.

But I am not sure that it is wisely thought to turn against your old, loyal laptop customers just to make the money today. What will happen if the economy recovers? Saying: “Hey, you know, it wasn’t meant like this. You know, you are my favourite client!” might not work.

What do you think? Did you experience something like this yourself already? Will the streets will soon be filled with homeless laptop users looking for a shelter?

Twitter Spammers getting smarter?

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Ok, this is a new category on my blog where I want to share some non educational posts with you all. I hope on a daily basis as I want to keep them short.

Today I want to share some new Twitter followers of mine: @burrisd72 @blackwellg57 @tysonz75 @whitleyt83
@wilkinsons88 and @princet97

The first “coincidence” was that they joined my followers list all together in the same minute. Must be close buddies those six guys. Doing all the stuff together. They all started tweeting some hours ago plus they are all tweeting from API.

My guess: to cloak their spam accounts for Twitter they are subscribing to “real” accounts via Twitterfeed and then retweet those tweets on their accounts to pretend to be “real” people. Anyone else who got new followers?

Ah, my favourite of the bunch is burrisd72.

I think I will click that link and date him…NOT ;) .

Edit:

Just found out that they are not getting smarter. The last tweet of burris came from:

There goes my theory… And I guess my chances for a date are gone, too :(