war of the social networks

One of the most controversial elements in the whole web 2.0 world is most definitely the whole "social network thing". As most of young people nowadays use social networks very frequently, not everyone sees the social network sites as a blessing, claiming corporations exploit the information given by the user for profit.

But one fact remains undeniable: social networks are everywhere. And every single one of them is trying to be the best/biggest/most successfull. Especially in Germany the battle is on. Some networks now try to attack the leading community studiVZ. Especially the social network giant facebook is really pushing forward. With a big marketing campaign including a facebook party in munich, facebook is going forward to get more german members on their site.
However facebook is not the only one trying to get to the top of the social networks in germany. The community lokalisten.de is also eager to get tot the top. With a major media corporation in the back they are now trying to pull people in the competetive way.

Anyway. I'm interested to see how all this competition turns out. Will there be a winner? Will one day all your information be in the possession of a major corporation? Will you have to maintain several accounts just to stay in contact with more than one person.

Italian days

Verona is a city in Veneto, northern Italy, one of the seven provincial capitals in the region. It is one of the main tourist destinations in north-eastern Italy, thanks to its artistic heritage, several annual fairs, shows and operas, such as the lyrical season in the Arena, the ancient amphitheatre built by the Romans.

At least that is what Wikipedia will tell you. And I have to it's even better than it sounds. Verona is just a wonderful city with lots of small towns around it.

One of these towns is Sirmione where we spent a few hours on friday. However the disadvantage (and advantage) of travelling to Garda's Lake in winter is that there is absolutely noone around. All the nice little cafés next to the lake were closed. Still you got the impression how crowded by tourists it will be in summer as a lot of signs were translated to german and they even served famous beer from munich.

After the obligatory get-together party we headed to Verona city the next day. We spent some time with sight seeing, in an italien café and even got some impression on the Eurocarnival which also took place that day.

After all it was a great weekend at a great place. But the best thing was that I got to experience it with lots of crazy people from all over Europe. So thanks to all the italiens who were involved in the organisation and I'm looking forward to see you again in august, for the real deal.

Verona calling

This weekend I won't be enjoying munich so much, because tomorrow I will be heading to Verona.

As the Leos in Europe are going to have their international get-together at the Leo European Forum in Italy, there still much work left to do. So all the executives are meeting this weekend in Verona to review the status and discuss further actions. Fortunately I'm not one of them. So I only will be joining for meeting some friends and enjoying the weekend ;-).

facebook and the relationship status

Some of you might not be aware of the fact that the relationship status on the famous social network "facebook" actually was invented by the devil himself. Especially in combination with the very famous "Public Wall" which exposes even the smallest change to your profile.

For some examples there is clearly the user to blame. But there some situation where the simple removing of your relationship status could cause quite a bit of confusion and suddenly result in all your friends gossiping about who you're hooking up with.

So keep in mind that facebook shows no mercy considering the changes made to your profile.

The easiest way though to deal with this fact is to customize facebook in a way that the public wall will respect your privacy.

Therefore just go to Settings -> Privacy Settings -> News Feed and Wall. There you can include and exclude the information which will be published to all your friends.

hello world - finally there, my first own blog

With all the web 2.0 hype couldn't pass me by I was very tempted to take part in it. So this is my "hello world" to the world wide web - as software engineers tend to say.

that's all for now but stay tuned for some of my thoughts about leo, technology and of the home of my choice - munich.