digital divide

Negroponte Unveils Second Generation OLPC

Just a few months after shipping the first laptops, the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC) is getting ready for round two. Chairman Nicholas Negroponte just unveiled the second generation laptop, going by the name XO-2 or XOXO.

So here’s what it’ll look like. (Note the Matrix-like picture language? Ah, good times.)
Needless to say, from […]

How I tried (and failed at) legally buying music in Germany

Please note: What’s about to follow is a rant. It’s also advice to music labels. Short-short version, dear content traders: Make your stuff more easily available.
This is a story of a sucky customer experience. As customers and experts alike will tell you, users like to rock, not to suck.
Buying music online is supposedly easy. Or […]

Creative Commons for German Public TV Could Save Costs, Archives

German public TV and the Some Rights Reserved content licenses by Creative Commons don’t seem to be a natural mix.
Then again, maybe they do.
As NDR, one of Germany’s regional public TV stations, proved by putting some shows under Creative Commons, open licenses and public TV may be a pretty good match indeed. (This goes […]

Re:publica 08 #2

Today is day 3 of re:publica 08, the last day of this year’s installment of this conference. Re:publica is the biggest and most important blogger & social media conference in Germany, organized largely by the Newthinking Team (i.e. the net activists whose most prominent member is probably Markus Beckedahl, author of Netzpolitik.org. Thanks Markus, and […]

Valley Trip Summary: Half-time.

I’m about half-way into my trip to the Bay Area, i.e. Silicon Valley, so I figured it’s time for a first summary. First of all, I’ve been neglecting this blog, and to some degree even Twitter. This isn’t just because I’ve been spending my time doing and seeing a lot of stuff and a bunch […]