web 2.0

Where do they find the time? Clay Shirky on the Cognitive Surplus

In this rare gem of a video, Clay Shirky talks about the time, energy and potentials that used to be lost to dumbly watching TV. How many Wikipedia entries could we get out of these brain cycles now that we can free up that TV time for more productive and satisfying activities again?

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Video wrap-up from re:publica 08

Just noticed that kosmar has cut a neat time warp video from re:publica 08, featuring the whole crowd. Thanks, Kosmar!


Liveblogging from next08

Tomorrow I’ll be blogging live from next conference in Hamburg, Germany. next08 is is one of Germany’s top web conferences and I was thrilled that SinnerSchrader asked me to be one of four livebloggers at their conference. (Thanks a lot, Martin!)
This year’s theme is get realtime:
The main theme will be get realtime. We want to […]


Chinese Anti-CNN Campaign

Note: I won’t touch the politics behind this campaign in this post. If you were looking for any political opinion on this subject, feel free to skip this post.
Over the last couple of days, I’ve been getting increasing amounts of propaganda material spam (pardon: information) related to China’s campaign against the CNN.
(When I say […]


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 #4 (Wrap-up)

So re:publica 08 is over, it’s the week after and things are back to normal. I’m only posting this just now since my weekend pretty much went into moving to a new apartment, but now that I’ve settled in, I’m back on a more regular schedule after after a trip to New York and San […]


Re:publica 08 #3 (Law)

One of the best panels My favorite panel at re:publica was Henning Krieg’s panel on law and blogging. At pretty much every other conference I missed out on Henning’s quite famous talks, and it was no surprise to find the room packed to the limits. Relaxed, informal and funny presentation, a lot of value for […]


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 […]


Re:publica 08 #1

So far, I haven’t been able to blog about re:publica 08, Germany’s top blogger & social media conference. Not because it hasn’t been interesting - quite the contrary - but because I ended up chatting with a lot of cool folks. Which is, let’s face it, the main point about this kind of congregations. The […]


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 […]


Presentation: print is dead, at least to the young

The print vs online discussion is as old as the internet, and I can’t even recall how often I’ve heard that print is dead. However, it’s not quite as common to also deliver the necessary data to back up this statement. One person who really has the science pat down and can back up his […]


Forrester: Online Community Best Practices

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Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang shares this great presentation about Online Community Best Practices. It’s 51 slides packed with useful advices for those of you who are planning to launch an online community of any kind. Note that this presentation won’t save you proper consulting and/or experimenting. But it contains excellent […]


On Bebo.com, and why it’s important to make invitations opt-in

Web companies of the world, if there is one lesson to learn, it’s this: Be careful when sending out invitation emails.
I just spammed, by complete accident, my whole Gmail address book through Bebo. This is something that may never happen, ever. So how could it?
Given the recent acquisition of the Social Networking Site Bebo.com […]


My Masters Thesis On Weblogs And Political Journalists: Now Available On Amazon

Exciting news (well, for me): My masters thesis on the Relevance of Weblogs for the Work of Political Journalists just went into print. (It’s German only, sorry, but you’ll find the abstract at the end of this post.)
The thesis is now available through amazon.de:

Author: Peter Bihr
Publisher: Vdm Verlag Dr. Müller (March 2008)
ISBN-10: 3836464292
ISBN-13: […]


Upcoming: Valley Trip. Wanna meet up?

Most of you live in the States - that’s what my blog stats say, and that’s my experience from talking to you, too. Also, with quite a few of you I’ve emailed, chatted, or talked during the last couple of years. (I just realized: This blog is turning two years old just about these days.) […]