looking at the design apart from the content, the fm4 site definitely is an impressive piece of work. it is hard to find a balanced attitude towards such a project knowing some lovely people behind it on the one hand and the uberadvantages of the orf being a very powerful monopolist on the other. politics everywhere.

but the real sad story is that some bollocks always will complain (i am one of them :)

the lesson to learn: never claim that you are doing it for the users – or they will give you a hard time whining the shit out of you.

weblogs, too? guardian online, orf fm4, weblogs.de?

<rant> my bloody opinion of the day: a commercial weblog is a paradoxon. weblogs are like pirate stations transmitting via http. logma 3000. i rather won't call my own stuff here "weblog" than using the term for yet another outcome of mass media myth or professional portal parasitism. </rant>

other quotes:

weblogs.com: "weblogs are often-updated sites that point to articles elsewhere on the web, often with comments, and to on-site articles. [...] the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc."

robotwisdom: "weblogs don't replace the function of publishing articles, but they do replace the function of publishing tables of contents, which for commercial zines have to hype their content dishonestly, and can't normally highlight good articles in other sources."

e&p: "[...] as weblogging becomes more widespread among corporations, there's likely to be some resentment from the pioneers who see it as an anti-corporate concept."

salon: "weblogs, typically, are personal web sites operated by individuals who compile chronological lists of links to stuff that interests them, interspersed with information, editorializing and personal asides."

scribble: "having 10 million hits is not the game plan. having 10 regular readers is a home run."

probably one day the one or the other has to "think of a better name than 'weblog', just start using it and see if it catches on" (jorn barger).

sidenote to boo.crash: about 200 people already lost their jobs, another 100 employments are in danger. those people are the struck ones. it is very likely that most of them will find new jobs pretty soon. but not everyone is a most wanted geek those days – and this is just the beginning, isn't it?

a ---- helper to learn the american sign language using short movie captures. strange: there are many autonomous variations of sign languages in different countries. will a deaf guy from singapore not understand his dutch colleague then?

sign writing is looking bloody complicated.

sanctions, sanctions, sanctions! news from all over the planet, from europe and from austria – a wonderful and lonely 404. poor country, sniff...

a week can be a long time according to this tagline.

boom yo! rush the show: a furious relaunch of sensomatic just shortly before midnight... coool amazing design and loads of fun with sensominder. rock'n'roll!

it appears like a curse to me, but i am constantly dropping some ideas on other sites forgetting to curry them in my own furry context. however, i just read about my suggestion for a new top-level domain called .log (or .blog?) on langreiter daily again – and with all beseeming modesty i think it's fantastic!

christian asks the right question: how are top-level domains obtained, resp. applied for? do we still have to be patient?

btw: should rather the united nations allocate domain names or is icann already the net's uno? one and another reader's letters in german news magazine der spiegel covering the topic.

shit, did i miss something not being at monomedia in berlin? i think so (at least a little bit). richard barbrook and joseph weizenbaum were there (and etoy, yawn!...). among other people i never heard of before. but latter are the reason why it could have been interesting.

crazy cow: i misheard exactly those words, too! thanks to partykeller for link & revelation...

cool: the next denki groove album is approaching europe! they are fantastic and irresistibly funny (rodney alan greenblat likes them, too!). "voxx" what's the new album called comes along with liner notes describing the tracks. i hardly can remember when i have seen something like that the last time... must have been some cruel jazzrockfusion crap. irony? weird japanese humor? i dunno. i just want the record. anyone willing to send me a copy from japan, please? jigoku e ochiro denki groove!

denki groove dj takkyu ishino is coming to vienna 3rd of june spinning the wheels at some bloody "rave".