As some of the readers of this blog know I am also working on projects in the field of search and semantic search. So I eagerly had a look at the Miiget project for a new people search engine.
As one can see in the query above also very sophisticated solutions have their limits: the query for Günther Beckstein, former Minister-President of Bavaria in Germany, is linked to Adolf Hitler. I’m sure that’s not what was intended.
But besides limitations like that the Miiget project is pretty impressive.
Google seems to say goodbye to its longterm strategy of clear and clean startpages. I don’t like that at all and I am using more and more the very clean interface of Yahoo! Search (not the Yahoo! Portal site – the clean search part). On the Mac there is even a very cool toolbar add on: Inquisitor
The US has a new president and it’s part of democracy to wish a new leader good luck and enthusiasm to do a great job – espescially in these difficult times. Let’s hope Obama will deliver what he promised.
Flush toilets have become such a standard part of our lifes that we cannot even imagine that the majority of the world population does not have access to even modest sanitation facilities.
The first time I became really aware of that fact was when I read Kishore Mahbubanisnew book where he mentioned in a side note that the moment of the arrival of a flush toilet was “the date when his life entered the modern world”.
Today is World Toilet Day 2008 – so let’s help bringing some dignity to the life of thousands by helping the World Toilet Organization installing some flush toilets around the world. Just click HERE to open the donation form..
It has been a long time – for more than 8 years I’ve been a loyal Yahoo! hosting service subscriber – but now it’s time for a change. It’s not only about bad and incompetent customer service and high prices – both wouldn’t have been enough to endure all the hassle of such a change. It’s just their poor servers. Yahoo! is just not capable of running current Wordpress versions.. and after the old martinopia.com was hacked this has become a serious security issue I don’t want to accept anymore.
So let’s wave goodbye and welcome the new Metanet hosted martinopia.com
Please note: the RSS-Feed has changed as well and is now powered by Feedburner. So please update your RSS subscription to get all the exciting martinopia.com content coming soon!
If you like your iPhone as well but the autocorrection makes you feel crazy as it does to me then it’s time to act now: sign the disable-the-autocorrection-online-petition.
Perhaps the swiss way of solving problems by democracy helps making the iPhone an even better device – without autocorrection
Today I seem to have been in contact with customer service reps from two planets: After one hour of normal working on my PC with internet connection suddenly my Internet connection by Cablecom was broken. As always in situations like that I disconnected both – the cablemodem and my Zyxel router from the power suppy for around one minute and reconnected then.. well for this time that did not help, so I contacted Cablecom on their help line. After a music listening happening of more than 20 minutes the phone was finally picked up by a Cablecom employee who of course wanted to disconnect and reconnect the cablemodem.. Well, after some time he found out that my cablemodem was “not active”.. the reason for that: they sent me a new cablemodem today. And because of some “optimizations in their processes” they had to disactivate my old (and still working) cablemodem in the moment when they sent out the new one. Knowing exactly that so I will have no internet access till the new cablemodem arrives. The sales rep even gave me a tracking number for that parcel – but that tracking number seems to be incorrect or the modem was never sent out – at least the Swiss Post which is supposed to be in charge for delivering the parcel does not know about that number.
After having asked if there is no alternative to get internet access till I get the new modem – e.g. by reactivating the old modem and waiting for one week with activating the new one – I was told that was not possible. Also my sorrows that I’m unable to work without internet connection just did not interest Cablecom at all. They sent out a new cablemodem which is active – so there is no reason for them to act in any further form to help their customers.. hmm.. I was pretty upset, but what should one do.. I needed a solution..
So I went to Swisscom to buy an Internet Unlimited USB card to access the internet by UMTS. Within less then 20 minutes I had a new mobile contract with such a UMTS/GPRS/Edge-card to access the internet anywhere I am for really cheap prices (I couldn’t believe how cheap mobile internet has become in Switzerland). But even better – when I was in the Swisscom shop I asked for my reserved iPhone which they managed that I got my new iPhone today – although I was not on top of the waiting list – but more about that in an upcoming post.
These days catch phrases like “yes, we can” or “hope” of Obamas 08 campaign seem to let so-called liberal Europeans forget about what it’s all about. Why bother with critical distance and evaluating what would be the best next US president from a European point of view – when the world can be that easy: the good guy = Obama vs the bad guy = Bush/McCain. Most of all those “yes, we can” singing german students cheering their new pop star Obama just ignore the fact that John McCain differs from Mr Bush as Mr Obama differs from Bill Clinton. The real question – which choice would be the best for the US and Europe in particular or if Obama could deliver, as the Economist asked some weeks ago – seems not to interest anybody.
I just don’t see what makes all these people so sure that Obama could deliver. Who would handle a new wave of terror best, who will strengthen the US economy again, who will stabilize the US dollar – all these questions are essential for the prosperity of Europe in the next years – but besides “hope” and “yes, we can” I have not heard many answers to the cheering masses from Mr. Obama. I don’t say he can’t but there is still a lot of work to the deliver clear answers why Mr Obama would be the better choice.
After some days of response time today I got an “answer” from Apple regarding my account paymant problem:
They just sent me the same two links to two non-related FAQ entries than they showed me automatically before I could fill in the contact form on the support sites. Obviously they did not even read what my problem was about (that I entered my new credit card information twice but that this information simply does not find the way in the Apple systems).
Apple – you build great computers, you brought us the iPod, you brougth style in our digital lifestyle – but please hire some smart web developers really able to build and run services like Mobile Me. It’s so annoying for customers having to contact you 10 times to reslove a simple problem!
but it was a lot fun.. 9.6km around Zurich City.