For me the concept behind oldjewstellingjokes.com is great. Some young media-folks are using modern technology to capture and preserve the fascination of charismatic people giving everyone a laugh with their favorite jokes. Sometimes I am asking myself if the general average of jewish jokes is really so much about sexuality like within the ones presented in this project, but never mind. The people are just great and it is very much inspiring to read the short cv underneath every clip and learn about their carrers and achievements. The technical background is ok as well, so guys, if you want to have a laugh, give oldjewstellingjokes.com a try!

Sad but true. Everyone who works in media business knows that meanwhile a lot of the aspects shown in the video above are becoming standard within the industry. So even though for some of you it may be close to gallows humour I hope you will have at least a little fun with that video and perhaps even laugh about how crazy the whole situation has become.

Barack Obama (Wikipedia) already has a guaranteed place in the history books, no matter how many of his aims he will be able to reach. He has – with a little help from his supporters and voters – already made this world a bit more tolerant and better. He is the first “black” president of the US. He is an intensive user of new forms of communications for political processes. And last but not least he has become an idol of the loving father and modern husband, who sees his wife not only as ornament but as equal partner.

“Exact!”, will be the answer of like-minded Obama fans. “Again a pitiable naive, caught by propaganda”, the conservative critics will comment. But what makes me so sure that the harmony shown by the presidential couple isn’t indeed fake? What if Barak in reality is an asshole, who smiles in the lenses of journalists and otherwise loves to be served by others? In this case I would like to point to a picture shown on the official Flickr account of the White House.

Meanwhile everyone has seen the clip on Youtube, in which the president kills a fly during a interview on television (Link to the clip on Youtube). Not so known by far is the picture, taken after this in which he collects the dead insect from the floor (Link to the picture at Flickr).

I love symbolic pictures. And this one shows alongside other things that the president of the United States of America even beside all his responsibilities and everything he has to bear in his mind, instinctively needs to go down in this expensive suit for a dead fly. I don’t care, if he did it out of respect for the creature, out of respect for the cleaning staff of the White House or just because his wife trained him this way.

I like the picture. And I like Obama

Leading to War” is a documentary about the prologue of the recent war in iraq. You can download it for free, stream it or watch it on Google-Video.

Wikipedia says:
“Presented chronologically from President Bush’s State of the Union Address in January, 2002 (the Axis of evil speech), and continuing up to the announcement of formal U.S. military action in Iraq on March 19, 2003, the film presents selected interviews, speeches, and press conferences given by Bush and his administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Non-U.S. sources include British Prime Minister Tony Blair.”

The topic is interesting anyway, but the film and its internetpage leadingtowar.com are as well a good example for political communication in our times.

As you are reading this text, I assume that you are using the internet. In case you are using it not only to read my blog but also do other stuff, you should really consider to take a look at “The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet”. Author Daniel J. Solove is telling about the chances but as well the dangers of our digital times in which we are vulnerable to until now unknown phenomena like virtual witch hunts in blogs, chats and social communities. Fortunately for us Solove, who is having a blog as well, convinced Yale University Press to publish the book not only as a commercial paper edition but as a free pdf-version, that can be downloaded from the books webpage. So now nobody has an excuse not to take at least a short glimpse in this volume. And I can only suggest to do so, because it contains some fundamental lessons about the internet as we live with it and in it today.

Via viralmythen (german), apophenia (english)

Reporters without Borders have published a new edition of the “Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents�. The date was choosen to mark the Online Free Expression Day.

As it says on the RwB-Page:

The handbook offers practical advice and techniques on how to create a blog, make entries and get the blog to show up in search engine results. It gives clear explanations about blogging for all those whose online freedom of expression is subject to restrictions, and it shows how to sidestep the censorship measures imposed by certain governments, with a practical example that demonstrates the use of the censorship circumvention software Tor.

The leaders of authoritarian countries are becoming more and suspicious of bloggers, these men and women who, although not journalists, publish news and information online and who, worse still, often tackle subjects the so-called traditional media dare not cover. In some countries, blogs have become an important new source of news. It is to protect this source that Reporters Without Borders has updated its handbook

Via netzpolitik.org (german)

I have just founded a group on Facebook, that I myself missed until now. It is called “People who believe that we can make the world a little better with blogging” and I think the name speaks for itself. It would be great that this group would be joined by a lot of bloggers from all over the world to learn from each other, exchange their experiences and develop some positive ideas together.

Here the group information:

So, everyone who can identify himself with this idea is warmly welcome in “People who believe that we can make the world a little better with blogging“.

I don not think, that there are a lot of people left who didn`t hear about Facebook until now, but if you belong to them, you will find some general information about it here in Wikipedia.

Just got this:

“Cafebabel.com, first european media in seven languages [300 000 visitors unical and one million of pages viewed each months] is changing. We are about to launch a new project, called ‘Babel Reporters’, which consists in ‘generational’ features focused mainly on Eastern Europe.

The concept is to increase the quality of our editorial offer, while sustaining the economic viability of cafebabel.com. Once realised, the reportages should be sold to a wide range of national media. Of course, cafebabel.com supports the travel costs and participants will be retributed for their coverage.

Since we want to create a team of professionals ‘euro-reporters’, we are looking for young but experienced journalists and photographers. The applicants should have a first significative experience in journalism (ideally having previously worked as free lance), have good contacts in local medias, speak english or french fluently and being curious and autonomous.

Please send asap your CV and application letter at Prune Antoine via redaction@cafebabel.com.”

Just received the information that young journalists from all over Europe have the possibility to take part in the “European Young Journalist Award on EU Enlargement issues“, which has been officially launched in Brussels on november 15th. The title is: “Enlarge your visionâ€?.

The organiser is the European Commission, Directorate-General for Enlargement, in cooperation with the European Youth Press association. The objective of the competition is to encourage young journalists to reflect on and express their views on the European Union’s enlargement policy.

During its 50 year history, the European Union has grown from originally 6 member states to 27. With a population of close to 500 million inhabitants, today’s Union is much stronger and more influential than with its 6 member states and a population of less than 200 million. Enlargement is one of the EU’s most powerful policy tools. The pull of the EU has helped to transform Central and Eastern Europe into modern, well-functioning democracies. More recently it has inspired farreaching reforms in the candidate and potential candidate countries (Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, as well as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo under UN Security Council Resolution 1244). All European citizens benefit from having neighbours that are stable democracies and prosperous market economies. Enlargement is a carefully managed process which helps the transformation of the countries involved, extending peace, stability, prosperity, democracy, human rights and the rule of law across Europe.

Young European citizens in particular are taking advantage of this community of diverse values and cultures, as it is getting easier for them to travel and learn other languages through EU exchange programs. In the long run, they are the ones who will benefit most from EU enlargement. By formulating their ideas of the future Europe, young journalists are important opinion-leaders for their generation. In the framework of the competition, participants are asked to submit a recently published article (publication date between January 2007 and March 15, 2008). On the special competition website (www.EUjournalist-award.eu ) they can find articles on the EU enlargement, written by their colleagues, as inspiration for their journalistic work. Entries for the competition can be written in one of the official EU languages or one of the languages of the candidate and potential candidate countries.

At the end of the competition each participating country will select a national winner and all 35 winners will undertake a 3 day trip through Western Balkan countries together. In addressing the young competitors, EU Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn said: “I welcome the launch of this competition and look forward to learning more about the views of young journalists on the enlargement policy. They are important opinion-leaders for their generation. I would like to invite them to share their experiences and visions of our common European future. Their ideas will further nourish the debates that will determine the shape of our continent.�

National juries made up of media representatives will select the winning article from each country in April 2008 and the articles will be published on the competition website. All the 35 winners will be invited on a trip through Western Balkan countries and will have the opportunity to participate in a conference with media representatives from various countries in June 2008. “Winners will not only be awarded but also get the chance of exchanging with experienced colleagues and media professionals. With this award we foster a network of young journalists between EU countries, candidate and potential candidate countries�, underlined Anna Siitam, spokes-woman for European Youth Press as the umbrella organisation of 48.000 young journalists in Europe.

For information on how to enter the competition, please visit www.EUjournalist-award.eu

In America as well as in England recently two new ideas have been developed to organize the work in pr even more efficient.

The British are testing a system which allows important representatives from politics and economics to be on a group photo without any need to get physicial contact or even be at the same place at the same time like the group. A first test of this system acomplished by the english secretary of culture James Purnell wasn`t very much successful though.

Screen Shot from the article in the Telegraph, which is linked above.

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, thought that press conferences would be so much more harmoncial and as well faster when they would be done without any single journalist. Having workers to ask the questions also gives the possibility to prepair much nicer answers. You don`t think so? Well:

Now a short one right before bedtime. As I just read this as usually very informative article by Fiete Stegers on the webpage of the German news-programme Tagesschau.de, the picture on the right has caught my attention, because it looks like just cut out of an random PR-picture. So when I searched for “Laptop in der Straßenbahn” (German for: “laptop in the tram”) at Google-picturesearch and went there on page three, I found this:

The page Teltarif offers a text from february 2005 with the title “Telekom stattet Bonner Bahn mit mobilem Hotspot aus” (“Telekom equipts the traincompany of Bonn with a mobile hotspot”). Here on the photo as well laptop, seat covers and hands may seem familiar to the interested reader. Now just for one more time using Google-Picturesearch with the optimized searchterms “telekom + surfen in der bahn” and well:

On Presseportal.de we find another very similiar article about the internet in the public transport in Bonn with the title “Das Internet fährt mit” “(“The Internet drives with [us/the train]“). And there we are even able to zoom the picture:

So this is like we have been able after 40 seconds of work and two searches at Google-Picturesearch to explain why the illustrating picture on Tagesschau.de looks like just cut out of an random PR-picture. Answer: It just has been cut out of an random PR-picture.

And the best is, that such a general photo can also be used in a general way not only for the “Klimakosten des Internet-Booms” (“Climate Expenses of the Internet-Boom”), but as well for a story about the “Bundestrojaner”.

Ok, this is a small and short one. I do not really have a clue about the news-categories at CNN, but I could have imagined that it is rather a topic for “Politics”, “World” or perhaps even “U.S.”, when the CNN chief news executive (who?) is “stepped back”, because of some critical remarks about the growing number of dead journalists in Iraq. Well, it seems that the colleagues found it rather “entertaining”.

Recently I have discovered a practical service, that offers watching a number of television channels via internet. After a short registration process at zattoo.com there are different versions of the basic-software for download supporting either Windows, Windows Vista, Mac or Linux. After installation and registration, a window showing the chosen program appears and another one displaying available channels. Sometimes the screen needs some time to build up but all in all I am really satisfied with the result. One should also not forget that this is still a beta-version and a free service moreover.

Some time ago I have seen Joost (HP, Wikipedia) which is another service for internet-television, but comparing them I indeed prefer Zattoo. It offers several news-channels live and uses a small software that can easily be run with other programs. Joost does not support live-television but on-demand-content only and also inlcludes resource-intensive extras like a chat-tool. As somebody who doesn`t own a television set I appreciate the possibility of having news from CNN, Al Jazeera or France 24 in the background during computer-work.

Overview of the channels featured in Zattoo
Channel (Genre – Language)
Comedy Central (Comedy – German)
Das Vierte (Entertainment – German)
DMAX (Entertainment – German)
DSF (Sports – German)
Entertainment Channel (Entertainment – German)
Giga (Entertainment – German)
MTV (Music – German)
Nick (Cartoons – German)
Tier TV (Special Interest – German)
TV Gusto (Special Interest – German)
VIVA (Music – German)
Al Jazeera (Information – English)
Canal 24 Horas (News – Spanish)
CNN International (News – English)
France 24 (News – English)
luxe.tv (Special Interest – English)
SF Info (News – Divers.)
sumo.tv (Entertainment – English)
Telezüri (General – Swiss German)
The Poker Channel (Special Interest – English)
TVE Internacional (General – Spanish)

As can be seen in the screen shots the main institution for TV-news in Germany, the Tagesschau, despite their enormous financial possibilities and own large excellent educated staff more and more uses Google Earth as it comes to graphical support of reports. Latest example is the coverage of the plane-crash in Sao Paulo. The screen shots are taken from the afternoon-edition (17.00 CET) which can be watched for free on the Tagesschau-webpage.

The events of Sao Paulo as well do contain a certain irony as not only the affected plane belongs to the brasilian airline TAM …

… but also the destroyed building.

So what about a little guessing game? All you have to do is to find out, which of the two pages from the newest edition of the Hamburg student magazine “Uniscene” is the cover-page 1 and which is the advertisement on page 26? Not so easy at all, isn`t it? The magazine can be downloaded as a pdf-file here on the webpage of the project.