Daniel Staemmler » WorldWideWeb

Most inspiring bits and bytes

Daniel Staemmler — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:11:53 +0000

There are a few great speeches and other moving pictures available on various video website. I gathered some of them here that came to mind and that I personally like the most. The order in this post is random since I think all of them are pretty great.

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Paul Potts sings Opera ( Britain’s got talent )

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

The Free Hugs Campaign

Benjamin Zander on music and passion

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Feel free to post your most inspiring video!

UPDATE: Over night, while I was laying awake in my bed, I thought about a presentation my cousin sent me a little while ago. This one will fit perfectly into this post as an addition to inspiring website, not video and moving pictures necessarily. ChangeThis.com is a website whose goal it is “…to challenge the way ideas are created and spread.” The presentation I received and found very much worth reading is about “A Positive Attitude” from Dan Auito. Who honestly couldn’t use a little reminder every now and then

Guide on DRM free Music Online

Daniel Staemmler — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:08:55 +0000

This subject is a little off topic from this blog but I personally like music and are interested in the subject of DRM. So here we go…

TechCrunch just published an article about Digital Right Management free music available online. All those music lovers out there who want to pay once and have the freedom to use the purchased songs the way they want this article is a good place to start.

Besides DRM free music there are a whole bunch of music blogs out there that make it easy to fill up your music collection with mash ups and other DJ mixes. In addition podcasts are a great way to check out new music or keep track of the latest tracks and developments that are out there.
Here is a list of sited that I visit every now and than to find some new music:

Radiolovers.com – Old Time Radioshows
Internet Archive: Audio Archive
Deep House Page
Today’s Blog Music – The Hype Machine
bt.etree.org – Live recordings of trade friendly artists
largehearted boy – music blog
Said the Gramophone – music blog
Soul Sides
Le Funk Boat
Honey, where have you been so long? – Pre-War Blues
SeeqPod Music – Playable Search, Discover, Watch, Listen, Share.
Popular Music - iJigg.com
Classic Cat – classical music selection
dj BC – The Boston Mash-up Project.
Dreamtimemix – Mash-up
Get Your Bootleg On – Mash-up

Please feel free to add your favorite music site that offers free and legal downloads of songs, mixes and/or mash-ups.

Goolge – Search Goliath and Ad Network

Daniel Staemmler — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:31:48 +0000

Wow, have you paid attention to the recent earnings of Google? For the first quarter of 2007 “… Google reported profit of $396.2 million” (Source: washingtonpost.com) which is almost double from the earnings last year in the same time period. This booted out Yahoo’s profit which “… dropped by nearly a third from a year” (Source: CNET News.com). That is a lot of profit for Goliath under the search engines and most of the earnings are from online advertisement not only on the Google website but also on their partners sites.

Why am I writing about this? I stumbled upon a blog entry by Jeol Downs from Answerbag.com (Referred by: We are all end users…) with the title “Why Google doesn’t care about Search“. And even though I like a lot of the services that Google offers I think he makes a very good point in naming Google an ad network. Don’t get me wrong I use a lot of Google’s services and like them and I also understand very well money has to be made somehow. The recent acquisition of Adscape for $23 million by Google (Source: TechCrunch) also sends a clear sign into the direction of building a stronger and powerful ad network.

Update 5/25/2007: I found an article from Ionut Alex Chitu with the title “What has Google done is Search lately?” that is contradicting the above mentioned article from Jeol Downs and argues that Google does a lot to improve their search functions and results.

Unlimited online storage space, interested?

Daniel Staemmler — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:30:38 +0000

John Kremer, the vice president of Yahoo, announced at the end of last month that Yahoo Mail is lifting the limit of their inbox storage space. Wow, I remember quiet well that I did search for unlimited storage space for backup copies of presentations, manuscripts, photos and the occasional music file. Right now they are scattered all over the place.

However,Â Asher Moses wrote in The Age an announcement about this and refers to comScore Media Metrix stating that Gmail “… has 51 million users worldwide, [and] offers 2.8GB of space; Microsoft’s Windows Live Mail offers 2 GB and has 228 million users.” What I personally didn’t know so far is, that Yahoo is the leader with 250 million users of their mail service. Which makes sense, since they have been around the longest, for 10 years to be precise.

The question remains, how long it takes for Gmail and Window’s Live Mail to catch up or offer features that convince users to use their services over the one from Yahoo Mail?

Information is the Key

Daniel Staemmler — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 20:30:17 +0000

We certainly live in the Information Society and information is the key to make decisions in a rapidly changing world. There are tools and websites out there that can help us on how to stay on top of the information flood that we experience every day. There are web-based RSS Aggregators out there, e.g. the Google Reader (see here for a review), that enable you to bundle the news and information you are interested in. Retrieving information in this way requires you to find the websites you are interested in, find their news feed, and import it into your news reader. That works for some people quiet well for other not.
Another way to stay on top of new information is to use an email alert service like the one from informaworld. Using their service allows you to get updates on journals, books, reference works, and abstract databases from Taylor & Francis, Routledge, Psychology Press and Informa Healthcare. This is a great way to stay on top of latest academic research and scientific discoveries.
There is also the possibility to set up your own email alert using your own search term. With a Google account you can create alerts that will be send to you per email whenever Google discovers a new web resource that contains the phrase you are looking for.

These are some suggestions to get a grip on all the information that is out there and might be of importance to you. Feel free and add other resources that you know of and that other readers might benefit from by using the comment function of this entry.

Top 10 Time(s) 25

Daniel Staemmler — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 05:44:34 +0000

It certainly is the time of the year, either at the end or beginning of one, where magazines, journals or whoever publishes a Top 10 list. Well, Time Magazine did so and published 25 Top 10 lists ranging from TV Shows, Web Sites, Books over Videos and Buzzwords till Breakups and Scandals. Does this leave any questions open for 2006? I personally hope so…

The Top 10 list of Websites starts with Prosper.com, which I never heart of before. Followed by Google Calendar on place number two. I am using this service from Google too and recently moved my whole personal schedule online. So far I am impressed since it allows me to share my appointment with friends and family members. The Online Video Guide closes the list of these Top 10.