Kasi-Blog

Spurred by the comments left on other articles, I just want to clarify how this whole Toshiba-story developed. Quite a tragedy, since the lovetolead-site is almost dead, this week only a dozen bloggers submitted an article. Quite a tragedy as well because an idea that started good (but had some flaws) was driven into isolation due to the miscommunication on all sides.

I personally hope that the site regains some attraction again – and I want to sincerely apologize to everybody who felt obstacled by my actions. I had three aims: raise awareness for the needs of bloggers, point to conceptual flaws and explore the mechanisms of social and virtual networks. Nothing more, nothing less. Here’s what happened: Read on, my friend »

Lovetolead is a site for bloggers to debate certain topics. It was created for Toshiba by a British web agency to advertise their new laptop. However, not all articles are welcome: the article of laberena was deleted even though it received the most votes until late afternoon. Neither Toshiba nor Lovetolead notified laberena.

Not many people are using the site. The article became the most voted article even though only ten or twenty people notified us of their vote, shows how little frequency the site receives. The method was quite simple to receive many votes and full inside the Term of Conditions. Other methods like manipulating IP-adresses were not even used, all votes that the article received were given by real persons.

Deleting the article shows that Toshiba lost all respect for bloggers – and simply sees them as a marketing-tool. Therefore I invite all bloggers at the site: if you want to be the first place, if you also think Toshiba misbehaves or if you have any questions or feedback, please contact me.

Two weeks ago I wrote an article to win a Toshiba laptop. The results and the winner of the Toshiba have been announced on my blog. This week my friend Laberena wrote an article at Nachhall-Texter. She will also give away the laptop. If you have voted, send an email either me at info [ at ] karsten-wenzlaff.de or to info [at] nachhall-texter.de. There is condition that the winner has to donate 500 Euros to a charitable cause.

Reuters wrote this morning that the G8 Sherpa Bernd Pfaffenbach announced in an interview that the summit in June “won’t yield a new climate change accord.” However the goverment website still announces that climate change will be a priority, according to a speech that Merkel delivers at the World Economic Forum today.

In an interview with Handelsblatt, G8 sherpa Pfaffenbach already cautioned that the trans-atlantic economic co-operation will most likely be not a topic at the G8 summit since it might jeopardize the WTO negotiations.

In addition to the G8 Research Library (I), I want to present the following links and fact sheets. They will soon be updated on the homepage of the ModelG8.org Read on, my friend »

This week two things happened at the same time: firstly, a call for application for the ModelG8 arrived, secondly new website of the J8 was started by the German Unicef Office in cooperation with Morgan Stanley.

Now what are the main differences between the ModelG8 and the J7? Read on, my friend »

The Model G8 Team asked me to give a small presentation about the G8 summit procedures to intensify the knowledge.

We came up with a list of question that I will try to answer next monday. I already gave a presentation on the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, but this one will focus more on the G8 summit in Heiligendamm.

If you are interested to join the discussion, please come to the Politikfabrik, Monday 29th of January, 8.30 pm. These are the questions: Read on, my friend »

Two weeks ago, I announced the G8-publication “Summit of Injustice” by Katja Kipping and Christine Buchholz. Katja Kipping send me the book for a review and I am glad to write a few lines on the book.

The title and the subtitle of the book (“How eight governments govern over six billion people”) indicates the general direction of the book: it serves as a collection of critique of the G8 politics. The publishers have assembled a remarkable list of authors, such as Elmar Altvater,Alex Callinicos, Hugo Chávez, Oskar Lafontaine, Chantal Mouffe or Peter Wahl.
Read on, my friend »

Only randomly I disovered that the blog-host Vbloge steals my content. Read on, my friend »

One of the greatest person I know send me a nice comic, created through the Garfield Comic Creator. Good night!

Hooray, the application for the Model G8 Youth Summit 2007, that I help organizing, is now available at www.modelg8.org!

I have neglected my coverage of StudiVZ topics, mainly because of time. There are very interesting developments in the social networks scene, a lot of social networks are planning to expand and are being pushed by a lot of money. I am not sure how it will end, another web 2.0 bubble about to burst? We’ll see.

In any case, for my english readers. StudiVZ has re-released old features and immediately encounters traffic problems. The original super-search, which allowed to search for users with very sophisticated search criteria, disappeared due to traffic constraints. Now it is back and again it is eating up the capacity – several users have complained to me about difficulties login into StudiVZ. Read on, my friend »

Amiando is a nice platform for organizing parties and inviting friends. Even though their blog is not very talkative and even if StudiVZ investor Lukas Gadowski already sensed the money and invested in it, it seems to be quite a useful tool. We’ll see how the invitation for the spontaneous “Russian Strawberries” will work which our Model G8 team is organizing.
Another useful tool is Pageflakes, which I currently test and see whether it can be synchronized with the other tools that I am using. It basically works like an online-desktop, with a calendar, to-do-lists, newsfeeds. Has anybody found similiar pages? What are your experiences?

Last week, I participated in the Lovetolead-Competition with an article (see mirror at Lovetolead) on the colonization of other worlds through bloggers. I also asked people to vote for me. I received 274 emails of people saying that they voted for me. All together I got more than 500 votes, so once I was in the Top 3, many other people voted for me as well.

Below you find the list of networks and responses that I got. As you can see I used several networks, among which the Youth Press and the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation were the most responsive. As you can see the responses were also quite immediately after I published the text on my website and send some emails through the networks. Interestingly in each network about 10 percent want to donate the network for a charitable cause.

Therefore I asked my friend laberena to write an article at Nachhall-Texter. She also agreed to give away the laptop to each and everyone that is voting and sending her an email at info [at] nachhall-texter.de. However, the condition is that the winner has to donate 500 Euros to a charitable cause.

On Nachhall-Texter you can find the link towards an alternative speech given by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, voiced over by the Greenpeace campaigners. Instead of an iPhone, this time Jobs announces the new green iPod – so that Greenpeace can go back to save whales.

Please vote for my Planet-Toshiba-Article here and send me an email at info[at]karsten-wenzlaff.de, I am checking whether they count all the votes correctly. Also, If I get the most votes, I win a laptop. I’ll notify all my voters and give one of them the laptop as a gift.

Carbogno and Fixmbr called a dispute between the CCC and StudiVZ on data security to my attention. Read on, my friend »

If any of you out there can recommend me a good email-program that has the following features

• easy import of my current Outlook Express Files
• easy import of my adressbook
• calendar
• synchronisation with mobile phone
• PGP-secure communication
• possibility to archive emails

But most importantly:

• Reducing the amount of file space used
• automatically zipping of large emails
• saving all emails in txt-format and saves attachments automatically in an extra file-folder.

Thanks!

Günther Jauch announced today that he will not be the successor of Sabine Christiansen. Her Political Talk-Show “Sabine Christiansen” is one of the most successful shows of this format in Germany.

Read on, my friend »

Oh, Toshiba discovered the bloggers. And at the same time, they have a new laptop that they want to sell. So what to do? First, thing of a cool slogan. Laptops – love, Web2.0 – to, Sell – lead. Lovetolead. Great. Leading innovation. Awesome. Read on, my friend »