I went to the re:publica 08 conference in Berlin. Unfortunately I hadn’t much time, so I could only attend a couple of talks and workshops. It was really good! Check out the website with video streams and lots of more information.

Last weekend I spent in London with some friends. The weather was nasty, but it’s always great to visit London. I was lucky to see the new St Pancras Station. It was re-opend after 12 years. The architecture and especially the famous St Pancras Clock are very impressive! I can also recommend checking out The Big Chill House for your music pleasure, Leon for healthy, organic and delicious fast food and the Shoreditch House for hanging around or swim in the pool on the roof top (members only).

Last week-end I went to a birthday party in Frohnhausen near Marburg. The party was on the country-side but on Sunday a did a quick visit to Marburg. It’s gorgeous! Watch the pictures in my small gallery here and you will see how beautiful all the renovated small houses look like!

Last night I just crushed into an opening at La Robe — a designer’s store next to a party of a friend of mine. Have a look at the current collection here.

Now, check this out: Anina recorded the speeches at the NMI with her mobile phone. She directly streamed the video to her website where you could watch the conference live! I recorded the process with my phone sitting next to Prof. Rebensburg who showed that you could watch the video stream on the internet.

I joined Anina for her keynote at the NMI 2007 on Thursday. She gave a brilliant and passionate speech which impressed the audience. Anina just came from Shanghai to Berlin for this conference and already left again today to fly back to China, unfortunately. There were a lot of very interesting speeches at the NMI: Prof. Sauter (IRT, Munich) talked about HDTV standards which opened everyone's eyes about some of the myths of HDTV, Dr. Richarts (Vodafone R&D) talked about their mobile arts projects, Dr. Schisler from L4 (where I teach) talked about Life4-U — the first TV magazine in Second Life — and many more. After the speeches Julean A. Simon played a so-called midi-wind-controller solo (sort of midi saxophone) on the roofs of the BBAW (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften). Find more at the Anina’s blog and watch a small clip here.

Once again I spent a couple of days in the Saxon Switzerland — always worth a trip for the beautiful mountains and the country side.

This was my first time on Sardinia and I really fell in love with the island — beautiful never-ending sand beaches, mountains right at the sea side, beautiful little villages and barely any tourists in spring-time.

A very good friend of mine, Ortrud, opened a new deli in my neighbourhood. Go check it out! It’s really great, you can get all sort of delicatessen. You can find it next to the popular cafe “Sowohl als auch” in Prenzlauerberg. Here’s a short movie clip.

Anina spent some time in Berlin and we checked out the local fashion stores for her upcoming project. Make sure you read her blog, because she’s always coming up with reports from fashion shows around the world, new ideas and cool new features.

Anina of 360° Fashion and anina.net gave a speech for the film students at The Film & Television Academy (HFF) “Konrad Wolf” in Potsdam. It was a very interesting, brilliant and inspiring speech about her life as a fashion model, mobile technology and the success of her popular blog. Have a look at the pictures by Prof. Weinberg who came up with the idea to invite Anina when he met her at the Webcuts.06 show last year and who is a very visionary person in matters of new media, too.

audioberlin invited the members and friends of interface!berlin for a tour at their studios. The sound studio is at the Meistersaal which is part of the Hansa Studios – a living legend as bands like U2, Depeche Mode and David Bowie recorded their albums there.

Ellie Kurttz — a good friend from London — came over to spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve with us. She’s a professional photographer who mainly works for the Royal Shakespeare Company. She had an exhibition at the Embassy of Brazil in London. Check out her brilliant work here (currently updating).

I wish everone a Merry Christmas and all the best for the next year — and remember: be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

Every year the team at 3x33 arranges a special designers Christmas market — a nice spot to find unique presents, have a good coffee and listen to some live jazz music.

For the first time after 10 years, one of my favorite magazines of all time — Tempo — published a special issue today. It’s a nonrecurring 380-pages edition and probably already sold out. The cover of Kate Moss doesn’t impress me very much, but I’ve got a copy and I remember the days when I read the Tempo in my “youth” and the shock when I heard that they knocked off the magazine. It was one of the freshest and most unique magazines with great articles during that time. They were one of the first in Germany who started the so-called New Journalism.

The media.net Berlin Brandenburg had their 20th media summit and 5th anniversary on Wednesday. It was hosted by Tita von Hardenberg interviewing the mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowerei. As always it was a very nice event and we had a great time at the after-party. You can find more pictures here.

Last weekend I was on the island Hiddensee — a beautiful, small island in the Baltic Sea where cars are not allowed. It’s the perfect place to relax and to get away from all the stress in a city like Berlin. I took some photos with my mobile phone SE K800i and I put them online here together with some small video clips which you can find here.

Today 112 internationally renowned thinkers and activists took their place around the biggest table ever constructed and answered 100 of the most pressing questions facing humanity. I went to the Bebelplatz square — located along one of Berlin’s central avenues, Unter den Linden to see the public event. You could hear the questions asked by Willem Dafoe and Hafsat Abiola, but unfortunately you couldn’t hear the answers of the participants as they all replied at the same time. However, they recorded the answers with video cameras individually installed in front of each speaker — imagine a round table with 112 microphones and cameras!
The project which was broadcasted live on the internet as well, was initiated by dropping knowledge — a German NGO which acts globally. It’s interesting how I heard of it. First, I read a news at the website of Pearl Jam who are known for their environmentally consciousness. Then I found out that the German foreign minister Dr. Steinmeier is the patron of the table of free voices. Last Monday I read an article at macnews.de — one of my daily RSS feeds — which described that they installed more than 112 Macs for this open source project and finally I found it this morning at Tagesspiegel Online. You can watch a small clip I recorded this afternoon here.
www.droppingknowledge.org

Charlotte of Tobis and Peter were so kind to invite me to the Germany premiere of Pedro Almodóvar’s new movie Volver starring Penélope Cruz. The screening was at the Kino Kulturbrauerei just around the corner where I live. And the aftershow party in the yard was so much fun! Here’s a clip of Penélope Cruz (unfortunately way too small).

On Sunday I was at Germany’s largest fan mile. Approximately 1 million fans were celebrating the German World Cup team in Berlin. It was a very emotional event and the German team wanted to thank the fans for their amazing support — making the World Cup the best of all time.
I must say it was a great feeling to support the German team in last 5 weeks and seeing them on stage at the Brandburg Gate and the whole euphoria I will never forget (small clip here).

After the glorious victory of the German World Cup team I took a day off at the Schlachtensee. You can see the crystal clear water of the lake in this video.

Today I was at the dmmk — the German multimedia congress. Nikesh Arora (Vice President European Operations von Google Inc.) and Charles Fränkl (Head of Management AOL Germany) had a keynote about social networking and Web 2.0 — no news really. The panels later this afternoon were more interesting, especially the speech by Sören Stamer of CoreMedia about the explosive character of the web was actually very improvised but very inspiring, too.

Last weekend I spent two days at the Kulturgut Wrechen — a beautifully restored estate in the wildlife park Feldberger Seenlandschaft which is about 130 km north from Berlin (GoogleEarth Placemark). The pension has some really nice rooms and is situated at the shore of a lake where you can relax or enjoy a walk along the many lakes in the national park. You can find more of my pictures here and a short video clip here.

Tonight was the grand opening celebration of the new central station in Berlin — the most modern station in the world (costs: € 700 million). There was a huge light show with fireworks and live music and it was the first time that the public had the opportunity to enter the whole station and check its architecture — impressive! You can find some pictures here and a short video clip here.

On Holy Saturday I spent a wonderful sunny day with my girl and a friend in Buckow (Google Earth Placemark) which is about 50 km east of Berlin. Located at two beautiful lakes, Buckow was the summer residence of Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel. We had the opportunity to visit the small exhibition which was installed in the house near the lake. If you’re around that area it’s also worth a walk around the lake.

The media.net Berlin Brandenburg had their 18th media summit at the Café Moskau last night. It was hosted by Jörg Thadeusz who discussed the question “In Love with Berlin?” with the artist Brigitte Maria Mayer ( “Echolot” ), comedian Thomas Hermanns, photographer Jim Rakete, director Tom Tykwer ( “Lola Runs”, “Das Parfüm” ), actress Katharina Wackernagel ( “Die Boxerin” ) and director Hans Weingärtner (“Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei” ). It was very entertaining but not very mattering. However, “networking” at the after show party was fun and it was nice to meet people and friends.
You can watch a small movie clip here.

So, I’ve just arrived in London for the Gemma Hayes concert tonight expecting some nice days here. I'm meeting Claudia, a friend of mine at frieze — a magazine for contemporary art and culture.

This Friday the 100th issue of DE:BUG will be released as a special 100-pages issue with a dictionary about the “electronic aspects of life” as they call it. It’s definitely worth its money and it comes with a free music compilation with exclusive tracks by To Rococo Rot, Lawrence, Mouse On Mars and many more.

Yesterday, I’ve finished reading the comic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore. I saw the movie at the world premiere, so I ordered the book the other day at Amazon. I was pretty surprised when I figured out that the story was first published in 1983 and the style of the graphics had this rough 70s / 80s look. It’s an intelligent, yet frightening story about a totalitarian world in 1997. Though, I must confess that I enjoyed the modern style of the movie more than the book and particularly Hugo Weaving as “V” and Natalie Portman as “Evey” were more likable than the comic characters.

Yesterday, I was at the Einstein Tower in Potsdam. The “Einsteinturm” was planned and built in the years 1919 to 1924 by the famous architect Erich Mendelsohn. The Einstein Tower is a functional building, a solar observatory and until the second World War the most prominent research institution of that kind in Europe. A substantial overhaul of the Einstein Tower started in November 1997 and it was re-opened in 1999. I think it was pretty crowded by tourists there during the Einstein Year 2005, so, yesterday was my first time at the site which gave me the opportunity to record a little wobbling video.

This afternoon Sybille and I spent some time in Motzen (Google Earth) at the Motzener Lake south of Berlin. It took us about an hour to get there by car but it was a beautiful sunny winter day and we enjoyed walking on the frozen lake.

Anina, the fashion model that blogs about her “digital life” has been given an ultimatum by her agency: either quit doing the technology stuff, or leave the agency. They said that fashion and technology did not go together.
I think that’s pretty stupid — it’s like telling you to stop talking to people on the phone or stop being interested in music. Read her article at Anina.net and leave her a comment.

Happy New Year everybody! I spent christmas with my parents and after that I travelled to the hotel of Sybille’s parents – the Berghof in the Saxon Swiss, which is not in Switzerland but in East Germany. This snap shot by Sybille gives an impression of the winter idyll (and no it’s not Caspar David Friedrich, it’s just me…). I wish everybody a wonderful 2006 and all the best!

Ha! I’ve just found an old comic book of Star Wars Episode IV. It still has the orginal title in german that says “Krieg der Sterne”. The imprint says it’s from 1978! It’s just book 1 of a series and ends when Luke, Han and Chewy rescue Leia from the Death Star. The last phrase of the comic book: “DREIPEO! WO BIST DU?” (3PO! Where are you?).

Hello everybody! My Website is up – at last!
I’ve been working on so many different ideas for my website during the last year, but I’ve never had the time to finally realize them…
So, now here’s a very reduced version of the web site. Still, I hope to post some interesting stuff for you and maybe you'll find my web site mutating in the next couple weeks or months.