Today I arrived in Bucharest for the World Blogging Forum 2009. Kudos to Mihaela and her team – the event is extremely well organized. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's sessions. Here's what happened today:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FQt1XI7hDA[/youtube] Read more
This posting is also available in German.The fourth and last part of my HDR-pics from Andalusia will surely help me to get through the rough Austrian winter – I really don't like low temperatures, and the weather in El Palmar and Tarifa was great in October. Both places are highly acclaimed surf-spots, as the Atlantic Ocean offers many high waves and there's always plenty, sometimes too much wind – unfortunately, the “too much” prevented us from taking the whale-watching boat tour. This is the final part of the series, but I got one more gallery of standard-photos coming up plus a special: soon I will post a selection of HDR in various resolutions as ready-to-use desktop backgrounds, so stay tuned. Feedback is always highly appreciated! More photos:
HDR-photos: Andalusian colors, part 1
HDR pics from Andalusia, part 2
Andalusia in HDR, part 3: Gibraltar
Earlier today, I asked on Twitter if anyone of my followers wanted a Google Wave invitation. The number of responses was overwhelming, the 14 invitations I gave away were gone within 5 minutes. I'm not an evangelist of Google's latest collaboration service, as it's still lacking too many features. But the huge demand amazed me, so I'm giving away three more invitations each here and on my German blog datenschmutz. All you have to do is leave a comment until tomorrow, 12:00pm CET.
I'll randomly pick three names – please use the e-mail address you want your invitation sent to for the comment field. And I'm very curious to hear your opinions about Google Wave: is it just another time-consuming distraction or the perfect collaboration tool we've all been waiting for?
This posting is also available in German.After reading Max' rather euphoric review about the new Amazon Kindle 2 ebook reader, I also ordered the international version of the always-on e-ink reader. The hardware is pretty okay for this price (around ?200), so I was willing to put my fear of proprietary DRM-systems aside for once. Today UPS delivered my device, but the initial happiness about the hardware wouldn't last too long – to be exact, it abruptly ended when I found out there is no way to view PDF-files on the Kindle. After a little online research I discovered an acceptable workflow to upload my PDF-ebooks to the reader: MobiPocket Creator, a free ebook conversion software, turns PDF-files into PCRs, which can be organized and displayed with the Kindle.
Thanks a lot for the encouraging feedback on my first two series of HDR-pics! (part 1 | part 2)! I know that HDR processing has been a little “overstretched” recently. But even though high dynamic resolution images often look “hyper-realistic”, I must say that these photos match the Andalusian colors as seen by the naked eye much more than a normal picture. Like Vil?m Flusser used to say, photography does *not* picture reality, but rather constructs technical images. And here goes the third part my series – I took all the pictures in Gibraltar. From gibbons to Africa – enjoy! Please note: all images are available in large size – just click on a pic to load the 1280-pixel version.
This posting is also available in German.Just before I took off to Andalusia I got mail from Mihaela, asking if I wanted to attend the World Blogging Forum 2009 in Romania as a VIP guest. Yes of course! Flight and hotel room are already booked and I'm looking forward to a conference a lot! The guest- and speaker-list contains a lot of popular bloggers who I'm glad to meet face to face, plus it's the first time I'm going to visit Bucharest. The organizers have invited the most successful bloggers from 30 countries to Romania to discuss the “ideas for a better digital world”:
The most influential bloggers in the world: The event brings together some of the most influential persons in the online media all around the world, in conferences and workshops aiming to establish clear parameters of the development of the online media.
