The perfect Social Media Rum: Foursquare

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GermanThis posting is also available in German.

found the perfect drink for tweet-ups and all kinds of social media gatherings: Foursquare spiced rum is way older than geo-location. The golden-brownish spirit is distilled in Barbados:

Foursquare rum

And this Foursquare is a lot older than the first GPS chip:

Foursquare is the name of the oldest sugar plantation (1636) in Barbados. It is home to the most advanced Rum Distillery in the world. Foursquare spiced rum is a combination of rare island spices and specialty aged rum blended in accordance with a centuries old secret formula known only to generations of the Seale family.

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Will the iPad blend?

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Blendtec's blenders cost a little fortune, but we're more than willing to spend an extra marketing dollar for all the great “Will it blend?” series videos those folks keep delivering. They blended hockey pucks, a laser pointers, Money clips – and above all plenty of Apple products. Following in the footsteps of the iPhone (both 1st edition and 3G) and the iPod, this time the newest geek-gadget aka the iPad undergoes the crush-test. Of course it won't withstand:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko[/youtube] Read more

WordPress 3.0: No more JPEG Support

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Beware, April Fool!

Of course WordPress will continue to “support” the JPEG format; after all, image rendering is the browser's job, the CMS is not involved when it comes to the actual rendering of images. This is my first April fool on my English blog. :saint: I've been doing this for a while on my German blog datenschmutz. Have you spotted any april fool postings on your favorite blogs? Please leave a comment, I'm curious!

Last Week Matt Mullenweg announced on his blog, that the upcoming WordPress 3.0 version drop the support for the JPEG file format. Increasing license costs and Microsoft's announcement to include SVG support in Internet Explorer 9 were the main reasons for this decision:

With the upcoming Internet Explorer 9 there is no more need for jpg – Microsoft finally embraces the SVG standard, thus helping to make the web a much more open place. JPEG does have some advantages, but they are simply out-weighed by the license costs.

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Microsoft’s future biz visions

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GermanThis posting is also available in German.

Stephen Elop is the president of Microsoft's Business Division – naturally, he's more interested in business innovation than in shiny customer gadgets. In this 6 minute interview, Elop talks about the deep-rooted change companies currently face as the underlying question “how do we deal with this vast amount of information in an efficient way?” is an ongoin project:

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Windows Phone E-Mail Preview

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Later this year, the all-new, Mobile 6.5-free Windows Phone will hit the shelfs. It seems Microsoft is doing their best to repeat some of Apple's mistakes (no copy-paste, no multitasking) – yet still, the first preview videos which turned up today look quite promising:

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Apple iStore limits: How Pixelpipe got kicked

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If you refuse to play by Apple's rules, you have to leave the store. The popular Pixelpipe application was removed last week simply because the developers dared to scan the contents of the DCIM-folder, which enables the users to select multiple pictures (or videos) at once. Even though this folder simply contains the user's own photos, Apple requires to use the official (single-select) API. Weird and sad but true: the software was removed after a third party programmer had filed a complaint. Read more

Paper Towel Gang: Bounty Viral

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“Bounty, the baddest PT in your county – almost as strong as a Canadian mounty – and I've seen one, they're pretty tough, pretty tough – but can they hold 11 pool palls in their hand – like I know that Bounty can?” Yes, that's a hilarious one:

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Pictures: Las Vegas Overview

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Yesterday I arrived at Vegas for Microsoft's Mix conference. And thanks to my lucky charm I got a room with a view at Mandalay Bay Hotel – from my window in the 33rd floor I overlook the complete strip, the famous Las Vegas Boulevard sporting all the grand casinos:

Las Vegas Boulevard

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Looking forward to MIXing in Las Vegas

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This Saturday I'm flying to Las Vegas to attend Mix conference. Microsoft Austria invited me (all these years of iResistance are finally paying off!) to visit the world's capital of gambling – of course I'll report my trip on this very blog and via Twitter. After my return from the US you and me hopefully know anything there is to know about one-armed bandits, striptease clubs with high moral standards, new Microsoft web publishing techniques and the status quo of the cloud.

Mix Konferenz in Las Vegas

Plus I expect to do a couple of video interviews – I'm not sure why Microsoft called this place “The Commons”, but there is definitely a hang-out and socializing place, which I will take full advantage of since some sessions are quite code-related. Read more

Gallery: Media History at the Technical Museum of Vienna

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In January I visited the exhibition Medienwelten at Technisches Museum Wien. It's a fascinating trip back to the very beginnings of information transmission – a must for anyone interested in the early beginnings of this media society:

The medien.welten exhibition presents the history of transmission media as well as storage media. On 2.500 square meters the evolution of the modern media-system becomes alive. In addition to hundreds of historical artefacts, images and texts, the exhibition features a virtual-information-room that goes beyond the scope of conventional museum exhibitions.

Last Sunday I returned to the museum, but this time I brough my camera. There's plenty to explore: from early telegraph systems which used a piano-keyboard for entering messages to a historic cinema. These pictures only highlight a bit of the exhibition – so if you ever come to Vienna, pay a visit to the exhibition yourself. Read more

When Content Partnerships smell funny

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Funny job descriptions turn up these day – have you ever heard of a “blog relations consultant”? I sure did today, and I can't say it was an enjoyable encounter. Just know this: unloading your backlink-ridden postings upon a popular blog is not called a “content partnership”. I would call it backlink scraping, but that sounds a lot more unfriendly, doesn't it?

Could it be there are altruist blog angels, interested in leveraging your popularity rank for utterly unselfish reasons? Unlikely, even though the first paragraph might sound tempting to some:

We're currently reaching out to bloggers like you to form a content partnership, or a guest blogging partnership, where our Professional writes can contribute guest blog posts on your blog once or twice a month.

Hang on, it's getting a lot funnier:

Our Writers would not be writing marketing material, but would like to provide Unique content for your blog. Please fill out this form if you are interested so that we can set up an editorial calendar.

Two note-worthy facts:

a) I had no idea that the difference between marketing and “great” content lies solely in the “uniqueness” of the latter.
b) This difference between the two mentioned content categories sounds even weirder considering that the person who sent me this e-mail works for a company which is “marketing” in its name.

So, sadly, I'm not going to start a “content partnership” with you. But I have a free consulting advice for you: set up your homepage before you start pestering innocent bloggers. Somebody might actually take a look at your URL, and read the following sentence:

We will use a unique combination that will allow you to fully utilize the Internet.

And then he might click around the bit and start to wonder, if a completely empty homepage is indeed “he latest trends of marketing that will literally put our customers first”…