Barcamp in Klagenfurt: My bags are packed
Lookin' forward to Barcamp Klagenfurt – it's been a while since the last un-conference, and I'm expecting an international crowd: after all, Slovenia is very near, and I'm quite sure that some Swiss, Italian and German web entrepreneurs and bloggers will drop by. If you've never visited the city of the “Lindwurm” (a mythological dragon, the town's landmark), there's a good reason now to travel to Carinthia.
The actual Barcamp takes place during the weekend, but we will all hang out together on Friday – so it's very likely quite a few folks will be hang-overed on Saturday, which is why I might consider doing my presentation on Sunday: I'm planning to speak about future micro-blogging scenarios and I will introduce my “3 twitter strategies”. The perfect chance to test Prezi under live conditions :mrgreen:
The participant list is 51 names long by now, I'm sure there will be at least 100 attendants. Of course the entry is free – it's an unconference. If you want to join, just add your name to the list of participants in the Austrian Barcamp wiki. Big Shout-outs to Georg, Ed and all others involved in the organisation of this event!
Need a place to stay? Klagenfurt's Youth Hostel not only offers very cheap accommodation (EUR 34,- for a single room), it's also located very close by the university, where the BC takes place – reservations can be made via e-mail: Youth Hostel Klagenfurt.
A new year has just started and I'm happy to invite all my readers to datadirt's first blog carnival: I'm curious about the new hardware you bought during the last year. Which shiny piece of technology is your favorite gadget, and which not-so-shiny one disappointed you? Feed the inner geek, write about satisfaction and disappointment. I'm sure that most of my readers experienced both scenarios, so let's just share them and spread the knowledge :mrgreen:
Combining amplified speakers with a slick and elegant touch-screen display sounds like a brilliant idea – in theory. But I do not even want to know about the fun Logitech's engineers had when declaring this piece of unfinished work: “Hey, we know that the touch-screen is not working well – who cares? There is not API or software anyways.” But that's not even the worst part: the speakers use USB to transmit music, which is not such a bad idea after all for laptop use, but the big big problem is this: as soon as the speakers are connected, every kind of internal or external soundcard is deactivated. Now ain't that great? I tried using the line-in, which renders all the additional touch screen functions useless and decreases the sound quality quite much. Since the product is way too heavy to qualify as a mobile laptop speaker, there's not much us for the Z-10 in my opinion. The sound is not that bad for speakers of this size – but the money is much better spent on a pair of JBL control speakers.
Nothing like listening to old-school dubstep mixes and surfing the net on a lazy Sunday afternoon – even though I have to admit that turning up the music is kind of my only option right now, since the new Samsung LCD screen I bought yesterday experiences some kind of identity crisis, confusing itself with some kind of alien sound-device by producing a constant annoying noise. But enough complaining, let's turn our heads and look back on the 
How you're doing? I hope you had a great start into the new year, and believe me: 2k9 is gonna be a wicked year for web 2.0 folks, and I mean “wicked” in the good, old-school jungle way. I do have the impression that the European commercial community is just waking up, and I'm seriously looking forward to bigger budgets being spent on web 2.0 advertising as this will boost the whole scene. My personal 1st of January had a very nice surprise in stall for me: datadirt received a Pagerank update and is now proudly sporting a 5.
Ready from some good ole fun after the dreadful distress of buying all your X-Mas presents? Word your way through Dan's list of 
This week, Swedish Start-up Company 
Main bloggerilla topic of the week: the new WordPress aka 2.7. Matt and his team change a lot in the backend – it's like Obama said: “Change, we can do it!” What O did not mention though was the fact that change makes most folks rather uncomfortable. In that respect, it's more like TLC sang-rapped: “Don't go chasin' waterfalls / listen to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to.” In other words, I've heard a lot of user complaining about a so-called uglification of the CMS. My five cents: so far I've only updated half of my blogs, and I really dig the new look and all the new features.
It's been a week full of surprises: Pownce closed pretty unexpectedly, while 
Microblogging-platform Pownce announced its shutdown on 15th of December yesterday. The company was bought by Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type and TypePad. The team will continue to work for Six Apart on new projects – seems the company saw no light at the end of the infamous twitter-tunnel: while Pownce hat a couple of unique features to offer, the community never reached the critical size that turns microblogging-fun into a profitable business.