Archive for the 'tech talk' Category

Taking things for granted

Published on February 28, 2008 in real world and tech talk. 0 Comments

i stumbled upon Matt Mullenweg’s article where he describes the domain name change from photomatt.net to ma.tt – which is under the top level domain (TLD) for Trinidad and Tobago.
Cool – that could work for me, too! But the first name- I don’t know – maybe better hollend.er – getting florian@hollend.er as email would be awesome! So I looked up a list of international TLDs, and sure enough, .er exists – for Eritrea.

Imagine the startled look on my face when the only thing available at the link for a domain name registrar was a TEXT file, reading

Thanks for your inquiry about registering a domain under the ER top level domain.

The current policy is that domain names are limited to businesses or persons actually in Eritrea and application for a domain name must be made to Zerai. currently there are only two domains under `.com.er’, a single `.edu.er’ domain, and a bunch of `.gov.er’ domains. there are actually over 100 subdomains under these domains, but domains directly underneath ER are fairly tightly controlled.

To register new domain names under ER, you must talk to the administrative contact. Here is the contact information:
[snip]

Eritrea does not yet have a direct internet connection. domain names are currently being used for the delivery of email.

For more information about the domain look at
http://www.punchdown.org/rvb/email/index.html

thanks,

[name]

technical contact
ER top level domain

I realized that I had taken it for granted that when there is a TLD, the country is “online”. No, they are not, at least not fully. They have E-Mail, but no working internet access. Which makes me think about two things:

  1. How incredibly lucky I am to live in a part of the world where there is SO MUCH – peace, infrastructure, democracy… all and every need is taken care of.
  2. The digital divide is there. “Still”…. well, the problem only came up in the last decades. This was my first contact with it. Unfortunately, this is not even close to being a big problem to Eritrea in comparison to its other issues, but still a thing that needs attention. And awareness, first and foremost.

Has any of you touched the digital divide yet? In what context?

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The importance of… staying in touch

Published on February 20, 2008 in people and tech talk. 0 Comments

Hey stranger!

This is how a good friend always greets me in her mails. Sign of how good I am at staying in contact with friends. Really, by blogging I (amongst other goals) relieve some of this guilt, because I can say “hey, I blogged about that. Did you read it? See, I AM staying in touch!”. Maybe I should make it mandatory for family and friends to subscribe to this site.

In addition, to get you guys some more up-to-date news, I picked up twittering, and you do find the most recent updates right here on the right side of this page. There, for example, today you found the info that I have new pictures online, a great GTD resource site and last news from my work front.

Of course, should you be twittering as well, please add me there, so I can see what you are up to as well! Communication is way more fun when it is a two-way street.

Giving you more stuff to read this week for free that makes you smarter

Published on January 21, 2008 in books, ideas, inspiration, people and tech talk. 1 Comment

People, once it gets going…

so figures that Lawrence Lessig did license his book “the future of ideas” under Creative Commons. You can download it here. Lawrence has been one of the key persons in the Creative Commons movement, he is a great speaker and his writing does set important landmarks in the understanding (and realization) of what is happening to information, creativity and innovation in these oh-so-modern days. I suggest you put this on your laptop, take it into the week and read it.

New goal: Being able to make fun of yourself as much as Bill Gates

Published on January 8, 2008 in fun, people and tech talk. 0 Comments

Yeah, you read that right. Bill Gates is your new role model, not for geekiness, not for being the richest lad around, but for making fun of himself and having a good time doing it.

Watch the video here

This is SO cool! I never thought I would say that about a Bill Gates video, but gosh it is. Of course having Bono, Steven Spielberg, Jay-Z, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and George Clooney making guest appearances in your little home video DOES help ;-)

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Second try of posting from the Blackberry

Published on January 6, 2008 in tech talk. 0 Comments

Now this is more like it: I found www.wphoneplugin.org, which is a wordpress plugin and provides a sleek, stripped down version of the wordpress admin interface. For short posts when no computer is available, I think I found my solution!