Schon länger wollte ich Luftbilder unserer Ferienwohnungen machen. Nachdem der Plan einer eigenen, geeigneten Drohne an den Voraussetzungen (Flugschein, Preis) gescheitert war, lag dieses kleine Projekt auf Eis. Und ist in Vergessenheit geraten. Zufällig habe ich dann über einen Bekannten Kontakt zu einem Drohnenbesitzer in der Nähe bekommen. Und gestern haben wir die ersten beiden Häuser (Fliegerstraße, Martensstraße) fotografieren können. Leider haben seine Akkus nicht für das Haus in der Gartenstraße gereicht. Das werden wir heute nachholen.

Die Ergebnisse finde ich super.

Many say that the sharing economy creates many opportunities for everybody. Everybody can make a lot of money, and it can be earned on the side. An Uber driver can earn more money than a taxi driver. So I was told by a taxi driver in Berlin who was very angry that he cannot driver for Uber in Germany.

Not sure if it’s true. My Columbian friend told a slightly different story. Translating his thoughts sounded more like he has to drive a few of hours every day to get into positive numbers. There’s gas, loan payments for the car, insurance – well, not sure if he actually pays insurance or if he cheats? Some sources indicate that Uber isn’t really that diligent on checking if their drivers are all insured. Actually – it’s not their drivers anyway. They do not enjoy employment status by any means from what I understand. So if my young Columbian buddy gets sick, he’s definitely not covered by Uber.

Tom Slee’s (see below) book gives us some insight into the financial conditions under which drivers operate. Even if there’s some drivers that earn average middle-class incomes, most of them appear to earn less than the employed taxi drivers after deducting all the cost. And the insurance and social security situation looks rather grim.

I had a lot more questions. Being used to a system where taxi drivers have to pass a test (how shabby this test might actually be) I was wondering if Uber drivers need anything like that. But it appears that those regulatory tests are not needed, according to this blog.

Some links:

• http://www.uberdrivers.net/
  
• What’s yours is Mine by Tom Slee

So some guy sent me an invitation earlier today. He wanted to add me to his professional network. I actually know him (if I recall it right, so sure thing I agreed! I need friends anyway, or at least professionals connected to me. Not sure which one is better though.

Then for reasons that I cannot explain I continued futzing around with LinkedIn, and after pressing a button here and a button there the system suggested that I should connect to these 190 people (that LinkedIn believes I know or should know). Again, sure thing, I pressed the button.

About 2 minutes later my iPhone started humming. And it continues humming ever since. About every minute once. And Michael and David and Suzanne and Peter and … they all seem to be online and agree to be me new buddies! Now isn’t this a wonderful result for a rainy Sunday afternoon?

Oh – and just now Christian has agreed to connect with me as well. I’m almost ready to cry!

For quite some time I was toying with the idea to create a little information page for the town of Gersfeld. The home page of the town is pretty bad, and I was thinking it should be easy to provide a more interesting design, good information and some cool content.

After having moved my Ninja Block gear up to Gersfeld, having gathered some experience in location data and map display through the development of the new Eclipse events page and some experimentation with the Bootstrap framework I had most of the pieces together.  I just had to add the webcam stream that we use in our holiday apartment website, and off I went.

The site http://gersfeld-webcam.de/ is now online since a couple of weeks, and I’m trying to add more and more information about local businesses and points of interest to the site. The number of visitors (other than myself) is still below 10 per day, but there are actually a few now that come and have a look every day.

Now I wonder what else I can do with the site. Any ideas?

So here we are in Istanbul again. First time no biz trip, just pleasure and a couple of hours of work every day (Link: The 4 hour week). We chose a hotel in the middle of the bazaar district. Kind of funny place. They really tried hard to get the 5 stars or so by building with as electronics into the place. But they pretty much screwed up: Their door opening system  doesn’t allow for programming more cars, so you get only one.

But that’s just a minor inconvenience. Walking to the Grand Bazaar, the Sultan Ahmed mosque is possible. And we can get to the good food around the Topkapi palace, with a nice view of the Bosperus.

So it is kind of cool. I get most of my work done – if not all. I enjoy the Turkish food, and I get pretty inspired (admittedly). Is this the new way? Does it matter where I work? Is location still important? Or has the WWW enabled us to chose location and community we want to be in / live with?

One of the  major revolutions in terms of communication took place when Gutenberg invented the printing press. People were able to share information without close proximity. They wrote / read printed materials. Information started to be available. Time still was an issue.

The WWW has empowered us even more. Location is not issue anymore. Time is not an issue anymore. Information is accessible from everywhere and can be made available within a split second.

I love it.