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Ever so often I have wished there was a decent and established micropayment or donation system, which would allow me to conveniently donate small amounts of money via the interwebs. I’d actually pay 50ct or a Euro for one or the other article I read. I usually buy the software I use and for some free software I donated. I buy albums I got a copy of from someone when I really like the music or I buy my music from Bleep right away. I feel creators should be compensated for their creation. mehr »

Owning the Nokia N900 for a couple of days now, I will summarize my first impressions in this blag post. Before I start I will tell you where I am coming from phone wise and will base my review on that.

I have had the Nokia e61i for quite a while, but it has only been little more than half a year that I have had a phone rate with a reasonable data plan which allowed me to use the interwebs on my phone.

What I liked about the e61i:

• Battery life was awsome.
• General sturdyness. The phone has taken quite a beating and stood up to it pretty well.
• The keyboard. The tactile feel of the keyboard and the way this phone fit into my hands made writing emails, SMS or IRC messages a charm.
• Sound quality and reception was ok.
• Multitasking. I frequently surfed the webs while hanging out on IRC through puTTY and irssi in a screen session.
• iSyncing my address book and calendars worked reasonably well.
• The looks. Reminded me of an old HP calculator. Nice.

What I disliked about the e61i:

• Sloooow. It would take up to a minute to start Opera or Google maps.
• Lack of GPS.
• The keyboard. While the tactile aspect was good, the lettering of the keys was sub par.
• The proprietary connector. I can not emphasize this enough. If I had a stick and the responsible product manager in front of me…
• Each internet app would ask whether it was allowed to use the net and you’d have to click through a couple of dialogues every time.
• Media player sucks

Generally I liked the e61i so much, that I seriously considered buying its recent e-Series sibling, the e72. That phone seems to have addressed most, if not all, of the issues I had with the e61i. But then I thought that if I am shelling out 300 Euros, I might as well spend 500 and go for the new hottness.

Enter the Nokia N900. mehr »

Gestern Abend fand in den Räumlichkeiten der Ständigen Vertretung Dortmund ein Vortrag zum Thema Co-Working statt. Eingeladen waren Christoph Fahle vom Betahaus in Berlin, welches in den letzten Wochen und Monaten recht viel Presseaufmerksamkeit bekommen hat, und Daniel Veselka aus Dortmund. Daniel arbeitet gerade ganz konkret im Kontext der Heimatdesign Truppe an der Einrichtung eines Co-Working Spaces im Gebäude des ehemaligen Ordnungsamtes.
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