Wake Up Call

Two great videos to post today. First, take a look at this (Hans, look at this one! :-):



then for a bit of a shift...look at this one - I had tears rolling down my cheeks on this one. From laughing.
This is a fairly accurate representation of what happens to us every morning. :-)))

Minisode blog

Interesting to learn that there is a new version of tv shows for viewing. Called a "minisode" and discussed in the NYTIMES a few days ago, the 150 online tv episodes being sponsored/offered by Sony here have been edited from their original running times of 30 or 60 minutes to lengths of 4 to 6 minutes. Sounds hilarious. Also reflects the attention span/time left for tv that people have today.

So this is my minisode Blog for the day. SHORT.

Two photos for you. A view of the thermometer outside our living room window. Yes, you read it correctly. Zero degrees.

And...although the picture doesn't show it very well, the white color there on the roof below the beautiful fall foliage is....SNOW.

I'm not sure I'm ready for winter.

P.S. Work going well. Still in training. Bunch of project discussions. Great colleagues. Great location (when I'm in Munich). LOTS to learn (which I like).

My(fricking!)hase

It's nice to be a technophile and all in order to be a little out there - one of those weirdos that adopts strange technology before everyone else so you can talk about your eccentric purchase/habit/hobby/indulgence/moment of extreme boredom.

Sometimes, though, the pain of participating in the whole "beta testing" process can be more than you're ready to deal with. In this case...Claudia...WAIT TO BUY THE RABBIT.

The idea is very clever. It's a smart object that is supposed to do a whole bunch of kinda useless but cool things. Namely: tell me when I have an email, read out the 5 top headlines of the New York Times every hour (or once a day, whatever), play the radio, give me traffic and weather reports, read the top feeds of some of my favorite blogs, etc. Oh, yeah, and it's multi-lingual, and practices tai chi regularly with its ears.

Cute idea. If it would really work. I'm still working on getting these things to work: email, headlines, blogs, tai chi, time once an hour.

What is working? weather, market report, occasionally the time, her *mood* report, radio. Oh - and one other cute thing. Other users can send messages to my rabbit. And today...I got TWO messages. One from a woman in Munich - a student - who told me to have a nice Sunday evening. The other from some guy is Bucharest - that sent me a strange song.

For 140 euros, not enough. Of course, for 6 euros a month, I get premium service, but I'm certainly not going to commit to that with the current level of quality. Am bombarding company with SUGGESTIONS and recommendations for fixing their services (ok, I sent one email). According to Nabaztag blog, I am not the only one dissatisfied.

Andreas says I should send the little beast back. I think I should just feed it to Sammy if it does not improve.

Myhase

hehe
Now I don't have to look out the window. Myhase tells me it's raining!!!

More to come. You can send me messages which Myhase will say to me. Just need to register here for a name. (If you didn't figure it out, my rabbit is called "Myhase" which means..."my rabbit" in German).

Off to get haircut.

Sapient

Well, most people know by now, through one channel or another. But I wanted to wait to post something here until after I'd signed papers. Which I did on Tuesday. So the news is that on October 15 (yup, 11 days to go), I'll start work at Sapient in Munich. I'm joining their "Experience Marketing" group as a managing consultant - to do a combination of online/digital marketing strategy and project management. I'm quite excited and happy about the decision. I had spoken to them about two months ago about a position, but wasn't ready to commit at that point. After looking around and interviewing with a number of companies during the last two months, I'm pretty certain that this is the place where I will enjoy my work the most. Hopefully I'll have time to keep up the blogging. I'll try to keep topics away from work. :-)