Internet Radio

Yesterday was the big day when I finally finished work. Ich bin jetzt in Ruhestand. Thanks to very generous colleagues I now have a PURE Evoke Flow, a radio that not only tunes into DAB digital radio but enables me to listen to internet radio without having to switch on my PC. I can now choose from over 1900 German language radio stations and listen to podcasts anywhere in the house. The internet radio connects to http://www.thelounge.com/ to give access to thousands of radio stations. Even if you don't have an internet radio you can still use thelounge which has good filters on its database to let you pick out what interests you.

When it came to downloading the manual, I also chose to download the Bedienungsanleitung so I can learn some more German. Here's some of what it says Über die PURE Lounge

Um Ihren EVOKE Flow mit all seinen Funktionen und Besonderheiten nutzen zu können, verbinden Sie ihn mit der PURE Lounge (www.thelounge.com), Ihrem Online-Gateway zu einer immensen Auswahl an Audioinhalten aus dem Internet. Die PURE Lounge bietet Tausende von Radiosendern, Podcasts und Listen-Again-Programmen, die Sie bequem von Wohnzimmer, Badezimmer, Garten, Garage − oder wo auch immer Sie sich in Reichweite Ihres Netzwerks befinden - aus hören können.

Unobserved

Should we all be able to communicate on the internet without what we write or say being observed? Chaos Computer Club is unhappy about Vorratsdatenspeicherung in Deutschland. For more on this and the text of an open letter to the German Justice Minister see http://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2010/offener-brief-leuti-schnarri

Politicians and the internet

Only this morning did I get around to watching Sunday evening's edition of neues from 3Sat. I can't read or watch everything at once! A large part of the programme was reporting on the use of the internet by politicians and political parties during the election campaign in NRW. Sunday was election day and the result would not have pleased the CDU. I can't say I was excited by this election but the reporting on the use of blogs, Twitter, etc. was interesting.

The interviews with the candidates were brief and did not go into their political views. There were also interviews with young people who expressed views about the lack of opportunity to interact with the politicians. This is all good listening material and there were also some journalistic blogs mentioned that have a definite regional emphasis. To understand the German speaking world (DACH as it's sometimes called. Work it out - Germany, Austria, Switzerland) you sometimes have to get down to regional level or even more local. Identity and culture have great variation and richness.

Politiker im Online Wahlkampf gives written comment from neues and you can view a short video report on the same page. Some YouTube links you might like to follow are: Die Macht der Blogs and Interview mit Alfons Pieper.  You can also download the whole half hour video

Computers, Internet and Broadband

I decided to look at more Austrian statistics and found I can access a publication that tells you all me everything I could possibly want to know about IKT-Einsatz in Haushalten 2009 What is IKT? Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien, in other words, the same as English ICT - though ICT seems to be a term more used in schools than any where else in Britain.

The Austrian publication contains data about what people use the internet for - die Zwecke der Internetnutzung - about online shopping and the most popular internet purchases. You'll also find a wonderfully modern German phrase in use "E Commerce and Trust". If you like computers, statistics and learning German then you can have fun with this publication. Follow the link above for a summary of the publication and then decide whether you want to download it.

TV

We spent some time in our conversation class today talking about TV viewing habits but realised none of us knew much about the full range of programmes available in Germany or which ones are popular. I'm reasonably familiar with the range of channels and I have links to many on the TV page of Jeckylls Heft What I have only just discovered is the Wikipedia Portal: Fernsehen which gives at least some of the answers we didn't have this afternoon. The main themes covered are Bezahlfernsehen – Einschaltquote – Geschichte des Fernsehens – Geschichte des Fernsehens in Deutschland – Geschichte des Fernsehens in Österreich – Fahrgastfernsehen – GEZ – GIS – Öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk – Privatfernsehen – Fernsehwerbung – Medienwissenschaft.

I found the article on Fernsehwerbung instructive, particularly about the rules and limitations that apply.

A useful collection of links and information about the various broadcasters can be found at http://www.medienindex.de/ Another source I only found today is the University of Exeter's Media Index Deutschsprachige Medien im Internet which has separate sections for Fernsehen, Radio, Zeitschriften, Zeitungen. Worth exploring further I think.

First student in the family?

Being the first in your family to go to university can be difficult. Not that I know personally because I didn't get to be a student. Statistics certainly show that if you come from a working class background then you are less likely to read for a degree. I certainly had encouragement from my family but that came from the realm of wishful thinking. They wanted the best for me but had no idea how to help me get there. And I never really knew what I wanted to achieve. Lack of clear goals coupled with the naturally laziness of a teenage boy would never get me anywhere. I certainly would not have thought I'd be learning German as an adult. I only just scraped a pass in the exams (GCE O-level back in those days) and was encouraged to take science subjects because those had given me better results.

Why am I blogging about something so far back in my past? Only because I watched an interesting video report from 3Sat about a support organisation set up to support and advise would be students from a working class background. Arbeiterkind.de is an internet portal for anyone trying to be the first from their family to get through higher education.

Als Arbeiterkind an die Hochschule

Die Initiative "ArbeiterKind." ermutigt Abiturienten zu studieren, auch wenn die Eltern dies nicht getan haben. Die Idee stammt von Katja Urbatsch. Sie ist auch ein sogenanntes Arbeiterkind.

You can watch the video featuring Katja Urbatsch - it's just 3mins27secs.

Do you think it's more difficult for kids to get to university if no-one from their family has been?

Computers, Internet and Politics

I still have my first computer bought in 1980 and stored in the attic. With only 16KB of RAM (yes, KB) and the only storage a built in cassette tape recorder it took ages to do anything. There really wasn't much software around and I ended up writing my own programs. Try writing a compiler in just 16K! Things have moved on amazingly and I can barely keep track of progress, though I do try.

Sometimes I manage to link my interest in computers with learning German. One source of information is 3Sat neues and I subscribe to the RSS feed so I can watch their video podcasts Das Computermagazin. There's also the neues.blog

I've only just caught up with the last two episodes. The first of the year included an interview with a blogger called Markus Beckedahl. This is a really massive blog that can help you keep up with what's happening on the internet and political responses to the net. I'm now following netzpolitik.org and the quote below is from its Über dieses Blog page

netzpolitik.org ist ein Blog und eine politische Plattform für Freiheit und Offenheit im digitalen Zeitalter. Thema sind die wichtigen Fragestellungen der digitalen Welt und wir zeigen Wege auf, wie man sich selbst mit Hilfes des Netzes für digitale Freiheiten engagieren kann. netzpolitik.org wurde in einer Vorläuferversion 2002 gestartet und ist seit 2004 in der jetzigen Form online. Alles andere erschliesst sich aus dem Inhalt.