Since launching German Pulse seven years ago, the online news climate has faced a number of setbacks, but we were determined to push through. Though, after the 2016 US elections and the mass hysteria over “fake news”, it became even more clear that the state of independent news was only going to get more uncertain.

Once We Were Friends

With smaller news outlets – German Pulse included – being deemed untrustworthy by default, once popular sources for exposure such as Facebook and Google News have decided to put little effort in continuing to place these stories in front of readers.

When Facebook changed their algorithm earlier this year in a deliberate attempt to put even less content from business and news pages in front of its followers, we at German Pulse saw more than a 50-percent drop in readership.

This is a problem.

Reaching our Facebook followers – those who intentionally say they want to see what we are posting – has become a real struggle as the new changes made being seen by just 5 percent of followers a real accomplishment today.

Where have all the $$$ Gone?

As readership takes a hit from these changes, so do our financial resources. Advertising dollars aren’t as easy to come by, and the ones that are at the ready offer no benefit to our readers and degrade the editorial content – a direction we have refused to go.

So what does this all mean for the future of German Pulse?

German Pulse exists at a time when many traditional clubs and organizations that have been around for decades face an ever declining membership. So we have accepted the struggle from the start. But from day one it has been our goal to help a new generation discover, connect, and grow their German heritage.

We don’t want to give up this fight, but our current resources, especially financially, have become limited.

Those of you who have been generous in supporting our efforts financially through Patreon and other means are making it possible to keep us from turning off the lights and shutting our doors. I only wish there were more of you.

Making The Cut

Because of the limited funding at this time, I’ve had to think long and hard about the current state of the network.

With a declining readership and little help from the outlets that once acted as the tool to promote our content to readers, we’ve decided to suspend our once regular news coverage for the time being. We hope to return to publishing new articles again in the future, but right now we must focus on putting our financial resources towards the areas that can hopefully take us back in a direction of growth.

We have also decided to pull all resources out from our sister site, LGBTGermany.com. The site will remain online, but we will be halting all development and new content until it once again makes sense to reenter the market.

So what’s staying?

The financial support provided by some of our generous readers and followers have made it possible to continue running a few of our more successful projects that show signs of continued growth potential.

German Pulse: Connect

When we launched Connect at the end of 2017, we knew it wouldn’t be an easy project. Connecting the hundreds of German restaurants, bars, and delis across America, when so many are struggling, takes a lot of time and effort. But we are wholly committed to the project and will continue to expand the site.

Curated Music Playlists

We see the growth of our weekly music playlist programming as a key element in the future of German Pulse and exposing Americans to the outstanding musical talent from Germany is an important part of promoting the culture. No other company or organization in America exposes more new German music than we do and we will continue to pump out new musical collections on a weekly/daily basis.

Email Newsletter

If you haven’t yet subscribed to the German Pulse email newsletter, what are you waiting for? Other than visiting our site, this is the best way to learn about the new happenings at German Pulse. We will continue to serve up engaging emails with content to keep you in the know about our new directions and bits of articles we feel are share-worthy.

Sign up and get a bonus offer for a one-year subscription to the new HEIMAT abroad magazine!

The Experiment

Over the last several months, we have been working hard on a project that will push us in a more local direction. We are teaming up with a Chicagoland organization on a yearlong event-based initiative that will put the modern cultural ideas that serve as the core of German Pulse to the test. Expect more news on this very soon!

Hint: sign up for our newsletter

Down But Not Out

I have pushed to keep this decision from becoming a necessity, but sometimes we have to face the reality that is staring us in the face. Instead of seeing this as a setback, though, this is an opportunity to allocate resources towards what will hopefully become a prosperous new direction for German Pulse.

Of course, none of this is possible without financial support. If you are already supporting German Pulse, you are the reason we can still move forward. This support can only take us so far though.

If you have not yet made that jump, we’ve made it possible to help support our work for as little as $1 a month through Patreon. It’s easy and gives us the support we need to secure a future for German Pulse and our mission to help others discover, connect and grow their German heritage.

To make sure you hear about the latest changes, our email newsletter is the best way to make sure you find out. Sign up for our algorithm-free newsletter.

Whether your support is financial or just spreading the word, it means a lot. It is my hope that you continue to follow us on this journey as we explore the future of German Pulse and the German culture abroad and in the US.

Thanks,

Stephen Fuchs
German Pulse, Founder

The post The Future of German Pulse: Facing Reality Isn’t Easy appeared first on German Pulse.

Woran glaubst du?

KLAN

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Seven

BLVTH

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Die Fetten Jahre

Tristan Brusch

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Molotow

Moop Mama

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Aber

Eko Fresh

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Nice

Sam Wernik

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Au Revoir

DJ BØL feat. ONEDAH. & Nanik

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Wie Zuhause

Alligatoah

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The post 8 New German Music Videos: KLAN, BLVTH, and more appeared first on German Pulse.

You’ve probably gotten the memo by now that plastic is out. Grocery stores are ditching their plastic bags, plastic straws are becoming an eco-terror threat, and Adidas isn’t about to let itself become the next big target in the war against plastic.

Adidas recently announced its plan to switch over to 100% recycled plastics by 2024. With plastic making up half of the materials used in the 920 million products sold per year, it would be impossible to make the change overnight. But it is a step in the right direction.

Making the change to recycled plastic is fueled by Adidas’ key demographic of young buyers who are environmentally aware and are conscious of the materials being used in their shoes, clothing, and sporting gear.

It could also be said that the change is partially fueled by rival Nike as well.

Nike has long been ahead of the anti-plastic movement and has already moved 75% of its plastic use over to recycled material.

The dirty side…

While it may be hard to see a negative side to the recent news by Adidas, some environmentalists have still found room for criticism.

Adidas, like many other companies using recycled materials, is sourcing their plastic from clean waste instead of tapping into the harmful plastic wasteland in our oceans.

Recycled bottles sent back to supermarkets and return centers are the leading sources for most companies, mainly due to the fact that the plastic is still quite clean and little effort is needed to repurpose the material.

The process of turning low-quality plastics recovered from the ocean into a material that can be used in a pristine new product such as shoes or clothing isn’t really on the market yet.

Adidas, though, has commented that it continues to explore the area for solutions. With sales expected to grow in the future, and with more competition following in their footsteps, there will be an ever-growing demand for recycled plastic.

The post Adidas and the Plan for Its Toxic Love Affair With Plastic appeared first on German Pulse.

Looking at their own sales numbers, CarMax found that only 19.4-percent of car buyers stood behind their previous brand choice, which means a massive 80.6-percent opted to try something completely different.

How did the German car manufacturers do?

Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Porsche can celebrate the results of the study as these three German car brands made it into the top ten list of most loyal owners.

Coming in second place — Lexus placed number one — Mercedes retained 28.3% of its owners. BMW ranked number six with a loyalty rate of 23.5-percent, and with 21.5-percent retention, Porsche placed in 8th.

The not-so-good:

Audi was the first of the German car brands to place below the average loyalty rate as CarMax found the manufacturer retaining only 15.7-percent of its owners.

No other German brand though came close to scoring as poorly as Volkswagen.

Placing last on the list, Volkswagen only managed to keep 7.9-percent of its drivers coming back for another vehicle in its lineup. That is worse than any other brand — German and non-German — on CarMax’s list.

The post German Car Brand Loyalty in the US: Winners & Losers appeared first on German Pulse.

Downtown (NSFW)

GiiRL

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Swallow

Monolink

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Das Lied vom Tod

Bonaparte

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Tausend Zweite Chancen

Timi Hendrix feat. Sapient

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Time is Your Gun (Live Session)

Fil Bo Riva

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Eternity

Patrick Siegfried Zimmer

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Wetter

Sebel

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The post 7 New German Music Videos: GiiRL, Monolink, and more appeared first on German Pulse.

A quick glance at the device may have you believe you’re looking at an iPhone as the Gigaset GS185 borrows quite a few visual cues from the Apple device, but the performance of this phone will come nowhere close. At 179 euros though, the specs don’t seem all that crappy for its price point.

What’s inside?

Android purists will be glad to see that the Gigaset GS185 comes loaded with stock Android (8.1 Oreo), though whether or not Gigaset updates the phone with new releases remains to be seen. The metal housing features a 5.5-inch HD display (720×1440 pixels), a quad-core Qualcomm processor with LTE, a Quick-charging 4,000 mAh battery, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage.

The not-so-good?

Trying to compare the Gigaset GS185 to an $800-$1000 flagship phone wouldn’t exactly be fair, but there are some drawbacks to this budget device that not even a “Made in Germany” lable can fix. In tests done by Germany’s Welt, the phone was reported to be quite slow at performing some basic functions, such as unlocking the device, opening the camera, and loading most apps.

The phone’s 13-megapixel rear and front camera may not be perfect, but for a phone at this price point, Welt claimed photos from the GS185 were quite good.

Made in Germany?

Gigaset is using robots to perform 70 percent of the manufacturing work on the GS185 in a factory located in the German city of Bocholt — 2.5 miles south of the Netherland border — and while it claims the “Made in Germany” sticker gives it a mark of quality, only so much should be expected from a 179 euro phone.

The Gigaset GS185 is currently on sale in Germany and a select few countries across Europe. A U.S. release has not been announced, but with such a crowded market, the likelihood of an American release is quite low.

The post First “Made in Germany” Smartphone, the Gigaset GS185, Is Here! How Good Is It? appeared first on German Pulse.

Here’s what happened:

The new quarterly magazine was launched in cooperation with German World Magazine founder Petra Schurmann, and features special bilingual articles for German and English readers. This is ideal for people who want to refresh their German language skills, stay up to date on the German-speaking community in the US, and German Americans who are interested in German culture in America. Each edition also features specific information for Expats as well as lifestyle tips, recipes, travel reports, interesting interviews, and much more, including special coverage from German Pulse!

After reading our way through the first issue under the new name, we are confident the editorial team has what it takes to carry on the mission and we have a special offer for anyone wanting to try HEIMAT abroad for themselves.

Wait, a discount?

A 1-year subscription (4 issues) regularly costs $12.95 in the USA and Canada, but our email subscribers can get their hands on a year of HEIMAT abroad for only $9.95!

Our subscribers don’t get bombarded with spammy messages or pointless greetings, so no need to worry about signing up for an inbox full of emails from us. Instead, we offer the occasional informative newsletter of what’s happening at German Pulse and throw in some freebies and discounts like this reduced price on HEIMAT abroad as a way of saying thanks.

So how do you get our “can’t miss” emails and this exclusive discount? Just follow this sign-up link and we will send you your coupon code for a 1-year subscription to HEIMAT abroad right away. It’s that simple!

The post DISCOUNT: Get Your Hands on ‘HEIMAT abroad’ the New German-American Magazine appeared first on German Pulse.

Philip Frenzel

Philip Frenzel was just awarded the top prize from the German Society for Mechatronics for his AD Case, a phone enclosure with a built-in airbag system. Tucked away inside the thin case are eight claw-like legs that spring into action as soon as the case detects a freefall motion, making it possible for a padded and safe landing. Unlike the airbags in your car though, these cushions can be folded back into the case to protect your phone from repeat plunges.

Frenzel got to work on the AD Case after suffering the same fate most of us have faced at some point with our phones. Despite attempts to keep his busted phone alive, Frenzel said that the “crash caused all the electronics to break down.” While most people would just accept defeat, move on, and possibly ruin the look of their new phone with a large protective case, Frenzel was in the middle of completing his mechatronics master’s degree at Aalen University and knew there had to be a better solution.

“Packing the iPhone with its aesthetic design into a chunky case is not fun,” Frenzel said in the telling of his thought process. So for four years he worked to find a solution that was both lightweight and safe from drops. Eventually, the AD Case evolved from the countless hours of work.

“In his thesis, Philip Frenzel impressively shows how a mechatronics engineer systematically and purposefully approaches a problem and develops a technically feasible and economically viable solution”, Prof. Dr. Rolf Biesenbach, Chairman of the German Society for Mechatronics eV, said as he granted the student with the coveted award.

While the award is an achievement in itself, Frenzel has bigger plans for the AD Case. With a patent on the airbag system already registered, Frenzel just founded a start-up with Peter Mayer, a graduate in economics at Aalen University of Applied Sciences, with the hopes of getting their case into the hands of smartphone users around the world.

The new startup, Frenzel + Mayer Solutions GbR, is gearing up to launch a crowdfunding campaign through Kickstarter to raise the funding needed to make their dream a reality. It is expected to go live on the service sometime later this month.

The post German Student’s ‘AD Case’ Will Add Airbag Protection to Your Phone in a Slim Case appeared first on German Pulse.

Hol dein Freak raus

Chefboss feat. Tino Turner

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Zuhause

Fynn Kliemann

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Sommer Am See

Badetasche feat. Laurenz

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Bad Ting

Sam

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Champion Sound

Marteria & Casper

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Midnight Sun

LIZOT feat. Oscar Merner

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So We Are Here

il Civetto

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Leben und leben lassen

Sayonara

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Du nimmst die Liebe zu ernst

Lässing

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The post 9 New German Music Videos: Chefboss, Fynn Kliemann, and more appeared first on German Pulse.

The purchase caught many insiders off guard and left questioning the move, but it has the potential to pay off big for both Smith and Forster who already run successful entertainment companies of their own.

Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment and Forster’s 2dux² will have greater opportunities to distribute their film and television projects in the German-speaking territories that Telepool has a sizable control in. While Telepool has faced some challenges in recent years, the talent that the two stars can bring to the table may be able to turn the company’s fortunes around.

“Marc and I took a close look at Telepool and discovered a company that has an incredible reputation and a lot of potential,” Smith said on the acquisition. “We look forward to working together and with the Telepool team to create unique opportunities and content to strategically grow the business.”

Forster also weighed in on the news, stating: “I believe Will and I will be able to contribute our combined energies and global relationships to the company’s advantage. It’s an exciting undertaking.”

The post Why Will Smith & Mark Forster Bought German Film Distributor Telepool appeared first on German Pulse.