For the free tripwolf iPhone application we did a video. Props go to the great guys and girls at FH Salzburg and thanks to Freud for providing a great soundtrack. Check it out here and let me know what you think.

With the rise of twitter and various aggregators out there I thought it’s time to round up various services that try to build real time news services. You don’t have to be a seasoned media philosopher or journalist to see that both companies and people are shifting to some sort of a more real time and relevant news service. I am particularly interested in this topic since I co-founded a startup called all140.com - a real time news magazine from real people. Why real people? Because the service fetches data sources such as twitter and mashes them up with google search trends and others. This data basically comes from actual people. Not from biased journalists but a plethora of billions of opinions generating a sustainable news source.

Now let’s get to business:

ALL140 (http://www.all140.com)

As mentioned above I am working on this project and we aim to make the one-stop-shop for real time news. Design sucks I know, but quality is what counts.

TWEETMEME (http://tweetmeme.com/)

Currently in everbody’s mouth and hyping it’s way through TechCrunch and the likes. The idea is simple and takes DIGG to another real-time-level, however it’s only based upon twitter.

TECHMEME (http://techmeme.com/)

You can already guess what it’s all about. A so-called Meme aggregating and semantically interpreting Tech News around the world. Not sure if twitter is involved as a source though.

FLACKR (http://flackr.net/)

Beautifully designed layout, yet it lacks categories. Overall very well done and useful for research.

BREAKING NEWS SF (http://BreakingSFNews.com/)

A location specific Site aggregating twitter content corresponding to the location.

Conclusion: Flackr seems to be really good in terms of usability, however I am rather unsure how they plan to drive traffic to their site. TechMeme almost seems oldschool compared to the uber-realtime services and all140 is good but as soon as we have a better design it will be better.

Der Personensuchmaschinenmarkt ist wohl einer der heißumkämpftesten derzeit. Studien zufolge sind ca. 30% aller Googleabfragen Personenbezogen und wohl einer der Hauptgründe warum sich viele Unternehmer in die Weiten der Personensuche begeben. Die US-Amerikaner waren auch hier den Europäern einige Jahre voraus und haben mit Seiten wie Spock, Wink oder pipl bereits den Weg geebnet und die Femtoepoche der Personensuche eingeläutet. Der (teils mäßige) Erfolg dieser war wohl Anreiz genug auch in Europa Nachahmer zu finden, wobei sich insbesondere zwei als ernsthafte Konkurrenz zu etablierten Seiten herauskristallisiert haben. Yasni, aus Deutschland kommend und mit starkem Communityansatz, und 123people, die österreichische Personensuchmaschine die vor kurzem Yasni den Rang als Weitreichenstärkste Personensuche im Deutschsprachigen Raum abgelöst hat (Disclosure: Ich bin im Team von 123people beruflich tätig).

Aber auch im Vergleich zu den amerikanischen Anbietern müssen sich die europäischen Keimlinge nicht mehr verstecken. Die Qualität der Ergebnisse wird zusehends auch in den USA angenommen wie eine Umfrage des Webportals Lifehacker zeigte. Dort erkundigte man sich nach den besten Personensuchmöglichkeiten weltweit. Das Ergebnis aus Usersicht kurz gefasst: Spock, Google, Facebook, Pipl und 123people.

Es sollte sich wohl jeder selbst ein Bild der verschiedenen Anbieter machen, ob eher Such oder Communityansatz, ob übersichtlich oder unstrukuriert. Meiner, nicht ganz unparteiischen Meinung zufolge, liefert 123people die besten Ergebnissen, bei bester Performance und bester grafischer Darstellung.

I never thought I’d blog about Zac “High School Musical” Efron. Actually this is not about him, but about his house in California. It’s a piece of beauty, combining almost Bauhaus-like Elements with contemporary Californian Architectural Elements. Never thought that kid has a) that much money b) such good taste. Let me know what you think….

I’ve always (and still am) on the verge between practising as a physician and being a business person. Obviously it’s incredibally fulfilling to actually help patients on a one-to-one basis, however when being a “regular doc” you’ll always be laced to this and won’t be able to scale. That’s where a certain business  or large-scale perspective comes into play. Imagine working for the WHO or developing new drugs as a pharmaceutical company - that’s a real chance to both make money and help people on a potentially extremely large, worldwide scale.

That’s probably one of the reasons why I really think that GE’s announcement today that they invest 6 billion dollars into it’s healthcare branch over the next years is superb. Meaning that they’ll try to force preventive medicine with more affordable CT scans, ultra portable Ultrasound Gears or by implementing some nifty Health/IT gadgets. I am not really sure of how one can call that - is it a marketing initiative, a branding thing, an actual strategic investment?

I am a littel bit affraid that this is only a Marketing Thing, but after watching the press speach of GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt I now think those guys really have some bold and great plans. Following up the Ecomagination campaign several years ago, GE sees it’s main competences and future revenue streams in Green Tech and Healthcare. Other than that almost the entire (Wannabe) think tank on the planet thinks pretty much the same, they are actually doing something and get their hands on.

healthymagination_presentation -

Let’s see what this announcement acutally brings to a specific patient’s life in the next years. I’ll try to pursue this and hope it’s not only words, but a real deal.

P.s: The twittersphere like it as well. And kudos to the state-of-the-art GE online Marketing Dept, which actually put a real life person in charge of managing it’s twitter account - that’s what it should be.

It’s not a secret that I am kind of addicted to movie trailers. In my opinion it’s an art itself to produce, cut and spread Movie trailers. Especially when the movie sucks but trailer looks gorgeous which is the case rather often.

Eventually I found a way on how to download those slick Movie Trailers from Apple.com/trailers (even in HD) with a little work around

1. Go to the Movie Trailers’ Website, i.e. Moon (which is a great!)
2. Right-click or click on the “View” Tab in your browser and look at the “Source Code” of the site
3. Now look for the Trailer file you want to download (Either HD or Normal and the size, 720p, etc.)
4. I’ve chosen the 720p HD Version of the Trailer Moon, which looks like that: http://movies.apple.com/movies/sony/moon/moon_480p.mov
5. Now add a little Magic by adding the letter “h” in front of the Movies size; In this case it should look like this: http://movies.apple.com/movies/sony/moon/moon_h480p.mov
6. Put that File in your Download Manager of Choice (Speed Downloader, iGetter, etc.) and that’s it
7. Enjoy the trailer over and over and over…

Hope it helps some other trailer geeks out there.

Everyday there are billions of e-mails sent and until now with any of them you were able to actually do something useful with them, except for obviously sending the actual email.

Email Charity (disclosure: I am working with them) now offers a unique way to change this by integrating a Standard-sized Banner into the footer of your e-mails. The Installations process works like a charm and it automatically integrates it in your E-mail Client of choice, whithout leaving the browser window. Now Email Charity teamed up with the infamous Life Ball team to support the fight against HIV, respectively AIDS and whenever you send an e-mail you can now show your support as well.

Here’s how the banner looks like

In the midst of a plethora of unqualified news regarding the swine flu and the success of my post on Steve Jobs’ Health I thought I should share my thoughts on that topic as well.

First of all, this entire media-hyped scenario of fear and death is absurd. Am I the only one who sees a connection - in terms of media - to the SARS Coronavirus, where 150 people died in 2003?! It is absolutely stunning that all of a sudden certain people tend to compare lifestyle, environmental status and health-related status between two totally oposing parts of the world.

Roche, which licenses/produces Tamiflu or Relenza, which are both part of the neuraminidase inhibitor family, are very effective and selective treatment options for viral Infections, such as SARS and… the Swine flu. Austria for example has ordererd tons and tons of Tamiflu in order to protect the entire population, furthermore millions of face masks that don’t make any sense at all because viruses are among the smallest organisms and can therefore easily pass such face masks. Yes, there are certain resistances for current neuraminidase inhibitors, but comparable to other problems with face on the planet they are negligable.

Tamiflu - 19,00 $
Face masks - 45,00 $
Doctors being paid a sh*t load of money in order to push Tamiflu and Face masks - Priceless