TECH SUPPORT

If it weren’t so true: 20 Things I Learned From Tech Support. Having worked in tech support and as a call center agent for a while, I can tell you… Life there is exactly like that 😉

Oh, and by the way: don’t miss the Internet Helpdesk video.

SENDUNG MIT DER MAUS: DIE HÖHE DES ULMER MÜNSTERS

In bester Sonntagmorgen-Manier schaue ich ja seit meiner Kindheit die Sendung mit der Maus – derzeit aufgrund des fehlenden ARD-Empfangs in den USA als Video-Podcast innerhalb von iTunes…

Oh, ging mir das Herz auf, als ich den Beitrag vom 15. Juli 2007 sah: Ulmer Münster.

Ich war zwar längere Zeit in der Garnisonsstadt Ulm stationiert, habe es aber erst Jahre später bei einem Tagesausflug nach Ulm auch hoch auf die Aussichtsplattform des Münsters geschafft… Aber in Kürze geht’s ja wieder zurück 😉

BLOGS ARE SCARY

I just read a blog post at DonsTag (“real time blog interpretation”). He wrote a comment on an article from another blog which is about to be published in a German school book).

I followed the link to the original article that Don was commenting on. So far, I’ve never heard of that blog (henningschuerig.de/blog), but some comments on that particular post were written by a friend of a former high-school classmate whom I’ve never met in person (the friend, not the classmate–I did attend some classes in high school!).

Quite scary or… “small world” again.

SKYPE: NO VAT IF YOU'RE LIVING OUTSIDE THE EUROPEAN UNION

When I opened my SkypeOut account back in Germany, Skype charged me 15% VAT on top of the money I wanted to put on my account.

It’s quite interesting that when I used my US billing address and my US credit card to refill my account with some Euros (yes, the account’s currency is not converted to USD), I’m not charged any VAT (see the Skype website for more information on their pricing). Woot. 15% discount 😉

The credit card transaction actually is performed in the United Kingdom, so my bank sent me an e-mail alert for “out-of-country usage of my credit card” a few minutes later. Wait–United Kingdom? Great Britain? One of the countries in the European Union that has not introduced the Euro a while ago? Strange…

Oh, and by the way: if you find some time, have a look at the Skype Brand Book. Great work.

IS FLICKR LOSING ITS USER BASE DUE TO ITS RECENTLY INTRODUCED RESTRICTIONS?

After I came across the flickr: Most Popular Cameras site, I noticed a drop in the graphs a certain time ago. As the diagram lacks units on both the time and the measurement axis, one cannot tell how much the number of pictures taken with one of the most famous/popular cameras dropped, but in fact you get the idea…

As the graphs shown in the picture above represent some of the most successful, semi-amateur/semi-professinal DSLR models (Canon Rebel XT (300D), Canon Rebel XTi (400D), Canon EOS 20D, Nikon D50, Nikon D80), flickr might have lost some of their most valuable customers: those who don’t need a high-professional picture service (professional photographers), but who produce amazing semi-professional pictures non the less – and most of them were willing to pay for flickr’s pro service.

What remains might be (I don’t really like to generalize that) a high number of users with point-and-shoot cameras who care little about the art of photography (yes, I have to admit there are also a lot of people who take great shots with their PAS cameras).

I wonder if there really is a causality between the drop of picture numbers and users leaving flickr due to the newly introduced censorship filters in some countries or if the drop in the diagram is basically meaningless.