What’s in an URI?

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One thing that I find constantly annoying is the inability of major newspaper websites to have human-friendly URIs. The URI (unified resource identifier) is the “web address” you see in your browser’s navigation bar. It can be very simple and easy to remember, post, share and type, like “nytimes.com”, or it can be so inexplicably long and ugly like this one, linking to an article about Google’s problems in China at the German daily “FAZ”:

http://www.faz.net/s/RubDDBDABB9457A437BAA85A49C26FB23A0/Doc~E9F73DC4F0C444FE4BA1181212F925369~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

Three things are wrong with an URI like that. 1) it is too long for no good reason 2) it makes no sense to a human and 3) it is systematically unsustainable. Let’s continue this little survey through the German newspaper landscape. The other major newspaper is the “Sueddeutsche Zeitung”.

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Summer in Erfurt

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Who would have thought that I would spend most of my summer in Erfurt, out of all places? Granted, it’s a nice little town in the summer, with some interesting spots to spend your time if you know where they are – but it’s still Erfurt! At any rate, I’m busy with a number of projects that make vacation, or the idea of vacation, a distant thought for now. What am I doing exactly?

Sven Welters and I are working on the ideation platform for the participatory budgeting project for the City of Erfurt, as well as a website for a publishing house. Both projects I will post once they are completed. Additionally, I am trying to set up a twitter/blogging documentation platform for the upcoming Government 2.0 Barcamp in Berlin, which is happening in close association with the German Ministry of the Interior and spearheaded by Philipp Mueller and the CPMG. Then I’m also revamping the website of a really good friend of mine who’s also a political consultant, lobbyist and advocat, Wolfgang Gruendinger, who just released a new book which is causing white a noise in the media. Yes there’s also another research project and memo in the pipeline, the semester just hasn’t ended yet, and they just officially renamed the school I’m stying at from Erfurt School of Public Policy to Willy Brandt School of Public Policy (at the University of Erfurt), and we’re going to move to a new building and we will get a new website (where I’m hopefully involved in).

While doing all that, I was transferring most of the websites hosted on my old server to my new one, with a little accident happening in the middle of it, so the whole endeavor was not quite so successful. But all that is of course part of a whole other thing that has been occupying me for the last months: tomorrow’s theatrical release of Quentin Tarantino‘s new movie Inglourious Basterds, a movie that is already highly acclaimed. I was quite busy reporting on the film, attending the Berlin premiere, and doing lots of little maintenance work on The Quentin Tarantino Archives, my website started in 1999 that makes this all possible. The website has since spun off two sister sites, The Spaghetti Western Database and The Deuce, both of which are quite successful and famous as well. Between the three, visitor numbers are probably going to approach 10.000 by the end of the year, if I do a good job with marketing and improving these sites.

That’s it for now, it was about time for a little update. I might do more work on this website this fall.

Crackberry

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I’ve done it. I’m now part of the BlackBerry crowd, believe it or not. Maybe I’ll even set it up so I can blog from it whenever I’m bored (rarely the case these days as you can see from the lag of entries on this page). I think with the corresponding network plan the so-called “evernet” is finally here. You’re always online, you get emails just like text messages, you no longer need to find a Wi-fi hotspot or other computer to check our facebook messages and so on. I have noticed, that one of the very pleasant and surprising side effects is, that it actually helps what some might call internet addiction. No longer do you feel sort of itchy when you’re really waiting for an important email. I’ll come right to your jacket pocket! No more worries. In some ways I feel liberated. I’m no longer chasing the internet, the internet is coming to me!

Blogging Away About Governance 2.0

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I finally wrote the stuff down that I had in my head for some time now. I’m talking about two blog posts on two different but somewhat related websites. Both little thoughts are about government 2.0 in a larger sense, and specifically, one post is a word of pessimism and caution about politics 2.0 entitled “Bread and Games 2.0“, which you can read at my professor Philipp Mueller’s blog right here, and the other is one dealing with how public institutions have to rethink their clients, or constituents, as we’re entering a new era of how governance works in the information society. That blog post is called “Rethinking the client” and is available at the new think tank Philipp and I have put together, the Center for Public Management and Governance. Enjoy reading.

Update: Both entries are now live, and I’m also working on a blog post about the “feed back culture” which I will also post on Philipp’s blog.