Coming back to my satirical he-said-she-said piece on Pirate Party Kenya, I think there’s 80% truth in it and that Kenya could also use such a modern political party. And this although I also believe that democracy as such still isn’t the best option for today’s Kenya, at least not when it comes to the way it has been implemented in the past and when we look at the historical structure of societies in East Africa.

I am not a member of the Pirate Party Germany because I am trying to be independent and have in the past also contributed to Germany’s first hyperlocal project frankfurt-gestalten.de (which is similar to Mzalendo.com, but for (the City of) Frankfurt am Main only and is more about republishing open data (e.g. hansards from the local parliament) and capturing citizen voices) and have as such tried to keep a neutral position.

I have, however, voted for Pirate Party during the last two local (German) elections because of the following reason(s).

I also voted for them because I am convinced of their concept. You’ll have to understand that about 95% of the German media are currently trying to brand us floating voters as “protest voters“, who voted for the Pirate Party out of protest. This is SO wrong and I am strongly opposed to this limited point of view! The problem is: most of the media didn’t get it. As much as they never understood the need to update their views on the law which regulates the use of (online) content. What’s a free and open media when they are too stupid to understand a completely different approach to politics? A new approach that also requires a different benchmarking system if we are to compare the new option with the traditional alternatives. And please remember: Germany already saw the introduction of the Greens Party (“Die Grünen”) in the early 1980s, so our society here is already familiar with new approaches.

I am calling the Pirate movement a modern party because I strongly believe that their structure is the logical consequence of what the internet has brought us so far. Such as an international and timely response on open issues that have in the past only been dealt with by a relatively small group. I see it as a response to the success of the internet – this world wide network that is as revolutionary as letterpress, radio and television combined. The understanding of the impact the internet has on all of us probably is something that many of the critics do not really want to acknowledge. As such, with new structures that introduced a completely new concept in communication, it’s also about time for a new and different system. Either way, it just happens, whether you like it or not. I also don’t like everything they put on Wikipedia, yet I often use it like many others.

What makes Pirates Party special to me is the integration of modern tools and a completely different understanding of grassroots democracy – something we already know from the internet. “Liquid feedback” is such a system and piece of software that collects voices and forwards votes to a person in the system that has more competence on a particular subject. Everyone can cast his vote on all issues or delegate his vote to someone else. It’s still a relatively new approach, but the one that makes the difference to me.  This alone – the different understanding of TRUE democracy – is reason enough for me to give them my vote.

It is also this understanding why I just laugh at critics who are asking me on “how can you vote for the Pirates – they don’t even have a political agenda next to their internet stuff??! 1!11″. Most critics just repeat what they read somewhere.

And the Pirate name? Well, both in Kenya and Germany, many if not all political parties seem to have names that don’t hold true to 95% of their daily business. Maybe the Anarchist Pogo Party of Germany (founded in 1981 by two punks) is one of the few that is as consequent in their approaches as the name dictates.  So either way you may want to interpret the name and how it qualifies for a better marketing strategy (given that it sounds a bit anarchic to most conservative voters), it probably only matters for marketing reasons and as such, it isn’t the worst.

In a recent election in two different states within Germany, the German Piratenpartei scored between 7 and almost 9%, thereby securing a few seats in local parliaments. They currently have over 23.000 (!) members in Germany, which is quite a lot for such a young party. Something tells me that a) they are doing it right, b) the interest to engage in local politics isn’t dead and as important as it has always been and c) not all of their members are the stereotypical IT folks with long hair who are into Terry Pratchett and/or have a paranoid fear of everything Google Inc. does. All these members, rich and poor, old and young certainly aren’t engaging for the protest only.

It is for these reasons alone, but also for many unmentioned more that I would to see politics adopting more structures that correspond to the technological framework we currently experience on our planet. New structures that enable crowdsourced project approaches, something that will hopefully also change the way we perceive to live in urban communities (e.g. a modernized infrastructure that plays along with our needs, not the other way round as it has been in the past). Pirate Party as such may not be the best option with all its typical start-up problems, but it’s the one that works and that’s all that matters to me at the moment. If we could have the same in Kenya, I’d be very happy!

Mein lieber Ilija Trojanow, mit dem Weltensammler hattest Du mich ja schon erreicht – dieser phantasievoll zusammengetragenen Biographie über Sir Richard Francis Burton, dem wahrscheinlich vielseitigsten Abenteurer und Kosmopoliten des viktorianischen Zeitalters. Ein Buch, dass sich ob des ständigen Wechsels der Erzählperspektive zum Ende hin im ostafrikanischen Schlamm wälzt und in meinem Bekanntenkreis anderer Afrikareisender teilweise schon nach 50 Seiten zur Seite gelegt wurde. Ein Buch, dass so viel Leidenschaft in sich trägt, dass es eines weiteren Bandes (“Nomade auf vier Kontinenten”) bedurfte, in dem das Universum und die Eigenarten des Herrn Burton näher beschrieben wurden. Schwierige Kost, so vermute ich, für all diejenigen, die auch im Zwiegespräch der Kulturen keinen Segen finden. Leidenschaft ist aber ein heimliches Dauerthema in meiner Welt, daher freut es mich umso mehr, in dieser beschriebenen Welt die Feinheiten zu erlesen, die den Herrn Burton wohl ausmachten.

Gefragt hatte ich Dich im Dezember 2006, im Goethe-Institut in Nairobi, nach der gemeinsamen Lesung mit Binyavanga Wainaina, über Deinen “Wechsel” zum Islam. Gelesen hatte ich den Weltensammler seinerzeit noch nicht – die wahre Motivation erschloss sich dann auch erst beim Lesen dieses überaus wunderbaren Interviews.

Ob es dem Burton in Ostafrika eigentlich gefallen hat, frage ich mich jetzt öfter. Ob er aufgrund der Eintönigkeit nicht nur für die Konversationen mit den Kaufleuten orientalischer Abstammung gelebt hat.

Vielleicht die gleiche Motivation, warum sich Binyavanga wohl derzeit am nigerianischen Nollywood-Fieber abarbeitet und auf Facebook Charaktere aus dem nächsten Projekt vorstellt. Ein kenianischer Schriftsteller – in Südafrika studiert, gearbeitet, über einen zynischen Artikel Berühmtheit erlangt; den Literaturbetrieb im Lande aufgewirbelt in den frühen 2000ern; die Hand, die ihn derzeit füttert, kritisierend, sich an einem modernen Afrika versucht – gar einem “interafrikanischen” Austausch, wie wir ihn vielleicht zuletzt beim CFA, bei Kwame Nrkrumah oder der Roamingvernetzung von Airtel Africa gesehen haben. Ein Schriftsteller, der ebenfalls zwischen den Welten lebt. “Nairobi people live in at least two different worlds”. Allein, er wohnt ja jetzt in den USA.

Nein, nein, dieses “Afrika” aus unserer Kindheit – es ist lange vorbei. Oder zumindest anders. Bei der GIZ vielleicht noch, in der “heilen Welt” einiger Auslandsdeutsche, die mit Hörspielen, dem BVB und dem Sonntag Tatort aufgewachsen sind und diese Werte jetzt ins Ausland tragen – überall dort, ja, das wirst Du sicherlich immer wieder erlebt haben im Ausland, bei Botschaftsempfängen und bei jungen DaF-Lektoren, da ist es noch so.

So wie Du es beschrieben hattest auf den ersten Seiten meiner neuesten Lektüre “Der entfesselte Globus” – eine Sammlung von Reportagen von Unterwegs. Und auf den ersten 12 Seiten sogleich die Beschreibung der deutschen “Community” in Nairobi.

Unserem Nairobi von damals, als die deutsche Community eine ähnliche bornierte Grundhaltung gegenüber dem Rest des Landes zeigte, wie sie wohl in ähnlicher Form nur Tom Hillenbrand (“Hamburg, keine Perle“) formuliert hatte (es muss ja für Daheimgebliebene nachvollziehbar sein) – ich vermute es ist nur noch schlimmer geworden. Alleine weil man in der vernetzten Gesellschaft (Mobilfunk! Satellitenfernsehen! Internet!) weniger Gemeinsamkeiten entdeckt. War die Community wohl damals noch eine Solche, ist es heute eher ein Zweckverbund.

Aber ich will ihr keinen Vorwurf machen – es gibt wahrlich introvertiertere Kulturen, die so dermaßen mit sich selbst beschäftigt sind, dass sie den externen Austausch nur dann wahrnehmen, wenn er neue Qualitäten ins Land spühlt.

Ob es den Weihnachtsstollen noch gibt – ich weiß es nicht. Zwischen uns liegen zehn Jahre Altersunterschied, kein so wirklich großer Unterschied im Nachhinein. Nairobi, mit seinen chronisch verstopften Straßen (Richard Branson stand letztens 2h im Stau), weil vier Mal so viele Fahrzeuge unterwegs wie eigentlich angebracht wären. Die deutsche Auslandsschule, die sich heute (!) nach all den Jahren endlich dazu durchringen konnte, die Verantwortung für die Domain von mir zu übernehmen; die Schule, die bei mir mehr als einmal verschissen hat (“es gibt kein schwarzes Christkind”); die Schule, in der mir mein Mathe- und Sportlehrer nach der allgemeinen deutschen Reifeprüfung nahelegte, “nichts mit Naturwissenschaften zu studieren”, und ich es dann trotzdem gemacht hatte; Nairobi, dass mich mit seinem iHub und meinen Freunden aus der kenianischen Blogosphere anlockt aber ob der Kosten für den westlichen Lebensstil und dem Reichtum der aufkommenden Mittelklasse eher abschreckt. All das, weil ja immer wieder die Frage nach der Rückkehr aufkommt. Gearbeitet habe ich in Kenia, das Land von einer anderen Seite kennengelernt. Das wahre Kenia kennengelernt, fernab der Hauptstadt. So wie Du Afrika bereist hattest. Ich erinnere mich noch gut an das Afrikanissimo Lesebuch, dieser erste Versuch der literarischen Annäherung. Gerne würde ich jetzt schreiben: ja, so war es damals, in den 1990er Jahren, als Kenia unter Moi noch fest im Griff der Mächte war, als es aus Afrika überwiegend Betroffenheitsliteratur gab – gespickt mit ein paar deutschen Reportagesammlungen der üblichen Journalisten, die sich mit einem Afrikabuch ein Denkmal setzen wollten (zurecht, hätte ich wohl auch so gemacht), aber keiner auch nur annähernd an Ryszard Kapuscinski herankam und das Afrikanissimo Buch der erste Schritt in die richtige Richtung war. Aber stattdessen schreibe ich nur: Lavington Green.

“Lavington Green”, die ersten beiden Worte im “entfesselten Globus”, die die Einkaufszeile beschreiben, wo früher zwei fette Punjabi Damen, Mukhwas-kauend, hinter der Kasse sitzend Anweisungen an ihre kenianischen Angestellten gegeben, sich dabei den Sari zurechtgerückt haben. Erinnerungen, die beim Lesen dieser Zeilen wiederkommen, die ich teilweise verdrängt hatte, weil das Einkaufszentrum in dieser Form nicht mehr existiert (der Sailsbury Supermarket aber wohl immer noch). Überhaupt, wir, die mit Forsty neben der Heilsarmee gewohnt haben, wo man jeden Sonntag Morgen die Uhr nach dem Trommelgesang stellen konnte…

Allein, allein, allein – das Buch hatte ich eigentlich ob der Reportagen aus Indien gekauft. Weil ich doch jetzt zum Ende der Woche mit einem indischen Kollegen aus Allahabad eine WG teilen werde – dem Kollegen, der sich unabhängig von mir Deinen Kumbh Mela Bildband gekauft hatte und wir so anfangs ins Gespräch kamen. “Same author!”, sagte ich ihm, und denke mir fortan “auf zu neuen Ufern!”.

Ich bitte sogar darum.

Meine große Schwester würde ich niemals öffentlich erwähnen, auf meine große Schwester lasse ich nichts kommen weil sie die verlässlichste Person auf dieser Welt ist, meine große Schwester kann vieles und ist daher auch sehr erfolgreich.

Meiner großen Schwester muss ich aber wohl doch mal mitteilen, dass man mit dem bewussten Teilen im Internet teilweise auch gutes Geld verdienen kann (1, 2, 3). Berufliche und persönliche Dinge, die mich beschäftigen, interessieren und inspirieren. Immer mit dem Wissen im Hinterkopf, dass ich mich hinter keiner Aussage, keinem peinlichen Video oder ungünstigem Foto verstecken muss.

Berufliche und persönliche, nicht aber private oder geheime Dinge. Ebenso gibt es von mir auch keine zu peinlichen oder grammatikalisch zu fragwürdigen Textfragmente in diesem Internetz, in das ich seit 1996 hineinschreibe. Weder hier in diesem persönlichen Blog, in meinen beruflichen Blogs, in beruflichen Foren bei Xing oder LinkedIn (uhii, international!), weder über die diversen Twitterkonten noch auf der Facebookseite mit der handverlesenen Freundesliste.

Liebe Personaler,
wenn Ihr also wie meine große Schwester der Meinung seid, dass man möglichst keine Informationen online teilen sollte, und dass Inhalte und Kommunikation nicht der Hauptgrund für den Erfolg des Internets sind – dann brauchen wir auch nicht zusammen zu arbeiten.

So einfach ist das.

An unrelated image* to attract readers.

If I could, I would develop and patent machines / systems that:

• split everything into atoms/elements so that the upcycling of “waste” is a bit easier
• reduces the water content in fruits and vegetables to a low percentage of <1% to keep transport cost ultra low (considering that most transport costs = weight + space; and that we’re often only transporting water from A to B). And find a way of putting it back into these fruits and vegetables.
• measures all energies used on a product (natural or man-made) and uses this approach for a replication process (~ the replicator we know from Star Trek).

Seriously, mankind made it to the moon and enabled nuclear fission, why shouldn’t these approaches be possible one day?

What would you do?

*Trostbrücke 4, home of EPEA :-) 

It’s a strange situation because I am already an Android user these days for the phone side and really appreciate the freedom (and costs!) that come with it despite Androids downsides (my main criticism is that there are no vouchers available for the Android app market as opposed to the iTunes store => +1.85% on each app purchase while using my EU credit card).

My beloved HP tc4400, the iPad2 on iOS5 and a FlyTouch 3 Android 2.2 tablet that still lacks a PDF reader because it’s already on auction. The FlyTouch btw also has a 1024×600 screen – as opposed to the other two that offer a 1024×768 screen resolution. Good for movies, bad for PDFs.

No, there’s much more to an iPad, obviously, and probably also more than enough reasons why over 29 million (!) iPads have already been sold till now. A “tablet revolution”? No, but a tablet revolution based on the iPad – that’s for sure.

I am used to buying second hand hardware and this time I am glad I had found a way to finance this purchase (via a mobile phone contract = subsidized hardware) and with the sudden loss of a dear family member earlier this year, I also realized that life is indeed too short for crappy products. Why should I waste time with stupid hardware if instead I can also go for the real thing?

This very emotional reason probably is the most honest excuse for this purchase, but you know what? Clicking that “buy” button felt damn good. Whatever they say about Apple products and their fanboyz – it’s true, it’s a *feel-good-world*.

So why should I still blog about this purchase if 29 million out there have already made this buying decision? Because I have a smart list that matters to me. Here’s my TOP5 reasons for the purchase:

Passion
After watching this documentary earlier last month about former Microsoft employees, it eventually occurred to me that most MS products just lack passion .

This is exactly what I like the most about these portable Apple products: a meticulous CEO that demoed his products and also looked at the smallest details.

Or Linux developers who create stuff out of passion. Not because they have to, but because they want to. That alone is a totally different approach and a sign of quality to me.

I am yet to see that on MS products. And I am a Win7 user most of the time, along with this crap called Outlook 2007 (HTML rendering, bollocks!).

And it’s not just the software you can buy. Just yesterday I read through this publication from Microsoft Research on the need for meta data to be implemented in future generations of filesystems. Very valid points and I understand that MS Resarch are doing good work, BUT! – again – the paper was much longer than necessary. So much blablabla and yet the important stuff could have been said on one single page. This out-of-focus-approach is so typical of MS, I think. As a customer and user of MS products, I don’t feel any passion in their products and meanwhile also believe that many lines of code on their OS & apps are just random data.

Hence: any company that shows a passion with their products is highly appreciated. A passion to deliver good quality.

Reader
I think the iPad is the best reading device. Why? Because I can not display most of my PDFs on a 7″ eInk display without constantly zooming in and out. So as long as eInk readers aren’t running a bit faster for this purpose, the iPad is the better alternative to me at the moment although I am sure we’ll soon see more 7″ devices.

The Amazon tablet(s) would have been an interesting alternative to me, but their 7″ Fire tablet isn’t even available here! In my opinion as a customer, if you can’t launch/ship global, then don’t even launch it for a single country. You can do that for Japan, maybe, but not for the US that are so connected with the rest of the world.

Apps
There are SO MANY apps available for the iPad. In fact, most publishing houses in Europe ONLY offer iPad apps for their print products. No Android app, only iOS. Sad, but still the bitter reality. Because I’d also be happy with a competitve (and available) Android tablet.

Talking of Android tablets, my friend Dave recently got an Asus eeePad Transformer TF101 and – as a pilot for an international airline – tried to pick the better alternative. Unfortunately, his tablet already broke after only two month and his biggest complain was the lousy App situation for Android Honeycomb (as compared to the iPad, of course, which is hard to beat). Dave – go and get your iPad. Now!

Adrian – I missed my chance to get an HP TouchPad for 99 EUR. I reckon that it would have been an interesting PDF reader and surfing device for me.

Runtime
Battery runtime on the iPad is just totally crazy. It’s long enough to get me through a day at a BarCamp and that’s all that matters to me.

Also, 29 million customers enable a fabulous aftermarket. You’ll find plenty and cheap chargers as well as other accessorries on eBay, on FocalPrice and so on.

Portability
I remember when Eric told me about his daily trips to the office through Nairobi traffic and mentioned how the iPad actually is the solution to his mobile office.

Just look at how many of us laughed about the iPad and its limited capabilites back when the iPad1 was launched. And now we are even using it to have a mobile office and a quick device for that daily “lemme google that”-moment.

Sure, the iPad2 is heavy and we’ll probably all complain about the size once there are more 7″ readers/tablets, but after my previous experience with a 8.9″ and a 10.1″ netbook, I know for sure that 12″-14″ is the best laptop size for me and that this 10″ tablet does it for me atm.

HP tc4400 vs. Apple iPad 2
(the HP tc4400 tablet pc also serves as my backup machine)

———————————-

I am not yet ready to fully convert to the Apple world (+ Ubuntu is cheaper anyways :-), but this lack of passion on MS products certainly is a very valid reason for me. It’s also kind of ironic that Bill Gates himself is very passionate about his philanthropic foundation for this passion has already enabled so much good work (the BMGF are imo doing a very good job by financing smaller projects). I wish some of this passion could also reflect back on Microsoft and that their future tablets with Windows 8+ will provide a suitable alternative. But atm, I highly doubt that.

So we were asked for donations and I did that, donated a small amount (via Paypal). You can do the same if you’d like to and can afford it.

Now, the person behind this G+ post lives in Spain, is probably German with Spanish roots and I’ve never met him. So why should I donate anything to a foreigner I’ve never seen “in real life”?

In February 2010, I posted this item called “offline/online” on my blog, asking my readers: “how important is it to meet offline? Does it change anything? Would you continue working with your online contacts if you were to meet them offline?”

When we told this story to my (probable :-) father-in-law, his first reaction was: “…but you don’t know him! Maybe he’s trying to con you?”. I am sure my sister and my mother would react in the very same way.

Eh, if you grew up in Nairobi, you’re used to folks trying to con you. Or trying to milk your pocket just bcs you live in a bigger house.

And still I gave some of my hard earned money to a stranger. For me, this time it’s not (only) a matter of sharing or giving because you can or because I felt sorry for the dog, but to prove that even these pure online connections matter as much as meeting somone offline. I am following this user on G+ for some time now, read his posts and that’s enough reason to trust someone. For me, that is.

Someone else from the German blogosphere even wrote that “this is how Social Media works”. Amazingly true. A network purely based on trust. Some things will never change, and while these “trust” networks obviously work in other cultures (Dabbawalla in India or Hawala in Somalia), this Christian part of Europe is still having problems with this modern form of trust. But why?

(I just realized that “Tumaini” is a recurring issue and post title on my blog :-)

This week, one of my Twitter followers died way too early. It’s unknown why he died at such an early age in his late thirties, and the cause actually doesn’t really matter. What matters is that his voice will be missed among the many opinions out there. A qualified opinion that knew what The Net is all about.

Whenever I see people tweeting “R.I.P [$prominent person]“, I don’t take it as a standardised way of replying on a sudden or even expected death, but rather understand it that those who wish the “Rest In Peace” actually care about the dead person and his/her achievements.

The irony is that many letters of condolence regarding his death mentioned that they “had only known him online” – which really reminds me of my blogpost ex 2010 where I had asked about the real difference between these offline and online worlds. Obviously, there’s none in 2011 – because we value people by what they contribute and share with others. Offline or online.

When someone dies and leaves this world with a legacy of 400+ blog posts dedicated to the political strategy for the internet and explaining how it has meanwhile become part of our lives – well then I can only take my hat off to this guy and appreciate what he has left behind.

Activism really pays off. Have an opinion on something, contribute and share your thoughts. It’s all that matters.

Clotaire Rapaille, who runs a company that tries to explore the “hot button” in each culture, also published a book called “The Culture Code – An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do”.

The idea of having someone actually trying to make a connection between consumer behaviour and how a particular society / swarm acts because “it’s in their culture” triggered my interest and actually made me buy this book – and this although Rapaille received a lot of hatred and anger over his remarks on the “code” of the City of Québec in Canada.

I was reminded of this culture code thing today when I openely tweeted about the many demand media and rss-feed link farms from India vs. original content and tried to explain – with Rapaille’s words! – that “Indians are at root a practical people”, which is why they wouldn’t waste time on reinventing stuff.

Now, India of course isn’t about copying foreign works and I truly believe that a lot of innovations and understanding in today’s “civilized” world actually hail from the Indian continent, BUT this “are practical people” somehow stuck with me because I believe it to be very true.

And that’s exactly my reason for today’s blog post: like my post on “The Africans” the other day, there’s always this danger of making such public statements. “Germans, Indians, Kenyans, Spaniards – they are all so and so”. You’ll instantly be hated by your readers if you make such general statements because in most cases they’ll reply with a “WTF?!” and will start arguing with you.

Of course we’re not all the same, and I myself am probably a good example of why such phrases don’t make sense, but despite all our differences, I think there’s still this culture code thing, the hot button as Rapaille calls it, which defines a common nature within a given culture. Something from deep down within, something from the “reptilian brain”.

It may not be the ultimate code that will explain all actions in a society (of course not), but if one of these identified culture codes could help to fix some of the problems we’re currently having out there in this world (e.g. wrong management that will lead to famines, exploitation of natural resources, wrong priorities, injustice, wars, etc.), then I am all for these codes.

Which gets me back to my sanitation-related blog post and the question, if there is any culture code in toilets. Well, is there? How come that in Japan consumers spend ~ 2500 EUR on a computerized toilet while in other, poorer societies, a toilet is at the very end of the wish list? And this while the toilet thing affects all humans on this planet?

A question which – according to Rapaille (or Freud? :-) – makes me think we should seat our kids on 2000 EUR toilets only to trigger such a demand at a very early age.

Customer: Do you have Soul?
Rob: That all depends.

This private blog is online since six years now and during this time I have covered a lot of topics that touched me one way or the other. Love, music, politics, environment, computer….yes, I even wrote about cars the other day.

And yet there’s still one blog post that’s been idling in my drafts folder since early March 2008 and will probably never be published unless I just start writing about it:

My Top 10 list of music videos

I’ve never published it for various reasons. One certainly being that such a list will have to change over time, so to define such a list for good is almost impossible. It’s not like the above mentioned list of Top 10 cars which only includes classics. No, a list of most-loved music videos is a temporary love affair that becomes diluted by the constant penetration with new music videos.

I tried this the other day with a list of Top 10 favorite songs. I went through my music library, copied all relevant mp3 files in an empty folder, uploaded them, listened to my selection and realized I got it all wrong:

TOP10 lists suck. Why? Because in the end you’ll realize that a selection almost isn’t possible and that if anything at all, it will just define the moment or a certain period.

It’s not the list that matters, but the selection process while searching and deciding which songs are eligible for such a list. And in the end you’ll just compile it for your own satisfaction and desire to have a Top10 list somewhere out there – on the internet or burned to a CD in your shelf.

a somehow unrelated photo I’ve posted here to focus your attention on the text. (yes, I’ve recently repaired this Marshall guitar amp for a friend of mine)

There are alternatives to Spotify, alternatives that are accessible from Germany, namely Grooveshark and Simfy. Grooveshark is somehow questionable because – as far as I know – they do not have agreements with record labels or the German Society for Musical Performing and Mechanical Reproduction Rights (GEMA) which has for long been an obstacle for internet surfers in Germany to access music videos from a German IP. But nevertheless, from a user perspective – and that’s all that matters right now – it doesn’t really matter which service you are using as long as your stuff is available*. What’s your stuff, you ask? Your metadata.

I am using the term “metadata” to describe all the soft and invisible stuff that provides the extra, the bonus data that brings the icing on the cake. With music services, it clearly is playlists. Your own and those of other users you’ve subscribed to.

Playlists

Now, with all these different music services, music in form of downloadable mp3s and streaming audio to your desktop computer or even mobile phone, it seems to be obvious that the availability of multimedia files as such isn’t the latest fashion, but instead your private or shared playlists. Playlists, I think, are the same reason why I prefer carefully written music blogs to mass music blogs that keep on publishing music-related posts just because it’s their business. No, playlists are the modern mixtape, the human selection that you can share with others. To me, these are very valuable.

When I switched from Spotify to Grooveshark the other day, I was wondering about my playlists and starred tracks on Spotify and how to get them onto Grooveshark. There’s a service that does exactly that: Groovylists.com – which will help you importing up to 200 tracks in one go.

In-Sync

However, I found myself preferring Spotify to Grooveshark for different reasons (there’s Fadhili Williams on Spotify!) so I went back to using Spotify and have been wondering how to keep these lists in sync. Would I want to manually keep all these services in sync? Will this question be solved one day with the introduction of Apples’s music cloud service and the standards (if any) it will set for their competitors? Mimi, me I don’t know. But what I do know is that we’ll urgently need a service that syncs all our metadata to the cloud and makes it available via a secured API to all these fancy new Web 2.0 sites. Just like the already existing password, bookmark and setting synchronisation via Firefox, Chrome, Xmarks and LastPass. Or that I can already backup all the apps from my Android phone to my Dropbox folder via Titanium Backup in one go.

What we’ll need is ONE service that does just that. Something that we can trust and that syncs all the selected metadata, be it private or openly shared, from all devices and all services to all devices and services. I’d even pay for (the privacy of) it.

Does something like that already exist?

(* = “your music”, as in “your mp3 won’t be uploaded to our music service because it already exists on our Amazon-S3-based service where we’re paying for the Gigabyte”, or in other words: it’s not the music files that matter, but the associated data, hence the metadata)

AOB, but also somehow related:

Probably the best reason to spend 8 minutes of your lifetime on my blog.