Patrick C. Price

Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

So it’s been two years to the day, since the new american government has been sworn in. Today, I got an e-mail from Vice President Joe Biden (ok, it wasn’t a personal one) linking to the following report, about what the current administration has achieved during it’s first two years in office.

Now personally, I am a republican at heart. But the way politics are currently run in the US, I must say, I stand steadily shoulder to shoulder with the direction Barack Obama’s administration is going.

Although I believe strongly, that government should be kept small and that the private sector should be allowed to rules it self, I do also strongly believe, that the government representing us as a people, needs to set some ruling guidelines in order to controll corporate greed and keep the power balance between us as citizens and large corporations intact. It is we, wo are the country. Let us not be reduced to pure consumers.

Congratulations on your achievements Barack and Joe. Keep sailing on!

A good friend of mine recently sent me this candid camera video of a snake exhibition quoting: “one could try this out once at your place” refering to my own (non-venomous) snakes.

There’s an old saying: It’s all fun and games, until someone looses an eye. I stumbled over this short movie on YouTube, showing why you should NEVER play on the potential fear of people EVER.

WARNING: This video is not for the light hearted, but it will leave you with a very distinct learning for life.

A few months ago, I had the idea, of finding and connecting with all the “Patrick Price’s” on facebook. I founded a group called the Patrick Price’s of the world.

Now I happend to come across a Movie on YouTube, called “Google Me”, which describes the case of Jim Killeen, that set out to go meet all the Jim Killeen’s out there.

I find it quite a cool movie and suggest you get your beamer out, pop some popcorn and enjoy a story of how our world is become more interconnected each day.

Just happened to stumble upon this short movie about how moments can create connections…

Yesterday was the Keith Jared concert in Zurich. I had gone with a friend, with whom I had gotten to know the “Köln concert” (listen) by Keith Jared.

Jared is an pianist who improvises most of his concerts. So there’s a lot of tone-finding and experimenting going on, while he’s playing. So it was unsure what to expect during the concert.

I realized, that other than with most concerts I’ve been to, you normally know one or two pieces of music atleast and can be looking forward for them to be played. Well, with improvisations that’s a different story.

The concert was in two segments of each approx. 40 minutes and each segment consisted of 4-5 individual improvisations. The concert was recored and will be made available as a CD. Of all the parts played, I personally only enjoyed 3.

Non-the-less, it was fun to see, how Jared stands up and silenty sings along as he plays. One could get the impression, in his head, he’s a a way larger concert and it’s just the piano background, that the people in the audience get to hear.

And I must point out, it’s a great thing, he doesn’t sing any louder, than he does. He might be the greatest piano player ever, but at the same time, he’s the worst singer ever.

Another strange thing was, that after leaving the stage for the 3rd or 4th time and returning for an encore, someone seemed to take a picture of him and he happened to see the red light of the camera and went off, as “this being the rudest thing in 61 years of playing the piano…” asking the person to appologize and calling him an asshole.

Well, Mr. Jared, although I have complete understanding, that you do not want your music show up on platforms like YouTube, etc. you might still want to change your approach to the problem.

You might want to come to an understanding, that people want to take home a photograph or a sound example to show their friends and tell them, how great the concert was. Not granting your paying audience this wish, is about as rude as vice-versa.

So why not take a more pragmatic approach by offering a deal to your audience à la: “Ok, I understand you want some pictures and maybe even video, sound, etc.” so here are the first three mintues of the concert, that you can film, take pictures of, share on you social networks, etc. and give them a “released to the public” concert opening. Then after 3 minutes, stopp, ask everyone to turn of their phones, cameras, etc, and shut up and enjoy the concert with no more interruptions at all. I’m sure it would be of way greater value to you, as it would virally spread your concert and be like a free preview to your CD. Think about it. Calling your audience “asshole” is not the finest thing to do.

This is one of the reasons I like Google.

This corporate movie, as most are, is a bit glorifying, but when in comes right down to it, I think the main difference between Google and print publishers is, that Google really enables people to speak, where as print publishers believe they are entitled to speak for the people. Being among the few people with a printing press has really corrupted many publishers making them think, they are the authority, where as it is the people, and they should be voicing that.

Manchmal finde ich es schlicht und ergreifend zum Kotzen… Dieses ewige Blogger vs. Journalisten Thema.So schreibt in der aktuellen Welt-Woche, Kurt W. Zimmermann seine Kolumne über  «Das Blogismus-Problem» in der er bemängelt, dass es keine bissigen deutschsprachigen Blogs gebe.Pro-Blogger Peter Hogenkamp geht da natürlich sofort und mit viel Power und Elan drauf ein. Kurt W. Zimmermann, Du alter Medienwichser! Gratulation!Bei solchen Posts find ich Hogenkamp wieder richtig gut.Was ich an der Diskussion aber müssig finde, ist das ewige Hin und Her, wer jetzt den besseren Journalismus macht, oder diese ewige Rollen-Zuteilung. Bist Du Blogger? Bist Du Journalist, bald kommt noch, bist Du Twitterer?Hallo? Wacht mal auf!Bei Blogs gehts um Meinungen! Blogs, Tweets, Leser-Briefe, SMS, Flugblätter, Flyer alles Formen der freien one-to-many Meinungsäusserung.Wir leben in einer Zeit in der die Meinungen nicht mehr nur von einer kleinen Zahl von Leuten publiziert und damit auch kontrolliert werden, sondern in der die Vielzahl der Meinungen zunehmends steigt. Es findet eine globale Diskussion statt, and der sich jeder beteiligen kann, darf und womöglich auch soll!Denn nur durch die Betrachtung aus vielen Blickwickeln wird etwas wirklich transparent. (Beispiel Spion-Spiegel, ist nur einseitig transparent)Liebe Medienschaffende, lernt, dass nicht ihr die Meinungen wiedergebt, spiegelt und kontrolliert, sondern wir, die Menschen dieser Welt. Zeitungen, Filme, TV, Blogs, Youtube, etc. alles sind nur Kanäle der Meinungsdistribution. Und je offener diese Kanäle, desto mehr werden sie genutzt und “embraced”.@Weltwoche: öffnet Euer Archiv und teilt Eure Meinung mit, anstatt sie den nur bezahlenden Menschen zugänglich zu machen und allen anderen vorzuenthalten. Startet Diskussionen und lasst die Leute daran partizipieren. Das ist die wahre Aufgabe zukünftiger Medien.Im übrigen empfehle ich: www.blognews.ch – unsere Social Media News PlattformUnd wer selbst noch keinen eigenen Meinungsäusserungs-Distributionskanal hat, der kriegt hier seinen eigenen! www.blog.ch@ Peter: Das C. bei mir ist kein Doktor-Titel, sondern stammt aus dem amerikanischen Teil meiner Herkunftskultur  Gerne wiedermal auf ein Bier!@ Kurt W.: unter www.blogverzeichnis.ch findest Du viele gute Schweizer Blogs zu über 32 Themen!

So today, was my last day at Scout24. I held a nice presentation and all went great. Had a nice chat with an interesting SEO guy on the train.The last couple of weeks, I was working on my start-up and have gone through a great course called ‘venture training’, offered by http://www.venturelab.ch. The guy running the show is Dominik Tarolli. Doing a great job at it, he provides young swiss startups with know-how and network.

I met a few cool guys on the way. eLoad24 is a companyproviding web-users with access to condensed knowhow. LogCut.com is a micromedia-commercialization-assistant . Need an airport shuttle? Use transferbus.net for european airport transfers. Social collaboration? amazee.com might be what you are looking for…

Anyhow, it’s interesting to learn, how the visual enfavors perception.

A friend of mine recently had a IM-mood-tag: ‘the future is here to take’. Let’s see, what the future brings.

God is always and everywhere.

At least thats what I learned in school. But is the new millenium changing the religios world? Or at least ist boundaries?

Imagine, Google knows all the content on the web. As it points out, it’s goal is to make the worlds knowlegde universally accessible to everyone (and everywhere, speaking about mobile).

Now, Google knows our content, G also knows our emails, soon G will know our conversations (Gtalk), and with it’s wifi-network in plan, G will know, when and where we are, what we are doing, what we shouldn’t be doing, etc. Take Picasa G will see what we have done.

Speaking about G is always and everywhere, is Google the new God?

Imagine if Google can teach it’s Servers not only to index everything it sees, but rather to understand in real-time everything it knows, wouldn’t that be the nearest thing to God, our planet has ever seen?

Don’t get me wrong,
a) I love Google (this is a blogger.com account, changed to WordPress in 2008) and
b) i am not religious, but none the less, I thought it’san interessting question, let’s talk in 10 years…