This tweet and news story from The Netherlands caught my eye this morning – “Dutch Railways will make trains to Berlin and Brussels much faster: “We want to seduce air passengers”” the title says. Whether prioritising that route – to get people off planes – even makes sense is open […]
When I moved to Berlin in 2013 I needed to find a flat. I used a blog entry to help with my search, and wrote up my search experiences in the blog post “How To Find a Flat In Berlin” in January 2014. That post became one of the most […]
OK, next up in Jon tries to solve Coronavirus social problems… what about grocery deliveries? My first specification was for a WordPress plugin to coordinate local food deliveries in my building and neighbourhood, which – when coming up with a Minimum Viable Product – is going to start with a […]
tl;dr – join both Coup and Emmy If instead you want some detail, read on. Contents Introduction Prerequisites Signup Pricing Scooters Helmets Test rides Miscellaneous other remarks Summary Introduction Berlin – long the testing groud for car sharing schemes – has a new mobility craze. The eScooter sharing scheme. […]
The German tech and politics conference re-publica has been going a decade now, and the tenth edition (in its third and final day today as I write this) is supposed to be about reflection. I’ve been to eight editions of re-publica – I was first a speaker back in 2009 […]
Yesterday one of the initiators of the “Volksentscheid Fahrrad” in Berlin came to make a presentation at my local Grüne party meeting. The campaign initiators want to use Berlin’s direct democracy systems to put 10 major changes to Berlin cycle infrastructure into law – these include some pretty major infrastructure […]
Back in 2009 Tom Steinberg wrote this: The most scary thing about the Internet for your government is not pedophiles, terrorists or viruses, whatever you may have read in the papers. It is the danger of your administration being silently obsoleted by the lightening pace at which the Internet changes […]
So the New York Times was at it this week, stating “Why Brussels is the New Berlin“. The NYT is a bit slow with that actually, as Deutsche Welle asked the same question back in August – at least their piece had a narrower focus on the arts scene that […]
Dear Violeta, It’s only a week or so since I wrote the last postcard to you. That one didn’t receive a response – perhaps you were too busy talking to the rail industry, rather than thinking of passengers’ needs? Anyway, today at Köln Hbf things went spectacularly wrong as happens […]
Dear Violeta, I have had plenty of time to contemplate this postcard to you. Most of the day in fact, as I’ve wasted that long trying to get to the bottom of what ought to be a rather simple cross-border railway problem. Later this week – on Thursday 8th October […]
I have been a jury member for Quadriga’s Digital Communication Awards in 2014 and 2015 and, prompted by fellow jury member Aurélie’s post about this year’s awards, here are a few thoughts about the awards this year, and what projects might like to do to stand a chance of winning […]
Today I sent a fax. Yes, on 17th August 2015 this is still necessary. Because I had received a letter on paper from the administration of the city of Berlin and my reply had to be sent either on paper or by fax. No e-mail address, or indeed telephone number […]