Well, I post it in German... Unfortunately I can not participate myself in those interesting projects but only can recommend them. All you would have to pay is 30% of the travelling costs (and flights to Turkey and France are not that expansive!), so take the chance! For all those who study IKEAS it is - I am sure - a good opportunity to gain intercultural competence.
Please spread the information on your homepages, emails and so on. For further information please click on the coutries and you will be directed automatically to the pages of the project.
Thanks a lot!

**Teilnehmer für Projekte in Frankreich und Türkei gesucht**

Frankreich: 10.07.2006 - 20.07.2006
Türkei: 01.09. - 09.09.2006

Offen für alle Teilnehmer zwischen 18 und 25 Jahren! Fragen und Anmeldungen bei Stefan-At-Newchance.de
Alle Informationen auf
Newchance.de (Stichwort "Internationales")

I have held the lecture and now I am happy. Everything went real well although I had some problems at the beginning to explain the technical terms part. To my surprise the class was real empty. Of those 21 students counted last time there were only 15 present! But I would say the topics were actually not that boring (were they?). For those who have missed the presentation (and of course also for those who have listened) there is a handout available for download. Just click here or go to the Center for US-Studies where you also find the course schedule.
Well, anyway... thank you again for listening and for being patient because I needed some more time than the actual lesson was.

I dont know why but the comments are not displayed properly in my blog. After I heard from several people that they could not write a comment I tried it myself. Indeed the comments are not displayed. So far I could not figure out what the problem is. I tried to re-organize the template but... no result yet. I only found out that Blogger collects the actual comments but they are invisible. Well, I hope I can fix it soon.
Unfortunately Blogger was overtaxed with re-publishing the templates today. I even could hardly log in. Is it only a problem I have? (If it works again feel free to comment on this ;-)

[Update]

Hurray! It works again. So please feel free to comment me...

Now, one week prior to my lecture, the subtopics and title are fixed (the more or less). But instead of giving the lecture here in detail I remain silent and keep the secret...
So, everybody should be looking forward to coming next Monday to class and to hear about what you should know about Web logs, their history and functions and how you (finally) can change the world...

Yes! Finally! It works! In the morning I installed a tool on my computer for editing blogs from my desktop. You can find it under W.Bloggar. I hope that with it editing blogs would be no problem anymore in the blogger. But so far I could not try it. The first difficulty was to start the program because as I just found out, it could do nothing with my password where I used some special signs in it. Well, anyway, now it works I hope and this is the first entry I upload with it.

Dear Reader of my blog,

Please stop here for a while and tell me why you have clicked on my blog. If you have your own blog, why do you write a blog and when have you started doing so?

This is meant seriously because in university we do some researches about the internet. My task is to find out about weblogs and the people who write them. So far I did not make much progress and rather found out about technical aspects.
If there is someone who likes to share her or his opinion with me please contact me.
Thanks a lot!!!

Well, yea… I have to confess something… This makes me feel slightly embarrassed because it is a confession in public.

My attitude towards blogs has changed somehow. I mean, I still have no solid opinion about this form of communication yet. But it starts fascinating me. There are a lot of possibilities to share things with whomever. During the last week I read some texts about blogs – no real deep study so far – but it is quite interesting. Especially the function of RSS is something exciting. I imagine that news must spread very fast that way! I will try to add an RSS-feature in my blog. –For now just as a test.

I also have thought of moving my blog. The msn-spaces are not really that satisfactory anymore. I have seen some blogs on blogger.com now and they provide much more freedom. The advantage of this Microsoft blog is that everything is really easy and you don’t have to know html or other codes to set up a blog. But this is also a disadvantage. So far I found no function which allows you to add some extra commands or features. When something doesn’t work, like in my profile uploading photos, you can do nothing about it. –At least I do not know how.
So I created already a profile at www.blogger.com. I could tell you the name already but so far there is no “new” content. First I have to experiment myself with creating it. Well, I have not had a closer look so far but things seem to be more sophisticated there. I tried uploading a picture too, but it wasn’t like in the msn-spaces where a pop-up appears and you just can select one from your hard disk. But fortunately there is everywhere a description. I hope I can figure it out during the weekend. If not, just give me some more time…
(Maybe, if I was successful, I can give some instructions during my lecture? –A crash course… “How to blog on / at / with Blogger” ;o)

Okay, I have a „blog“. So what?
This summer semester the university offers a course about “The Impact of Internet on American Society”. One of the course requirements was to create one’s own blog. That’s what I did. -But only because of this requirement!
I never have thought of doing so before. When this all started with blogs and so on a friend of mine was really fond of those blogs (and still is I think). She always read the diaries of other people and eventually created her own cyberspace. So far I absolutely don’t share her ardour. What is so interesting about reading the diaries of others? My own life is exciting enough. Their privacy shall remain theirs. So at first I basically don’t understand why people feel the need to read a blog and second why they write blogs. I mean why do those people think somebody would feel interested in their boring life?
But I don’t know much about blogs yet. At the moment I would call them only the “voluntary” spam of the internet. The only difference is that blogs are not sent coincidentally to whoever the receiver may be. People even go voluntarily on them.
I am very sceptical about those blogs at the moment. We will see if this changes during the course of the … course.
But as a “sign of good will” I even took the lecture about “blogs” and their impact on society which is already in 2 weeks.
My progresses on that issue will be posted here then.
But since this everybody-creates-his-own-blog-project is an experiment I am also keen to know if it will work out. I have thought of one “danger”: For those who in preparation for their lectures at the beginning of the courses have acquired a thorough knowledge of their topic it will be difficult to maintain a visible progress in their blog-postings about the same topic afterwards.
Well, anyway, I will try to keep my blog up to date and to get to know more about the advantages and disadvantages of what I still regard as “strange” :)