This weekend we were visiting some friends of us to celebrate their birthday in a nice little premise in Vienna.
We arrived Saturday in the early afternoon and went into the city center to do some shopping in our favourite bookstore. I want to give you a visual impression of the route from the museum quarter right into the city center of Vienna.

We start from the museum of art history.

We cross the highly frequented “Ring” (the inner of two circles surrounding the city center) and pass by the “Hofburg”

The Hofburg was and still is the residence of the Austrian leaders and I think the current president of the United States (Geroge W. Bush) will be welcomed there when he visits Austria this summer. The stand in front of the building is not always there. People could sit there and watch the runners of the Vienna Marathon which took place last Sunday.
Right after passing the Hofburg we end up at the “Michaelerplatz” where you have the chance to meet Mozart’s little Brother if you are lucky… I don’t have to mention that we were lucky:

Although his clothing may look quite antiquated he knows how to use a mobile. If you head straight forward you will most probably get to see some old form of transportation: the Viennese Gondoliere (like the Italian ones, just replace the Gondolas with Horses).

If you pass continue the street, passing by the traditional and famous K.u.K. Hofzuckerbäcker Demel you will then end up at the plague pillar

Then you really are in the center. Right around the corner at the end of the street you’ll find the “Stephansdom”. After shopping we went to get some more Mozart right behind the Hofburg:

It is no coincidence that you bump into some kind of Mozart artefact. Our most famous musician (next after Johann Hölzel) is celebrating his 250th birthday. Not only one single day but the whole year. Happy birthday Wolfgang. A toast to the genius of our “Woiferl”.

The Exalead search engine.

While using my favourite flavour of GNU/Linux as operating system I got so used to have multiple alternatives for every task that I also started to look out for alternatives for other everyday tasks. It seems as if one of the most recurring tasks to me is searching the internet. Looking up any keyword or topic I just heard of and did not know what it meant or did not know the background. My favourite engine is the Google search engine at the moment. But for several reasons I don’t want to rely on only one solution anymore.

Working in the IT-branch I do care of alternatives because you always have to have a good resort if plan A fails. That is why most internet service providers are connected redundant to the internet. It happened to us that some workers dug a hole somewhere between Vienna and Linz. Sadly they cut the three main fibre channels which connect half of Linz to the Vienna core node. If you are not connected redundant all your services will stop to work for an indefinitely time. Now imagine that one day the google webpage might not be accessible one day because all their servers were confiscated by the US because of investigations against terror. So a good alternative would be the lifebelt for those who are seeking for information.

Another thing is that it might be a good idea to spread ones activities over different services. If you take a look at the current Google empire you will realize that they have already all the data they need to track all of your activities. It is obvious that Google can see what you searched for when you use the Google search engine. But what about the not so obvious trackers? Nearly on every page on the web you can find ads which are coming from the Google Adsense program. It might not be so obvious for average surfers but technically it works like that: if a website uses the Google Adsense program the webpage itself includes ads which are coming directly from the Google servers and not from the original page itself. For e.g. if site A has got a google banner on the index page and you are watching it your browser first gets the source code of the index page of site A and then displays it to you. As the sourcecode contains commands for your browser to fetch ads from Google it connects to the Google server, fetches the information and integrates it into the index page of site A. One would think that there is no connection yet between site A and Google yet but there is. To be able to integrate the Ads site A has to provide a user ID to Google so that it delivers ads and so that Google can relate clicks on ads to the user ID for accounting reasons.

In other words: Not only by using the search engine you are giving Google the power to collect your data. On every single page which you are visiting and which contains Google ads, Google videos, Google maps, any other Google service Google can collect your data. They know on which page you where on which day and what content the page displayed. So they can make a really good profile of your person. They don’t have your personal details yet but in business world it must be a very very big power to have access to that data. A company with that information is able to track all the trends and interests on a global basis. Just amazing if you would sell such information to marketing companies or even governments. An incredible thought.

I wonder when Google is going to start as a telecommunication provider for mobile phones. The access to data would be more or less the same, just in real life. You can track where which person is at which location at which time. And as you are providing the data channels you can also analyze the content itself. And in this very case you even know the personal data such as name, address, etc. as well

Ok. Enough conspiracy theory for today. I am not telling anyone to be that paranoid but just to think all over before wakign up *after* someone misused all the gathered data. And to be honest I am not going to dump Google as my favourite search engine in the near future. And on my webpage you can see that I am also using Google maps. I will just try to also switch to alternatives more often which leads us back to the main topic here: the Google alternative.

In Europe there is some development going on on an alternative search engine to Google. The project is called Quaero and aims to bring out a good search engine alternative. On one side I am not a fan of “let’s make some clone of something” just to break into a market which is more or less entirely in American hands. But on the other hand I am a big fan of alternatives, especially when one single corporation has the control over the complete sector. One search engine which is involved in the Quaero project is Exalead. The details can also be read at Wikipedia.org. The interface is also very simple and easy to use but comes with some nice features (which you can turn on if you want but which you are not condemned to use from the beginning). So you don’t have to install multiple plugins [1] [2] for your Firefox browser.

Yesterday we enjoyed our last movie of the Crossing Europe film festival 2006. It was Kontakt, a Macedonian/German production. A very funny and entertaining movie which won the “Ray” audience award of the festival. The audience was glad to hear some statements of the main actress of the movie (who revealed the major secret of the main actor of the movie).

The festival was quite successful and very very interesting and entertaining for the audience. We are already looking forward to the next festival, taking place from 24th to 29th of April 2007.

Kontakt movie, imdb.com

Right back from my second day at the Crossing Europe film festival. Today I joined two marvellous screenings: the “European animation highlights” and “On the outskirts (Am Rande der Städte)”.

The “European animation highlights” are a compilation of short films which gives a good overview of European animation works of the last year. The DVD should be available around June (hopefully, the initiators of the DVD said). The range of different styles was amazing. From light, entertaining trick films to really deep and heavy animations. I have to admit that one or two masterpieces were too abstract for my taste but it was good to see all the different types of contributions. One of my favourites was Fallen Arts which was an award winning computer animation. Just take a look at the incredible awards list. But the compilation also contained works of yet unknown students who delivered high quality animations too. The first work was “Maestro” which you can download here (44MB MPG). Sadly I did not find any other works online.

“On the outskirts” is a documentary film which deals with new communities which have evolved on the Turkish coastal areas. Large buildings where the Turkish people who worked hard in foreign countries (especially Germany) spend their retirement. The director itself explained to the audience that she wanted to focus on the problem the children of those workers face. They are forced to go “back” to a country which language they barely speak and to which they hardly have any connection anymore. It was very informative to listen to the directors stories. I am glad that I could see the film as it shows me a different Turkey than that I had in my mind.

The images of the festival officials are not published yet at the Crossing Europe gallery homepage. I am quite sure that I must be on one of the photos they took today Will check it out tomorrow…