Not a week goes by without new allegations and threats against Google from German officials. Recently there were reports of federal and state officials debating to make the usage of Google Analytics illegal because of fears that Google might create detailed user profiles based on users' interests. This would consequently impose fines on websites using this tool to collect and analyze anonymous usage data from their visitors. In other bizarre news, local officials in a small city have voted for a plan to charge Google per kilometer for Street View footage.The latest assault comes from Germany's minister of justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (FDP) who in the Spiegel magazine (poor translation here) threatens with legislative actions unless Google is rethinking its what ...Read More
During the Christmas holidays I had the chance to finally cross off a few things on my to-do list. One major item was to take care of the ol' blog. I started with replacing the Mandigo theme with the simpler Nautica which I came across a while back.What I like about the Nautica theme for Wordpress is the striped down design and the focus on typography. It took a little while to get my head around the CSS and all the function, but I managed to make some necessary customizing to make the layout look they way I wanted it to. There are still a few things left to fix, one being to increase the width on the single post ...Read More
Here are my favourite songs of 2009:Tracklisting:1 Bricks And Mortar /Editors
2 Only If You Run /Julian Plenti
3 My Will Is Good /Port O'Brien
4 Two Weeks /Grizzly Bear
5 It Don't Move Me /Peter Bjorn and John
6 Daniel /Bat for Lashes
7 11th Dimension /Julian Casablancas
8 Hard Times /Patrick Wolf
9 Young Adult Friction /The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
10 Songbird /Theodor Jensen
11 Airport Surroundings /Loney Dear
12 I'll Fight /Wilco
13 Cornerstone /Arctic Monkeys
14 One More Chance /Bloc Party
15 Feel It All Around /Washed Out
16 Deadbeat Summer /Neon Indian
17 Collapsing At Your Doorstep /Air France
18 Perfection as a Hipster /God Help the Girl
19 French Navy /Camera Obscura
20 Bicycle /Memory Tapes
21 Seven /Fever Ray
22 Kiss my name /Antony & the Johnsons
23 Every Path /Alela Diane
24 Gimme Sympathy (Acoustic) /Metric
25 Bluish /Animal CollectiveHead over to 8tracks.com and create your own mix - don't forget to share a link! :) Read More
Update 30/5: You can find photos from this concert here: my photos, voss and Readheadwalking, all on Flickr.After his debut on Irish soil in Whelans in December last year, the Swedish king of Indie pop, Jens Lekman, is returning to Dublin, this time with full band to play the Village venue on Sunday 25 May. Having seen him on stage twice, once with and once without the band, I cannot say which one I preferred more. Alone on stage he is the centre of attention and plays more on his charm and witty style which really pulls in the crowd throughout the show. But with the band there is whole other show on offer; he is then able to take ...Read More
It has gone 22 years since the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated in Stockholm. Palme is one of the most well-known Swedish politicians of our time due to his fierce opposition to American foreign policies and his assassination on 28 February 1986.United States recalled its Ambassador to Sweden in February 1968 in protest to Palme (then Minister of Education) participating in a demonstration in Stockholm against the war in Vietnam. In 1972 relations between Sweden and the United States were frozen for over a year after a speech by Palme (PM) comparing the US bombings of Hanoi to other atrocities such as the bombing of Guernica and extermination of Jews at Treblinka. The U.S government called this ...Read More
My name is Hessam Lavi and I live in Berlin, Germany. I'm an ex-Googler and have worked with Search and SEO for almost 5 years now. Apart from the obvious (optimization, conversion, web analytics etc) I'm also passionate about music and photography. 