Recent posts in my Austria Category
April 16, 2009
Re-creating 1940s Grödig and St Leonhard
When I lived in Austria working at Sony, one of the interesting bits of local history that caught my eye was that the area I stayed in had hosted refugee, internment and prisoner of war camps during both the First and Second World Wars. Although the camp no longer existed, there was the odd bit of evidence around Salzburg, including this postcard I spotted in an antique shop, featuring Serbian prisoners of war during the 1914-18 conflict. Some research on...
November 2, 2008
The Hexenturm Files...coming to Radio 4
You might recall that 18 months ago I was living in Salzburg, Austria, whilst working with Sony. At the time the joint blog that my wife and I write about our travels was called 'Some Edelweiss Of Our Own' rather than 'A lemon tree of our own'. Whilst in Salzburg, my better half wrote a series of articles which she called 'The Hexenturm Files'. She had noticed a picture of a spooky old building in the laundry she used on...
June 19, 2008
Euro 2008: The websites - League table
Euro 2008 is now down to just 8 teams, but over the last two weeks of matches I've been surveying the websites of the original 16 finalists. There weren't any major surprises there. It seems that the larger and more prosperous nations had the best websites - and the big three of Germany, France and Italy seemed to be dominating in the online world in the way they have so often done in the past on the football field....
June 8, 2008
Euro 2008: The websites - Austria & Croatia
Euro 2008 kicked off yesterday with an opening match between Switzerland and the Czech Republic in Basel, and another game between Portugal vs Turkey in Geneva. Obviously I watched the games, but I've also had an eye on the websites of the football associations in the competing nations. Today's programme of games sees co-hosts Austria start their campaign in Vienna with a game against the team that ultimately knocked England out of Euro 2008 contention - Croatia. Austria We...
May 30, 2008
Euro 2008 host cities on the web: Vienna
In 30 days time the winners of Euro 2008 will be receiving the Henri Delaunay trophy in the Ernst Happel stadium. Before the whole tournament gets under way, I've been writing a series of posts looking at the official information being made available online by the eight host cities. So far I've looked at three cities in Austria. Salzburg, where I used to live, as well as Klagenfurt and Innsbruck. Today I'm looking at Austria's capital city, where the...
May 29, 2008
Euro 2008 host cities on the web: Innsbruck
I've been doing a series of posts looking at the online information available about the host cities at Euro 2008, which kicks off in just over a week's time. So far I've covered Salzburg and Klagenfurt in Austria. Today it is the turn of Innsbruck, where Spain, Sweden and Russia will be playing matches as part of Group D. Innsbruck The official Innsbruck city site has content about the tournament in English and German. There is also a site...
May 27, 2008
Euro 2008 host cities on the web: Klagenfurt
I was looking yesterday at the information available online about Salzburg hosting three games at Euro 2008. If my plans to get tickets had gone right, as well as two matches in Salzburg, where I used to live, I would have been going to see Germany play Croatia in Klagenfurt. As part of a series of posts looking at the information the Euro 2008 host cities have made available online, here is what I would have found if I'd...
May 26, 2008
Euro 2008 host cities on the web: Salzburg
If the random number generator employed by UEFA in their ticket ballots had been calibrated a bit differently, right now I would be in the last stages of planning my trip back to Salzburg in Austria to see some matches at Euro 2008. I put my ticket application in before the final draw was known, and, as it turned out, I would have had tickets to see two matches featuring my adopted homeland of Greece. But it wasn't to...
March 14, 2008
The long (monkey) tail of YouTube
I got an email alert from YouTube a while back, informing me that someone had left a comment on my YouTube clip of a monkey teasing a pig which we saw in Salzburg Zoo last winter. XXRevolveXX had said: "that monkey needs a life" I was just in the middle of composing some witty retort about pots / kettles and the fact that XXRevolveXX had frittered away a minute watching the monkey with no life, when I noticed something I...
October 22, 2007
I think I've Schmapped myself
I noticed this in the cartoon strip of one of the London free-sheets at the tail-end of last week, and wondered whether Schmap had actually paid for some product placement, or whether the whole thing was instead a bit of a co-incidence. I however, have not been paying for the product placement of my Creative Commons licenced Flickr photographs within their Schmap guides, which now seem to have grown to cover most of the major cities in Europe I've visited....
April 5, 2007
Will virtual representations of sporting events become part of the online rights economy?
Having been in Austria at the start of the tournament, and in Greece for the conclusion, neither of which are renowned for their love of the game, following the Cricket World Cup has been somewhat problematic. The BBC's Test Match Special podcast is available to me, but sadly the live commentary is firmly locked behind the BBC's GeoIP firewall. So I've been casting my eye around the rest of the web for coverage. Like the BBC, the Guardian has been...
March 5, 2007
T-Mobile hot-spots in Austria suffer from poor translation
I posted earlier about my experience of using a localised survey product at Salzburg's airport last week. Whilst I was there I also bought an hour of internet access via a T-Mobile hot spot, and experienced a little glitch in the English translation of the Austrian version of their service. I was quite happily browsing away, when my copy of Firefox was brought to a halt by an urgent dialogue box. Your time has run out! The thing is,...
Patchy interface localisation in Salzburg Airport's touch-screen customer satisfaction survey
I had to travel briefly to London on business last week, and the first leg of my journey, from Salzburg to Frankfurt, was a bit delayed. That gave me time to explore Salzburg Airport's customer satisfaction kiosk. The departure gates have a touch-screen information point, where you can rate your airport experience. It offers a choice between German language and English language, and was one of those applications that displayed the importance of getting the little details right when...
February 28, 2007
Google's anti-American stance on spelling the Habsburgs will upset Conservapedia
Yesterday, as he often does, Dave pointed me to something on the web that I enjoved investigating further - the Conservapedia. This is a wiki set up to counter the "clear" anti-Christian and anti-American bias of Wikipedia. Dave's post pretty much deals straight away with the main flaws of the project, and points to a page that they keep, documenting the evidence of the 'bias' in Wikipedia. I was struck very much by one point: Wikipedia often uses foreign...
February 23, 2007
Investigating the history of witches in Salzburg
Unlike the behemoth of the BBC, I seldom take the opportunity to cross-post to or cross-promote the blogs I contribute to, but I wanted to make an exception this week. Those of you who ever followed the posts on here about the ghost walks that I use to do in London, and in one case in Haunted Malta, with my wife, might be interested in a series of posts she has published this week on 'A lemon tree of our...
December 14, 2006
Viewing the Tehran conference about the Holocaust from Austria
Whatever the current issues between "the West" and Iran, you have to admire Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ability to put pressure on sensitive nerves in the West, and generate a lot of publicity. The conference on the Holocaust that took place in Iran this week is a prime example, sparking outrage around the globe, but at the same time making people ask questions about the nature of free speech under Western democracies. I've been interested as an observer here in...
September 19, 2006
New job with Sony in Austria
I'm very excited to be able to write that after my appearance at this weekend's AUKML conference in Edinburgh I shall be flying straight from Scotland to Austria. There I shall be joining Sony NetServices on a temporary basis as a Usability Consultant within their user experience team. The position is based just ouside of Salzburg, birthplace of not just Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but Herbert von Karajan and Christian Doppler as well. Apparently some musical or other was filmed there...