http://www.hesspoint.com

I currently have the problem that the HDD of my Thinkpad is always full (only 60 gig). On the other hand I don’t want my file-server running day and night, because that thing has a power consumption like a bitch. On the other hand I don’t want one of those external USB drives, since I want to access the drives with more then one computer. So what to do? First step as always is to google for a bit and I dug up some info about so called Network Attached Storage drives. That are essentially external HDDs that come with an embedded mini computer and an Ethernet port. So the cool thing is that you can just connect it to your router which assigns it an IP. The clever ones already know where this is going: You can share the drive across your whole network and if you are wireless you can access the drive sitting in your garden with your Laptop. That looks like to ultimate file storing and sharing solution which can replace your conventional file-server. On top, these drives only consumes about 15-17 Watts. The top shelf ones even support streaming (which is really cool if you have a (wireless) home entertainment client to watch movies or listen to music), additional USB ports for other USB drives or printers.
I don’t quite know which one I gonna buy, but here are some alternatives that look rather good:

• FSC Storagebird LAN (160 gig)
• Western Digital Netcenter (160-320 gig, 2 USB ports, Print-server)
• Maxtor Shared Storage (200-300 gig, 2 USB ports)
• Buffalo LinkStation (120-300 gig, also a variant with gigabit LAN available)

For prices check Güstiger or Geizhals (in Germany) or your local price comparison site.
I keep you updated and put on a report when I got mine.

Update: Here is a great article of PCWorld on that topic and a very detailed review of the Maxtor drive.

Update: I just ordered myself a Buffalo LinkStation 250 gig. The thing that rocks about it is that it runs on Linux which means you can change and hack the firmeware. Apparently you can even put a Debian with Apache, PHP, mySQL, etc. on which would really be the ultimate hype, though it sounds crazy. Unfortunately I gotta wait a few days before I have it delivered…

Today a courageous campaign was launched by the largest German media companies. "Du bist Deutschland" (in English that means "You are Germany") is the message to make the Germans realize that only if everyone makes some effort and is willing to get himself up, Germany can get back up on its feet. I think a very good campaign with great TV spots. Now its up to the people to take some action. First step is to think positive and not to resign.
Click here for the campaign’s website.

The regular readers might have noticed that I didn’t post anything for a few days. The reason is that I participated in the 16. ebs Symposium this weekend. The symposium was organized by the students of the European Business School (EBS) in Oestrich-Winkel, the oldest private business school in Germany. It is located at the River Rhine in a region called Rheingau, one of the most famous wine growing areas in Germany.
The conference’s theme was "The German Angst" - Vertrauen in die Zukunft. German Angst is one of the few German expressions which found its way into the English language, it was coined by "The Economist" and describes the fear of Germans of the future that currently paralyzes Germany’s economy. The best example was the result of the elections last week, which was pretty much a disaster, reflecting the people’s fear of change and reforms that would be so important for this country. The conference tried to evaluate concepts of overcoming the current situation and let Germany rise up to be a strong economy again. Many top class speakers and companies held speeches, workshops and a recruiting fair. Among the speakers were names as Lothar Späth (Merrill Lynch), Alexander Dibelius (Goldman Sachs) or Burkhard Schwenker (Roland Berger).
It was a very interesting and inspiring weekend, not to forget the great food and no one less then Knacki Deuser (the host of the TV comedy show "Nightwash", every Sunday 0:00h on WDR) as the host of the gala dinner.
Of course I wouldn’t be a real geocacher if I didn’t take the chance of sneaking through some vineyards on my way home

Fernando Alonso is F1 Worldchampion 2005. Though Kimi Räikonnen got in 2nd in the Brazilian GP, 3rd was enough for Alonso to close it after all. Congrats!

No it didn’t escape, but it got free of that annoying ad banner. Now Opera finally gave up its license fees, since they grew radpidly over the last couple of years, and switched to a premium support business model. Unfortunately this does not apply for the mobile versions as Windows mobile and Symbian Series60, which are widely used Smartphone systems.
Anyway it is a reason for me to testdrive Opera and see if it can compete with Firefox (which I adore as you know).
If you also want to test it, here is the download.

Normally 404 pages suck, because you expect to get a site and it’s just not there. With this 404 page there is no reason to bite into your keyboard anymore, rather to laugh your ass off. Sorry only in German.
Click here: http://www.tueren-shop.com/404.html

I just accidently opened my blog with IE and I was shocked how incapable that browser really is. It is neither capable of interpreting CSS right nor can it handle transparency in PNG images. So don’t read my blog with IE (besides it would mess up my good browser stats with 62% Firefox users vs. 24% IE users ;-)), even better don’t use IE at all!
By the way just a coincidence: I found this cool button you can put on your website if it is also "Too cool for IE". Check it out.

Unfortunately there is no rating system for caches on Geocaching.com. So I came up with my own rating. When I log a cache as found I simply add this piece of text at the bottom:

Rating (out of 5):
——————
Puzzles & route:
[:)][:)]
Cache & hiding place:
[:)][:)][:)]
Landscape & location:
[:)][:)][:)][:)]
Challengefactor:
[:)][:)]
Ingenuity & creativity:
[:)][:)]

Overall:
[:)][:)]

You have to put the "[:)]" as often as you want to rate it. You can also vary the icons used to display the rating. Click here for a list of icons.
Feel free to pick it up for your logs and to customize it to your needs.
Happy hunting!

Stefan Raab is undoubtfully one of the greatest talents in discovering trends. After the legendary TV total sport events like boxing, Wok WM, Stockcar Racing and manymore, he held his own early elections yesterday night in the TV total Bundestagswahl show. Though it was far from being representative it was still interesting.

 

Why not representative? 1. Everyone could vote (also foreigners and minors), 2. Everyone could call as often as they wanted and 3. the avarage TV total viewers are younger people. But exactly for that reason it was interesting because the results more or less reflect the votes of the youger generation.
Click here for the show’s website and for an article on Spiegel online.

One last thing (if you are German):

Google recently launched its own blog search engine. If you have pings enabled then you are all set and your blog is most likely already indexed.
Google Blog Search