The iPad arrived now also in Europe. One of our freelancers got one yesterday and he got a lot of milage out of it (after 18h of use the battery was still 50% full) and he answered my question on how you best hold the iPad (on the lap or in your hands):

ich habe ihn vor allem damit ich auf dem klo nicht tausend zeitschrifen und bücher herumliegen habe. (ganz im sinne meiner frau)
(I use it mainly in the bathroom to get rid of all the magazines and books there so also my wife likes that now)

>> CollegeHumor gets excited about the great, endless possibilities to make fun about the iPad and Apple now:

>> List of 10 funny iPad cartoons.

>> John Klossner’s Apple cartoons.

For the 30th anniversary of the legendary Pac-Man video game Google’s logo turns into a Pac-Man game itself. It will be shown for 48hours and seems to be a big hit. Update: Here a modified version you can still use now.

What American football, basketball or baseball is for the Americans soccer is for pretty much the rest of the world: the number one - most watched - sport. A professor in Germany now predicts that Germany will become the next World Soccer champion in the world cup starting in a few weeks in South Africa. The formula is actually quite simple to understand if you still remember just a little maths from university. Of course, the professor also predicted that Germany would win 4 years ago and as we know they finished an honorable third “only”. So practically this means that they all still have to play.

This video here was also posted on Techcrunch yesterday. While it is intended to be funny, I think it contains a bit of truth. Question now is if this is done totally on purpose as sort of unconscious brainwashing of everyone listening to this or if the Apple folks simply don’t know any other adjectives than:

great    easy    awesome   incredible    amazing

Or, and that is certainly a good part of it too, they are highly passionate and excited about their own work, which is one of the best sales and marketing attributes you can have.

Every so often fun things happen and shame if you only hear about it 4 weeks later. This time it is infamous Paul Carr’s very own story to accept Michael Arrington’s call to write the Saturday column at Web 2.0 blog/news portal Techcrunch. I think it is a smart move to try to lighten up the otherwise very dry reads about the dozen or more Web 2.0 startup news pieces every day mixed with a good dose of Apple, Google or Microsoft stories to increase readership - of course. Now I have to admit that I have not read Paul Carr’s Techcrunch columns yet but will start doing so from tomorrow on and with that read - yes - Techcrunch. His first intro post shows the kind of blog posts you have to expect and not take too seriously, or should you take it seriously? Bringing nothing to Techcrunch…; as the boss in the movie Good Morning Vietnam with Robin Williams said “…well, that is funny”.

This year’s elections in Germany will also make use of social media tools. Unlike the US presidential elections, I do not expect they will be much affected — with one exception:

The newly founded HSP (Horst Schlämmer Partei) is betting big time through using social media. On its campaign website you can see that they are present on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, StudiVZ, have newsletters, a blog, its podcast is number one in the iTunes store already, and much more. It looks almost as if they are making fun of social media tools, too, having just about any social network embedded code for copy available.

Watch the campaign video, I like most where he shows his plan in a live TV show.