The German government is currently debating an issue not many in the U.S. may have thought of: how long cellphone providers should retain your personal information. After all, cellphones histories are a veritable treasure trove of information on our movements and habits, not to mention a meticulous log of whom we contacted. In order to demonstrate how much just six months worth of cellphone data reveals, German politician Malte Spitz released six months of his own cell phone data.

With this information publicly available, The Zeit online took the massive Excel spreadsheet and created an amazing visualization of Spitz’s movements from August 2009 to February 2010. The data was augmented with Spitz’s tweets and blog entries. While numbers just look like numbers, watching the little dot zip around Germany is very unsettling. During those six months, Spitz was trackable 78% of the time. You can even see how he liked to spend Christmas. (more…)

Danish philatelists (look it up) will soon be in mourning as the country’s post office has announced their intention to offer a digital alternative to postage stamps starting on April 1, 2011. Instead of affixing adhesive squares for proof of payment on letters, the new system will rely on text messages.

The system seems similar to systems in the U.S. which allow people to make charitable donations by sending a text to a pre-set number. The charge is then added to their monthly bill, and the money sent to the organization indicated by the sender. The only difference with the postage code system is that after the text is sent, the user receive a special code which they write on the envelope. The code is scanned at mail sorting facilities, and canceled just like a stamp.

Those philatelists I mentioned earlier might see this as the beginning of the end for postage stamps, and mourn the passing of the artistic little squares. However, I would point out that with this new system, anything you want could be made a stamp. A sticker, a painting, a drawing made by the sender themselves. The possibilities are endless.

The hope is that offering a digital payment system will make it easier to send mail, and perhaps increase system usage. Digital stamps first debuted in Germany, and now Sweden is also looking at starting a similar program later this year, and perhaps success in these two countries will make other postal systems consider adopting it.

Now, it is worth pointing out that while I’ve seen many sources corroborating the story, the fact that it is scheduled to be begin on April 1st gives me pause. It is extremely unlikely that someone would stage so elaborate a prank based around the Danish postal system, but if that turns out to be the case: we warned you.

(The Local via The Daily What, image via Tecca)

This hotel in Berlin is not falling over (or folding). It’s actually built like that on purpose. Billed as the first hotel in Europe specifically designed for musicians, the Nhow Hotel features state-of-the-art recording studios and guitars. The interior design, by Karim Rashid, has been described as “an amusement park for lovers of glossy, hyper design.”

(via Jetsetta via Neatorama)

This beats Hofstra University’s Unispan by a mile. A fun, slippery-slidey mile. In the Mathematik/Informatik building of the Technical University of Munich, Garching campus, there are two four-story parabolic slides. They’re not display art for looking at. They are for sliding. By anyone in the building. Best. College. Ever.

Between this and the dog who gave birth to 17 puppies, Germany wins this week.

(via Makezine)

When the geek accessorizers at ThinkGeek pretended to sell “Canned Unicorn Meat” on April Fools’ Day, it generated so much interest that they turned it into a real product, although it consists of a dismembered stuffed unicorn in a can rather than the sparkly chunks that appear on the packaging.

Try telling that to German customs authorities, though: A ThinkGeek customer named Ingomar reports that her order has been held up at the border because “it’s supposedly food and meat of a ‘rare’ animal.” That is quite a rare animal indeed.

Folks,

I just learned that it is not very helpful to describe the “canned unicorn meat” as “canned unicorn meat” on the invoice when trying to import this.

Customs get really irritated as it’s supposedly food and meat of a “rare” animal. For the sake of keeping things smooth please label it as “canned unicorn (plush toy)” or something less conspicuous.

My delicous unicorn is stuck in customs for almost a week now.

Best regards,

Ingomar

Canned Unicorn Meat previously got ThinkGeek in hot water with the National Pork Board, which sent it a cease-and-desist because the product used the slogan “The Other White Meat.”

(ThinkGeek via @toptweets)

This weekend, Germany will finally finish paying off its reparations from World War I. Following Germany’s defeat in the war, the Allied Powers hit it with a steep bill in the form of the Treaty of Versailles, which mandated that it pay £23.6 billion ($393.6 billion in today’s dollars). Reparations plunged postwar Germany deeply into debt, and as Wikipedia summarizes, came in the form of “coal, steel, intellectual property (eg. the trademark for Aspirin) and agricultural products” as well as money.

Resentment over reparations helped propel Hitler into power and sparked anti-Semitic propaganda like this cartoon (via); when Hitler took power, the payment of reparations ceased, although they were reinstated by West Germany in 1953.

The population of radioactive wild boars in Germany is (figuratively) exploding of late, with the average boar in one tested area showing more than ten times the level of radioactivity deemed safe by the government.

But the mushrooming crowd of radioactive boars has less to do with mushroom clouds than with plain old mushrooms:

It doesn’t matter if you were rooting for Spain or if you were rooting for the Netherlands, yesterday’s World Cup Final match had one hero: Paul the Psychic Octopus.

Paul’s incredible feat of bookie-busting clairvoyance in correctly predicting the outcome of Germany’s seven World Cup matches, and then the final result, in which Spain proved victorious, has fans worldwide in an uproar … dare I say, salivating.

>>>Read the full post at Mediaite.

Achtung, Deutschland: The so-called “psychic octopus” that’s thus far predicted the outcomes of Germany’s 2010 World Cup matches with 100% accuracy, most recently calling the German victory against Argentina, has a rather more gloomy prediction for Germany’s quarterfinal match against Spain, which takes place tomorrow at 2:30pm EDT: He’s predicted that Spain will win the match. But there’s still a glimmer of hope for Germany’s fans:

I know you’ve all penned this day in your calendars, I know I’ve been waiting for this day a long time: Today, LR Health & Beauty Systems is debuting squinty tough guy Bruce Willis‘ “signature collection,” which he created in partnership with the German beauty company.

“I personally feel that the new Bruce Willis fragrance is the manliest scent in the world,” said Tilo Plöger, chief operating officer of LR Health & Beauty Systems. The Willis scent reportedly contains notes of grapefruit, pepper, and vetiver.