This morning, Europe's leading magazine for software developers (c't, with a sold circulation well above 300,000 copies) published a German-language article I wrote about the current flood of smartphone patent disputes the industry. It starts on page 32 of the print edition, and it has also been published online (on heise.de, which belongs to the same publisher).
Basically that's two articles in one: a non-judgmental description of the most important disputes and the relevant players, patents and technologies as well as an opinion piece in which I discuss the implications all of this has for Android's future.
Just a few days ago, evertiq, Europe's leading electronics industry news site, (re-)published my analysis (in English) of what the ITC staff's opinion on four of Apple's patent infringement claims against Nokia means for Apple's disputes with Android phone makers HTC and Motorola. That article is materially consistent with my recent blog post on that subject.
Having the opportunity to contribute to such publications is a back-to-the-roots, coming-full-circle experience for me. It's how I started in this industry 25 years ago.
At the time I was 15 years young and I saw how other people of my age (well, maybe a year or two older) got published by 64'er, a German magazine for Commodore 64 users. That magazine received many submissions and regularly selected a number of them for publication. They rejected my first two submissions but thought the third one, while not good enough at that stage, had potential. They gave me guidance on how to turn that article (on advanced 6510 assembly language programming techniques) into something publishable.
Once I had the knack of it, I authored many dozens of articles for them. After a while the magazine editors introduced me to their company's book publishing department, and at age 16 I became Germany's youngest computer book author (here's a funny German-language article in a book shop magazine about that).
My focus changed over time and I did a number of other things in the industry. But I kept authoring articles from time to time: usually just one or two per year, and there were only a few years in which I didn't publish anything.
Other articles and op-eds in recent years
Since some of you may be curious about where else (besides on this blog) my writings have been published, I thought I'd put together a reversely chronological (newest on top) list of articles and opinion pieces I wrote in recent years:
EUobserver, September 2010: "Has the Pirate Party boat sunk?" (derived from this blog post)
ITespresso.de, May 2010: German-language article on German high court ruling on software patentability
Blogactiv.eu (EurActiv), November 2009: "MySQL and a company’s market relevance in the light of 'free' and 'freemium' revenue models"
VentureCapital-Magazin (German), September 2008: article on start-up opportunities related to social network applications
VentureCapital-Magazin (German), April 2008: article on the role of intellectual property rights in open source business models
[European] Parliament Magazine, March 2006: "More Lisbon, less Munich" (article on EU patent reform proposals)
Slashdot, November 2005: "Patent Pools and Pledges -- Panacea or Placebo?"
heise.de, November 2005: German-language version of the aforementioned Slashdot op-ed
Those were my IT-related articles and op-eds of the last five years. In addition, I have also written about sports policy issues.
Non-IT writings (sports policy)
In 2007, I advised the number one club in the world's number one spectator's sport, Real Madrid CF, in connection with a European Union policy initiative. My work was primarily related to the commercialization of soccer broadcasting rights but also other issues such as player transfer rules, access to tournaments, and general sports governance.
I have since written about sports policy for notable media:
In November 2008, the website of Germany's leading weekly newspaper, Die Zeit, published my opinion piece advocated more openness toward investments in soccer teams
Besides IT topics, heise.de also covers media industry issues. I contributed two articles on the application of EU competition rules to the commercialization of soccer broadcasting rights, one in October 2007 and another one in March 2008 after Sky, a pay TV station of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation group, lodged a complaint with the European Commission.
In politik+kommunikation, a lobbying industry publication, I discussed the combative lobbying methods and extreme demands of IOC, FIFA, UEFA and other sports bodies (April 2008).
For SPONSORs, the leading German sports industry magazine, I wrote about the impact of then-impending national elections in Italy and Spain on the commercialization of soccer broadcasting rights in those countries (February 2008) and about the current quarrel between Spanish soccer clubs over revenue distribution in connection with those rights (July 2010).
I will continue to write about IT and sports policy topics for the kinds of publications I mentioned here. But more than anything else, I'll keep posting right here on this blog, and I thank you all for your continued interest.
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