local.ch blog

A new year means a new start, as the change of date and a new calendar reminds us. But for some it can also mean a change of scenery, as anyone packing their calendar in a box and relocating with it knows. For those whose agenda not only includes a turn of the year but also a change of residence, local.ch now has a new service: http://www.einfach-ummelden.ch.

Moving house equals stress: packing boxes, emptying drawers, packing more boxes, dismantling furniture, creative cooking to clear out food cupboards, settling the ensuing upset stomach, moving boxes into the new apartment, unpacking boxes, assembling furniture, unpacking more boxes, dropping from exhaustion and wishing everything was over. More than enough reason for local.ch to relieve you of at least some of the relocation stress. At einfach-ummelden.ch, you can now give your new address to anyone who needs to know from the comfort of your possibly not-yet-unpacked couch. Just one visit to our website and we’ll inform not only the essential services, such as health insurance and utility suppliers, but also your magazine and newspaper subscriptions, customer cards and business contacts. No tedious repeat emailing to numerous addresses – local.ch takes over and passes on your change of address to everyone who needs it.

As we are currently testing and expanding this service, it is available initially in German and French only. We hope to provide it in Italian and English soon.
For the protection of our users and to ensure that we are actually dealing with the person who is moving, we compare your details with the entry of your old address in our directory. This means that before the change of address is passed on, you are sent a text message to the telephone number saved under your entry at local.ch. Only when we have received your confirmation do we notify the addressees selected by you.

If you have not saved a telephone number in our directory, you still have the option to use einfach-ummelden.ch. Go to the website and have a look: a relocation is bound to be on the cards at some stage and then you will be well prepared, thanks to local.ch. Give yourself more time for the important things when moving – packing your boxes, for instance.
Talking of moving: that’s in store for me too at the local.ch blog. I will continue to plaster the internet, but with NZZ and no longer here. It has been a pleasure for me to keep you updated on the news at local.ch, to read your feedback and to exchange views. I wish you all lots of fun in the future and hope this blog continues to receive such interesting posts. Hope to see you soon at my new location!

Is your Christmas wish among those the Santa Clauses at local.ch are making come true?

After a month of reading more than 500 comments in four languages, we’ve finally decided who will receive a share of the CHF 5,000 we have set aside to make their Christmas wishes come true. Choosing the winners wasn’t easy because there were so many great wishes, and the task was made even more difficult because of the many touching, personal statements we read. We were especially delighted by the fact that so many of you (see Sevi (comment 66) in the German Blog-Post, and Aryan (comment 134) and SK (comment 115) in the French Blog-Post) wanted to help others not as fortunate as yourselves.

This being the case, we decided to place our gifts in several different “sacks”. One very large sack, intended to benefit as many people as possible, contains CHF 20,000 and is going to the Winterhilfe Schweiz winter aid charity.

In addition, we are dividing up CHF 5,000 into smaller sacks and handing them out to the following recipients:
CHF 1,000 to the Krebsliga Schweiz cancer charity as requested by, among others, Elodie et Valérie in comment 167 and Hélène in comment 89.

CHF1,000 to the Stepping Stones School in Nigeria, as suggested by Samira in comment 89.
CHF1,000 will go to support a school in Recife, Brazil – this request from Susanne in comment 156.
CHF500 to pay for the bike that Daniela requested in comment 60.
CHF500 to buy the Apple Logic Studio asked for by Angel in comment 30 – we look forward to hearing his first rap!
Because Christmas is a special time when people get together, especially to share a meal, we also want to fulfil the following wishes:
CHF150 to Zammali to pay for a new crêpe pan (comment 129)
CHF150 to Alex for the yogurt machine he asked for in comment 4
Finally, because we also enjoy fulfilling wishes that are very personal and have a great deal to do with the person making the request, we’ve also decided to make the following wishes come true:
CHF150 to Christin, who wants a trendy new hairstyle (comment 172)
CHF150 to Wilson so he can buy an EHC Biel/Bienne team shirt (comment 79)
CHF150 to Britta to pay for a doll’s pram for her daughter (comment 91)
CHF150 to Eva who wants to buy the Playmobil doll’s house her daughter is so keen on (comment 107)
CHF100 to Paolo and in particular his daughter, who very much wants a sombrero (be sure to send us a photograph!)
Congratulations to all the winners! We will contact you as soon as possible with more information.
Thanks to everyone who took part. We were touched by all your requests and suggestions, which definitely helped get us into the Christmas spirit. We wish you all a very Merry Christmas – and give our regards to the real Santa Claus!

Version 3.0 of the local.ch Android app is live. We have simplified the app, incorporated some of your requests and now also recognise telemarketing numbers. Here you can see the changes at a glance.

Android continues to grow extremely fast. This is demonstrated by the download figures for our app. And next year the trend is likely to continue upwards: new devices such as the Galaxy Nexus S and the new Android Ice Cream Sandwich will provide a huge boost.

For this reason, we have given our Android app some new features and rectified some bugs while we were at it.

Entirely new is the start screen: now you see only one search field. So you no longer need to laboriously enter the search term in one field and the location in the other field.

Directly under the search field, you can find the suggested categories. This should make your search easier. Are you looking for a bar or a cash machine around the corner? Just click on the relevant category and you can immediately see what is available around you.

A feature that is bound to help you is the identification of telemarketing (*some call it spam identification). Some numbers that users search for cannot be found in the telephone directories. We can safely say that some are telemarketing numbers; i.e. companies that want to sell you something. If you search for these numbers with the local.ch app, the message “number unknown, we suspect telemarketing” will be displayed.

You can now also search using voice recognition, because what Apple can do, Android can match. Just click on the microphone icon and speak. For some simple terms at least, it already works very well; for more complex terms, you may have to try several times.

Until now, you have been able to choose whether you want to use local.ch as an app or widget. Now you can also add local.ch to your Quick Search (instead of Google). This will take you to your desired result quicker.

And you will, of course, again find some bug fixes and improvements to stability and speed.

Enjoy the new version. We hope we have fulfilled some of your wishes. If not, please let us know in the comments box.

What is red and gold, covered in tinsel and smells of cinnamon? No, the answer is not a decorated spice shelf – but Christmas! This year, the festive season comes with a very special surprise: local.ch will make your Christmas wishes come true.

Father Christmas, Santa Claus – there are many names for the old man with the white beard who sets off on 24 December with a big sack full of presents for all those who deserve to have their wishes fulfilled. To ease his burden, local.ch has come up with a brilliant plan: this year, we will help Father Christmas deliver his festive load.

So how does this work? It’s simple: just tell us under this blog spot what you would like this Christmas and why, and local.ch will try to grant your wish. Your gift can cost up to CHF 5,000 – it could be an iPad 2 or a round of mulled wine for you and your friends.

Instead of a prize draw, our team of stand-in Father Christmases at local.ch will decide the winner or winners. The creativity of your wish, and the reason for it, is very important to us. There’s no need to write a novel or become a Good Samaritan, but it would be nice if your wish not only benefited you but other people or animalstoo. And something else: we will grant up to three different wishes. One very big wish or two medium-sized wishes or three smallish ones – it all depends on what you want.

If you don’t have a wish of your own but like someone else’s ideas, just tell us in the comment line. We’re looking forward to receiving your suggestions and thoughts.

You can participate until 12 noon on 23 December – not only here on the blog, but also over on Facebook and Twitter (Hashtag: #localxmas). The lucky winner or winners will then be announced on the 24th of December.

Now Father Christmas can take off his boots and stretch out in front of the warm fire – this year, we are filling in for him. So go off to your keyboard and let us know how we can make your festive wishes come true. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

The 500 people who gathered at a TV studio in Zurich Leutschenbach on a chilly Tuesday morning at the beginning of October were attracted by something rather different than a quiz show with a washing machine as the main prize. This was all about something that lasts for longer: education and information from various specialist areas prepared with a popular science approach. In an entertaining way, the acronym TED (technology, entertainment, design) was presented to the audience in 20 short talks in Zurich on 4 October. We had the privilege of being the sponsor of this excellent event and therefore wish to share some of our impressions with you here.

The idea of TED may sound simple: “thoughts that are worth sharing” to be passed on at an event under this motto. TEDx is the small brother of the big TED conference in California, which has been held there annually since 1990.
The aim of TED is not only an enthusiastic, spellbound audience, but also what it does with the ideas: they are there to be discussed further, inspire and provide subjects for discussion even between the presentations. This works so well because both the speakers and the audience come from entirely different areas. Natural scientists, engineers, artists, sportsmen, entrepreneurs and students: TEDx brings together all kinds of people of all age groups. With a conference contribution of CHF50, participation is also by no means expensive for anyone having to miss TED itself.

When everyone comes from a different specialist area, it is not possible to hide behind specialist terms and deep theoretical discussions: everybody has to learn something from one another. This distinguishes TEDx from other conferences, which have a narrower subject matter. TEDx is the proverbial thinking out of the box: where else can one learn about the findings of a brain researcher, ski entrepreneur, journalist and mountaineer in a concentrated form in 20 presentations of 15 minutes in length. The mountaineer, Satyabrata Dam, impressed us most: a former submarine commander in the Indian navy, since 2010 his day job has been to climb mountains (which he was been blogging in such an insightful way hier), travel the world, hold talks on his expeditions and, more importantly, continue climbing. One of his lessons: the mountain teaches you both humility and courage. Humility because you understand how irrelevant and fragile man is; courage because that makes every moment precious and should prevent you from spending your time on unnecessary activities.

Inspirations take effect by people living them passing them on and preferring to go their own way rather than keeping to the beaten track. This is what makes TEDx so special. The presentation of Benedikt Germanier had just such an effect: the 44-year-old Swiss entrepreneur quit his job as a strategy consultant at UBS in New York in order to spend the rest of his life doing what satisfies him most: skis – their perfect production and supplying them with passion for quality. Simple principles and real goods instead of speculative constructs as the backdrop and drive of what one does; the return to something tangible. Germanier’s development is no less than the encouragement to spend one’s life – and also earn one’s living – doing what one believes in and what one feels passionately about, instead of pursuing a career half-heartedly. Germanier shows that in an ideal world life is not something to be put up with, but a route than can be designed independently.
If you think that TEDx is a place of elevated moments, you are not wrong, but don’t miss the equally important E part of TED: the entertainment. There were musical breathers with the electronic pop of All Hands, Jojo Mayer and the drums and sound experiments from Oy to whirl around the information taken in.
During the aperitif and the breaks between the dense programme, visitors had the opportunity to discuss what they had heard. And they were keen to do so. As such, a whole day passed with clever, exciting entertainment across the boundaries of age groups and areas of interest. That leaves us with just one thing to add: thank you, organisers of TEDxZurich, including our colleague Hugo, for an excellent job. We look forward to next year and hope to see you there.