100th blog post: Who am I, anyway?

Since the rest of my website is in German and only this technology blog is written in English many readers may wonder: Who is the author? So I will use my 100th blog post to again introduce myself.

I am Markus Göbel, technology and economy journalist from Berlin, Germany. I work as freelancer for newspapers and magazines like Financial Times Deutschland, WirtschaftsWoche, DIE ZEIT and others. These are all big names in Germany, but probably unknown to international readers. I hold a degree in Journalism from the University of Munich and attended one of Germany's most prestigious Journalism Schools, Deutsche Journalistenschule.

I started this blog seven months ago because I realized that I have opinions and interests that are not well reflected in the other media. Especially the VoIP area, which became a main focus of this blog, is dominated by blogs of entrepreneurs who have an interest in maximizing their profits. Luca, Andy, David, Alec, Pat and others run great websites, but there you will hardly find tipps on how to hack their companies' services for free phone calls. They use their blog as a business tool.

But to me "free" calls as in "free beer" are still the killer application of VoIP. That's a conviction I share with people like Vinay from India whose blog became one of my main sources of inspiration. His VOIP Guide gets over 7000+ visitors each day mainly from USA, UK, India and Singapore because the customers want free phone calls.

Also I try to introduce a more European view because I realized that our technology is often more advanced than in the US. Just last week I had an interview with a mobile VoIP startup that left the US and concentrates entirely on Europe because “the market is more advanced and the handsets are unlocked”. My favourite VoIP device is AVM's Fritz!Box from Berlin which blows away any other ATA with its rich features.

I am always interested in new topics for this blog and the articles I write for German media. That's why I enjoy to be in direct discussion with the decision makers via interviews, blog comments and Facebook groups. You can always send me press releases or devices for testing. I can also write as guest blogger in your company's blog, telling what's hot and what's not from my point of view.