SHOESTRING Travel Magazine now has its own internet home and can be found at http://www.shoestring-magazine.com/.

The website is hosted by Blogger, which means that anyone with a GoogleID (including Twitter, Yahoo, Blogger etc.) can become a follower of SHOESTRING Travel Magazine in seconds and get all the latest travel news directly to their dashboard as soon as the site is updated!

Shoestring-magazine.com has been designed to host news and reviews to keep travellers up-to-date. As the magazine is going to be published quarterly (Issue #2 is due out in October!), news that happen between publications would not get a mention otherwise.

The new site also hosts a forum called "Community" which is free to sign up to. Here, travellers and readers can share and exchange experiences and tips and maybe even find travel buddies! You can even share travel photos and videos, and who knows, maybe you'll even inspire a SHOESTRING feature or get to write for the magazine yourself!

The Tips & Tricks section contains the advice pages from the magazine, such as "How do you plan a Gap Year?" This valuable advice is always accessible, and even if you can't open the link the see the full issue of SHOESTRING, as this section will conatin the pages in jpg format. This means, that for most of your travel queries, this section will become a one-stop-shop and the pages can be printed out so that you can take them away and refer to them whenever you need them.

Next to all this, the website will also be where the next issue of SHOESTRING will be published! The issues will be downloadable and printable and you can bookmark and share the site on various social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Technorati and Google.

The little red sign on the left of the website shows how many visitors are online at the moment, while the map on the right shows where SHOESTRING's readers are from.

Please become a follower on shoestring-magazine.com and on Facebook (search for Group SHOESTRING Travel Magazine), and help turn SHOESTRING into an international backpacker magazine!!

I was notified about a complaint today, that the Solinger Tageblatt received because of my portfolio website cornelia-kaufmann.jimdo.com.

Mr. G. had been to the Tageblatt office on Friday to complain, and from what I've heard, he was not very well-spoken and not the quietest either. I had written an article for the Tageblatt, which was published on 9th October 2008, in which he and his wife get a mention. After all, it was them who alerted us to the problem and basically commissioned the article.

I had used that article as part of my portfolio website, on which I collected all my articles until early 2009. Their complaint was now, that although you can also find the article on the Solinger Tageblatt Homepage, it shouldn't have been on my site. "It's not right to find my name mentioned on the internet", Mrs. G. told me on the phone. They said they hadn't given permission to me to use it - thing is though, technically, they had. They had given permission to the Tageblatt, which I write for.

However: First of all, I stated on my site, where the article originated, that I had written it and why I used it on my site (as part of my portfolio). Also, my website has a link to the Tageblatt homepage. So it was properly referenced.

But here's the thing: If somebody wants to republish or use a Tageblatt article in any shape or form, not the persons in the article have to give permission - just the author of the article. And in this case, the author is me! So if I decide to publish my article on my website I am in my right to do so!

Besides, you could only find my site if you knew the address, and you could only find that specific article on the site if Mr. G. went on an ego trip and googled himself. Which I assume he did, how else would he have found it?

I reluctantly deleted the article from my website, but I just got word from the Tageblatt's secretary that he was back in the office Tuesday (19th January) to complain some more, even though I had called them and deleted the article.

Welcome to the internet age, is all I can really say to that. Oh yeah, and: "Mr. and Mrs. G., get a life!"

What do you think? Leave a comment on the blog to let me know!