der aufpreis ist nicht wirklich niedrig, aber schon noch akzeptabel.
gerade die möglichkeit zum sofortkauf ist schon sehr interessant. das problem dabei ist eher, daß man bei sofortüberweisung.de immer seine zugangsdaten an dritte weitergibt. andrerseits ist sofortüberweisung in deutschland ja sehr häufig genutzt, die meisten scheint das also nicht zu stören.

thats reasonable.
on the other hand, the forum probably only has a few thousand people that are possible candidates (having good english skills, are enthusiastic enough, have enough time on their hands). getting hundred of them active on one single project is a really tall order. have you read me review/summary of all new and still active bitcoin projects and services of 2011? i am pretty sure all of them combined dont have one hundred people at their disposal.
i think settling for 20-50 people is more realistic. first stage is research and planning anyway and that doesnt require that much manpower. when you have a concrete and practical plan how, where and when you can successfully introduce bitcoin its much more likely to get people onboard.
right now many are hesitant, because they have no i idea what worldly might come up with. they wont commit until they know, no matter how good his track record is.

you do know that only works if you have a ridiculous amount of agents?

the statistic i posted was sales, not phones in existence.
even if iphones are still much more common in the usa, i am pretty sure this will change over the next few years. anyway, i agree that it would be good to have an iphone version of bitcoinspinner. its clearly the best application for mobile devices right now. bitpak is absolutely no alternative.
 

dont let your personal experience fool you.
market share by OS q2 2011:



doesnt mean iphones are not important, but the priority should clearly be android. since in general android phones are cheaper they will continue to spread faster.

spielt es irgendeine rolle, wofür bitcoin konzipiert wurde?
du weigerst dich wahrscheinlich auch dein brot mit einem messer zu streichen, weil es ja zum schneiden konzipiert wurde 

worldly, i think it would be better to focus on areas where bitcoin is vastly superior to the current solution and less things can go wrong. kiva has a multitude of issues, plus there is a massive currency risk borrowing bitcoins and then converting to fiat. if bitcoin rises 100% during the loan period, nobody will be able to pay back a loan.

i think concentrating efforts on richer countries is more promising. people who only convert their spare money to bitcoins are much more likely to risk fluctuations. plus we dont have the dilemma that the people to adopt bitcoin go broke when it is as successful as we hope.

count me in.
i can code, but there are people probably more qualified than me. so i will likely do testing, translating from/to german, be a smart ass and do research.

beim schwundgeld würde mich mal interessieren, wie sich das zeug überhaupt verbreiten soll.
ich meine, wenn ich gerade liquide sein muss und die wahl habe, mir schwundgeld zu besorgen oder bitcoin/gold/whatever, dann nehme ich doch nie und nimmer das schwundgeld.
und wenn ich gerade nicht liquide sein muss, nehme ich schwundgeld als verkäufer gar nicht an, bzw. nur, wenn ich es sofort in eine stabile anlage tauschen kann.
deshalb denke ich, daß schwundgeld im prinzip sehr ähnlich ist zum nichtvorhandensein einer offiziellen währung.

das streichen von dezimalstellen halte ich in naher zukunft schon aus marketinggründen für doof. solange ein bitcoin immer das gleiche bezeichnet, kann man sich direkt die wertentwicklung angucken. sieht doch auch viel besser aus, wenn btc auf einmal 100€ wert sind.
was die nachkommastellen angeht, halte ich tausendstel auch für unpraktisch. gibt genug leute, die kaum bis drei zählen können. die sind mit einer währung, die nicht mit den üblichen hunderdsteln arbeitet, total überfordert.

die gold/silber/kupfer variante finde ich gar nicht so schlecht. so sehen währungen ja nicht nur in wow aus, sondern in etlichen fantasyspielen. größtenteils, weil währungen tatsächlich mal so oder ähnlich ausgesehen haben. insofern ist das schon erheblich intuitiver als eine benennung a la mirco-zorkmids und nano-credits.

ps: 51.67µ฿ sieht noch besser aus 
den ersten wert würde ich ganz trocken als 5.00755167฿ anzeigen, evtl. mit einem einheitlichen trennzeichen (punkt, komma, whatever) bei jeder neuen untereinheit.

the review was mostly about the progress in terms of software and infrastructure. i would love to read a review about the events and people of 2011, too. it would also be quite an interesting read for new people. the wiki history page isnt bad, but its just the facts. but i am not a very good writer and english is not my native language, so i will leave that task to someone else.

since many services and users use a new address for every transaction and there is no indication in the blockchain which addresses belong to the same wallet, you would end up with way to many classes.

you the holiday discounts on steam and bought three games. all delivered about an hour after payment. great shop!

Every other day there is some guy reviewing bitcoin and its usually all about price development, hashrates, transaction volume, google trends, press hits or whatever onedimensional metric he thinks is accurate to measure how "successful" bitcoin has been recently.
This is supposed to be a review thats a little different. Instead of (over-)interpreting some obscure numbers and putting something like a price tag or benchmark on how far bitcoin has come i just want show you what wasnt there in 2010. This overview is by no means complete. I left out some projects of which i dont know if they are still active. Others i might have just missed. In some sections there is so much i only give a link or prominent example. If you think of anything you think should definitely be in here, please tell me.

First, to put things in perspective, a quick glance at what was new in 2010:

First buy (pizza)
First exchange (mtgox)
First public gpu miners (poclbm, diablo)
First pool (slush)
First Wiki Pages

When i became aware of bitcoin sometime around end of january 2011 that was pretty much it. One client, one exchange with one currency, one Pool, two miners and an economy that consisted of a few enthusiasts trading something like socks or carrots just to show its possible.
I hope this overview and the progess it presents makes all you bitcoin enthusiasts even more enthusiastic and gets all you sceptics to check out some cool stuff you might have missed in your ignorant defiance of bitcoin awesomeness. (thats what the links are for, morans!)
So without further dwelling in nostalgia here is an unreflected, unresonably long list of things most likely not known to mankind for more than 360 days:  

Important changes in the Original Bitcoin Original Client
Wallet encryption
New gui
Faster startup
Faster blockchain Download

Libraries
Bitcoinj
Libbitcoin
Bccapi

Desktop Clients
Multibit
Electrum

Mobile Clients
Bitcoin spinner
Bitcoin wallet for android
MtGox Mobile

Web Wallets
Strongcoin.com
Blockchain.info Wallet
Instawallet.org

Mining
Pool software (Pushpool, Simplecoin)
More mining software (Phoenix, CGminer)
Frontends (Gui Miner)
Pool hopping software (Bithopper)
P2Pool
First public fpga miner

Info and Statistics
Bitcoincharts.com
Blockchain.info
RowIT network status charts

Economy
Way Too Many Exchanges to list here https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Exchanges
and Shopping Cart Interfaces  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Shopping_Cart_Interfaces

Finally the one alternative blockchain with an actual purpose: Namecoin

Conclusion
2010 was the year of the firsts. Many new things became possible like trading, gpu mining and pooled mining. Imho, 2011 was the year that made many of those things actually doable. Trading bitcoins, securing them, setting up pool servers and miners, integrating bitcoin into shops and programming bitcoin applications all went from arcane arts to activities a reasonable tech-savvy person can dare to try. Consequentially, the amount of bitcoin related projects and services grew massively. To compare this with my statement about the beginning of the year, we now have multiple clients and mining programs and more exchanges, supported currencies and pools than anyone with only twenty fingers+toes can count. plus you can actually buy some stuff.

2012 Outlook
All those projects and services are still very new. Most of them still need to prove that they are stable, secure and continue to be actively maintained. Selection and maturation of existing projects doesnt sound very exciting, but is an important step to becoming a trustworthy currency. On the other hand i believe there are still a few revolutionary developments ahead of us. Personally, i am very excited about the new standard transactions hiding out in the satoshi client v0.6. Security will always be an important issue for bitcoin and will always require a certain amount of dilligence on the user side. Providing the means to maintain a high level of security to the board masses is still a great archievement and will be of paramount importance for a wide adoption of bitcoin.
When the mainstream press discovered bitcoin this summer, it wasnt ready. Getting Bitcoins was hard, securing them was harder and judging which services to trust was nigh on impossible. A lot has happened since then and if and when the next surge of media attention comes, bringing new people with it, there is a good chance less disasters will happen and fewer people will leave frustrated or scared.
Does that mean 2012 will be the year of the big breakthrough? Imho No. Bitcoin is still far away from being usable by Average Joe. But i believe 2012 might very well be the year bitcoin finds its first economic niches big enough to sustain bitcoin specific businesses. And its downhill from there.

tl:dr: Yay 2011!!

edit: put the pizza in its place 

welche solidarischen systeme?
deutschland ist seit einer gefühlten ewigkeit eines der länder mit den größten exportgewinnen. gleichzeitig steigt die staatsverschuldung ständig und die reallöhne sinken. die, die wirklich geld verdienen oder haben, waren schon immer in der lage, es dem staat und den leuten, die sich für sie den arsch aufgerissen haben, vorzuenthalten.

im übrigen bin ich der meinung, daß kriminalität neben gelegenheit größtenteils aus not entsteht. schärfere gesetze und stärkere überwachung helfen da kaum, denn wer wenig nat, hat auch wenig zu verlieren.

afaik the gui was developed by someone who - at that point - didnt directly participate in the development of the client. so the "wasted effort" was only in the final integration into the original client and was mostly done because the wxwidgets gui was practically abandoned.
what info is visible or not is a minor thing and can be changed at any point without much work. imho, most people dont care about the specifics. especially the precise number of connections is of no value to the average user, as long as its "enough".


that however i can second. on the other hand i can totally understand why the developers chose to gave the bip 11/12/13 higher priority. it will change the whole network and gives developers of other clients the chance to implement those powerful features too, while wallet management and moving functionality to the gui only improves the original client itself.
so its a good plan for overall long term development, at the cost of alienating some users right now who dont like or have trouble using the client.

8 nachkommastellen aka 1 millionstel cent reicht nicht? aha 
btw das system lässt sich erweitern, so daß die anzahl der geldeinheiten nochmal um mehrere größenordnungen anschwillt. wie da einige wenige zusätzliche blockchains irgendeine rolle spielen sollen...

bei der befürwortung zentralen regierungsstellen mit adressdaten kriege ich echt schmerzen. da kannst du deine sämtlichen geldtransaktionen auch gleich öffentlich aushängen. irgendwer leakt den kram immer. oder leitet ihn an leute weiter, die gut dafür bezahlen.
von staatlicher regulierung will ich mal gar nicht reden... meinst du das derzeitige system steckt ganz rein zufällig total in der scheisse?

i on the other hand come from a village with 500 people with public bus, roads, water, eletricity and dsl even were you have to dig several hundred meters just to provide for a single house. in a country were practically everybody has acceptable medical care and nobody lost his pension during the financial crisis.
to me those are essential archievements of civilization and i am quite happy to live in a country that hasnt yet disposed them completely.
doesnt mean things couldnt be better. there is a lot of corruption and spending. but the solution is to improve the government, not throw it away.
and thats actually quite possible. its not really a technical problem, but a political one. the solutions are often simple, the system just doesnt want to change. but thats exactly the same forces at work that stop you from getting rid of the government. so if one has the power to overcome those forces and get rid of all those ineffective government agencies, that same person/party/entity could change them for the better as well.

problem with all that trimming is that companies suck at providing public infrastructure. do you really want to rely on someone providing things like water, electricity or public transportation who has no legal obligation to it in a proper way and can stop to provide a service at any time?

i think thats not really a pro argument for berlin. berlin has a metro population of 4.5mio, london over 13mio, plus berlin is far away for most germans. to reach more people in germany you have to choose something more central, like frankfurt.  thats <2 hours by train/car for ca. 30-40mio germans and paris is only 4hours by train.

if its either london or berlin, london sounds better, mostly because the organization and speakers are already there. rather have a small decent conference than a big disappointing one.