Apr 08
What a relief! Finally craigslist has been introduced to Germany, currently supporting eight major cities. This simple portal allows to post basically anything free against charge and to search for anything you want. No fancy graphics no costs, just a simple flea market for everyone and everything.
I personally have used this platform several times while living in the States and I can confirm the benefits society gets out of it. Furthermore, I truly believe this will conquer Germany as it has done for many other countries around the world. Have fun buying and selling everything. Is this the end of eBay?
Mar 26
This story was sent to me via email.
A SPANISH Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. ‘House’ for instance, is feminine: ‘la casa.’ ‘Pencil,’ however, is masculine: ‘el lapiz.’
A student asked, ‘What gender is ‘computer’?’ Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether ‘computer’ should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.
The men’s group decided that ‘computer’ should definitely be of the feminine gender (’la computadora’), because:
- No one but their creator understands their internal logic.
- The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
- Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval.
- As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
The women’s group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (’el computador’), because:
- In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on.
- They have a lot of data but still can’t think for themselves.
- They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem.
- As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.
The women won.
Feb 19
Amazon.de
I really enjoy ready this book of Gunther Dueck. One of the essential messages in the book is that the key for an most efficient economy, is to focus on people as individuals and create happiness for each of them. A human can work most efficiently when he is happy. Therefore creating this environment will result in a most efficient labor. It will take the power of computers to calculate happiness for every one. But Gunther agues, that this will be the future.
Feb 18
A few posts ago I talked about how user experience will change. This will be one of the most significant changes on the web in the next few years and I truly believe this. I’ve seen some smaller experiments on the web and at conventions in this direction (I especially like the work of marcos weskamp). I’m coming across this topic more and more every day. Just recently I found the yahoo innovation group (now called next) and could see some of their amazing and beautiful work. Today I discovered the labs at digg and it was really happy to see confirmation in what I think will be seen more often in the near future.
Dec 04
One of my greatest dreams have come true: after 11 years RATM is touring again!!! I never had a chance to see them for myself and I’m really excited, when I saw this:
check out their webpage for more tour dates. Australia is next. Shows are almost all SOLD OUT. I bet they’re touring the world and ending in USA shortly before elections…
Nov 30
I have a strong feeling that future social networking sites are increasingly going to have strong visual enhancements and a more playful touch and feel to them. An important role will be using vector graphics, which aren’t being used that often on the client side for functional reasons. The most obvious benefit of using vector graphics is the scalability of the graphic without loss of quality. It is mostly known in Flash games or Flash Ads, where it serves it’s purpose really well. But many web developers haven’t realized the power of vector graphics used in a functional manner that contributes directly to the application itself.
A nice example of this is what Geni.com implemented using ActionScript. Their usage of the scalability makes the whole web application actually interesting and is the core of their user experience. The basically same application was implemented in Flex by verwandt.de (or the English version itsourtree.com).
Unfortunately most browsers don’t support vector graphics without a plugin, like Flash Player or a Plugin for the SVG-Format. You also have to use some tricks if you are dependent on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But sometimes it’s not necessary, too. Think about it.
Nov 30
The “Black Book on Brand Companies” gives a deep view on how leading brand companies operate in the world economy. The scary truth behind the scenes with tips of what every single one of us can do about it. Unfortunately not in English yet, but some information in English is on the official homepage of the book. There you can also find a good link list for more background information on brand companies and organizations fighting for a better world.
Amazon.de
Nov 21
The time we are living through these days is the time I have been waiting for since I did my first project with Flash 5 and ActionScript 1 (AS)!
I think finally people outside of the ActionScript community are starting to understand that with ActionScript (3.0), more can be done than just control movies. The language is finally taken serious from other coders and people in the computer business and that is because what is going on the scene. It’s nuts!
Ever since I saw Colin Moock’s presentation in 2003 at the Shockwards event at my school (Stuttgart Media University), when he was promoting the ActionScript 2.0 language and it’s object-orientated characteristics, I was overwhelmed by what could be done on the client-side. After a nice chat with him I was extremely motivated in learning all this stuff and already started to create some visions. Unfortunately my professors at my school didn’t take me and my seriously, which was very frustrating. Luckily, I could do some small projects in AS 1 and AS2 together with the talented designer and my friend Daniel Hübschmann, but courses at school kept me very busy and I couldn’t focus on coding in AS, like I can do now.
I’m so glad I believed my gut feelings in sticking around with Flash and AS, because the future with AS 3++ will be AMAZING! It’s basically what Kevin Lynch from Adobe says at the beginning of his speech from the AIR Roadshow It’s for everyone who loves client-side programming
Here are some examples that already show the power of AS3 (with Flex):
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Ribbit Phone: The Ribbit Phone Component will give Rich internet application developers the ability to make and receive calls, record/send and receive voicemail, as well as add and manage contacts.
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buzzword: Buzzword, the first real word processor for the web, is a breakthrough in collaborative authoring for documents that matter.
- Abobe Premiere Express is basically a light version of Adobes Premiere Software for video editing, but on the web. It’s also developed in Flex and for instance used on YouTube as the YouTube Remixer
