I am going to speak about web entertainment (and Hobnox) on FMX/08 tomorrow. I will probably see some friends there as well.

I haven't been to a previous FMX-conference. Judging from their program they do focus a lot on technology and Visual FX. The panel I have the privilege to participate in is subjected "realtime".

I think this is a very good topic altough the notion is quite dated. But the term gets a slightly new meaning as the networks start to become real multimedia channels that can deliver streaming high quality video and multiplayer games with minimal latency and without wires.

Many month ago Yahoo introduced Yahoo Pipes to the public - allowing to mix and process data from sites and RSS feeds from different sources (I have a master RSS feed of a pipe that represents almost all my blog activities)

Now Yahoo has expanded this model to include widgets for displaying the resulting: Yahoo Badges.

See the a demo here:

Hobnox will be supporting re:publica 08 conference in Berlin. We will be recording some sessions. I have the honor to discuss »Because we can...« on Friday morning, April 4th, and we will also present Hobnox in a separate session in the afternoon.

The new seminars for summer term 2008 are fixed. It is always a very exciting moment to think about new topics for projects... or rather: to pick the best from the ideas floating around.

And I always love to define topics with a leightweight appearance but at the same time much depth.

Here are the two candidates:

Project seminar: »Habits«
Design research about our habits and how they shape our daily life and how we use things.

Project seminar: »PIM«
Design for Personal Information Management systems.

Apple has released the iPhone SDK. The 2.1 gigabyte download is free after registration and includes the latest Developer Tools as well.

I personally don't use an iPhone. Being able to hack it (or get third party software for it) was a stopper for me. Another argument against the iPhone was the rather limited storage space — 4 and 8 gigs simply did not seem enough space.

Apple still wants to retain some control over which apps are pushed on the phone, but it seems the upcoming operating system of the iPhone has already been hacked. People may be able to install software independently from Apple (e.g. to remove a SIM card lock) on a hacked phone.

But looking at the developer site for the iPhone simply does it right. I get a clear product, a very readable documentation and easy to digest tutorials - developing hardware and software together again pays out in a consistent product.

The Android SDK on the other hand is lacking the simple question: How can I get started (I mean really)? What devices can I deploy an Android application on? In fact the Android FAQ states that there are no phones that Android is running on. So who is supporting Android? Why should I spend time on developing for a theoretical market? Android is nothing more than an approach to an upcoming problem that Apple has already solved from A-Z.

That is the reason why Apple is succsessful: They offer solutions - not concepts.

People that think the stylishness of their products are key to Apple's success don't know much about Design.

This is a surprise: Adobe announced Director 11 - the follow-up release to Director MX 2004. After years of speculation Adobe seems to be committed to develop Director further.

There is a rough comparison chart on the Adobe site which compares Director to Flash. I am not quite convinced the advantages of Director over Flash will set it apart and (re-)create its own market (or re-create its former market). The ubiquity of the Flash plug-in, YouTube & Co, ActionScript 3 and Flex have brought a lot of seriousness to the Flash platform in the past 3-4 years.

Next week Hobnox will launch the first Beta version of the community website. And we will integrate Flash-based tools to manipulate a content library. Here is an appetizer...

Most areas of the site will start out as closed beta and/or demos, but we want to slowly ramp up the features and the design. We have many ideas on the drawing board, but we want the users to participate in the development.

If you live in Berlin there will be a festival on 28th of Februrary (with the nominees from the evolution contest playing). Some performances will be streamed live over the Internet.

There are still many projects online that did not make it to rank 1-3 but are worth a look.

Soon you will be able to log-in, play around and add your own profile and content to the system. You can apply for the closed beta now.

Jason Fried from 37signals argues against the use of Personas.

Personas don’t talk back. Personas can’t answer questions. Personas don’t have opinions. Personas can’t tell you when something just doesn’t feel right.

This is a pretty sketchy definition of what personas are supposed to do as a tool: The foremost reason for personas is to have people from all departments think about their product from a customer perspective and with a mindset that can be shared. Personas are not meant to "talk back" - they are meant to align imagination and create labels for »common thinking«.

It makes a difference if people talk their ideas pretending to be someone else or not. Personas drive positive groupthinking. It also forces to anticipate users. It also makes deriving marketing stories from that easier.

I just learned that John Maeda is now the next president of the Rhode Island School of Design.

The Hobnox evolution contest is half way through and there are now 280 submissions in three categories: music (220), film (79), urban culture (30). There are regular "news" with portraits of some of the contestants on the Hobnox channels like this:

For example »Twisted Reality« by Johannes Guerreiro and Krystian Majewski from the Koeln International School of Design.

Sign-up and rate projects to win one of three iPod touch!

John Chung Lee made an interesting software that uses a Wii remote to allow interaction with multiple pens on any screen or projection.

Simple introduction monetarian theory.

See Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Finally Hobnox has launched a »warm-up site«: The Hobnox Evolution. Creatives can suggest productions there and win several budgets totaling €75,000.

Things have been very busy for me lately. But instead of just apologizing I give you some links to see some stuff that is coming out of that:

99stories.com - sly-fi.com - str33t.org - mi145.com

Most of that is "viewing only" at the moment. This will change radically... ;-)

One of the most interesting topics for information architecture is search. There are ways to find, explore, browse and discover things in digital domains. The value of information increases with the possibility of being found. So design for findability becomes the most important strategy to increase the value of information.

One of the distinct experts in the field of Information Architecture is Peter Morville. He gave an interesting one-hour talk at Google about »Ambient Findability and the Future of Search«:

He talks a lot about the problem of search in general (he is speaking at a search engine company). How to enable better search and findability is a question of a) metadata and b) representation.

It is the representation aspect of searching and finding, that is still a huge area for design innovations. While improving the Google search result page may be too difficult, there are a lot of very specific problems where searching and navigating an information domain gets a very interesting and particular design issue.

A designer needs a good understanding of the fact that users have different approaches of locating things depending on

• the nature of the information,
• the structure and relations,
• the quantity of data,
• their habit of solving things systematically and
• the prior knowledge about the domain.

Isn't that amazing that this clip about the Bush administration lying about weapons of mass destruction needs to be compiled by someone and uploaded to YouTube instead of the professional journalists went for this one?

There constantly is a discussion about making the computer feel more "natural" to the user. I do think that this approach led to the graphical user interface we are all used to today and it is philosophically the right approach to deal with technology. But I also do believe technology is not yet ready to allow "natural" interaction in most occasions.

If you don't believe me this video will hopefully bring this discussion to an end:

And don't miss this Second Life parody:

One of the tools I love to use is Tinderbox. The homepage says: "Tinderbox is a personal content assistant that helps you organize, analyze, and share your notes."

I just downloaded the latest beta version (3.6.3 b17) and found that it has a list of improvements that push it forward again.

If you never heard of Tinderbox try looking at some of the screencasts that are online.

Tinderbox is a tool that has been around for ages now and while the technical progress is slow compared to other tools it remains unmatched for a lot of tasks. The sad part of it is, that it does have some limits and missing features that people expect from a writing tool. But besides of that it's potential has not yet been fully exploited by its community.

The tricky thing with Tinderbox is, that it does "take off" unless you know how to use the tool wiseley. For a newbie it may feel like just another note-taking tool that misses some core features. But once you discovered some of the core concepts of Tinderbox a whole new set of options.

Findamentally it is a tool that keeps asking you: What do you want to do with your thoughts? How do you create relevance out of randomness? What does order in a chaotic world of fragmented information mean?

Tinderbox somehow forces you to answer these questions and define a concept how you want to process everything you write down. You may start with no such concept and try to develop it while playing around with Tinderbox. But once the level of interdependence of notes, actions, templates and such gets high (which can happen quickly) you need to become smart about how you manage you material.

As there are more and more programs offering podcasts I think there is more interesting content appearing in this subscription format that is interesting for design:

• DESIGNsuisse
  A german/swiss language series from swiss television mostly with portraits about designers and/or design agencies. These are spotlights about design processes and help to demystify design as a service instead of an artform.
• Cool Hunting
  Cool Hunting is a daily update on ideas and products in the intersection of art, design, culture and technology, and features weekly videos that get an inside look at the people who create them.
• Elektrischer Reporter
  This is a "more or less experimental" podcast by the german news magazine Handelsblatt. It features stories about internet culture.
• Diggnation
  A weekly "boulevardesque" commentary of two guys about the weekly top stories on digg.com. Running for over 2 years now.
• Icon-o-cast
  This audio podcast is presented by Lunar Design. Explore and demystify the world of design.
• School of Visual Arts New York
  A series of different podcasts from the SVA NY.
• UIE Brain Spark
  This site features several podcasts (e.g. "The Josh and Jared Show") related to "User Interface Engineering".

There are much more for sure. I'll just leave it here now. If you know a podcast of interest for designers, let me know.

This is a very nice project by Yann-Arthus Bertrand that shows video portraits of 6000 randomly picked people in 65 countires that are talking about personal things.

Hobnox (the internet start-up I am CD for) is hiring:

• art director
• web/screen designer
• system administrator
• senior developers for C, Flash, PHP and Java
• junior developers for C, Flash, PHP and Java

Work location is Cologne, Germany. More information here. The project is related to WebTV and the entertainment-/music business.

It is an international company. So if you are English only and you are prepared to work in Cologne, Germany, you may also apply.

There is also an open position for a team assistant in Munich.

This (german) article talks about digg.com stopping to censor articles that could lead to legal issues for Digg.com. The problematic article contained some code from an Equadorian blogger that allows to crack HD-DVD content. Of course the film industry wanted to keep that information confidential. Kevin Rose - one of the founders of digg.com - replied on his weblog according to the outrage of the digg.com community - and they decided to risk fighting with BigCo's that sue digg.com.

There has been no post here for over a month now. I really feel bad about that as I can see from different stats, that there are more than 550 subscribers to this blog (slowly growing) - which is not too much compared to some other blogs... but a hell lot of people for me. And with a 20% reach (people that actually click or act on a blog post) I think it is not wise to neglect a blog for so long. But then again I need to thank all subscribers for the confidence I sense from that.

Truth is that I have been way too busy the last month. I stopped working as a professor at the computer science department of the Cologne University of Applied Science (I still do teach Design though) and started to work on an international project related to the music and TV entertainment busniess. I probably will contemplate and write about that sooner or later, because there are really a lot of stories that I'd like to share in future.

So keep me on the radar... I am still alive!