Notes from Prof. Dipl.-Des. Oliver Wrede
-
Posting to WordPress with Obsidian
The note taking and personal knowledge management tool Obsidian has a community plugin, that allows publishing of Obsidian notes to WordPress. It does not however support updating an Obsidian note from a changed WordPress post. It does not yet do pages, inline images or custom fields. But it seems the developer Cheng Liang is working…
-
New Seminar about Information Topologies in Winter Semester 2023/2024
The new project seminar for the students of the department of Design at Aachen University of Applied Sciences will be about “Information Topologies”. Information Topology deals with the organization and arrangement of information spaces. Often, the goal is to make information intuitively accessible and easier to find or learn, or to design a general strategy…
-
Posting to WordPress with Tinderbox
I am a long time Tinderbox user. But while having purchased a license many years I never have been able to fully use it for my purpose. It can do a lot of things – if you have the time to dig into it. Now Detlef Beyer has added an early prototype plugin to be able…
-
Facebook’s Threads – same sh*t from different different ***hole
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter this company really really really annoys too many people to much of the time. And I do not mean those who suffer from Musk’s Twitter not adhering to contracts and paying for their office spaces or cloud services. I also don’t mean those researchers that are currently blackmailed to…
-
The Pulse of Open-Source: A Snapshot of GitHub’s Most Active Projects
In the vibrant world of software development, GitHub serves as a real-time barometer of the most active open-source projects. Today’s snapshot reveals a diverse array of trending projects, with Python, Ruby, and JavaScript emerging as the popular languages. These projects, spanning AI, machine learning, chatbots, and development tools, reflect the current interests and growth in…
-
Facebook & Instagram destroy your attention span?
Just yesterday I wrote about Tim Berners-Lee complaining about what the web is like today. Today I found more commentary that supports this view. Big players like Facebook, Instagram introduced means to kill the ability of users to use URLs to create meaningful relations. On Facebook users are just allowed to express meaning in the…
-
First Web Browser
The World Wide Web was invented as a hypertext document repository by Tim Berners-Lee who was working at the CERN research institute in Geneva. The OS Tim was using was NeXT (a predecessor to the MacOS X of today). There is a emulation of the first web browser in a NeXT UI (following links apparently…
-
Search beats Navigation
Search has become one of the primary ways to access information online. There are six major drivers that have caused this departure from »orientation and navigation« tools as the main design challenge. Search has become one of the primary ways to access information online. There are six major drivers that have caused this departure from…
-
OPML Editor (Frontier in disguise?)
Over 24 years ago I learned about a Mac application called »Frontier«. This application taught me, that the Internet is actually a programmable environment. Frontier was a genius concept invented by Dave Winer, because it was not only a script language (called „UserTalk”). It also came with an object database and an editor to edit…
-
Information war of the right-wing conservatives
This article by Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) in The Guardian talks about how a couple of single right-wing conservatives in the USA use money, technology and the Internet to manipulate public opinion: And they already have set course to repeat their manipulative endeavor in Europe: Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media With…
-
HTC Vive is a tech breakthrough
We have some HTC Vive VR systems at the Department of Design at the Aachen University of Applied Science. This system is a game changer for consumer grade Virtual Reality applications. I have to admit that I am awed by the engineering feat that Alan Yates and Valve have pulled off with the HTC Vive. I was not…
-
John Searle: Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence
John Searle is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His Talk at Google is focused on the philosophy of mind and the potential for consciousness in artificial intelligence. This Talk was hosted for Google’s Singularity Network.
-
New seminar in winter semester 2016/2017
Tomorrow the winter semester 2016/2017 starts. I will be an offering new seminar called »Forecast« that researches design for information systems that can be used to understand developments and future situations.
-
Documentary »Hello World! Processing«
Hello World! Processing from Ultra_Lab on Vimeo. Hello World! Processing is a documentary on creative coding that explores the role that ideas such as process, experimentation and algorithm play in this creative field featuring artists, designers and code enthusiasts. Based on a series of interviews to some of the leading figures of the Processing open…
-
MIT MediaLab research departments
The MIT MediaLab has an interesting structure in its research departments:
-
Watching the Republican Presidential Candidate Race
Watching the Republican Presidential Candidate Race. The GOP party is now witnessing the result of their constant “dumbing down” of the public about politics and political reasoning. It makes it much harder for candidates to create momentum with rational arguments about political issues. It opened a chance for a candidate that is unfit for a…
-
Kids should learn programming!
Blogger Nico Lumma recently published a rant on Handelsblatt about Germany (and probably other countries) are wasting time by not letting children learn to program in school. There have been initiatives like http://code.org/ to promote »coding« as a basic skill of the future: … or a recent German version »Jeder kann programmieren« … And maybe…
-
Fargo: Outliner for Bloggers!
Finally! Fargo is an online tool for writing in outlines to a WordPress blog. Very good. Outlining has been underestimated as a writing tool – but there was barely any way to edit content without a desktop software – like OmniOutliner – this way. I was using Userland Software (Frontier with Manila – later Radio)…
-
SwiftKey Flow
SwiftKey Flow is a way to use swiping for text input. It is supported by a selection of word predictions for quick completion:
-
Qeexo detects different touch methods on an Android phone
Qeexo wants to bring new dimensions of touch to interactive surfaces, and make better use of the natural richness of our hands! Fingers have many “modes” – they do not just poke, as contemporary touchscreen interaction would suggest, but also flick, rub, knock, grasp, and many other actions.
Got any book recommendations?