details of a global brain

  • Podcasts from Tagesschau.de

    The popular german TV news program Tagesschau started podcasts MP3 of their prime time broadcast. This supports my hypothesis, that podcasting will be adopted quickly by traditional media. I still think podcasting will remain marginal in the blogsphere.

  • How to hire a product manager

    Here is someone with a lot of experience in hiring product managers talking about how to hire one: So what do I look for in a PM? Most importantly, raw intellectual horsepower. I’ll take a wickedly smart, inexperienced PM over one of average intellect and years of experience any day. Product management is fundamentally about…

  • Mapping scientific literature

    Students often ask for reading recommendations. The question of where to start is a question of what one already knows and what one is up to. There is no single path to take on. So most of the time I first try to give an overview about different types of literature. Now I found this…

  • 60 years Hiroshima

    Hiroshima was not only a human desaster of unspeakable extent – it is also the beginning of »politics of deception« that led to Vietnam, Iraq I and Iraq II (and probably more to come). Quote from the LA Times article: Hiroshima’s myths have gradually given rise to an American unilateralism born of atomic arrogance. The…

  • OPML Editor

    Dave Winer has released his latest project: OPML Editor. I like writing in outlines, but OPML Editor remains a typical Winerish tool: powerful for users that want to dig a scripting tool on steroids – but utterly useless for “normal” users that expect a tool without dead ends and a somewhat standard compliant graphical user…

  • Gizmo here – Skype gone

    On Sunday I decided to switch my DSL provider. After I entered their online form, I recieved their confirmation on Monday. On Wednesday morning I got their package with a brand new DSL/WLAN modem/router and all login data required. Setting it up was a snap. Everything worked out of the box. I also recieved Internet…

  • Virtual Earth

    Microsoft’s answer to Google Maps is Virtual Earth. Obviously Microsoft uses other data for their maps. Alltogether Google Maps appear to be nicer, faster, a little more precise and with better aerial imagery. Microsoft sometimes uses BW images – maybe from the infrared spectrum. Microsofts product also sometimes fails to load all tiles of the…

  • Feeds for aliens!

    Ok, we all know what we should do with this, don’t we? If you think they’ll coming to pick you up before the Vogons bust the planet then maybe that’s the place to claim your seat.

  • Updgrade to Tiger

    I upgraded my PowerBook to the latest Tiger release. In 20 years of working with computers I never experienced a system upgrade that was so easy. After cloning the complete internal harddisk to an equally sized external one (with Carbon Copy Cloner) I did a clean re-install of MacOS X 10.4 Tiger. Tiger comes with…

  • Bloggers need not apply?

    An interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about webloggers that apply for academic positions claiming that most blogs are not benefitial: Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know “the real them” — better…

  • Google Maps

    Google Maps really seems to take off after offering their Google Maps API for web developers. People are quickly developing very interessting variations (e.g. this incredible mixing of map and satellite views or someone tracking the hotspots he was using with plazes.com). You’ll find much more at this del.icio.us tag »googlemaps«.

  • How long does it take for a weblog to become inactive?

    Several weeks now without any update here. Why? Well, too many reasons to list here. I was too busy on the one hand – on the other hand I did not want to blog just to remain »active«. I know I ignored one the »post early, post often« rule for running a successful blog. I…

  • Apple and Intel

    This is another major bombshell after the aquisition of Macromedia through Adobe: rumors say Apple is going to announce Intel chips in Apple computers tomorrow. Another interesting articles: Intel, Apple coupling could woo Hollywood Apple to Intel: Some advantage, lots of risk Update: So it’s true. I wasn’t surprised about the fact that Apple had…

  • Plone book arrived….

    I just received a copy of the Plone book by Andy McKay (german translation). Lot’s of new things are in there. Good for studying after some extensive trial & error sessions. I had a discussion with Peter Baumgartner two days ago about Plone – and it seems like they’re going to substitute Userland Manila with…

  • Are weblogs different to forums?

    Peter Baumgartner and Leiff Pullich (after giving a presentation about weblogs in education) had a discussion with others at the Fernuniverstität Hagen about the differences between classical forums and weblogs for discussion: In several occasions we had no convincing argument why discussion via weblogs are different from news groups. The productive atmosphere today (oops: yesterday)…

  • Location based services (update)

    A follow-up to yesterdays post: Tim Bruysten adds some context and links to an interesting project: Loopcity by Dietmar Offenhuber. Markus Neckar pointed me to the MacOS X menubar extra for Plazes by Martin Pittenauer. This makes it very easy to have the system announcing itself to the Plazes service (btw this is one of…

Got any book recommendations?