Prof. Dipl.-Des. Oliver Wrede

Blog

  • I finally switched to WordPress

    wordpress_logoAfter a long time of consideration I turned over to WordPress for this weblog and I will not be using Tinderbox to blog here anymore. Tinderbox is a great software for thinking and writing – and I love to have a more graphical/visual note taking approach to weblogging. But it was getting too clumsy to update my weblog or simply correct a typo. It also is a client side application – thus requiring me to use Tinderbox to blog (so it didn’t work with other clients or other computers).

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    Now I just need a slick design for this site.

  • 3 components of good web design

    Actually the site PSDTUTS has great tutorials for Web Designers. But one of the recent articles about what design roles that constitute a good web design discipline did not convince me.

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  • US officials flunk test of American history, economics, civics

    Yahoo News reports: “US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.”

    You can take the 33-question quiz here.

    I couriously tried the test and scored a 60.61% as a non-US citizen. Doesn’t this qualify me for US congress?

  • Fundamental changes ahead: petaflop barrier broken

    According to this WIRED blog entry IBM and Cray have both cracked the petaflop barrier.

    Computer scientist Mark Seager of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory claims that this will change the scientific method for the first time since Galileo invented the telescope (in 1509)”.

    The reason for that is that simulation and approximation can be used to come to acurate models of complex phenomena instead of just reasoning about formula by theory and experimenting to prove those.

    With 362 terabytes of memory and 1.059 quadrillion floating-point calculations per second the Jaguar of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is tuned for scientific calculations like climate and energy models, drug discovery, new materials, etc.

    The question arises if these amounts of speed and data processing could one day break one fundamental rule: that some problems will always be beyond discovery through calculation. Neurology, psychology, sociology, economy and cultural studies are scientific areas that haven’t really started yet. Large scale simulation can be the one scientific method that is missing for those (implied that the methods of observation deliver enough data to model upon).

    And if so, there is a danger that even governmental policies may one day be driven by probability and not ethics.

  • Zeitgeist: Addendum

    Here is a two hour documentary by Peter Joseph from July 2008 explains so much of the backgrounds of a “corporatocracy” today, an unsustainable “monetary-ism” and religious deception that causes social and economic distress.

    »Zeitgeist: Addendum« is a sequel to the documentary »Zeitgeist« from 2007:

    Zeitgeist: Addendum, attempts to locate the root causes of this pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution. This solution is not based on politics, morality, laws, or any other “establishment” notions of human affairs, but rather on a modern, non-superstitious based understanding of what we are and how we align with nature, to which we are a part

    The movie portraits the Venus Project – a life long futuristic vision of Jaques Fresco of a sustainable society. Unfortunatly the site looks like a study site for futuristic industrial design and technology and thus fails to generate interest for the socio-political subtext of Frescos work.

    Unfortunatly, while the movie does extensively talk about a global vision, it remains a US centric view as the critisism is focusing on the US agenda. And thus it falls short in the ideas of how to initiate change in the system.

    But much of the movie very well explains the problem of the current monetary system and how it came into being.

  • Information Design and the Monetary System

    I am personally interested in how the lack of information or proper presentation of that information led to the current financial crisis. Obviously the information was available — but not well understood, not correctly aggregated or falsely interpreted by politicians that were responsible for phony policies and flawed legislations.

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  • The political implication of YouTube

    YouTube allows people to make visible the failure of politicians. The way they remain clueless and lie about their cluelessness afterwards. This is very important. But unfortunatly a revealing YouTube video may not get the publicity it should.

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  • Let’s play Bailout

    It seems US government is denying its responsibility for the financial crash — and even trying to get away with new mistakes by pushing congress to agree on a plan that is hardly removing the source of the problem.

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  • Bailing out in the wrong direction

    US Government is suggesting a $700 billion financial package to prevent a chain reaction at Wall Street. The US national debt to over $10 trillion dollars with just a single decision.

    Interestingly there are many experts that tell their own story about what this all means on the long run.

    Someone may wonder where this money is coming from. And very simply said there are two sources:

    a) Nothing… Thin air!

    This could be done by simply done by “claiming” that there’s $700.000.000.000 dollars more in the world. This is suggesting that this money is covered by something else and it also allows the value of the dollar to degrade for anybody (but there are other reasons as well). In 2008, for example, it took $21.57 to buy what $1 bought in 1913 (Source)

    Experts like Peter Schiff are punding the topic of the collapse of the dollar since years – and other experts try to cover it up. Just watch this piece:

    Peter Schiff is also favouring the gold standard:

    b) The future

    The “future” is… the future taxes, prices and hard work. The “average Joe” is paying it with less social security, less pansion, less money in the pocket for more and longer work.

    The only politician in the US that obviously does not try to cover it up seems to be – who else – Ron Paul. Watch his comment here:

  • Two Red Dot Design Awards for Hobnox

    I forgot to post this here: Hobnox won two Red Dot Design Awards for the website and the Hobnox Audiotool. Unfortunatly the Red Dot website does not list the achievement – and there is no statement from the Jury either.

    The Audiotool also recieved the Flashforward Award 2008 – which is rewarding the best Flash projects worldwide.

    BTW: There will be an major Update to the Audiotool as soon as Flash Player 10 is released. New features of the 10th player allow a more reliable Java-free playback and – this is big – the possibility to record sessions to MP3. Saving a work for later continuation is following soon.

  • Zoot Woman as well!

    I am sorry to “spam” my music interest recently. But I am just so glad about what the Berlin team was able to pull up again. As my Last.fm profile discloses I have been listening to the britsh band called Zoot Woman recently. Now I am happy that Hobnox has the concert and an interview:

    [See fullscreen and also interview available]

    (Reminds me of the fact that I forgot to link the interveiw with Jose Gonzales in my last post).

  • Jose Gonzalez Live – exclusively on Sly-Fi.com

    Hobnox is exclusively providing a recording of the live concert of José Gonzaléz in Admiralspalast in Berlin. Beautiful concert, excellent camera work, perfect sound. And we are investigating to deliver this in near-HD video quality soon (stay tuned).

    [See on Sly-Fi-Channel]

  • Hobnox recieved the Grimme Online Award

    grimmeHobnox recieves the Grimme Online Award.

    The Grimme Online Award is one of the most prestigious awards for online projects in Germany. The jury does mention the quality of the design.

    As Head of Concept and Design this makes me happy. But there have been many people working on the design that are not yet mentioned anywhere. And I want to give them credit here – even though some may have been working for Hobnox only a short period of time:

    I want to thank everyone mentioned here for the effort that contributed to the achievement. Thank you!

  • 89% want to impeach Bush

    impeach_bush

    MSNBC has a poll online that asks if people would impeach George W. Bush. Out of 678898 people that participated in that poll 89% think he should be.

    Just yesterday Dennis Kucinich presented a very long lists of articles to Congress. Here is a PDF with the transcript of his presentation.

  • Senate Report: Bush used Iraq intelligence he knew was falseusa,

    Described in this article of the Huffington Post the U.S. Senate Select Commitee on Intelligence has released a series of reports on intelligence related to Iraq before the war.

    The reports show that the Bush administration actively ignored available intelligence to press ahead with an agenda that will ultimately lead to the installment of permanent U.S. military bases in the Middle East.

    The reports give examples that there was no intelligence that supported

    • statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
    • statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
    • statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
    • statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
    • the statement of the Secretary of Defense that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
    • repeated statements of the Vice President that the Intelligence Community did confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001.

     

    Sen. Dianne Feinstein concludes:

    »Even though the intelligence before the war supported inaccurate statements, the Bush administration distorted the intelligence in order to build its case to go to war. The executive branch released only those findings that supported the argument, did not relay uncertainties, and at times made statements beyond what the intelligence supported.«

  • Hobnox – now open for everyone! New contest coming up!

    So Hobnox (the startup I am working for as “Head of Concept & Design”) has reached the end of the private beta phase and is now running as public beta (which means: everyone can register and use it).

    There are still many things that we have in the pipeline. As of now it appears to be a (a) video sharing site with a community plus (b) some WebTV plus (c) some Flash apps (which are still in demo mode)… and these things will become more and more interconnected as we move along, because the level of interconnectedness is key to success of the concept.

    Meanwhile we get reviews like this:

    Coming up:

    We restart the Evolution Contest and creatives can win $30.000 in three categories (so the sum of the prizes is $90.000). People will be able to submit projects starting next week… the actual voting starts on 4th of August.

    If you wonder what the Evolution Contest is you might still browse the participants of the first contest (Nov’07-Feb’08) in this archive.