details of a global brain
-
Scrivener
I always had a special interest in tools that help authors to think. Outliners were fine, but they very often lacked visual context. Some mind mapping tools were fine – but these often did not do a good job maintaining a coherent structure in the text or good typography. Scrivener just seems to be a…
-
The iPhone principle
Yesterday Apple introduced the new iPhone. It features a very precise touch screen and some other sensors. On the first look it may only seem like a fancy phone that manages to get rid of buttons and integrate features of an iPod. But I think it is much more than that. I believe Apple has…
-
Desire (Design and Democracy)
I think the current Privacy/We-blog seminar (see blog) is turning out very well. The students are working on a project that is very “web2.0-ish” and a profound reflection on the business models that drive this market (or new bubble if you will). One of the questions that constantly return to me is what is the…
-
James Allchin on Macintosh
According to this Computerworld article Microsoft long time Windows development chief James Allchin wrote an internal memo in January 2004 about the product quality policies within Microsoft: “I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are,…
-
CSSEdit
CSSEdit appears to be one of the best CSS Editors for Macintosh around. Xyle Scope was a perfect tool to analyze CSS, but CSSEdit includes a very good editor.
-
The rats leave the sinking ship…
Prominent neo-con RIchard Perle is now blaming the Bush administration for failure in Iraq: “I probably would have said, ‘Let’s consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists,’” he told Vanity Fair magazine in its upcoming January issue. Kenneth Adelman, another…
-
Global Warming Price Tag – $7 Trillion
BBC reports: A report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern suggests that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20%. But taking action now would cost just 1% of global gross domestic product, the 700-page study says. Tony Blair said the Stern Review showed that scientific evidence of global warming was “overwhelming” and its consequences…
-
libavg – Kiss Director goodbye?
libavg is a very interesting package for multimedia installations: libavg is a high-level multimedia platform with a focus on interactive installations. It is meant to pick up where Macromedia Director leaves off and gives you high-quality hardware-accelerated visuals as well as easy and flexible authoring, testing and deployment. libavg integrates well with other open-source solutions…
-
The beginning of the end
Nothing to add to this one….
-
Why I like online video
Disregarding the legal issues with copyrighted material on YouTubes and Google Video servers (I can’t check those as a regular user), there are some clips where I am simply glad that they are available online, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see them: documentaries, political commentaries and satire. Just some examples: Commentary: Olbermann on…
-
iPod killers? I don’t think so…
Here is a very detailed article about concurrent products for the Apple iPod called “iPod Killers for Christmas 2006” (and an older one for Summer 2006). And I think to some extent the article exhibits, why all those vendors remain unsuccsessful to decrease the market share of the iPod. It is not a question of…
-
Do you remember early assignments in study projects?
One of the important things you need to work out as a design educator is what you will give out as first assignment in a seminar or project. It is like a warm-up for a project, something that helps you to move into the problem domain quickly. Of course there is usually plenty of material…
-
New address for the german weblog
My German weblog [RSS-Feed] now has a new URL. I aligned its design to this English blog here. The German site is build on WordPress – this blog here is a mix of Tinderbox for editing and Zope on the server.
-
Design and organisations
I had a phone conversation with a friend who works in a planning department of one of the largest corporations in the world. We were discussing the experiences of many employees in large organisations (she is a fan of Dilbert therefore). I was reminded of the »Design and organisations« seminar I did five years ago.…
-
YouTube aquired by Google
There were rumors around about Goolge bying YouTube for $1,65 billion. Now the YouTube founders themselves posted a small video announcing the deal: Like this guy I think it will be a extremely interesting question how Google will deal with the copyright violations in the end. Update: Something doesn’t just feel right about these guys…
-
Webmontag Cologne one week later!
Please spread the word: The Webmontag-Event in Cologne was pushed one week (from 2nd October to the 9th October).
Got any book recommendations?