What I’ve just discovered when watching this blog on my ipod touch is that embedded YouTube videos are automatically shown with a preview picture and when you tap on them the iPhone built in YouTube app is called, playing the according „flash movie“ in the transcoded QuickTime format. Now this shows me that flash won’t come to the iPhone anytime soon. But very good move here, apple, for pushing QuickTime even further and of course a great move for google (YouTube) to become exclusive video provider for the iPhone …
Kategorie: Allgemein
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The twitter phenomenon
For many of you out there this may be old stuff,but tonight I was once again realLy impressed by the power of twitter when the plane landed in Hudson river. I was doing some stuff at home on my notebook when the tweet of Robert scoble came in with the story of the accident – no german website nor german tv I was watching at that time did cover the story when the first photos were posted to twitpic-and I have to agree with Oliver so much, that journalism has completely changed-it’s not about the quality of the photos, it’s about the speed they’ve been posted (as Robert said the first photo was made with an iPhone.)
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Frist run in the new year
Well, I should start running again – feels so good, especially when it’s so cold outside (-7 in cologne).
Before the run – man am I’m looking old
After the run, looking even older 🙁
This guy is SO awesome – be sure to watch his other movies as well 😉
Togehter with our friends over at clicktivities we have just launched the new site for the RVM: erlebniscard.de . „Erlebniscard“ is a kind of customer loyal program for Rhein Main Verkehrsverbund GmbH which is a big company in the transport sector in Frankfurt, germany. The whole site is based on plone – which was our first project based on this CMS and I have to say, after quite a hussle in the beginning it worked out as a very good CMS, we now gained very deep knowledge in and will offer it other customers as well. Plone is mainly based on the application server zope and python, and is a very powerful and flexible „framework“, though the learning curve is stall in the beginning. We managed to connect background systems and doing a lot of business logic stuff in connection with existing ebusiness structures. Thanks to all participating teams for doing great work during the last weeks.
In case it occcurs, that Apple Mail crashes after the latest Leopard Update, then it might be, because you use GPG with it – updateing to the latest version solved the problem for me. Get it here
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The end of the Blackberry culture
I’ve been using my blackberry as phone and email device since 2 years – and will stop it now. During my 2 weeks on holiday I had completely switched the device off, and boy: this was really relaxing. I feel I have to focus more on the work I’m currently doing and not having one of my two eyes completely stuck to the red LED of the device, always checking (even during meetings) mails, answering, editing… I am convinced, that the „always on“ mentality in itself is not the problem – it’s the „always avaliable“ thing, that made myself unproductive. I ordered an iPhone two days ago: because: I want and need an email device to be „always on“ but I want to choose when and how I read and react to emails.
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Once upon a time: „SYMP“
Tonight I’ve been doing some backup stuff, and when I went through all the files, I found a directory called „backup_240106“: it contained a neat PDF I had forgotten: a first presentation of „SYMP“, which I had written on the 24.08.05 – SYMP (which fancy-like stodd for Sync Your Mobile Phone) was a kind of „MobileMe“ which I had thought of back in ’05 – and I remember a guy called „Nico“ which I had some nice discussions about that (and several beer in cologne, if I remember correctly 😉 ). The idea was to have a kind of open source CVS or SVN for everybody, with easy to use Accessing-Apps as well for the Desktop, as for your mobile. Of course, there was no idea about the iPhone back then, but I was thinking of J2ME, as it was (is) widely spread among mobiles in that times. There should have been a kind of XML index, for all syncing files, so that on your mobile, only the xml would have been parsed – and if you „ordered“ a document within, the device would have downloaded it, in order to reduce traffic-costs (which back then were the main problem). I feel like I should have thought about that idea in more depth, but as Loic can’t stop saying: Only execution matters. 😉
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motionet XMAS Party
Together with our friends from clicktivities we had a great XMAS-Party: The biggest Rock-Contest in Germany took place during that evening – see some pictures below 😉
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Black Macbook MagSafe Board
After I „offered“ my Macbook to the rain in last August, the battery didn’t charge anymore, though the macbook works seamlessly. After reading a lot on the net, I now decided to get myself a new magsafe board, which is a small piece sitting inside the macbook, and connects the magsafe connector to the mainboard – I suppose, this is broken due to the rain. After trying 120345890 times to get someone at gravis to the phone, I finally went there last saturday, wanting to order the spare part. All they said: Apple dosen’t sell spare parts, and so do we (ehm, well, ok…). Now I ordered it at comtecedv.de Let’s see how this will work out.
UPDATE:I’ve just finished installation of the new Magsafe board – but it didn’t work – so, the mainboard seems to be defect ;( Damn – could have been so easy. Btw: got two screws left – hope that doesn’t hurt my MB 😉
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My trip to Sweden and Lativa
During the last weeks I made a small but very nice trip to the north, fliying from Dusseldorf to Stockholm (ryanair), taking the ferry from Stockholm to Riga (Silja Lines) and flying back from Riga to Dusseldorf (ryanair).
For accomodation I chose the community couchsurfing.com which I can highly suggest to anyone out there wanting to travel „the special“ way. The cool thing with couchsrufing.com is, that thre are people from all over the world who host you on their couch. So of course, no money for hotel etc. but most important: you get your guide for free 😉 I really liked the idea of getting connected to people who live in the towns you visit – and it really worked out for me, getting to know Stockholm and Riga from the „insight view“ (Thanks to Olov and Agnija). These guys where so helpful and pleasant, that I had a wonderful time in both cities (photos following 😉 ). What really excited me was Riga, the capital of Latvia, with their young people, fully addicted to the internet – first thing I discussed with Agnija was the impact of converged media – she is studying somethint like media science. I was a bit disappointed by Stockhom, because during my stay, streets were nearly empty – but this might have to do with holidays and it was quite cold, so no need to go outside for the Swedish, only stupid german tourists like me were walking around… 😉
I think my next travel to the north will be in summertime – because Riga and Stockholm are really beatiful towns, with lots of green and water.
Now, refreshed, and back to work, kickin 2009…