Category Archives: tech

Flattr, a great idea, a great video, great people behind

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Flattr is exactly what I dreamed of when I wrote my post about the donation-button-dilemma on open-source projects. Flattr, by the creators of the pirate bay, is a service that let’s you specify an amount you want to spend monthly, I don’t know what they plan, but let’s say 10€, and you can flattr any project you like, very much like digging, and they will get a share of your money. Of course, this only works because the money adds up.

There are some unknown variables to me so far. I don’t know how much of the money reaches the designated receiver after all, how privacy and security is ensured, how money can be transferred to flattr and so on, yet, this idea opens up new horizons for people who want to invest time in software they don’t mean to sell, but still be able to live a life worth living.

I mentioned the video, it’s a well-made one, see below

( note: I’m using the logo without permission, hope the pirate-bay guys won’t mind that. )

impressive, prezi and other ways to kill PowerPoint

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I’ve to admit, I haven’t used PowerPoint for 4 years, mostly because no one wanted me to present anything. Times have changed, I had to do 4 presentations in one week lately. Being forced to communicate through slides, I experienced a bit, and here’s my conclusion.

The first presentation was built using Keynote, which is part of iWork, Apple’s Office counterpart. Creation was really simple, the look is just amazing ( especially the transitions ), but there is one problem: I don’t have a mobile Mac at the moment, so I needed to use a friend’s MacBook to do the presentation. This is definitely a bit of a pain, considering the fact that he’s most likely not always around, and exporting to PowerPoint kills all the USPs. There is a workaround though, you can export presentations as .mov files, movies that halt on every transition and continue only after you press a key.

Second presentation, Latex Beamer producing PDFs. The ugly part is the creation, certainly. Unless you are fluid in a text editor, command line and the reading of technical documentation, this might not be your premier choice. After you’ve gracefully managed to create some slides, the output looks great and the best point about it is that any netbook will do just fine for the presentation. I used my Ubuntu-equipped machine and it worked well using the default PDF-Viewer.

Sven showed impressive to me today, a great way of tuning your PDF-only presentations by adding transitions, overview pages and other handy accessoires to finished PDF-Presentations. It’s written in python, has some dependencies ( nothing that easy_install couldn’t fix ) and works really well.

The third presentation kicked off using Google Docs. The presentation ( about Google Go ) had no style, no transitions, was built in about 10 minutes and.. worked. Nothing more, nothing less. It clearly did it’s job, yet there are, at least by now, a bunch of more pleasing ways to get the job done available.

Because a lot of people are really excited about Prezi at the moment, I decided to give it a shot. The presentations created are really different from what presentations have been in the past, it looks.. amazing, is easy to use, features a free plan. It depends on flash, which is somewhat a drawback and is, at least for me not a choice at the moment. Why? Well, first of all, there is no way to create custom styles, you are basically limited to what Prezi offers. The next problem is the lack of a free offline editor ( Google Docs is able to do that ). And of course, what you create looks create, but either I missed the feature that says “copy region from one Prezi to another” or it’s not there. Either way, without it, reuse seems impossible. Still, if you have only 3 minutes and need to deliver a stunning performance, you should go with Prezi. ( Edit: Benny just posted something about Prezi a few days ago, too )

A day at the Android Developer Lab World Tour in Zürich

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What would you do if you had the chance to meet some fellow android developers at Google’s Europe HQ in Zürich for free? Yes, you register and go there. As did I, we. Unfortunately, someone at Google’s messed the times up, which lead to us having to depart in Stuttgart at 6am rather than 10am, but nevertheless we made it on time.

What’s the impression of the Google HQ? It’s quite hard to remain objective and unimpressed, so the report may well be seriously biased. Sights along the way in: Streetview car, Google Sign. No suits. Sights in the entrance area: Pool table ( playable ), fridge, Google Sign. Very colourful, nice. Once we waited about 10 minutes we were guided to the conference location, which was also located on the ground floor, right next to the cafeteria and the ( ! ) gym. The overall impression on the way there was that it’s actually not a place that’s perfectly suitable for working there, but it’s a place where living might be fun as well :-)

We had to wait some time until the event kicked off, but the time was spent more or less usefully setting up wifi, talking to other developers and the android stuff ( specifically Reto Meier who held the talk ) and drinking free coke. The event started, but was interrupted to give away free nexus ones. This came not really as a surprise as a) the boxes were located next to the entry, so it was not hard to spot and b) most of the participants I talked to followed the other lab sessions e.g. in Berlin and Paris. But forget about surprises, it’s so amazing to get a phone for free ( actually, it’s even more amazing if it’s the second one ). And what can I say, it rocks, you need to play with one for a little while, forget the iPhone, honestly.

After about half an hour later, the talk finally began, very interactive, very well-held. It basically included a what is android-primer, as well as some focus on technologies available and best practices. After a short while ( let’s guess it was 30 minutes ), we switched over to having .. lunch. And damn, it was tasty like hell. Just like the whole day, all people were nice, friendly, it was a really great atmosphere even just to eat.. wow.

The second part of the talk focused on some code examples, and afterwards, the fun part of the event began: the big bang question session. I had some prepared, as had almost all other people there. And it’s just great to talk to someone who knows ( omitting the should here ), and gives you a clear answer. Reto Meier, again, did a great job on this.I also showed some people qwerted, and I guess some even liked it :-) . There is one app I really want to recommend, it’s called Music Queue and tries to change the way we listen to music and organize our on-the-fly playlist. Great app, cool developer!

What can I see? We left too soon ( for my impression ), and I need to work there. Like, really. Unfortunately, picture taking is generally not allowed on the premises, yet we were able to take some at the conference room itself.

Thanks to all the great people there, was a really cool day.. next year again, hm?

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qwerted status update

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Wow. just wow. The last few days, I received tons of emails from people who want to beta test qwerted, have been featured on some blogs ( androidguys.com , ignore the code , mobiflip , some other languaged-blogs ), thanks to the all writers, and got a lot of motivation from the positive reactions.

There are some things I’d like to adress in a short here. First of all, iPhone indeed has some kind of resizing of the touch areas for specific keys, but it’s not as extensive as qwerted’s resizing. Just try it ( I did )! Overall, qwerted and all other android keyboards do have a special problem, and that is that screen estate is fairly limited, and at least on my devices ( g1, google ion ) the screen is notably smaller than the iphone’s.

The next issue is word suggestions. Many people approached me with that wish. I’m currently in the process of building “more necessary” things, like a dictionary installer, and qwerted will get suggested words after that. But I guess not in the plain way you know word suggestions. Maybe context aware, maybe something else. But they are definitely on the agenda.

A word on pricing. I set up a small survey for beta users ( If you’re one of those, the survey is on google ), and the results at this point indicate a selling price of about $2.49. I think this is quite fair and reasonable.

I’m sorry if I forgot to answer some mails or didn’t reply to questions, it’s been a few busy days, and I’m still overwhelmed, amazed and thrilled by the way the whole qwerted-thing developed. And it’s just the start.

Finally: I guess I’m going to make the end-of-january deadline!

Germany, France against Google ( Protectionism at its best )

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Have you heard the latest ideas of deeply concerned government representatives in France and Germany? Mastermind Sarkozy wants to raise a Google-Tax, German Secretary of Justice sees a urgent need to check if projects like Streetview conform with german law. While these thoughts are not a week old, the fight aainst Google Books is still present. Well, Google is the new enemy, that is obvious.

The overall public perception of Google in Germany is quite negative, but it wasn’t always. In the early years, Google was seen as a great company, very much like the “don’t be evil”-claim suggests. Over the years yet, this attitude has shifted towards an, in my opinion, overly critic one. The main concerns are privacy and the fear of an uncontrollably huge enterprise with almost unlimited power in the internet. While all of these fears are at least partially reasonable and justified, they are nothing more but a result of an organic development and the business model of Google. This development has only been possible by a number of components working together brilliantly: the idea, the team, the environment, and the time in which all of Google happened.

Contrary to other big players in the industry, no one was ever forced to use Google. Although this is a weak point, it’s still important in understanding why government programs to limit Google’s influence are set to fail. Google dominates the market not by a policy in which all other competitors are either bought or killed, it dominates the market by being the best. This is valid for GMail, the Google Search, Maps and many other applications. The consequence is simple: Users tend to use the best, that is, Google. A very high market share at the end is just a symptom for the lack of knowledge of other players involved, but no consequence of some evil tendency on Google’s side.

What about privacy? First of all, there is a discrepancy. While searching for people and last names is super-popular, this is only valid as long as the own name is not represented in any ( negative, compromising ) way. So basically, Google should fix the stuff people mess up on the internet, be it by uploading pictures or by writing private sex-blogs. Something Google will never do, because it’s simply not possible, and a search engine can’t be replacement for a responsible and conscious use of this medium.

The other privacy concern is the usage data Google gathers. This happens e.g. when you use GMail, the Google Search, Google Documents, and virtually all other products provided. This data is collected to improve the overall experience, e.g. by providing recommendations or remembering settings, by customizing results and so on. But this data is only collected once you start using Google. Google Analytics, using also cookies to track unique visitors, is by the way just a product provided by Google for Website owners. In case you feel offended by that, you should therefore contact the staff of any website in question, rather than Google.

What is clear to me after writing these few paragraphs: the Problem is not Google, the problem is the non-existence of any kind of competitor on this continent. Having been unable to create a sustainable Internet business in the last ten years ( help me if I’m wrong ) on the continent, instead of improving the conditions for IT-Startups, the education, this problem shall now be solved by reanimating the poor idea of protectionism.

The question should be, why we are simply unable to be a successful country when it comes to non-copied, innovative startups and great companies. And how to solve that.. I don’t know.

bored summary of the past day. / 750words, 1buckapp, java coding tipps

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So, on this very exceptionally snowy day here in Stuttgart, i decided to procrastinate a bit and do some fun stuff. Because going outside would have been at least life-threatening, I decided that the most exciting adventure would be to clean the kitchen take a panorama image out of my 3 living room windows. Here it is.

After having mastered the fun part of the day, I had a really interesting skype call with a former colleague of mine who is now enrolled at UCL. We spoke about some projects we have been doing, and of course the upcoming ones. And I guess a sideproject of his, 1bucketapp.appspot.com, is really worth mentioning. I don’t know what to do with it, but maybe you can put it to use.

Another, at first sight, useless site is http://750words.com/, a project where everyone is encouraged to write 750 words every day. The texts are not published nor accessible to anyone else but you, so it’s a private diary for everyone who has a need for one. From my personal attempt to use it I can tell that 750 words is a lot.

The last interesting snippet of the day was a collection of tipps for keeping Java code clean and maintainable. Although the text dates back to 2001, it’s still of remarkabel relevance and definitely worth reading.