From the desk of

Kategorie: Technology

  • Life changing … 

    No, I would not descri­be any of the Mac­in­toshes I used or owned as life chan­ging. My cour­se of life was too much direc­ted towards pro­fes­sio­nal geek­dom; my inte­rests had always been ali­gned with that stuff so that I would not call any sin­gle of the com­pu­ters I had life changing.  The first Mac I…

  • Bücher, Daten, Internet

    Ich bin ein ziem­li­cher Bücher­wurm. Schon wäh­rend mei­nes Auf­wach­sens waren mir Bücher wich­tig und wert. Ich hat­te mei­ne Stamm­buch­hand­lung, die Buch­händ­ler dort kann­ten mich gut. Von Zeit zu Zeit half ich ein wenig bei tech­ni­schen Pro­ble­men, oder ich durf­te Bücher schon mal in Muf­fins bezah­len. Mein Geschmack, mei­ne Inter­es­sen: das war dort alles klar –…

  • Verschlüsselung ist nicht Teil der Lösung, sondern Teil des Problems

    Im Rah­men der glo­ba­len Inter­net-Über­wa­chung, die PRISM und Tem­po­ra offen­sicht­lich gemacht haben – und wahr­schein­lich gibt es doch auch noch ande­re Pro­gram­me in ande­ren Staa­ten – ist ein Gut­teil des Online-Dis­kur­ses der Fra­ge gewid­met, wie man sich selbst mit Ver­schlüs­se­lung schüt­zen kann.  Nach mei­nem Dafür­hal­ten ist aber der Ein­satz von Ver­schlüs­se­lung kei­ne Lösung des Pro­blems: weder für…

  • Und nochmal: Zeitung.

    An nahe­zu jedem Com­pu­ter wer­den wir dar­an erin­nert, dass es eine Zeit gab, in der Tages­zei­tun­gen die tech­no­lo­gi­sche Ent­wick­lung getrie­ben haben. Die Schrift „Times New Roman“ hat ihren Namen von ihrem Auf­trag­ge­ber und ihrer Ver­wen­dung: Die Lon­don Times lies eine Schrift ent­wer­fen, die auf den damals neu auf­kom­men­den Rota­ti­ons­pres­sen auch bei höhe­ren Geschwin­dig­kei­ten mög­lichst gut…

  • Eine Notiz zum Apple Event

    Ich gebe es zu: wie so vie­le ande­re Apple-Fans saß auch ich um kurz nach 19 Uhr vor mei­nem iPad und sah mir den Live­stream an. Ich woll­te hören und sehen, was Apple denn nun eigent­lich anzu­kün­di­gen und zu zei­gen hat; hat­te mei­ne eige­nen Theo­rien was zu sehen sein wür­de und was nicht, und ent­zog…

  • Steve Jobs: A Lost Interview

    Ich sit­ze gera­de auf dem Bal­kon und sehe auf dem iPad ein Video von Ste­ve Jobs, das zu seli­gen NeXT-Zei­ten ent­stand. Inter­es­sant, in vie­len Facetten.  Ste­ve Jobs – Lost Inter­view from John on Vimeo.

  • Features for Twitter for Mac

    Twitter’s nati­ve app for Mac OS has been my pri­ma­ry Twit­ter envi­ron­ment for some time now. I used it befo­re it got that enti­re­ly new (non­stan­dard) user inter­face. I still like it bet­ter than the other Twit­ter app’s I’ve seen out the­re, but the­re are a few gripes with it that I have.  I like to…

  • Zeitungs-Websites

    Lie­be Zeitungswebsite-CMS-Konfektionierer, die Druck­an­sich­ten auf Euren Web­sites sind ja durch­aus sehr prak­tisch. Könnt Ihr es aber bit­te so ein­rich­ten, dass die Druck­an­sicht nicht ein neu­es Fens­ter oder ein neu­es Tab öff­net, son­dern ein­fach in mei­nem aktu­el­len Brow­ser gela­den wird, so wie jede ande­re Sei­te auch? Und könnt ihr auch auf den Java­Script-Auf­ruf des Druck-Dia­logs ver­zich­ten?…

  • Nokia/Microsoft vs. …

    I get the very distinct impres­si­on that Micro­No­kia are not set­ting them­sel­ves up to com­pe­te against Apple, but much rather pri­ma­ri­ly against Google’s Android. Lar­ge­ly, this is becau­se again we’­re see­ing a split bet­ween hard­ware and soft­ware com­pa­nies. In split­ting apart tho­se kinds of deve­lo­p­ment, they are at a dis­ad­van­ta­ge to bring about the same…

  • Why IMAP is a good model for cloud services

    I do admit it: I like the IMAP pro­to­col. I regu­lar­ly use mul­ti­ple com­pu­ters and my iPho­ne, and I read and wri­te email on all of them. IMAP makes that con­ve­ni­ent: I have the same view of my fol­ders and my inbox on every com­pu­ter. We also use a Web­mail cli­ent that uses IMAP as…

  • Data Roaming?

    Coming home from two weeks abroad and some idle time to think, I have a few more topics to blog about. One of them is one of the things I con­sider one of the most obs­ce­ne forms of rip­off the mobi­le pho­ne car­ri­ers do is „data roa­ming.“ If you want to bring your smart­phone online, what…

  • Be afraid. Be very afraid.

    It is a wide­ly held belief that Ste­ve Jobs is a man to trans­form indus­tries. He’s done it befo­re, and I think he (with his com­pa­ny Apple) has set his eyes to do it yet again. This time, it’s tele­pho­ny. And I can’t bla­me him, it is a god-awful indus­try we (as a spe­ci­es, glo­bal­ly)…

  • Lessons in customer support

    I – pro­ba­b­ly along with many, many others of the iPho­ne Twit­ter App – dis­co­ver­ed some­thing that I con­sider a bug. As soon as you rota­te the pho­ne, your posi­ti­on in your time­line is utter­ly garb­led. Whe­re you are after tur­ning has no resem­blan­ce whatsoe­ver to whe­re you were befo­re. That means: Take the pho­ne,…

  • eBooks

    So there’s a new Kind­le that looks quite attrac­ti­ve. Many things on the Kind­le platt­form appear quite nice: You can read the Kind­le books on mul­ti­ple devices (the Kind­le app for iPho­ne and iPad just as well as your desk­top and lap­top com­pu­ter) and have your libra­ry available on all devices equal­ly. The way I…

  • Home media integration and other televisory matters

    Fol­lo­wing up on my last pos­ting, the­re are a few more things that come to mind when thin­king about the future of TV sets. With all tho­se video strea­ming ser­vices that I want, I also would like inte­gra­ti­on with my lapop (or iPho­ne or iPad, or wha­te­ver other media con­sump­ti­on devices the­re are in the…

  • TV sets and online experience

    It seems that TV sets that offer some form of web con­nec­ti­vi­ty are the latest cra­ze, right next with the 3D stuff that is not yet rea­dy for con­sump­ti­on, at least to my mind. I say web con­nec­ti­vi­ty becau­se it’s about the web more than it is about inter­net con­nec­ti­vi­ty – the TV sets are…

  • More basement finds …

    So if you thought that the last post dates me, see here. This is from the mid eight­ies, magne­tic stripes to save stuff on. One stri­pe held all of 1.2 kb. What fun to remember!

  • URL shortening, a new approach

    The­re is an approach in URL shor­ten­ers that I have not yet seen, but think that has some merit: Store all the infor­ma­ti­on for the URLs in a DNS zone. Store the URLs you point to as TXT records. The zone can then be pul­led and per­used at will. That way, data is never stored…

  • Look what I found!

    Clea­ning up the base­ment (becau­se we had some water lea­king in, but that is a dif­fe­rent mat­ter enti­re­ly), I found stuff that prac­ti­cal­ly makes me feel ancient … 

  • An iPhone API I’d like to see

    Just tal­king about the iPho­ne, the­re is an API that I’d like to see and I’m sure many appli­ca­ti­ons would bene­fit from: A down­load mana­ger.  I ima­gi­ne that an app could regis­ter to pull the con­tent of a spe­ci­fic URL or the ans­wer from a Web Ser­vice at a spe­ci­fied time or at spe­ci­fied inter­vals,…