fragments

Facebook in real life

Wed, 14 May 2008 13:33:29 +0000

Twitter

Sun, 11 May 2008 21:52:30 +0000

Since I'm getting asked about twitter on a regular basis now even from people who are into IT I figured I should do a post about it.

Twitter is basically a service to broadcast status messages whereever you are and get the status of your friends on the go. It sends you text messages (SMS), instant messages or you can use twhirl, an excellent AIR client or your browser to read and post new messages. It lets you configure who's messages you want on your phone and who's not, etc. Go watch the video below and sign up for an account. You can find me here.

Technorati Tags: twitter, web 2.0

Diplomhauptprüfung Informatik

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:08:53 +0000

As most of you have already heard, I passed all my exams last week at the Technical University of Munich! To leave something for the poor souls who will have to go through the Diplomhauptprüfung in years to come, I have just uploaded my compilation of information on the classes that I was tested in. I don't assume this will be very useful except for the person who wrote it, but sometimes it can help to get a short explanation of something before diving into the matter. So here it is [600k, pdf], I hope it is of some use.

Technorati Tags: DHP, Diplom, exams, TUM

click-and-be-owned

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:03:02 +0000

Just came across a really scary story on schneier's blog: Apparently the FBI is planting fake links in online message boards claiming to lead to child porn. Once you click on them, your IP address is recorded and your house might be searched and you might be arrested. Here are more details on one case on ars technica.

So watch out next time someone is sending you a funny link on IM or in emails. It's hard to imagine how anyone with a half way decent knowledge of internet technology and IT security can come up with such an idea? There are so many ways of how you could end up on the list without ever doing anything related to visiting such a message board, and using this as the only basis of a federal investigation is just unbelievable.

Technorati Tags: FBI, security

web 2.0 your alarm clock

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:29:03 +0000

I want a chumby, too! Seems like they are only shipping to US addresses for now :(

Technorati Tags: chumby, gadget, web 2.0

Safari: open in new tab

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:04:38 +0000

Been waiting for this feature ever since switching back to safari (Firefox was just behaving to strange in longterm use). Enter this into your command line and safari 3.1 will open anything that has a target=_blank in a new tab instead of a window.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Thanx to fscklog for another useful hint!

Technorati Tags: apple, mac, safari

webdesign

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:30:02 +0000

New approach to web design ;)

(via laughingsquid)

Technorati Tags: ads, funny, VW, video

Quality Ads on facebook

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:17:43 +0000

Just came across this excellently crafted ad on facebook:

I guess they still have a long way to go before they can make money off of that ;)

Technorati Tags: ads, funny, facebook

locate the mistake

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:21:23 +0000

Found photoshopdisasters this morning and been ROTFL ;)

Technorati Tags: funny, photography, photoshop, blog

when geeks go to a war protest

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:57:25 +0000

LOL ;)

(via swissmiss)

Technorati Tags: funny

Freeze flash mob munich

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:17:15 +0000

In case you haven't heard the term flash mob before here's the citation from wikipedia:

A flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief period of time, then quickly disperse.

Now someone came up with the concept of a freeze flash mob, meaning everyone gathers in a public place and just stops moving for a couple of minutes. You can see how much fun it is to see people wandering around totally clueless of what's going on in this video taken in London:

I got an invite on facebook to join a group for an upcoming event in munich. If I'm in town I am definitely going to be there! Here are the raw details from the group page, in case you're not on facebook:

Friday, May 9 2008 exactly 14:15:00 to 14:20:00
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Location: Marienplatz

Technorati Tags: flash mob, freeze, munich

Rasender Stillstand

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:50:33 +0000

Ich bin gerade über einen wunderbaren Artikel zum Thema Zeit in brand eins gestolpert:

Im Vorjahr hat der britische Verkehrsinformations-Dienst Keepmoving eine Geschwindigkeits-Studie in europäischen Städten durchgeführt. Wie schnell kommt man durch, mit Auto oder öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln? Die langsamste Stadt Europas ist demnach London, wo die Prognose für 2010 beinahe erreicht ist: Mit Tempo 19 geht es durch die britische Hauptstadt. Gleich darauf: Berlin. Das durchschnittliche Tempo dort beträgt 24 Kilometer pro Stunde. So schnell waren Postkutschen zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts. Es lebe der Fortschritt.

...

"Multitasking", "Echtzeit", der ganze faule Zauber lebt davon, dass man so tut, als ob. Der nervöse Kerl im Flugzeug, der während Start und Landung den Zeigefinger auf der Einschalttaste seines Blackberrys hat, weil er ein paar Minuten nichts tun und Unfug wie "bin auf dem weg zum meeting, cu ben" tippen darf. Solche Menschen produzieren bis zu 300 Mails, S MS oder anderen Info-Müll pro Tag, und das heißt, dass mindestens 300 andere Leute diesen Müll bekommen. Dieser Spam füllt das, was die Multitasker als "ihr Netzwerk" bezeichnen, also die Gesamtheit ihrer Opfer, die gleichsam auch Täter sind.

Technorati Tags: brandeins

Wedding Pictures

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 01:00:24 +0000

On Feb 9 Leo & Richy got married in Freising. I was asked to be the official photographer for the wedding. It was a fun wedding and a great experience being in charge of the pictures for such an important event.
I just uploaded a subset of the 900 or so images I took, so go check out the gallery of my favorite shots.

Technorati Tags: photography, wedding

Remember the Milk

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:43:32 +0000

I stumbled across Remember the Milk a couple of weeks ago. It's a web app to manage task lists with great integration with pretty much anything I use: You can email tasks to your todo lists from the blackberry, it supports iCal style export, it has an iPhone optimized app, plus there is a quicksilver plugin!

Apart from being very useful and saving you the pain of synchronizing task lists across platforms all the time, what I like the most about the application is its use of keyboard shortcuts that really boost your efficiency when dealing with the app. Haven't seen anything like it in a web app so far. So go check it out, it's free.

Technorati Tags: GTD, productivity, web 2.0

Ventures into data recovery

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:30:08 +0000

I was recently asked to shoot photos at a wedding of friends and ended up with a memory card that wasn't readable in a camera or in a compact flash drive at all anymore. No idea why this happened, I've been using this camera for about a year now and never had any problems.

Since it was crucial to get the images off anyways I had to look into data recovery tools for the first time. I found PC Inspector and it saved my day. It was pretty slow to get about 400 MB of RAW files off the card but it did the job. I was able to recover all files with the exception of a couple broken ones! So if you ever end up in a similar situation, have a look at this tool.

Technorati Tags: bugs, photography, data recovery