hangout-disco - Renders a WebGL room with avatars for each participant of a Google+ Hangout, with the possibility to play music, etc. - Google Project Hosting. Fun - something like a virtual Hangout world.
Archive November 2011
BUSTED! Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps • The Register. Net - Android phones infected with rootkit/keylogger. And if I read that correctly, the software was apparently installed by network providers and/or device manufacturers. Oh, of course, it's just a "diagnostic tool" - just like the various trojans for PCs are only remote maintenance tools ...
Zinc HTTP Components. Interesting project that has set itself the task of providing as complete support as possible for all aspects of the HTTP protocol. Interesting because they start from the protocol definition and not, as in many other cases, the HTTP implementation is only as far as it was necessary for the respective web framework.
I'm a confessed PyPy fan, and with version 1.7, PyPy has done a good job - the memory leaks of version 1.6 seem to be gone, and you can now run long-running processes (like a Tornado web server here in the post) with it. Especially for more complex template engines and situations where you work internally with larger data structures to produce results, it's a real alternative - but remember, PyPy needs more memory for the same work.
GemStone Seaside | About. About Seaside: there is a pretty cool virtual appliance (i.e. pre-chewed virtual disk image) for mounting in VMWare installations with a GemStone/S installation including Seaside and a Squeak as an IDE for development for this system. So if you want to see how the big kids work with Smalltalk, click here to download and try it out.
Security flaw: Fire hazard with HP printers? - Golem.de. Finally able to remotely burn down offices. Surely every hacker dreams of that. Thanks HP for this extremely useful feature.
Python Math | Python for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch - Keep away from the last update, as you can no longer bring in external scripts into the tool, which makes it completely useless. The author promises an editor in an update, but it remains to be seen whether it will be even remotely usable. Of course, this is just one of the nonsensical Apple policies he has implemented - but the way he installs an update and only mentions it in the last line of the update information is really bad. Because if you miss that, you have an currently unusable part on the Pad or Phone.
Fliers Still Must Turn Off Devices, but Its Not Clear Why - NYTimes.com. What always amazes me about this ridiculous request to turn off electronic devices: if they were really so dangerous, why are they allowed on board? As the author correctly states in the article: the authorities panic over small bottles of hand lotion, but the electronic devices are waved through. Nevertheless, this completely ineffective request is repeated over and over again. Cargo cult security.
YaCy - Free search engine software and decentralized web search. I'm a fan of distributed systems, so I should definitely check out this distributed search engine (alongside the distributed overlay network Tor and the distributed social network Diaspora, certainly an important component in a potential "free" network).
Flight data agreement has been negotiated - fm4.ORF.at. And where are our so-called diligent data protection officers of the states and the federal government now? Oh, sorry, they must hate Facebook. It's also much more important to campaign against Like buttons and threaten websites with fines rather than standing up to their own government representatives who draft and enforce such data trading deals.
Welcome to NeuroLab’s documentation! — NeuroLab v0.2.1 documentation. Okay, I don't need it right now (and honestly, I don't know if I will ever need it), but what the heck, I'm just a fan of neural networks. And Python. And therefore, here's a reference to a library that provides a whole range of algorithms from this field for Python.
A human review of the Kindle Fire – Marco.org. Sounds like the Kindle Fire is quite unnecessary. Good thing it's not even available on the German market (I wouldn't give up my Kindle with eInk display though, it's brilliant).
Nice Impressions
Pictures from the Microsoft Dynamics AX Congress in Nice. Okay, not actually pictures from the congress, but more of Nice. Palms, Mediterranean flair, the Mediterranean Sea, and big yachts. Unfortunately, it was mostly dark, but that has never stopped me from taking pictures.
Men's toys in Nice
Extra post for extra cars. They were just standing there one day in front of the convention center. We didn't really understand why - at the time there was some kind of local assembly or something, but in addition, there were hordes of uniformed people around, the cars were there, lots of police. Maybe some regional bigwig was there and he was a classic car fan. The cars were nice to look at anyway.
forger the digital sculpting app for iPad. 3D modeling on the go on the iPad following the clay shaping model. Could be interesting for one or the other who wants to bring it over to Blender to Collada to import it into Second Life, for example.
Technical Overview : Dart : Structured web programming. Of all the current "we're reinventing JavaScript" approaches, this one is almost the most interesting - in principle, it is a classic OO language with a C#-like feature set and mapping to JavaScript. But what is interesting about this system: it is designed from the outset to also develop in a browser environment. But not just within a browser, but as its own IDE, which integrates a runtime browser. And the developer of the project is the Newspeak (previous post) developer, who has already shown very interesting ideas for an IDE. Currently, the Dart Editor is much more oriented towards typical IDEs than the more innovative ideas of the database-based IDE in my opinion.
Newspeak » The Newspeak Programming Language. I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm not really linking it because of the language itself, but because of the IDE presented there - it runs within Squeak, but is largely autonomous and looks very interesting to me. From the first glance, I would say that someone is very inspired by the old Apple Dylan - the hierarchical representation of classes and methods, the linking and the general presentation of the source as a kind of hyperlinked database looks very good.
Radius limited searching with the ORM | Neogeo ramblings with a Python twist. Looking at this, there are really nice features in GeoDjango. Unfortunately, I don't currently have a project where I could use it, so just bookmarked for later. The blog also has other interesting articles about GeoDjango.
Pixelmator. For everyone who, like me, feels ripped off by Adobe because they simply pushed PSE 10 as a new product into the App Store instead of following the usual practices there and releasing it as an update for PSE 9 (not that I'm particularly surprised - Adobe has been pulling such stunts with the product for a while now, that there are no more free updates). I just want to point out Pixelmator again. Much cheaper, visually much better structured, much smaller (I find it ridiculous that a photo editor must occupy 2.6 GB on the disk without the possibility for the user to select what they really need). For me, the essential tool is the Healing Brush (since that is the retouching tool that Lightroom does not have in an adequate form), and Pixelmator also has it as a tool and delivers good results for me. PS and PSE are now history for me. Warning, Pixelmator appreciates a slightly more powerful CPU and a bit more memory - with large images, I notice short pauses on my MacBook Air 13" from time to time (not really critical, just noticeable).
LEGO Universe : Game Help - LEGO Universe. Oh no, I haven't even played it (though I bought it, just never logged in due to lack of time) and they're already shutting it down. I would have wished for a bit more patience from them - do companies now expect every idea to be instantly successful? It's a shame anyway, the ideas sounded really good.
Kodak sells Image Sensor Solutions business: Digital Photography Review. That doesn't sound good to me as a Leica M user. I hope my M8 lasts as long as possible and doesn't suffer from the digital component failures that were common with Kodak digital adaptations (I still think about my DCS 520 often).
Pinax. And once again something I think I already had. But for current reasons, it has come back on my radar, and therefore I will take a closer look at it. Something like a peddler's tray for Django projects with a focus on social networks and community sites. Sounds very interesting - a bit like Drupal with Python and on Django (so rather not finished sites but building blocks and framework for creating them).
Panasonic: Systemkamera GX1 mit Dreikern-Bildprozessor - Golem.de. Still a bit thin on information (as usual, but already more about it at dpreview), but Panasonic seems to really want to catch up with Olympus and certainly also Sony. It will be exciting again, the G3 has already shown at Panasonic what the newer generation can do and the GX1 is supposed to top that.
Autumn Walk
Autumn has been at work for quite some time, but today the weather was really beautiful, so I took a longer walk around the Aasee and the Schlossgarten and took some photos. A small selection is attached, I just love the colors in the autumn sun. The walk ended with delicious Turkish food at FrauenstraĂźe 24. The photos were taken with the Leica M8.
New55 Film. There seems to be a project in the works that wants to reinvent the Polaroid Type 55 film (the one with the simultaneous positive and negative). Their project - according to their own statements - already has successes to show, including providing a correctly exposed positive and negative (with Polaroid, only one of the two was ever correctly exposed). Hmm, if this really takes off, I'll take a few packs of it!