“We’ve partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. It’s an amazing resource that beautifully encapsulates our ongoing fascination with the future, and science and technology’s incredible potential to improve our lives. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.”

Source: http://www.popsci.com/archives

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

After hitting <return> the folder will be a shortcut to the Windows 7 Administration GOD Mode. Enjoy. (Thanks Damir)

Source: http://tomicic.de/2010/01/03/Windows7GodMode.aspx

“A mashup, bootleg or blend (also mash up and mash-up) is a song or composition created by blending two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another.

In full swing at the end of the 20th century, mashups have been described positively as “ultimate post-modern pop song[s]” or “‘culture jamming in its purest form’” They have also been described negatively as “the logical extension of the sampling fever of the ’80s taken to its dumbest extreme”. Due to the questionable legal status of mash ups and little chance of profits “there’s a real punk rock attitude attached to the movement”.” (Source)

Oh… by the way: This is not the first time I am writing about Mash-Ups… be sure to have a look here and here.

Source 1: http://www.mashup-charts.com/
Source 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_%28music%29

They even sent me a notice that there will be a planned maintenance downtime in more than a week. They do the maintenance on a saturday morning. When it’s unlikely that anyone will miss the uplink. (Since we got two, we won’t actually miss it… it’s just slower)

Der T-Online Venture Fund gab heute ein Investment in die sones GmbH bekannt. sones sicherte sich in einer zweiten Finanzierungsrunde eine Beteiligung im einstelligen Millionenbereich. Mit den zusätzlichen Mitteln soll das Produkt bis zur endgültigen Marktreife weiterentwickelt werden.

Das 2007 gegründete Software-Unternehmen aus Erfurt hat eine völlig neue, innovative Datenbanktechnologie entwickelt. Die objektorientierte Datenbank kann die relevanten Informationen aus komplexen, unstrukturierten Datenmengen direkt miteinander verbinden und setzt somit neue Maßstäbe hinsichtlich Skalierbarkeit und Performance. Mit dieser Technologie werden komplexitätsbedingt bisher unlösbare Probleme in der Datenspeicherung und -analyse beherrschbar.

“Bei sones hat uns vor allem die innovative Technologie überzeugt und der Ansatz, Bestehendes in Frage zu stellen. Somit können völlig neue Möglichkeiten des Datenmanagements geschaffen werden“, so Christoph Schmidt, Senior Vice President bei der Deutschen Telekom AG für den Bereich Personal Social Networks.

sones arbeitet derzeit am Ausbau seiner Datenbanktechnologie sowie am dazugehörigen Dateisystem. Gegen Ende dieses Jahres wird die erste Vollversion des objektorientierten Datenbankmanagementsystems (DBMS) zur Verfügung stehen. Softwareentwicklern und Partnern wird es via SDK (Software Development Kit) ermöglicht, weitreichenden Einfluss auf die Entwicklung zu nehmen und Veränderungen am System vorzunehmen. sones lädt interessierte Softwareentwickler und potentielle Partner ein, sich über die Webseite www.sones.de für das Preview- und Partner-Programm anzumelden, um die kostenlose Entwicklerversion zu erhalten und Feedback für die zukünftige Weiterentwicklung zu geben. Derzeit steht ein auf Webservices basierendes Tagging- und Recommendation-System zur Verfügung, das bereits kommerziell eingesetzt wird. „Das System kann an die jeweiligen Anforderungen in den Bereichen eCommerce, Social Networks und Portal/Content-Lösungen angepasst werden“ sagt Alexander Oelling, Leiter New Business Development bei sones. Auch hier setzt sones auf die Zusammenarbeit mit Software-Partnern, um das Produkt in die jeweiligen Webseiten zu integrieren.

Mauricio Matthesius, Geschäftsführer von sones: „Der T-Online Venture Fund hat erkannt, dass unsere revolutionäre Technologie die Zukunft der Datenbanken mitbestimmen kann, und uns in die Lage versetzt, diese Vision konsequent umzusetzen.“

Mit dem Einstieg des T-Online Venture Fund sucht das Unternehmen weitere Mitarbeiter vor allen in den Bereichen Softwareentwicklung und Vertrieb.”

Source 1: http://www.t-venture.de/de/topnews/090402_PM_TOVF_sones_dt
Source 2: http://www.sones.de

get yours!

Source: http://www.drpepper.com/freeDrPepper/

Source: http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts

Wird es – und zwar von ProSieben selbst – als Flash On-Demand “auf-der-Webseite” Player. Und hauptsächlich als Notiz für spätere Sendungen an mich selbst hier mal kurz die Anleitung wie man sich die ganzen Einzelvideos von Schlag den Raab auf den heimischen Rechner zieht um sie ohne Werbeunterbrechung und ohne lästiges herumklicken durchaus auchmal auf dem ebenso heimischen Fernseher anschauen kann. Die Qualität reicht dabei so gerade bis kurz nach knapp aber durchaus schaubar.

Also – für mich und den geneigten Leser:

Wie schon bei vorherigen Folgen der Sendung ist der vordere Teil der URL immer der gleiche, also http://videoplayer.prosieben.de/show_comedy/schlag_den_raab/flv/ – geändert wird jeweils das Jahr der Sendung – in diesem Fall 2008, der Monat – in diesem Fall 11 – und die Nummer der Sendung – in diesem Fall die 13. Danach kommt -00-01.flv bis -00-15.flv – wieviele Einzelteile das sind kann man auf der Webseite abzählen oder einfach probieren bis ein Notfound kommt. Einfach oder?

Das ganze Zeug ist dann mit handelsüblichen Playern abspielbar und die Qualität ist wie schon gesagt nicht so schlecht für ein On-Demand Angebot der kostenlosen Sorte:

Der Platzverbrauch ist dann entsprechend auch bemerkenswert für ein On-Demand Angebot aber das ist ja nur von Vorteil:

]]> http://www.schrankmonster.de/2008/11/02/wie-man-schlag-den-raab-schaut-ohne-werbung-und-ohne-herumklicken/feed/ 1 http://www.schrankmonster.de/2008/09/11/delicious-dew/ http://www.schrankmonster.de/2008/09/11/delicious-dew/#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:50:52 +0000 bietiekay http://www.schrankmonster.de/2008/09/11/deliciousDew.aspx

1. all synths are uploaded and only available online (broadband needed)
2. all synths are public, everyone can access them
3. the synther tool runs only on Windows
4. you’ll need a Live ID

When everything is checked you can go and upload up to 20 Gbytes of image data – my test synth takes up 200 Mbytes of the available space – so you have plenty of space to play with.

To start just install the photosynth application to view – and click “create” on the website. After the obligatory login you immediately can upload your pictures. Give it a name, ssome tags and a license and select your pictures.

Your pictures should show the same scene from different perspectives – photosynth is all about matching perspectives. After clicking on “Synth” the process starts.

And after a surprisingly short period of time your synth is done. Click on “View Synth” and you’re taken back to the website and you can browse your synth. That’s it – easy!

Source 1: my first photosynth
Source 2: Photosynth is open for the public
Source 3: create a synth

Now the soda wishlist is completed. Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper – soda heaven.

“Uh, Uh, Uh. Where is it?”

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0228246/quotes

“Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data. At present, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and “augmented” by the addition of computer-generated graphics. Advanced research includes the use of motion-tracking data, fiducial marker recognition using machine vision, and the construction of controlled environments containing any number of sensors and actuators.”

So – Augmented reality mixes the reality and the computer graphics and creates a new reality for you. That’s a lot of theoretical…so let’s talk about Levelhead:

It’s a game where you have to move plastic cubes with printed-on patterns in front of a camera – the computer now renders a new world inside of the plastic cubes – when you move the cube, the world inside the cube moves too… it looks like this:

“levelHead uses a hand-held solid-plastic cube as its only interface. On-screen it appears each face of the cube contains a little room, each of which are logically connected by doors.
In one of these rooms is a character. By tilting the cube the player directs this character from room to room in an effort to find the exit.

Some doors lead nowhere and will send the character back to the room they started in, a trick designed to challenge the player’s spatial memory. Which doors belong to which rooms?

There are three cubes (levels) in total, each of which are connected by a single door. Players have the goal of moving the character from room to room, cube to cube in an attempt to find the final exit door of all three cubes. If this door is found the character will appear to leave the cube, walk across the table surface and vanish.. The game then begins again.
Someone once said levelHead may have something to do with a story from Borges.. For a description of the conceptual basis of this project, see below. “

If you are not amazed now? You should watch this:

The thing is – this cool game and technology will be available at the end of this month as full open-source. I suggest to check Julians site back at the end of the month at last.

Source 1: Augmented Reality @ Wikipedia
Source 2: Levelhead homepage

“Announced this morning by TVR Managing Director, David Oxley, at an exclusive preview event held at the new TVR development works in Lancashire, England – TVR Production has resumed!

Upon the momentous occasion, which included invited members of the TVR Car Club, TVR staff presented the TVR Sagaris model year 2008. Exterior design has remained the same except for new 5 spoke wheels, while the interior receives a new center console with satellite navigation.

As promised back in 2006 by TVR owner, Nikolai Smolenski said “My intention is to expand the sales and distribution of TVR cars throughout Europe, the rest of the world and USA markets is a key part of the business strategy of the company.” Built as a left hand drive model, the 2008 Sagaris confirms it will be exported internationally.

Preliminary pricing puts the 2008 TVR Sagaris just below 85.000 Euros.”

So now the only thing I need is the money to buy one of these beasts… I’ll have one in black or white

the re-designed interior included satnav…touchscreen…

…and re-designed exhausts… I actually liked the side-exausts better…

the new bonnet … and the gorgeous speed six…*raaawwr*

Source 1: http://www.worldcarfans.com/9080710.012/page1/tvr-production-restarts—2008-sagaris-presented
Source 2: http://www.tvr-car-club.co.uk/tvrpreviewevent.asp

“nur in der ehemaligen DDR”, gesehen auf Spiegel-Online Fussball Liveticker.

Read the article and get the Excel files and play with it for yourself…

Source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3563/microsoft_excel_revolutionary_3d_.php

Yeah, and of course you get all the unhealthy things real coders do need to stay night after night awake. 

Happy coding!

(Crosspost from blog.aheil.de)

But I have to practice some more before being ready for the Forest-Gump-17-in-a-row-in-one-evening-because-it’s-for-free-challenge.

Jens Heymann

Limited Edition of 300, first release

That took place in context with the Limited Edition of “300″. Every fanboy and collector got his copy and had been happy, proud and (I guess) felt also a little bit arrogant – what a great divinely thing he owns and others not.

Limited Edition of 300, second release

Now everything is different. The big exclusiveness has gone. More fanboys can have their limited edition and doesn’t need to feel inferior any longer. Additionally this new version is different from the first one.

The reactions?

The previously exclusive owners of the first limited edition moan, that it’s only a rip-off of customers. In reality they are annoyed about spending much money for something (perhaps via bidding or third-party usury) that simply was not worth it.

All the other ones are happy and satisfied.

Jens Heymann

(Printed commercial in various magazins)

Jens Heymann

(TV Spielfilm, 16.11.2007)

Jens Heymann

26.11.1942, kurz nachdem die Sowjets die 6.Armee in Stalingrad einschlossen (hier natürlich nicht so dargestellt)

19.11.1976, Honecker auf Staatsbesuch in Guinea-Bissau

10.11.1989, die erste Wende-BILD

12.11.1989, die erste Wende-BILD am Sonntag

Ein Nachtrag zum Fernsehprogramm von 1989:

Damals liefen noch keine Talkshows, aber dafür die Lindenstraße um 18.40 Uhr, Transformers im Nachmittagsprogramm und Apocalypse Now am Abend. Aber ansonsten hat sich seitdem nicht viel geändert.

Jens Heymann

On this day, for reasons we still don’t quite understand, we started giving our encouragement in pirate slang. Mark suspects one of us might have been reaching for a low shot that, by pure chance, might have come off the wall at an unusually high rate of speed, and strained something best left unstrained. “Arrr!,” he might have said.

Who knows? It might have happened exactly that way.

Anyway, whoever let out the first “Arrr!” started something. One thing led to another. “That be a fine cannonade,” one said, to be followed by “Now watch as I fire a broadside straight into your yardarm!” and other such helpful phrases.

By the time our hour on the court was over, we realized that lapsing into pirate lingo had made the game more fun and the time pass more quickly. We decided then and there that what the world really needed was a new national holiday, Talk Like A Pirate Day. “

Source: http://www.talklikeapirate.com/about.html

]]> http://www.schrankmonster.de/2007/09/18/its-talk-like-a-pirate-day-arrr/feed/ 0 http://www.schrankmonster.de/2007/08/21/beware-of-the-serial-port-killer/ http://www.schrankmonster.de/2007/08/21/beware-of-the-serial-port-killer/#comments Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:53:46 +0000 bietiekay http://www.schrankmonster.de/2007/08/21/BewareOfTheSerialPortKiller.aspx Uhh it seems that someone got hold of a power cord … and did a bad bad thing:

So they got the tea set and the digital camera out:

We don’t just think of our new hardware as the core equipment of a enormous network. We think of it… well… in a different way.

Source: http://www.fem.tu-ilmenau.de

Source 1: http://www.lostgarden.com/turtle_main.htm
Source 2: http://blueturtles.schrankmonster.de

I’m just speechless.

Oh… it looked like that:

Just today the car maker KIA decided to start his PS3 related marketing campaign. And guess what? Someone did it again. They used a PGR3 screenshot in a Playstation 3 advertisement.

Have a look:

There we have it: Two advertisements for the Playstation 3 doing all the same: Advertising the fact that you’ll better buy a 360. Priceless.

Do it again Sony, Kia, or whoever would like to make my day…

Well to make a point: Someone who can actually draw took a heart and created what a person like me wanted for years: A proper tile set for prototyping.

The author wants to tell us this:

“The PlanetCute set attempts to wiggle past many of those problems.

• Building blocks, not tilesets: Instead of having complex tilesets, each block stacks nicely with pretty much any other block. If you can understand Legos, you can understand how to put together these graphics. These tiles should be useful to children, not just uber-elite game gods.
• Standardized format: All the graphics are uniform sized PNGs. The graphics will also work in almost any graphics engine out there that can do 2D sprites. Once you get your offsets right once, you never have to change them again.
• Source files included: If you do need to make changes, I’ve included the source files. If you really need to change a color, go for it. If you need a big gem, just scale up the original. Everything is a vector so you’ll alway end up with clean results.”

And yet it does look very very good:

You can grab them and:

“The next time you make a prototype, use these graphics. If you can reduce the time you spend on futzing with graphics from 40% to 5%, you can put more time into those fun game mechanics you’ve been dreaming about. The magic is that your graphics will now look good enough to get you through the first 15 seconds of your demo. Your friend will perk up and stay engaged long enough to give you feedback all the wonderful work that you’ve put into your prototype.”

To complete this article: They are available as pixel graphics and Silverlight/Expression compatible .design files…hurray!

Source: http://lostgarden.com/2007/05/dancs-miraculously-flexible-game.html

Oh you could search for this…or for “Tino Seeber”

Source: http://blog.ahzf.de

Source: http://www.youdontknowjack.com

“We’re using weather balloons to go up to approximately 100k feet armed with 4 cameras… 20 megapixels of camera! We’ll be taking shots every 7 seconds for two hours and measuring the temperature with the Make: controller and thermistors!

It took 16 people working on this, countless cases of mountain dew, lots of take-out food, and a lot of sleepless nights, and we intend to fly Sunday!

Cloud cover, snow, and mechanical failure may postpone the launch, but we’re ready to give it our best shot this weekend.

In this Make: Video Podcast, you’ll learn all the details of how to put a weather balloon up into space! The weather balloon will make it up to about 100,000 feet. That’s almost 20 miles up and more than twice the height of being in an airplane. It’s high enough that the sky is black and you can see the curvature of the earth.”

It’s running on Windows, Linux and MacOS and you will need the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe files because OpenTTD just reuses the graphics of the old version.

But when you got all that you get a very very great game that doesn’t need much resources and is insane fun.

Source: http://www.openttd.org/index.php

“Like any other game console, Atari 2600 cartridges contained executable code also commingled with data. This lists the code as columns of assembly language. Most of it is math or conditional statements (if x is true, go to y), so each time there’s “go to” a curve is drawn from that point to its destination.

When a byte of data (as opposed to code) is found in the cartridge, it is shown as an orange row: a solid block for a “1″ or a dot for a “0″. The row is eight elements long, representing a whole byte. This usually means that the images can be seen in their entirety when a series of bytes are shown as rows. The images were often stored upside-down as a programming method.”

And it looks like this:

Source: http://benfry.com/distellamap/

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jollyjake/278562314/

Nun kommt es aber alle paar Jahre vor, dass ein Sportwettenanbieter in Hinblick auf kommende Ereignisse das kalte Grausen bekommt.

Heute beginnt die World Series. Das ist die Endspielserie in der größten us-amerikanischen Baseball-Profiliga, der MLB. Im Finale stehen sich die St. Louis Cardinals und die Detroit Tigers gegenüber, wobei letztere als Favorit gelten.

Und damit sind wir auch schon bei der Ursache für die Sorgenfalten bei einigen Wettanbietern: Die Detroit Tigers galten eigentlich als klarer Außenseiter im Meisterschaftsrennen. Wer vor Beginn der Saison etwas Geld übrig hatte und vielleicht einen Tausender auf das Team gesetzt hat, kann bei der damaligen Quote von 500:1 schon mal zittrig werden. So eine halbe Million ist nicht zu verachten…

Für die Wettanbieter bleibt nur zu hoffen, dass nicht allzu viele treue Fans auf ihr Team gesetzt haben – und dass St. Louis den Titel holt, denn die haben nur eine Quote von 7:1.

Artikel in Sport1.de

Artikel eines Sportwettenanbieters aus den USA

“This software works on Excel 97 and 2000. I was absorbed in video game named *pacman* when I was a schoolchild. I would like to reproduce that on Excel. I’ve held the thought from two years before,
and finally…It’s realized.

All actions are expressed by rewriting of a cell background color. Each one of cells as a dot, and move it by make cell’s background color high-speed rewriting. Although I did not think it’s possiblele, but now it’s possiblele by the favor of the improvement in a performance of a personal computer. The window zoom is 10%, so the each cell can not be seen. But it is A CELL.”

Oh…of course Space Invaders is available too…

Source: http://www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/

1. Download the YAPS sourcecode (or any other project…) and extract to a folder
2. open a commandline window (Start->Run->”cmd.exe”) and change to that folder
3. run MSBuild in that folder. Normally MSBuild is in \WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\MSBuild.exe
4. When no errors are reported, you’re done. If there were errors, check the source and/or the folder. You need to run MSBuild where the sln/csproj files are…

This is what compiling the YAPS daily sourcecode looks like on my machine:

Source 1: MSBuild at MSDN
Source 2: MSBuild Team Blog

“TV-Browser is a free electronic program guide. It offers more than 140 mainly german stations.”

You get everything you might expect from an electronic program guide with TV-Browser and even more. It’s extensible and fast. The extensibility is exactly the reason why I am using it as the EPG frontend for YAPS/VCR.

I used the WebSearch Plugin of TV Browser to actually do a http-request on the YAPS/VCR webserver. This request adds the recording to the schedule list…easy as it could be…

It looks like this:

Infact the only thing I had to do is to add one line to the WebSearch Plugin config, which looks like this:

Simple, isn’t it… one webrequest and the recording is added.

Finally I’ve got a great EPG to program my recordings…yeeehaaa!

Source 1: udp multicast to tcp unicast proxy extended to be a vcr
Source 2: http://www.tvbrowser.org

For just $1.99 (beta pricing!) you get a commentary track for a growing number of movies…really really great stuff.

Source: http://www.rifftrax.com/index.php

This technology is mainly used to filter all those spammers from the normal commenting users. Schrankmonster even uses this technology. Kiesow doesn’t like very long captchas and I don’t like dumb ones…like this one which was sent in by Tomasz Naumowicz:

Source 1: http://www.kiesows.de/blog/2006/07/19/captcha-2

Source 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captchas

Source: derdickemann

Source: http://swith.gazaxian.com/2001seconds.htm

“This drawing was done entirely in MS Paint with a Logitech laser mouse. I did not use the copy and paste tool, or the text tool. There was no color sampling or pasting from other images, but I did view some seperate images as reference, as do most artists. ”

it’s 700px x 10.000px in the big version

Source: http://www.ubersite.com/m/84167

Black and sleek. Soon to be powered on with Sonic Rush and the New Super Mario Bros..