dealing with new UI concepts in todays applications…

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

I really like the new Office UI. And I especially like it when it’s used in future development applications. Great!

“I promised that I would deliver the new Office UI that NStatic uses this morning. Unfortunately, I am currently redoing the icons on the ribbon, so you’ll have to wait another day or two. For now, I’ll give you a partial glimpse.”

Source: .net undocumented

Putty SSH Tunnel as a Service

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

Putty is a free SSH client for Windows. And here’s a link to a How-To that shows you how to set up a tunnel as a system service:

“First of all, before I wanted to browse the web, I’d have to start the putty client and log into my ssh shell. I had to always keep the putty client open, so it would always be minimized to the taskbar, taking up precious space and often getting closed my mistake. Also, if I lost internet connection my ssh session would be aborted and I’d once again have to log in. There must be a better way. By running the ssh tunnel from a Windows Service it is now always running silently in the background. If my network connection is disturbed, it automatically reestablishes my ssh session.”

Read more here.

Source: Putty SSH Tunnel

Indiana Jones and the FOUNTAIN of YOUTH

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

When you played and enjoyed the LucasArts Adventure “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis” then this is great news for you:

“Fountain of Youth is a fan-made adventure game by a team of both Indiana Jones and computer game enthusiasts. A playable demo has been in development and has experienced quite a few delays, but is expected to be available soon – and the design of the full game, (after much revamping) is nearly complete – for development to begin by Fall 2005.

The project has been running almost 5 years, and has suffered several major setbacks. This website contains information about the game we are developing plus information on the developers, screenshots, downloads and much, much more. Just use the navigation bar on the left to find your way around.

We’ve had thousands of offers for translations of the game, thanks!!! Its great to have so much interest and help to hand (believe me, we will contact a lot of you – there’s lots of languages!!) If you CAN offer a translation we are very greatful – but please wait for the release of the demo before you decide how well a translation you can provide :)

We also hope to send out free DVD-cased editions of the demo and full-game once they are available to anyone who donates enough to cover the shipping. We also hope to create a special boxed edition of the game with a printed manual in the future.”

There is a demo available and the full game is expected soon.

Source: Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth

Windows CE Shared Source Contest 2006

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

Microsofts Embedded Devices group and WindowsForDevices.com offers a contest to everyone who likes to take part. Read this:

WindowsForDevices.com and Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded Devices (MED) Group are teaming up to invite developers worldwide to compete at using Microsoft’s Windows CE Shared Source in an exciting real-world project. The contest’s theme is “Show-It-Off at the Shared Source Project Competition.”

“Create a cool, real-world project that combines Windows CE along with either or both of two Shared Source components — the Windows CE WebCam driver and/or the Windows CE DVR engine. If your project is selected by our team of judges for the Grand Prize, you’ll win a complete Xbox 360 dream setup consisting of the Xbox 360 console, a 34-inch HDTV, games, and accessories! Three other winners will be awarded Xbox 360 game consoles.”

So you are actually using shared source components to create new applications. Everything that is needed for the contest is freely available for download. And the prices are quite cool…

I recommend having a look at the Microsoft Shared Source Website. Just to stay up-to-date.

Source 1: http://www.windowsfordevices.com/articles/AT5277795134.html

Source 2: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx

Download Managers are helpful tools to suck…

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

Download Managers are helpful tools to suck a great number of files from machines across the network. Since there are many commercial/shareware ones, this guy decided to write his own and give everyone who wants the source of it:

“Right then, a little light bulb went on in my head, and I decided to build her a file download utility. The requirements were simple:

  • I should be able to point to a web page and filter URLs on it. For example, “*.doc” should give me a collection of URLs that have .doc at the end of the link.
    From the list of available files, I should be able to select the files I want to download.
  • I should be able to download my selected files simultaneously.
  • I should be able to nominate the number of simultaneous threads for download.
  • I should be able to cancel a download at any point in time.
  • I should be informed of the download status of each selected file.
  • I do not want to re-download files that I have downloaded before.”

Source: http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/FileDownloadManager.asp

P.S.: yeah..i know.. it should be leech…but well… suck scores better ;)

Ilmenau drive-in cinema

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad


Once a year the HFC (HochschulFilmClub) organises a drive-in cinema. And yesterday was the first of two days of drive-in cinema in Ilmenau. Unfortunately a storm came up just before the show started. I was ready in place for the movie and then the HFC decided to cancel the event for this time…


They told us to come back the next day…well I don’t have time :-( So no drive-in cinema for this year for me.





Oh…we (Microsoft) even sponsored the event…


Source: http://www.hochschulfilmclub.de/

things have to change…

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

Schrankmonster is powered by a 4-way XEON 2.8 Ghz machine with 2 GB RAM running Windows Server 2003 and dasBlog blog-engine. And believe it or not: dasBlog actually utilizes all 4 CPUs completely at peak times.

Much of this is led by the fact that dasBlog was built for much smaller weblogs (not that schrankmonster is big…). And for MUCH less traffic. When you load the front page of schrankmonster you instantly notice the lag between typing the URL+pressing enter and the completely loaded page showing on your screen.

dasBlog does not use any database server. Instead it uses XML files. Two for each day of the year. And well. It parses them very often…

Very much to my pleasure the traffic on schrankmonster is raising each month. And that means: slower page load times… It became more and more unacceptable in the last weeks.

Beefing up the hardware is not an option. I believe it’s a quite beefy system already. And the main problem remains: the software. So it’s time for a change: I will move schrankmonster bit by bit from dasBlog to a shiny new software called “Community Server“.

I just finished the test-setup today and I am thinking how to move the content to the new platform. The main goal is that nobody will even notice (beside some radical layout changes) that there is a new blog engine powering schrankmonster.

Source 1: http://www.dasblog.net
Source 2: http://www.communityserver.com

one more step to photorealism

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

I came across a short movie which demos a new animation and graphic engine for all next-gen consoles and PC.

Yes, this actually IS a computer generated character:


The engine yet has some obvious problems with the mouth and teeth animation…but it’s just astonishing what’s possible these days. They even claim it’s in real time. Oh and the first appearence of this technology will be in an adventure game… great news, eh?

Source: http://www.gbase.ch/pc/downloads/3451.html

Masterchiefs’ Warthog is a Peugeot…

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad


I have to admint that when I first drove the Warthog in HALO 1 my first thought was “It’s a french car! The steering is so indirect and tipsy like in every french car I drove to this point.”


And who would have thought that I was right? (well beside of moi) It’s a PEUGEOT! It’s a concept car and therefore it’s worth a lot of money…though it lacks the turret on the back…



Source: Warthog Testdrive

free MPEG-4/3GPP encoder/decoder

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

Nero just released a free MPEG-4/3GPP encoder/decoder software package for Windows.

  • Compression Ratios ranging from ultra high (58 CDs fit on one!) to High-End Audio (2.5:1), for absolutely perfect audiophile encodings
  • Crystal Clear, Award Winning Sound Quality at every compression ratio and bit rate!
  • Support for Embedded Album Art (Covers, Booklets, Lyrics!)
  • Store Entire Audio Album in a Single .mp4 File with all the Features of an Audio CD embedded inside, but at a fraction of the space!
  • Reference Quality MPEG-4 Audio Codec
  • Fully Compatible with the Latest Version of the State-of-the-art MPEG-4 Audio Standard (LC-AAC, HE-AAC and HE-AAC v2)

Source: Nero Digital Audio

Imagine Cup Beachparty 2006

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

As this is a germany-only-offer I’ll do it in german:




“Die Entscheidung ist gefallen! Die überwältigende Anzahl von 6477 Teilnehmern hat es der Jury sehr schwer gemacht. Dennoch stehen die deutschen Vertreter für das Weltfinale in Indien jetzt fest. Die vielen tollen Ideen und Euer super Engagement möchten wir mit Euch gebührend feiern – denn eine Party unter Palmen bei 25° Lufttemperatur und 31° Wassertemperatur geht auch in Deutschland. Wir laden Dich hiermit herzlich zur Imagine Cup Beach Party am 30. Mai 2006 in das Tropical Island Resort nach Brandenburg ein.



360 m lang, 210 m breit und 107 m hoch, eine Grundfläche von 6,6 Hektar mit 7000 Kubikmetern Wasser und über 20.000 tropischen Pflanzen, dies ist genau der richtige Ort für einen würdigen Abschluss des Imagine Cup 2006 in Deutschland.



Deck-Chair-Coding, karibischer Flair, Beachparty in der größten freitragenden Halle der Welt, und das alles kostenlos, … lass Dich überraschen!“


Es sind noch ca. 50 Plätze für Studenten frei. Also los und anmelden! Die Vergabe findet nach dem First-Come-First-Serve Prinzip statt.




Hier geht es zur Anmeldung.

Hier auch ein kurzer Blick auf die Agenda:



Source 1: Imagine Cup Beachparty 2006
Source 2: Microsoft Imagine Cup 2006

German CISCO Expo 2006 review

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

German CISCO Expo 2006 is finally over and from our point of view it was truly a great success.
There were very interessting sometimes cool presentations and demos, a lot of food & snacks and
very colorful light at the party. Over all it was a much better event than all those cisco
CeBit exhibitions I’ve been to before… the new (cisco) economy seem to be back on stage ;)

Keynotes

CISCO’s new vision for next generation networking got a new name: “Intelligent Information Network”!
Now all the routers and switches should become more intelligent, be aware of the users actual location
and connection type (ethernet, wlan, UMTS, …) and voice, data, video are integrated services of
IIN. Doesn’t sound this familiar? Yes! In the days of web 2.0 I think German Telekom would call
this reinvention of the wheel just ISDN 2.0… let’s hope that it will work better this time ;)

BTW: During the T-Systems keynote they showed us a _real hacker_ *huu-hoo* and demonstrated
the unbelievable security risks of unencrypted VoIP by using ARP Spoofing *hu-hoho*. So don’t
ask T-Systems if you have a _real_ security problem.

eLearning

There were several talks about eLearning, eEducation, about the CISCO networking academy, and
the Scottish Schools Digital Network. If we belive in the given facts and figures people with
deep knowledge in networking will have a great time to earn a lot of money during the next years.
But from our point of view there is still no real funding of university research (URP is not that
great). The NetAcad program might be good for people willing to learn how to configure cisco
switches, but not when you are more interessted in building next generation routers, switches, and
networking concepts. So for us this program is more or less just marketing…

Technology power sessions

WLAN is still a lot of fun… Much more interessing was the talk about the modular IOS, EEM, and
Gold. CISCO is rewritting their os from ground and the new one will have some really nice features…
For example a real filesystem with virtual files like /sys (*hu-hoo* think about this twice ;),
embedded event management, processes for more or less every protocol in use and best: an TCL
scripting environment! If you send enough emails to the dev team embedded perl could also
become available. You can win a box of sparkling wine when you implement tetris within TCL *g*

RFID sponsored by German Telekom… great… :/

Burn venture capital, burn!

The party was really a great! Thanks to the orga team… but I still don’t like this “booooming”…

review and pictures by Ahzf

Source: http://www.ahzf.de

Past Events

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

All the badges, collected during the last 48 months are scanned and added to my perosonal memex [1].




  • SFB 346 [2] Presentation, University of Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany
  • A.T. Kearney Workshop, Karlsruhe, Germany
  • CSC Ploenzke Workshop, Karlsruhe, Germany
  • Informatik 2003 [3], Frankfurt am Main, Germany
  • NET.Object Days 2003 [4], Erfurt, Germany
  • TechNet Roadshow, Microsoft Office 2003 & Exchange Server 2003, Frankfurt, Germany
  • MSR Academic Conference 2003, Dresden, Germany
  • TechEd 2004, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • STC 2004 [5], Essen-Duisburg, Germany
  • TechNet Roadshow 2004 Windows Server System, Frankfurt, Germany
  • Wissenschaftssommer 2004 [], Stutgart, Germany
  • Informatik 2004 [6], Ulm, Germany
  • Informatics Driving Innovation – Challenges in Research, Munich, Germany
  • “Less is More” – Simple Computing in an Age of Complexity [7], Cambridge, UK
  • PDC 2005, Los Angeles, Unuted States
  • EURON Roadmap Workshop 2005 [8], Karlsruhe, Germany
  • Visual Studio 2005 Launch, Birmingham, UK
  • Visual Studio 2005 Launch, London, UK
  • Visual Studio 2005 Launch, Harrogate, UK
  • Visual Studio 2005 Launch, Edinburgh, UK
  • Microsoft Research Security Workshop [9], Hamburg, Germany
  • Microsoft MVP Open Day, Cambridge, UK
  • Informatiktage 2006 [10], Bonn, Germany
  • Microsoft Research, International Symposium on Intelligent Environements [11], Cambridge, UK
  • CHI2006 [12], Montréal, Canada

[1] http://blog.aheil.de/CategoryView,category,Memex.aspx
[2] http://www.imi.uni-karlsruhe.de/367.php
[3] http://www.informatik2003.de/
[4] http://www.old.netobjectdays.org/node03/index.html
[5] http://www.event-team.com/events/stc2004/
[6] http://www.wissenschaft-im-dialog.de/wss.php4?ID=20
[7] http://research.microsoft.com/ero/iep/LessIsMore.aspx
[8] http://wwwiaim.ira.uka.de/euron/cwiki.php
[9] http://research.microsoft.com/ero/Events/Security/2006/
[10] http://www.informatiktage.de/
[11] http://research.microsoft.com/ero/iep/isie06.aspx
[12] http://www.chi2006.org

OpenVPN is available for Windows Mobile 5 (and 2003 by the way)

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

For some time we where in desperate need of a comprehensive and secure VPN solution for Windows Mobile (all version!). There is PPTP and L2TP. And there are teething problems for… well ever since.

The silent wish always was to have a more subtle solution: We are using OpenVPN on all of our machines. So we wanted it on our mobile devices too. And there it is:


It’s running on Pocket PC 2003 and Windows Mobile 5.

Source 1: http://www.ziggurat29.com/OVPNPPCAlpha/OVPNPPCAlpha.htm

Source 2: http://www.openvpn.net

5. Ilmenauer Newcomer Festival “Vorsicht Band! 2006”

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

Today it’s once again time for the Ilmenau Newcomer Festival “Vorsicht Band! 2006”. And this time again there’s FeM involved. But first the facts:

16 Newcomer bands from all across germany are going to perform in the next two days. Since the 16 where chosen from 272 you can bet that there’s only the best the newcomer scene has to offer these days.

And now to the juicy facts from FeM: You can watch the whole Newcomer Festival “Vorsicht Band! 2006” over the internet for free. Just connect to one of the following Windows Media livestreams:

Broadband Internet (1 Mbit and above): mms://streaming.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/vorsichtband2006
Narrowband Internet (below DSL): mms://streaming.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/vorsichtband2006_modem

To be precise:

THE LIFESTREAMS ARE AVAILABLE NOW!!!

And some facts for the nerds: 3 stages, 9 cameras, 30 people, 10.000m cableing,…

Source 1: http://streaming.fem.tu-ilmenau.de

Source 2: http://www.ilmenau-festival.de