Silberbauer Says:

The four best presentations I experienced on w2e this year.

Web 2.0 Expo SF 2010: Ben Huh, “Becoming One with Internet Culture”
Great talk on the ‘new pop culture’ and subversives vs. hackers.

Web 2.0 Expo SF 2010: Tim O’Reilly, “State of the Internet Operating System”
The man himself speaks about the clash between the ‘new’ open Microsoft, Amazon’s cloud and the closed business model of Apple.

Web 2.0 Expo SF 2010: June Cohen, “Ideas Worth Spreading: TED’s Transition…”
June shows the new TED translation feature that is truly impressive. And she’s just a great presenter.

Web 2.0 Expo SF 2010: Eric Ries, “The Lean Startup: Innovation Through Experimentation. …”
A bit hyped presentation, but still with a lot of good stuff on lean startup tactics.

Just a couple of images of the Concerthouse illumination from last night. We’re changing the illumination everytime a major event is taking place in the Concerthouse and this time it is the Outgames’ Conference about human rights for gays and other minorities. The illumination will be on until wednesday from around 22:30 until 06:00.

Note to self: Don’t go down this road… use overlays and popups with extreme caution.

New York Times delivered a very good review of the Copenhagen Concerthouse. I’ve been creative project manager of the Blue Screen Video installation that is covering the whole building. So it’s really nice to see that the building has been noticed.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/arts/index.html

A short report from ‘TodaysArt08” in Hague in Holland.

What is TodaysArt?
TodaysArt is a two-day festival with electronic music, video installations, art and dance. It draws mostly a local crowd from Holland and hasn’t got the same international atmosphere as fx Sonar in Barcelona.

Was it any good?
No!
Even though we experienced a couple of highlights, it wasn’t worth the money. The basic impression of the festival is that the event has been putting too much effort in promotion instead of creating great content. And that will not bring me back to Hague next year.
A couple of things were great but the rest will quickly be forgotten and I recommend saving the money and going to Sonar in Barcelona instead.

The good stuff:
Augmented Spaces by Pablo Valbuena
The best thing were definitely the video installation ‘Augmented Spaces’ by Pablo Valbuena. It was a really impressive installation that made a great use of the extremely white Richard Myers building. Great use of the technique and the two projectors placed on the corner of the big white building.
The only problem was that the installation ran for two nights and that was way too much. Even though it was impressive, it quickly became a bit boring and it was weird that they didn’t bring more content to the festival.

Aerial Dance:
Another great event was the aerial dance by the Spanish aerial dance team ‘Brenda Angiel’. I took a couple of pictures during their training in the afternoon and some video at their performance later the same night.

And finally, the strangest instrument ever. The lightning scratching device. Fun, but once you’ve seen it – you’ve seen it.

/Lars Silberbauer

A couple of scenarios where this software from Aimersoft might be useful:

1. You are the (un)lucky owner of an Ipod and at the same time you have more than one computer and you really want to upload and download music to your Ipod from both computers.

2. Your harddisk sudddenly breaks down and leaves you with a lot of music on your Ipod – but no way to get it back onto your new harddrive and with no possibility to upload new music to your Ipod without deleting all of the music.

3. Your best friend has got a lot of cool music that you want to ‘backup’ from his Ipod onto your harddrive (remember to ask your friend if he holds all copyrights to the music before you start to download… ).

If you recognize one or more of these scenarios? Then Aimersoft Ipod Backup Software will definitely be useful.

What does it do?
Well, then name says it all – it simply just copies all you music from the Ipod onto a specified folder on your harddrive.

What does it cost?
This is the best part… IT IS FREE!!

Does Aimersoft Ipod Copy Manager have a lot of hidden spyware and keyloggers?
This is the worst part… I DON’T KNOW!!! (but for what it is worth – I don’t think so

Anyway, it works great and you will enjoy the feeling of once againg taking control of your music and bringing it back from the greedy hands of Apple and Steve Jobs who still is using the positiv ‘Apple Brand’ and great design to harrass their customers with stupid limitations to their product.

One might wonder why Apple has gone through so much trouble to limit their Ipods in this way. It keeps reminding me of Microsoft in the old days and their connection with some kind of bad empire or something… it seems to me like… well, I can’t quite remember…

Take a look at this CNN weatherforecast of hurricane Ike from today. At 1:20 in the clip he uses the 3 dimensional multi touch display. For once it is not only eye candy but has value and gives a good impression of the hurricane. Nice use and integration of Google Maps as well.

If the embedded video doesn’t work then use this link or see the clip on Baekdal’s blog

If the embedded video doesn’t work then use this link:

Just a small video of the DR Concerthouse. It is shot from the largest crane doing a 360 degree around the Concert House. We’re right now developing the illumination of the large Blue Screen surrounding the Concert House. It will be lit up by video projectors and gobo lights. Besides this there will be around 20 video projectors placed inside the building lighting the foyer area.

So, I haven’t been posting for a couple of weeks because I’ve been extremely busy at work and at the same time had to finish my HD (Business diploma in Innovation and Management).

The Sonar Experience
But I have to share the experience I’ve had this weekend at the Sonar Festival in Barcelona. I went with a colleague to get some ideas to our the next big project which is to create a very large scale video projection solution in and on the new Jean Nouvel Concert House in Copenhagen.

How can I describe the Sonar Festival?….
In a few words: an utterly mind blowing experience!!
If you don’t take my word for it, then hear it from Miss Dubstep herself aka Mary Anne Hobbs from BBC1 in this clip from Sonar Night 2008.

And again, if you don’t think that this blond know what she is talking about then look at this clip I shot during the BBC1 Showcase at the festival Thursday night. Watch the crowd goes wild when she drops the bass line in around the middle of the clip.

The sound is of course terrible and can by no means give a real impression of the subsonic bass line which makes your nostrils spin – but the Sonar set of Mary Anne Hobbs, Flying Lotus, Shackleton and Mala is available on the BBC1 Sonar website or the direct link to the BBC1 Player. Check it out!!

What about the visuals?
There were a lot of visuals at the Sonar Night stages. I believe most of them were by Pfadfinderei which also gave a presentation at the Sonar Day Event about their work and methods for creating visuals. Great visual work with a big technical setup. The visuals worked great to enhance the musical experience. A small sample a recorded at the Sonar main stage.

The visuals were combined with a great ambient light setting created by gobo lights. This is a small clip from early in the evening when it wasn’t too crowded.

But is Sonar just a big rave party??
No, it’s so much more than that. It is SonarDay, SonarNight, SonarMatica, SonarPro, Showcases and much much more. But its too much to describe all the events taking place but take a lot at the gallery and then just sign up for next year and get the full experience. I will definitely be there!!

So, finally I had some time to work with Axure 5. And yes: It’s worth it. I don’t have time to do an extensive review, but features like Shared project (yes, with versioning and with no need for server support besides a LAN drive), improved flowcharting and a generally improved interface makes v5 a LOT cooler than v4. Also, the use of variables and the option to move around panels makes for some great effects. If you have the time, that is. Using these features WILL make your prototype pretty complex pretty quick.

Especially I like the palette undock feature. Now you can really use those 3 21″ monitors of yours

I have a few requests, though: Now as the flowchart feature is maturing and finally getting usable, please include support for Jesse James Garrett’s Visual Vocabulary. Only a few more symbols are needed. And, if possible: We need more glue points on the shapes – like in Visio.

Grab your trial here:www.axure.com.

Spend most of my evening going through one of these heavy demand specs that only governmental institutions are able to make. Hundreds of demands, ranging from the very abstract (“The solution should be easy to use”) to the very concrete (“The user presses a button that brings up a preview…”).

Hidden among all the text it states that the vendor must use all the fancy usercentric methods of design and do it all in a very dialogue-based and agile way. … but why? All the design decisions are made (poorly, though) by the specification. To go out and ask the users will result in hundreds of change request for the project managers and laywers to fight over.

Could we please stop making these lame specifications? They’re a bloody waste of time and money. Collect your organization’s needs (that’s needs, not wants), put down a core team in your own organization, call your UX consultants, and together we’ll make it happen.

My Land Rover-crazy uncle sent me this one. It’s clear to see where the designer engineer behind the Defender 110 found his inspiration.

Land Rover Defender 110. In some countries used by the police as weapon against hooligans. Only the chick go faster-stripes raise its aerodynamic properties to just above those of a…

Typical Danish cobblestone, mid-nineteenth century. Typically used by Copenhagen hooligans as a weapon against the police.

Let’s continue our design comparison quest.

Hummer H1. American inferiority complex. Kills trees – and people too, if you mess up.

Husqvarna Chainsaw. Swedish sturdiness. Kills trees – and people too, if you mess up.

Klaus reported the first remarkable sign on a so far unknown connection between car design and weapons. Now I’m ready to disclose yet another piece of evidence on the vehicle that will silence all critics of this claim.

This is ‘Karma’, a premium hybrid sports sedan from the Danish designer Fisker compared with a single bladed throwing knife in stainless steel.

Outselling American brands for years, Toyota is ready to deliver the final punch to Ford and General Motors on their own turf. The concept is called A-BAT and it is, by any standard, ugly as hell. But kudos to car designer Ian Cartabiano for understanding that the ultimate American car have to look like a hand gun. So simple – why didn’t anyone think of that before?

Cartabiano says that the A-BAT is inspired by miltary trucks – yeah right. It looks more like a big, chromed 9mm to me. If Toyota decides to put this beast into production, I think it’s gonna sell Alan Mulally’s pants off.

Toyota A-BAT concept. Made in Japan for the American market.

The .357 semi-automatic Desert Eagle. Made in Israel for the American market.

(The A-BAT Found on Top Gear website).