First Draft Project Proposal.

Here you can find the first draft of my project proposal:

Project Proposal Oblaender.pdf

Timescale_VirtualClub_oblaender1Draft.pdf

The timescale is still with German explantions, but I'm working on to get a English Version of MS Project...

Spoon: Run desktop software in the cloud

Some month ago apple introduced its new macbookair. And every othter company dealing with computer has its own netbook.
The idea: These small versions of laptops have only one purpose: Instead installing software on their own machine the internet browser is the access to software. Why should the computer use its power to calculate and run programs when the internet provides all kind of software without installing on a local machine, accessible from everywhere with every computer.
Cloudcomputing is this idea called, that webbased services are installed on servers instead of your own computer. googledocs is maybe the famoust one.
This trend is some years old, but with spoon comes now a software, which allows you even to run desktop software in the cloud.
You just have to register and can start a lot of wellknown software like skype or secondlife without installing it anymore.
It's a nice service which shows a new way of marketing. Instead of buying a software, maybe even on the good old dvd you more and more take it as service and pay a monthly fee. Especially cloud computing software offers this pricing models. But that's a big field which is worth an own blog entry...

eLearning

Yesterday we heard another example of "what to do after studies".
This time, Shane Cronin from the DEIS department. For all non-irish: DEIS is the irish word for "oportunity". The DEIS department does research in the area of elearning and is founded by the 7th European Union Framework Programme. At the moment it is staffed by 4 persons. 
After a short introduction of his career Shane told us about his daily work. Shane studied Mutlimedia App Development (dipl.), then made his Bachelor of Arts Honor at the CIT in Multimedia. After 2 years working experience as freelancer for Food's kool at the West Cork Leader and Safe Food Ireland he came back to the CIT to work as app developer for the elearning department.

The elearning department works for both, commercial project and European research projects.
As we already heard a lot about research projects Shane focused his presentation more at the commercial projects and showed us examples, how such projects work.
The projects usually have 6 steps:

1. Brief from client
2. Quotation
3. Contract
4. Project work begins
5. Client Review
6. Sign Off

Elearning is not just distance learning for further education. It can also mean to explain a product to customers. Those explanation videos are often seen on homepages where start-ups explain there services (e.g. dropbox, prezi)
Shane gave us an example of the AIB Merchant Services system, which AIB offers in cooperation with zapatag. Zapatag is a bonus point system (an RFID chip on the customer's mobile), which brings customers discounts and the store owners detailed data about their customers and their shopping habbits. But why should I explain it when the DEIS department created a video. But before watching it, Shane explained us the steps before, showed us the storyboard, the voice over, so it was quite interesting to see the finished product, which is now embedded at the AIBms.com homepage. But also in my blog:



Another example which was more elearning in the classical sense was the production of elearning videos for the staff of the postbank, to teach them in new products.
The videos are mainly made in flash, in case of the postbank example there was also real video, shooted in a studio in a bluescreen.
But the production of the videos/animation is the last step. Im comparision to normal video production much more effort is neseccary to put in the concept, that the viewers really understand and learn, what the video wants to teach.

University kills free economy?
After those examples we had a lively discussion, lead by the freelancers of our masters course, if the trend, that the CITs do commercial project weaks the small companies and freelancers. CITs get their equipement by the government to do research. When doing commercial projects, the can perform much cheaper and efficient then a normal company, which is a damage for the normal economy, especially small media companies.

Again I enjoyed the input, because I never thought about working in such an area.

Street View in Germany II

Maybe it's a little bit boring, but what I read today is that strange, that I have to write about it.
Like the Newspaper "der Westen" (the west) published today, "fans" of google throw eggs against walls of pixelated houses and put letters in the postbox with the creative text: "google's cool".

Especially in cities where many flats are in one house the concern of one tenant is enough to pixelate the house. That his housemates may see their house online doesn't count.
One tenant was obvoisly really angry about that fact and wrote a letter, which get's quite famous.

The letter says:
Dear tentants,
as at least one of the tentants living in that house is concerned, that his privacy could be destroyed by google street view I will to protect your privacy not longer accept packages for others. I fight for your privacy!

But all discussion and punishment doesn't lead to any success, cause google pixelated the raw data, so there is no way to unpixelate the houses.
Next blog entry will defentely be about something else then google street view... Hopefully...

Streetview in Germany

One of my favourite topics is the launch of google street view in Germany. As I mentioned already, on the one hand, house owners who feel disturbed in their privacy can apply, that their house will be pixelated by google. But, on the other hand, every private person can take pictures of streets and houses and publish them in the internet. And as many online picturedatabases are linked with google maps (e.g. panoramio), you can also see were the picture is made.
So some very clever people combined both and suddenly, you can see pixeled houses again, like this example in Berlin shows. First, you see only the pixelated house, but in the top you can click on a small picture and then you got the original view:

House first pixelated, then visible by a picture of Panoramio.

Comment: Midwhile the picture is removed. But when clicking on "photos" in the right corner you can see another perspective of the house.

Happy birthday, Windows!

Today, 25 years ago, Microsoft published its first operating system called Windows. To that time no one expected, that it would become the most succesful operating system ever.
Even though apple publishes one new innovation product after the other, Windows is still the most selling operating system world wide, and in my opinion since Windows 7 there is no urgent need to change to Mac...


The system to that time reformed they way of using computers. This is a quote from the original press release

"Microsoft Windows extends the features of the DOS operating system, yet is compatible with most existing applications that run under DOS. Windows lets users integrate the tasks they perform with their computer by providing the ability to work with several programs at the same time and easily switch between them without having to quit and restart individual applications. In addition, it provides a rich foundation for a new generation of applications.
“Windows provides unprecedented power to users today and a foundation for hardware and software advancements of the next few years,” said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. “It is unique software designed for the serious PC user, who places high value on the productivity that a personal computer can bring.”

And this little video shows how it performed to that time: 

Project Proposal Document

Attached you can find the current documents of my project proposal:
Project proposal document.pdf

Timescale.pdf