As i have invested into a new (but used) digital camera for the upcoming summer trips the time has come to say thank you to my old beloved digicam: the Kodak DC 240. For almost six years she has filled the galleries and accompanied me on trips and stays in other countries and on another continent. I can remember that in the first months of our relationship — she with her flash and i with my photographical eagerness — have really strained the patience and tolerance of our contemporaries in Gregory and Dallas, South Dakota. As we got older a serenity in this regard has arrived and the average frequency of new private galleries slowly decreased from about 2 galleries per month to only about a half. Nevertheless, we continued taking pictures from cities and landscapes wherever our feet respectively the camera bag took us. Even though she was technically half-broken for the last 5 years, due to some rough mosh pitting in Stan’s mocha, i never considered giving up on her. Taking into account how old she is and what she’s been through she’s still in an awesome shape — she just grew comparatively large and clunky. The time for her has come to rest a little beneath the newton, so that i can get back to her to get nostalgic once in a while… But before i do this, we must praise her good deeds: according to the ‘About’ panel she has captured 45724 pictures and fired 7481 flashes. Unbelievable. So long, farewell, and thanks for all the pix…

The official handover ritual includes picturing each other:

One good thing about the new camera, a Canon Ixus 400, is that this is a model which still had CompactFlash as the memory card type. Which means i’m still able to use my old cards. All the new Ixus models have slots for SD cards. But this was not the main reason for the purchase. The Ixus is smaller and takes far more better pictures, as i think. Here is a sample picture shot in Frankfurt am Main:

Back in 1957 the public relation department of an newspaper publisher in Iowa has used Charlie Brown and Lucy to explain how the making of The Des Moines Register and Tribune is organized.

via Drawn!: Good grief! I’m covered all over with dots!

Nachdem die Tagesschau schon mit Podcasts herumexperimentiert hat (beta-podcast), wollen es Deutschlandradio und -funk nun endlich auch wissen. Habe eben zufällig auf dradio.de einen Hinweis (siehe Bild) zu dessen Podcast-Testbetrieb gefunden, dessen einleitende Worte sehr überzeugend klingen:

Wer möchte nicht gerne von den Sendezeiten im Radio unabhängig sein? Ab sofort ist das möglich. Deutschlandfunk und Deutschlandradio Kultur gibt es jetzt zum Herunterladen und Mitnehmen für den MP3-Player. Während des Testbetriebs erwartet die Hörer eine rund halbstündige Spezialausgabe mit den Interviews vom Tage.

Es bleibt aber leider erst einmal beim Wollen und nicht beim Können, denn der Link, der da angegeben ist www.dradio.de/rss/podcast/interviews, ist ein Alias (oder eine Verknüpfung) zu dieser Adresse http://dradio.loopnet:8080/rss/podcast/interviews/ Die erscheint mir und Browser & Podcastclient aber irgendwie ungültig. Fügt mensch .de dazwischen, funzt es auch nicht… Naja, mal warten, bis es da was zum Testen gibt. Ich bin jedenfalls sehr gespannt.

Eigentlich wollte ich nur gucken, ob sich das charmante Wort ‘Weltallbahnhof’, aus dem Radio auch auf dradio.de erwähnt ist. Dazu bin ich nun nicht mehr gekommen. Wikipedia jedenfalls aber kennt es und ich nun auch. Im Englischen würde es übrigens Spaceport heiszen. Raumhafen scheint wohl auch im Deutschen gängig zu sein. Wörter sind auch was für mich und nicht erst seitdem ich die Word Nerds unregelmäszig höre…

Nachtrag
Schneller Fehlschuss: beim obigen Link fehlt der Schrägstrich hintendran. So funktioniert der Testpodcast:

pcast://www.dradio.de/rss/podcast/interviews/

Auf dass D-Radio&-Funk die Verwendung von Podcasts ausweitet.

Since the Word Nerds have played it on their episode on lost positives i can’t get this song out of my head nor off my playlist: Blue Bird Tattoo by Circe Link. It has reached quite the attention and got many awards on garageband.com and i’m sure you will share this sympathy, too. It is such a charming upbeat song putting a smile on my face everytime i listen to it.

Picture and bluebird background from Wikipedia.

After a long time i have given my old Newton MessagePad 130 access to a power supply unit again. And surprisingly: it still works great. Handwriting recognition and backlight and Newton OS 2.0 … It takes 4 regular ‘walkman’ batteries to make it mobile. The big problem though is that there is no connection between my computer and the newton. It doesn’t do USB or anything even fancier such as Bluetooth. It has a serialport and infrared… Furthermore Apple has discontinued support and software development, e.g. for syncing it with contemporary pim-apps, such as iCal and the Addressbook. So there is no ‘official’ way syncing it via osx with modern macs. But there are some third-party efforts underdone in keeping our newtons on the road and going. Once i have managed to create a physical connection between mac and newton syncing should work. Here is a list of sites devoted to the pda that had all but the support by Steve:

• newtsync.com: syncing the newton with the mac
• WikiWikiNewt: the place for all things newton
• Newted Community: “bleeding green since 1999”

Rumors about a new pda by Apple regularly pop up since Apple stopped the newton. They’ve got everything to bring an ‘iPad’ out — if they just wanted it …

Technisch wäre es schon lange möglich, Fahrräder ohne offene Ketten, also auch ohne Öl an und Löcher in der Hose. Im Prinzip habe ich bei meinem englischen Holländerrad das Problem nicht , dass die Kette mir die Hose zermalmt oder verklebt, die Kette schleift nur regelmäszig am Kettenschutz… Eine wenig Hintergrund und warum mensch in Deutschland keine kardangetriebenen Räder bekommt gibts auf dem neuen Blog: ‘Riesenmaschine’:

• Aus der Hosenbeinforschung
• Hosenbeinforschung II - Kardan
• Hosenbeinforschung III - Klappt

Nachdem der Rummel um die Live8-Konzerte und dem G8-Gipfel vorbei ist, leiden die Menschen und besonders die Kinder Afrikas weiterhin an großer Armut und schwerer Hungersnot. In diesen Tagen sehen wir Bilder von Kleinkindern aus dem Niger, die von extremen Hunger gekennzeichnet in Notzentren versorgt werden, bevor es für sie vielleicht zu spät ist. Warnungen wurden von der Weltöffentlichkeit, von uns!, bislang ignoriert. Lasst uns das wiederholen, was wir vor einem guten halben Jahr getan haben, um den Opfern des Tsunamis zu helfen. Lasst Benefizkonzerte und Demonstrationen nicht leere Gesten bleiben!

Spenden kannst Du z.B. hier:

• Deutsches Rotes Kreuz
• UNICEF Deutschland
• Ärzte ohne Grenzen

After the hype of the Live8 concerts and the G8 summit is over the people and especially the children of Africa remain suffering from severe poverty and hunger. In these days we are confronted with the pictures of Nigerien children defaced by extreme hunger that are being treated in makeshift medical-centers before it is to late for them. Even though the warnings have been repeated the global public has, we have!, ignored them. Let’s repeat what we have done half a year ago to help the victims of the tsunami. Don’t let benefit concerts and demonstrations remain empty words gestures!

You can donate e.g. at the local counterparts of those organizations:

• Red Cross & Red Crescent
• UNICEF
• Médecins Sans Frontières

A very promising work-in-progress of a computer animated movie about a girl going to the moon by holding on to a fishing rod or: about a boy doing that and meeting the moongirl there? I really like the symbiotic relationship between the hero(ine) and the glowworms.

via Drawn!: Moongirl sneaky-peek

I have just attended a seminar on ‘text technologies and the semantic web’ by Ernesto De Luca. Students were to present a topic and write a short paper on it. It was very insightful and inspiring. As i had understood, the key for a meaningful integration of information across many sources would be an ontology-based approach. I have written a short seminar paper (PDF) about how ontologies might help to overcome semantic heterogeneity across many information sources. It seemed quite right. The computer should be able to understand the semantics of the sources, so that logical queries such as “Who shot JFK?” could be answered by processing source ontologies using the ‘vocabulary’ of the shared ontology. Such a system would be really smart.

But at the end of the presentations covering ontology-based approaches (including mine), a question remained: Who would put such a great effort in creating the shared ontology and especially the local ontologies? I thought that Wikipedia is the best proof that this can only happen voluntarily on a non-profit basis. Yet, WP is not yet semantic. But it could well be extended progressively. After some research, i have found somesimiliar thoughts on WP. This will probably take quite a while until WP is able to accept logical queries — yet, the first steps are in the making. But then, existing sources such as external websites would not be integrated: the articles of WP have to get modified or written anew.

For the integration of many resources (today), there are tag-based social databases (read: folksonomies) such as del.icio.us and flickr. They proof that many normal people are better in organizing and categorizing sources than a few professionals. And it is cheaper, too. Del.icio.us seems to be in the focus of research in that regard. There is a well-written article arguing that the approach of using an “Ontology is Overrated [while arguing in favor of]: Categories, Links, and Tags”. The author shows on one hand that the rigid classification schemes found in libraries are not appropriate anymore and on the other hand that those systems that really work are not run by professional ontologists but by regular people (read: us) putting tags on resources and creating a vast folksonomy.

I think ontology-based infrastructures could be much more superior to tag-based systems, if only many people would be involved in managing such a system. It seems that ontologies will remain an academic topic, until we have found ways for including this social dimension for crafting, updating, and using ontologies for information sharing. Right now tags and links will provide the best bang for the buck — to put it into economists terms. Still, I am very excited about how semantics could be created and used by many in a folksonomist way in the future. Any thoughts on this?