Desktop 2.0

Wow, I’ve eventually upgraded my tech-nomade life by switching to an improved home office setup.

From a single (1280 x 800 px) notebook + cabled mouse…

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…to a (1680 x 1050) 22″ wide-screen monitor and a cordless Logitech keyboard & laser mouse:

SANY1777

You know I actually didn’t want to go this far and attach another screen to my system as I was afraid it would compromise my freedom (~ uhuru! :-). But it is SO much better to work on a bigger screen – which btw also has a much more vibrant colour contrast and provides more reliable results when it comes to photo editing & co.

Saw this setup (notebook + ext monitor) in use somewhere else and realized that I should upgrade my own desktop. Besides, being able to move a browser window from one screen to the other is just very, very convenient. Yes, I know, I am a bit late at adopting such “new” technologies.

The 22″ LG Flatron W2242T-PF is one of the cheaper screens and even though it comes with both VGA and DVI-D ports (this is a requirement to me), it does of course only feature a cheaper TN display (which will never be as efficient for decent colour works as MVA/PVAs, for instance). The monitor stand also is a bit shaky – it’s just a piece of ligh plastic with no real balance for the 4,7kg screen (manufacturers obviously trying to cash-in on selling extra VESA wall & desktop stands). However, my funds do not provide enough room for a much better monitor, so I’ll stick to this one for now. Am a bit curious to know what kind of screen type those 13,3 MacBooks come with.

Oh, and if you happen to own one of those new LGs: just make sure you reduce screen brightness and remove blue colour to a value of 23 (23 …there you have it). I don’t know why LG came up with such stupid factory settings in the first place.

The keyboard is a Logitech Cordless Desktop S520, kind of new model but it also has a nasty software bug: Logitech’s SetPoint software doesn’t like the Synaptics touchpad drivers as found on a laptop like my HP nx8220. Which means that about 50% of all extra (programmable) keys do not work (until Logitech comes up with a working solution, that is).

Compared to many other wireless keyboard-mouse dekstop solutions, the keys have a relatively low drop and it almost feels as if you’re typing on a notebook. Nice! The laser mouse is average but still better than my older + cabled 9,- EUR optical Logitech mouse.

I also managed to buy a used docking station for the notebook, so unplugging the machine for mobile use is much easier + the docking bay also has a DVI-D port. This really is the setup for me: a business laptop + docking station, hooked up to an external screen and keyboard once I am at home (thus avoiding the difficult scenario of keeping two different computers at sync…unless of course I’d be using a Mac machine, but that’s another story).

As for having a native 1680×1050 screen resolution directly on the notebook: I tested this a few months ago with another display panel, but 1680×1050 at something above 128dpi is just too tiny for my old eyes.

p.s.: Logitech stole 5h of my life with their f******** “SetPoint” software that’s supposed to power the extra buttons on the keyboard. What the…..??! Also, considering that this software just has to power some extra buttons and the mouse, you’re probably wondering about the 50+ mb download that comes along with using SetPoint.? Logitech hardware is nice, but their software really pissed me off big times.

[update: Logitech support wrote in (at least!), telling me to deinstall the driver for Synaptics touchpad. WTF? Sorry guys, your driver software is either certified, or not. I won’t install any shitty SetPoint crap on my system until that issue is solved.]

Afrika BarCamp in Wien im Januar 09

Eben via ICT4D feed entdeckt: AfrikaCamp Wien Jaenner 2009

Wieso ich das gut finde?

  • Follow-up zum BarCampAfrica in Mountain View
  • Afrika muss imho viel mehr in den Fokus des europäischen Bewusstseins gerückt werden (gibt es so etwas überhaupt? Jedenfalls: Afrika + Europa = imho gemeinsame Zukunft)
  • Ich war noch nie in Wien und würde dann gerne auch Afrah und Garen besuchen.
  • BarCamps = lohnen sich fast immer in vielerlei Hinsicht
  • ich könnte einen Vortrag über Afrigadget.com & Ushahidi.com halten
  • idealer Grund um endlich mal wieder Zeit in afritwit.com zu investieren (Pool von afrikanischen Twitterbenutzern bzw. solchen die einen Bezug zu “Afrika” haben)

Wer kommt mit?

NUTEC – cradle 2 cradle fair

I’ve just come home from attending “Nutec” today – an international congress and exhibition on “Nutec: Nutrients – Upcycling – Triple-Top-Line-Eco-effectiveness-Community” that took place right here in Frankfurt am Main, Germany during the last three days.

Nutec is all about nutrients that will remain in a biological or technical loop, or as the tagline on their website reads: “Everlasting Cycles: How Waste becomes Food”.

Nutec was partly organized by EPEA which is run by Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart – who is the B in MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry) – an international consulting company that tries to a) sell the philosophy of the so-called Cradle to Cradle (C2C) concept and b) tries to achieve this by convincing companies to obtain a C2C certification.

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closing the loop on technical and biologial nutrients

Since Michael was my professor at university and since I a firm believer in this philosophy of closing the loops (which is one of the reasons I started becoming active in the field of ecological sanitation), it was particularly interesting to see how this event was set up, where the aims are, what kind of visitors it would attract and what any possible outcomes are.

Those of you who frequently visit other green blogs like Treehugger.com, know that C2C is a “sexy” and already very popular approach at dealing with the protection of our environment. And those who have read McDonoughs & Braungart’s famous Cradle to Cradle book often agree that their idea of another industrial revolution actually is the way to go. Maybe not at once, but in small steps and by starting today. I have even convinced some older folks in the business who have a very green background of this new approach. Especially since this whole green movement has been active here in Europe way back in the 1980s when our US-American friends only had green flower people – so opinions on “what needs to be done” had already been settled, with the usual discussions. Unfortunately, green activists had in the past often only experienced a negative image, partly due to their bad rhetorics. You simply can not tell anyone he’s doing someting bad if your only solution is to advice him on doing less (bad things).

McDonough & Braungart both achieved to market their idea of another industrial revolution, where they are asking companies to redesign their products into greener products. Products whose materials remain as nutrients and may then be reused for another purpose. I won’t go into more details here because I’ve blogged about this subject more than once during the last three years and there are various other resources online that give a much better insight into the subject.

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Trigema – Germany’s famous manufacturer of clothes who produces compostable shirts right here in Germany. The CEO of Trigema was present at their booth and really impressed me. Talking about Corporate Social Resposibility – big up for Trigema!

Back to the Nutec exhibition: this year’s event was a trial set up by EPEA to see / test how the public and international scene reacts. Messe Frankfurt, the world’s largest trade fair organiser, actually accepted a loss of 1,2 Million Euros to host this event – provided that EPEA/ElcaMedia continues to invite to another Nutec conference & fair, maybe next year in Hong Kong.

And this is what it was all about: an international event, hosted to pool interested visitors and their contributions, with about 60 exhibitors (this time only) that showcasted some of their ideas and approaches. And mind you, the idea behind all this is not to display eco products, but instead show the world that a better world is possible with economic incentives. After all, no company in this world will change its products only because of some environmental concerns. Instead, there’s money to be made out of this – analyzing your material flow streams and processes will help you (as a company) to save on lots of hidden costs you may not have been aware of. So instead of telling companies to stop polluting the environment, these guys invented the C2C certification which provides a detailed analysis of production processes and shows them a way forward.

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Backhausen – an Austrian company producing returnable fabrics. These guys were certified with a GOLD C2C certificate for their products.

The C2C certification has in the last few month also received some criticism online, especially as portrayed in this story on FastCompany last month. Despite of some personal resentments some CEOs may have with MBDC, the C2C certification is a smart way to cash-in on environmental protection, as it helps everyone involved.

For some reasons, which may also include this 49-minutes long documentary on MBDC, the C2C philosophy has become very popular in The Netherlands lately. It probably also is one of the reasons why Nutec this time attracted many Dutch exhibitors – green start-ups that are often looking for investors and who have some very smart ideas.
Braungart is a German though, and when I look back at university, I think I am save to assume that only a handful of students really understood his concepts and the importance of his message. It’s like the prophet who’s an outsider at home. I blame this on the German culture, and often wish my fellow countrymen here would be much more open to new ideas and willing to take more risks. So it’s very nice to see the Dutch side being so open to his ideas. We urgently need much more of this enthusiasm in Europe.

Other interesting exhibitors included:

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Nike – with a small booth displaying their shoe recycling concepts.

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These guys from Austria run a networking agency and set up a pilot project in the city of Graz where they managed to obtain funds from the European Union that helps them turn the city centre into a greener place. Simple, but smart and making sure to use what’s available (the EU has these grants + there’s a whole industry busy trying to apply for these).

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XeroFlor – these are the guys that provided the green (grass) roof to the Ford Rouge Center in Dearborn, Michigan, USA – the world’s largest green roof, covering 46,500 m² and thereby protecting the roof from heat and cold, improving the interior climate, saving on heating energy and offering habitat for smaller animals and plants.

I recently visited a friend who lives in a green roof building. If I ever manage to build a house one day, I’ll try to get my hands on such a roof. It’s just awesome! Didn’t ask for a price though.

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Ron from Redwood Renewables in California who’s offering solar panels integrated into roof tiles. “Redwood has developed the first disruptive environmentally friendly, chemical free, patent protected technology that can inexpensively recycle waste elastomers (tires) into devulcanized rubber high quality integrated solar roofing tiles and molded consumer end products“.

Told him about solar systems being in use in rural Kenya and how popular the system already is over there. For a typical household of 4-5 pax, you’ll need about 417 solar panel tiles on your roof.

Ron is currently looking for investors.

(Funny thing is that I had read about his project before when someone had sent me a link to his one-paged website some time ago and upon seeing his logo (!), I instantly remembered the link from the other day. It’s a small world :-)

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The famous Herman Miller collection must not be missed on this event. Comfortable and well-designed furnitures (and lamps, visible in the background) that make the difference. The materials used on each chair have been reduced to a limited selection and inspected for their toxicity. That’s the kind of chair you’d want to have for your office. Or?

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Some other crazy Austrians who invented this new show concept consisting of three different parts. The company name Wexla apparently is a joke on the word “Wechsler”, which would prolly translate to something like “exchangeable”. And exchangeable is what their shoe soles are.
These are prototypes, so don’t be fooled by the somehow strange design.

The idea behind this obviously is to provide exchangeable shoes to customers. I’ve even seen another Dutch company offering a very very nice laptop bag which can be rented for a period of three months and then returned. Could you imagine renting consumer goods instead of buying them? Well – that’s exactly the scenario we’re talking about here. Imagine your desk at work being occupied by someone else so you’ll have to work on another desk. How would you feel about that? Are human beings ready to accept such new habbits?

I tend to compare that with the YouTube Generation that stopped buying complete (music) albums and instead downloads single tracks online. Because it suits their needs.

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EcoWorx – another US-American product line the “Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded the Presidential Green Chemistry Award for its environmental and performance benefits”.

We walk on carpets almost every day and inhale the abrasion. Think about it!

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A talented industrial designer at VelopA-Citystyle developed this new bench system created of two different materials, which is currently waiting for an official Cradle to Cradle certification. Appart from the green cover in this 1:2 scaled model above, “the bench is made from one piece of steel, without nuts and bolts, and is less vulnerable to vandalism and damage”.

That’s one those moments where I think: damn, I should have studied industrial design! :-)

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And this idea, ladies and gentleman, is one of the craziest concepts I’ve heard of lately. But a very good one, indeed.
What you see here as a scaled egg model, is supposed to become a comfy building for expecting mothers who want to give birth to their children in a much better, eco-effective environment. It’s a new type of childbirth centre, so urgently needed in Europe because birth rates are alarmingly low these days and in some European countries, giving birth is only possible in hospitals (and not at home, where you’d probably feel more comfortable). Once investments for this project are secured, they will try to build the first project in Spain.
Obviously, I couldn’t resist telling them about urine diversion toilets that would add a greener side to their sanitational facilities. :-)

————–

These are just some of the exhibitors, and there were only 60 around this time. Maybe there will be 200 next time – featuring innovative products from toxic-free cleaning detergents, healthy toys to edible fabrics and cleaner toner cartridges. Who knows? Everything is possible if you start analysing the products that surround us and realize how much we’re currently poisoning ourselves.

Interestingly, we saw a lot of (industrial) designers on this event – as opposed to traditional engineers which is what you’d prolly expect from an engineering perspective. But then – these designers are the ones to create the demand side, the ones who will have to ask for better materials.

It will be particularly interesting to see where we are in let’s say five years from now – what kind of products will have changed and found their ways into our daily lifes. What seems obvious to me is that C2C is a great marketing tool to promote innovative products for a better world. Oh, and there’s lot’s of money involved.

When will we see the first African C2C certified product?

[n.b.: Talking about environmental matters – what do you do with all these brochures you normally pick up at fairs? Read them at home and then throw them away? Many of the above mentioned projects have interesting brochures but still lousy internet websites. How come? I actually prefer a good website to obtain the relevant information instead of a papered brochure….]

Volkseigentum

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entdeckt @ Post, Postbankfiliale Goetheplatz, Frankfurt am Main.

Streetart ist auch eine sehr charmante Form der Kunst. :-)

(to my English readers: that’s a “public property” streetart sticker on the entrance door to a Deutsche Post branch – right in the middle of Frankfurt downtown, the capital of money in Germany, in direct neighbourhood to all major banks in town + ex-Lehman Brothers building – friggin hilarious! :-)

Alle Jahre wieder…

“Ich möcht Dich mal sehen wie Du drei Tage lange im Altersheim hockst und Händchen hältst….aber einen Tag lang können wir das gerne mal machen.”

Das Fest der Liebe, das (christliche) Weihnachtsfest steht vor der Tür und schon jetzt im November wurde ich mit der Frage konfrontiert, “was wir eigentlich an Weihnachten machen”.

Meistens weiß man ja nicht was man möchte – sondern nur das, was man nicht möchte.

Was ich nicht möchte:

  • zu Hause doof rumsitzen und Kalorien bunkern
  • mir über den materiellen Wert von Geschenken Gedanken machen (müssen)
  • etwas Feiern, dass ich lieber das ganze Jahr über (er)leben würde: eine gerechte Welt und ein liebevolles und ehrliches Miteinander

Abgesehen von der Möglichkeit, im Kreis der verbliebenen Familie gemeinsam die Zeit totzuschlagen und damit die Nähe nachzuholen, die ich das ganze Jahr über ob des Wechsels in eine andere Stadt sträflichst vernachlässigt habe, verkommt das Weihnachtsfest als Solches für mich immer mehr zu einem Ritual wie Ostern oder – noch schlimmer – Karneval.

Statt sich über all diesen Frust zu ärgern, würde ich gerne etwas von meiner Energie abgeben und diejenigen beglücken, die damit am Wenigsten rechnen. Nur: wo?

  • Im Kinderheim in Kenia – wäre super, aber zu teuer wg Flug, Unterkunft, usw.
  • Im lokalen Alters-/Pflegeheim? – habe ich schon mal gemacht, und kommt für mich auch ganz auf die Gemeinde an.
  • Im Bahnhofsviertel in FFM bei den Drogenabhängigen?
  • ???

Ich könnte das Weihnachtsfest dieses Jahr auch einfach ignorieren und irgendwo als Hilfskraft arbeiten. Natürlich kann ich so etwas nur deswegen sagen, weil ich den 9-5 job an den Nagel gehängt, mich selbstständig gemacht habe und wir z.Zt. noch kinderlos sind. Für alle anderen bedeutet das Fest wohl vor allem 2-3 Tage bezahlter Urlaub.

Aber ganz abgesehen davon, welchen Stellenwert dieses Fest für jeden Einzelnen hat – wie werdet Ihr Euer Weihnachtsfest verbringen? Und was werdet Ihr dazu beitragen?

Nokia Multiscanner

While testing Nokia’s E71 two months ago, I couldn’t find the following application on the phone I’d read about somewhere else: Nokia Multiscanner. I know that it apparently comes pre-installed on both the E71 and the E66, but on my trial device, it was just missing. Since I already LOVE Nokia’s BarCode reader and think it is a very smart application, I didn’t hesitate for a second upon seeing it as an item on my feedreader today and installed it right away. Unfortunately, the original source of that blog post is currently offline, but Google still provides other interesting resources about Nokia Multiscanner.

[all screenshots are in German as my phone is set to German language]

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Nokia Multiscanner is an application for S60V3 Nokia phones that provides Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for scanned texts. Currently, both business cards and document texts are supported – it even “reads” German texts and displays them on the screen for further usage.

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available options: save image, adjust layout, binary image (?), language, image size

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You can even zoom in and do the usual auto-focus to get your selected text in focus (doesn’t appear on these screenshots though as I had to simultaneously press two buttons at the same time to get the screenshot).

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It will then display the scanned text and even ask you if you want to further save it as a note, a short message, mms or e-mail. Neat!

The beautiful part is that this application really works to an extend where it is somehow usable. Scanning business cards is even easier, as it will already group different parts of an address to different fields (the user may then still edit). See this forum contribution on Nokiaapps.org for more details on the procedure (also includes lots of interesting screenshots).

Nokia Multiscanner currently runs on my Nokia N95-1 and from what I’ve understood so far, Multiscanner was initially designed as a pocket translator tool – so the pure OCR functionality is a nice add-on.

As for scanning business cards, I will always recommend using Nokia’s Mobile BarCode Reader instead and sticking your very own personal barcode to the back of your phone.

Obama Superstar

An American woman today boarded the commuter train in Frankfurt-Rödelheim and wore an Obama’08 badge. As she kept on talking with her boyfriend about the elections and how things will hopefully change, her seat neighbour from West Africa kindly asked her for that badge and was more than happy when she handed it over to him.

“God bless you, my friend”, he gratefully replied, “God bless you!”.

Obama is much more than a candidate for the 44th presidency in the United States of America.

When we look at today’s web editions of both leading newspapers in Kenya (The Daily Nation, The Standard), we see the following news items (Obama and other US-election related news are marked yellow):

The Daily Nation:
FireShot capture #1 - 'DAILY NATION - Home' - www nation co ke

The Standard:
FireShot capture #2 - 'The Standard I Online Edition Home' - www eastandard net

When was the last time you didn’t associate war, terror, fear with the USA?