what about broadcasting?

The "computer club" once was one of the oldest and yet most loveable programmes on public television for twenty years, with Wolfgang Back and Wolfgang Rudolph, two lovely nerdy guys that explained the shiny new world of computers and communication. After their show was cancelled in 2003, the were "reborn" not so long ago as a podcast.
But they do not perceive their podcast as such, but as a radio show being available on the internet. So they contacted their media regulation bureau in order to get a license, but did not get one as the bureau said "being a weekly show available upon request, you do not require a license" which made them wonder about the concept of "broadcasting" as such.

Convergence gone wrong: Apple presents the I-phone

(Photo courtesy of Apple Inc.)
Out of pure excitement, I have to write about the iPhone. Surely you'll have noticed by now, new is out after the keynote at the macworld. Besides all the other news and products like the Apple TV which surely has improved over its last presentation and the collaboration with Paramount for additional movies besides the ones from Disney, clearly the iPhone stole the show. Not unexpected for most, of course, but Apple clearly "overdelivered". The idea of the design, a big screen, was available on the web somehwere a couple of months back, but realized as a folding mechanism over the screen. With the tochscreen solution, usability surely improves.
But already there a some doubts about the concept: A Cnet journalist claims the touchscreen could quickly get covered in fingerprints, or worse, the display might break, rendering the phone unusable. While I can see the fingerprints as a possible problem, the latter is something that can just happen to everything. And with a developing time of over 2,5 years, I am sure Apple did some tests about long-term durability and ruggedness - of course it looks fragile, but is it?

What I am worried about more is that Apple did too much, created a product that is too good, and yet, is not. Surely the specs are amazing, the touchscreen is just great, the interface slick as ever, the usage of OS X on a mobile device a breakthrough regarding the smartphone capabilities. The package is great, but how do the indivdual components deliver? Are they as good as their standalone counterparts? In other words, is the iPhone a better iPod, better mobile, better smartphone, better internet device than what is on the market? Let's have a look at the iPhone as an iPod. Like Steve Jobs said, "this is the best iPod we ever created" and of course he is right. Who will want an iPod video after he has seen the iPhone? With a screen that size, there won't be much interest in the big iPod much more. But the question arises how many people actually use the iPod primarily as a video player. If i recall correctly, not so many people did.
But if I'm right on this, Apple has two design flaws with the iPhone as the iPod:

1) not nearly enough Storage space
My guess is, that everyone will want to use that nice big screen to watch movies and tv series and whatnot. What will you need? Storage storage storage. Now even with the 8 GB version, how much movies will fit in? With OS X on board, applications, images and music will already fill up a huge part of the memory. Everyone will have to decide if he wants to use the iPhone as a decent music player on the side, or if he wants to carry some movies and tv-shows around, as storage space is very limited.

2) not nearly enough run-time on battery
5 hours is all the iPhone will deliver when watching a movie. This is supposed to be a full-fleshed mobile phone, a device that is supposed to enable communication while on the move. A normal mobile phone will run days before it needs recharging, but after a long train ride or flight you just might not be able to make that one call you should be doing. Ouch.

So if you want to use the iPhone as iPod, cut down that huge library of yours, or just don't throw away your iPod. If you want to use the iPhone as a video player, better buy another one to talk with, as the battery will run out. If you want to use it as phone, congrats! You just bought the smallest tablet computer imaginable. But you didn't buy a phone. You should be hoping that NAND memory becomes cheaper and fuel cells smaller in the next years, or better months, or even better, weeks.

we had a little soirée

train your brain

absolutely challenging and addictive, and supposedly uses both of your brain's halves (yes, that "female" one too). Beat my 29,136 seconds - after all, life is a game.

Stop hiding, start living

Kalles Kaviar @ Volkshaus

Kalles Kaviar @ Volkshaus
Originally uploaded by Stürmifüdle.

So no more french philosophers that already have a slight smell of decay. I'm reading Malinowski's "Diary in the strict sense".
Malinowski was one of the founding fathers of social anthropology, especially of a school of thought called functionalism. He created the still employed method of participant observation on long field trips when he went to the Trobriand Islands, close to Papua New Guinea.

What does this have to do with anything? While I was researching the camera models that he used to take pictures of all the "niggers" (in that time, also a term for any non-white population), I stumbled upon this.

Turns out the camera equipement from the beginning of the last century was the basis for some very well known fiction about science, including oversized fat slugs, yeti-lookalikes, judo-style outfits and something called "lightsabers". And then I found out that the blasters were just customized Mauser pistols, nicknamed "broomhandles", which happen to have been the weapon of choice of a chap called "Lawrence of Arabia". Now didn't he ride around the desert on some weird looking fury animal, just like that guy called Skywalker?

time to get your foucault out

"He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constranits of power; he makes them play sponatenously upon himself, he inscribes himself in power relations in which he simulatenously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection"

(Foucault, 1979: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison) just made me think about all the Germans that were formely known as "Hartz-IV Empfänger" (Receivers of the very basic social insurance money) and are now officially called "Unterschicht" (lower class). It didn't made them feel better about their situation, but now they can complain while -seemingly- accepting their social shortcoming. Made & makes me think.

The qoute, by the way, is from a very thorough paper on the history of photography and anthropology, heavily influenced by the french poststructuralist gang of four (Foucault, Barthes, Derrida - but, now that I checked, no Lacan).