[Nerd-Content] Twitter Roundup #21
09.05.2010 | Evening- Moving mail from Thunderbird to gmail has been a very good choice productivity-wise. I strongly recommend Inbox Heaven for gmail
- These stories by Eric Wahlforss on bootstrapping Soundcloud are just incredible good
- HPI/HPV starting Business Plan Contest – Winner gets a one year scholarship for 3 founders with 1500€/month per person. And a free office. And free coaching. And they want no equity …
- Digitale Nomaden – Ăśber das Freiberuflerleben in Berlin
- Flattr could be a good concept of how to pay for content in the future.
- Things I bought recently: Remember the Milk Pro Account, Transmit 4, Ipredator VPN
- I will attend Barcamp London 8. Looking forward to it big times!
- Brutal good video by M.I.A. / Romain Gavras here.
[Nerd-Content] Music Hackday Amsterdam 2010
26.04.2010 | Late Evening
Last weekend I attended Music Hackday Amsterdam 2010 which was as awesome as always. About 150 people came together for a weekend in some gallery/office-building in the center of Amsterdam. And most of them did awesome hacks.
Apart from meeting a bunch of great people and eating pizza I was taking it slow this time and participated in a hardware workshop by Steim. I learned soldering (inc. burning fingers) and programming Arduino (inc. liking it).
This is the outcome of the days. An Arduino-driven led-lit Noise/Tone/Cracklebox:
Thanks again to everyone who helped me along the way, especially Joep for being so patient with me.
I hope to hack a bit more in the future on this project and to publish the code and soldering plan …
[HPI], [Nerd-Content] Twitter Roundup #20
23.04.2010 | Lunch Time- When Berlin reaches 22c it becomes one of the best cities in the world.
- I have been working on Twestival.fm which features a nice Tracksonamap integration.
- A lot of good music has been donated to Twestival.fm
- Cinch – “Windows 7″-style Window Management for Mac OS X
- I have signed up for Gmail and am using the “Inbox Heaven” workflow now
- Moving all my mails ( > 10.000 / 1.5 Gb) from Thunderbird to gmail via IMAP took over a week … moving mails with attachements is a pain …
- I have a Tumblelog at Tumblr now … http://freenerd.tumblr.com …
- Products is the reason to love Apple. Politics is the reason not to do. It is a dilemma.
- The working title for my Bachelor’s Thesis: Agile Software Development in Small Projects – Methods and Techniques used in the Sendinel Project
- I am attending Music Hack Day Amsterdam.
I have submitted this track to the BMI + Florian Meindl Remix Competition
BMI Techno Seminar (Disko DNA Spring Remix) by DiskoDNA
The Multitoe Touch Floor Research at the HPI released this great video which displays some cool ideas regarding large touch interfaces. Last semester I have been working on a paper that outlines a music production app for that floor. You can download it here.
[Nerd-Content] Books I’ve read recently
12.04.2010 | AfternoonFollowing are some of the books i’ve read recently which made a big impression on me. Ask me if you can lent one 
The Art of the Start
The Passionate Programmer
Getting Real
The Big Switch
Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction
[HPI], [Nerd-Content] Second and third workday in South Africa
09.04.2010 | Late EveningI am already back in Germany now but I wanted to write some more about the research trip to South Africa. The first part of the report can be read here.
On the second and third day we did more user research, adjusted our system with hotfixes to the latest findings and prepared everything for after our departure.
The user research was the key aspect of the whole journey. It split into two parts: Understanding how the clinic works and testing our prototypes with the people.
For understanding the clinic, we talked to the staff, observed how they work and asked a lot of semi-stupid questions. I sometimes found it hard to jump over my own shadow when we had to bug people with strange and often naive questions. But we really dug deep to get to know the processes, the culture, why and how things work …
When we tested the prototypes with the people we had two things in mind: Finding out about the general skills of the people (Can they use computers? Can they use Bluetooth with their mobiles?) and how well we designed the prototypes (Which way is best to enter a date? Which is the best means to authenticate people?). We had prepared the user research at home with several design mock-ups, process guidelines and protocol templates.
But as usual the planning was more important than the plan itself. We weren’t able to run all user tests and we abandoned the testing protocol sometimes. The important part was to get a feeling for the situtation the users are in and to create understanding.
The most important finding was, that the patients are no good at all as users of our systems since they lack even basic computer skills. People had never seen a mouse before. The problem was not our system but using a computer. I have been watching a lot participants who just stared at the screen without knowing what to do. Even after we introduced them to the input devices they had problems to understand the basic concepts (Moving mouse moves cursor, clicking activates something …)
We concluded that no patient would ever be able to use the system without guidance. Therefore we had to change the target group away from patients over to the nurses who all are using laptops to keep track of the patients data already.
Before we went to South Africa one big part of our project was the so-called “Knowledge Base” which aimed to educate people on health-related topics. In the prototype texts, pictures and videos were displayed. We even thought about extending this with videos recorded by the clinic staff which could be played automatically in the waiting room.
We will possibly drop the knowledge base in the future for several reasons. We had changed the target group from patients to nurses thus the patients will never be able to browse the content. In the user tests the patients were not reacting to the shown content in the prototypes and did not understand the benefit of looking at the material. Also the nurses told us, that the general problem with information is not the to it access or distribution of it but creating awareness for it with the people. That is best done by a person and not a machine. And thel ast thing is that there was a TV set in the waiting room which was always running but which got no attention at all from the waiting patients (unlike in Germany where everyone would have aligned to have a better view at the screen …)
All these things led to drastic changes in the system. We were throwing out big parts to concentrate on the core functionality. This was an extremely liberating process as it was decluttering to the core. We hacked some dirty fixes on-spot (Ugly JavaScript is perfect for that) and continuously deployed them for more user tests.
During the stay the technicians were able to set-up the satelite dish and the modem which connects the clinic to the internet. The dish is aiming in a very low angle at a geosynchronous satellite that is somewhere over Washington/USA. To clear line of sight one tree branch had to be cut down. At some point the internet conection was finally up resulting in all the Windows computers starting to run updates …
At the moment (read: 2 weeks after we left the clinic) the internet connection is down and we can’t access our server. We don’t the real cause for that yet but hope to be able to fix it during the next week.
So after three days in the clinic we finished up the work and left again. In conclusion we can say that the research trip has been essential for the project. We were able to test our assumptions and change the system according to the real problems of the people. I’m confident that we will be able to put the last 6 weeks of the project to very good use and to come up with an end-product that will meet the needs of the people (and give us something to write a bachelor thesis about).
[all pictures are from Thomas' Flickr Set here]
(up next is a more informal post on the more touristic part of the journey)
[Mobile Photos] Spring starts | Biking season
06.04.2010 | Towards Midnight
I have returned from South Africa yesterday. To welcome spring in Berlin I was finally getting my bike back on the street today. Awesome. I can feel that this will be a great summer 
Sent from my mobile
[In General], [Nerd-Content], [Personal] First workday in South Africa
23.03.2010 | Late Evening
I am currently sitting in a cottage in the woods some kilometers east of the town Hazyview in East South Africa. The 3G network is more stable and faster than I have ever experienced it in germany.
In South Africa the summer has just ended and autumn has broken, which means that it is not getting warmer than 30°C … good for us. Furthermore it is raining every now and then cooling down the air even more.
We arrived here yesterday in the night, after a 2-days-1-night travel from Berlin to Doha/Katar to Johannesburg. We fetched our cars (decent mini-family-vans with an undersized engine, not in the above picture) and drove to our accomondation. Door to Door about 37 hours.
Today in the morning, we drove to a clinic in a rural part of South Africa. In these area the inhabitants are mostly poor, mostly black and often without a tap water connection at there home. It is one of these parts in the country where the legacy of Apartheid is visible a lot. A former ghetto that has not yet been reconnected.
The journey to the clinic led us first through a very touristic area where one high-prized hotel followed the next. We then took a well-built asphalt road driving north. We left that road for a dirt road as you can see it on the picture above. After a long time (which we mainly used for regretting not to have a 4×4 offroader) we arrived at the clinic.
The clinic is part of a SAP Research project where they test the usage of computer technology in the rural primary health system. After having a tour around, we started to deploy our system. We plugged our server into the local network and set-up terminal test computers.
Then we spoke with the hospital staff about their processes and their opinion on our system. The buglist piled up fast … but so did our understanding of how things work in the clinic.
One of the biggest issues for us during the tests was the language, because even though the people speak english, it is sometimes hard to understand them. Which is the same for them with us as well …
During our stay technicians showed up at the clinic to install a satellite dish for an internet connection. They have not succeeded yet in installing (“we have to cut down some tree branches, otherwise we cant see the satellite”) but they will hopefully do so tomorrow. This internet connection will allow us to maintain the system from germany and to get feedback on the usage of it.
We finished the day with driving to another clinic and having a talk with the staff about their processes and opinions.
On thing, that astonished me during this day, was how near first and third world are. From a shopping center of european standard to an area, where people walk on a sandy half-destroyed road carrying tapwater to there home in less than 20 minutes.
During the next days we will continue working in the clinic, finding out how we can introduce real-life meaning to our bachelor project (and eventually make some sort of scientific sense with this trip).
(read the second part of the report here)
[Personal] Off to South Africa
21.03.2010 | After MidnightThe next two weeks I will be in Mpumalanga and Kwazulu Natal in East South Africa. The journey is a research trip for my bachelor project “Sendinel” at the HPI. We will deploy a software system at a clinic in a rural area and do user research.
I’ll hopefully be able to tweet and send some photos … and I am really excited right now. It is actually the first time ever that I am leaving Europe.
[Music] Venetian Snares – Szerencsétlen
09.03.2010 | Towards MidnightBecause I got lucky some days ago buying the awesome Venetian Snares – Rossz Csillag Alatt Született on 2 x 12”
