jmichael.eu

aka-aki: Taking social networking to the streets

J�rg Michael — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:02:58 +0200

A few students at the University of Arts in Berlin did their thesis (actually, "Diplomarbeit") on a crazy idea of theirs and went on to actually develop the real thing. Take the concept of social networking and combine it with real-life aspects. They came up with a website and a piece of software you put on your internet enabled mobile phone. It also works without internet connection on your phone, but the functionality will be reduced.

The British TIMES has an article about aka-aki that does a better job of explaining it than I will, but it is also longer ;-)

Download the software, turn on Bluetooth - here is where it gets interesting - and run the program. aka-aki will find other Bluetooth phones in your vicinity and look up their profiles on aka-aki's web server. If the owner is also a member of aka-aki, you can access their picture and profile. If they're not, well, there used to be a feature that allowed you to send a "hey, why don't you sign up? go to www.aka-aki.com" message via Bluetooth. The current version doesn't have it, but it is rumored to return.

You can also grab "stickers" - basically little picture with a name and a meaning - that you can use to let others know a little about you in categories such as: what I am, what I love, , where I am by day/night, what keeps me busy, what I have to offer, what I spend my money on. When you meet another member, your phone knows how many matching stickers you have. It also tells you how many times your phone has seen the other phone before. And the date of the first encounter with that phone.

It also has a twitter like micro-blogging thingie where you can also "follow your friends' activities" and it has its own "aki-mail" service.built into the software.

So, walk up to that hottie, introduce yourself and say "Our paths have crossed 27 times so far and we both love coffee. How about a Latte?".

After developing the software on zero budget, they found VC investors in December 2007 and at this year's CeBIT fair in Hannover, they won an award for "most innovative idea".

So go download the software and play with it. They just recently did the english version so it's not perfect, but should allow you to play with the software. Their site it at http://www.aka-aki.com/?lg=en or just http://www.aka-aki.com for the german version.

Cameras don’t take pictures, people do

J�rg Michael — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:49:03 +0200

No, these are not my photos. A friend and co-worker sent me a link to the photo album he and his girlfriend have put together from their trip to Thailand.
I looked at the photos and thought that they really show there's more to great pictures than a high end camera. So yes, they were taken with a rather high end camera, but that's not the point here. So go check out Ellen's photo's at http://www.dokumentiert.de.

Quick links: Bangkok | North Thailand | North Thailand 2 | Hua Hin | Toilet Signs, 42 of them ;-)

The new kid on the block

J�rg Michael — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:37:00 +0200

Well, I've finally asked for my blog to be added to Planet Lotus. Motivated in part as a means to force me to become more active in the Lotus Notes & Domino blogging community.

So, as a quick start, here is my How I got started with Lotus Notes post and there is also a much longer version providing a bit more information.

How to keep NotesDocument.CopyAllItems under control

J�rg Michael — Tue, 8 Apr 2008 23:51:49 +0200

Now that I have your attention, I can tell you that CopyAllItems is innocent. You just need to be aware of how it works.

I recently came across an application that - for reasons I still don't understand - had a database PostOpen script that would grab your calendar profile from your mail file and .copyallitems to your personal profile document in the other application.

Then some users started getting error messages. Turns out that copyallitems copies all items, as you would expect. Even if the other document already contains items with the same names. So there were mutiple copies of all the items in the profile document. When that happens, the problem is that you will only have access to the first item with that name. Which, after a few changes to that item, is not exactly what you want. Notes doesn't have a problem with multiple items of the same name. It's the formula and Lotusscript APIs that can't deal with it. I understand the C(++) API can handle it.

So, to sum this up: There's nothing wrong with using .copyallitems. Just make sure that the destination document doesn't already have items with the same names.

Einkaufen mit EC-Karte bei LIDL ist sicher!

J�rg Michael — Tue, 8 Apr 2008 22:42:03 +0200

Es gibt mal wieder ein Statement von der LIDL Gesch�ftsf�hrung. Wieder sehr aufschlussreich. Ab demn�chst soll die PIN-Eingabe bei LIDL also nicht mehr aufgezeichnet werden.

Sehr geehrte Kundinnen und Kunden,
Lidl hat beschlossen, bis auf weiteres auf den Einsatz von Videokameras in seinen Filialen zu verzichten.
In allen Filialen in Deutschland bauen wir deshalb unsere Kameraanlagen ab.
[...]
Wir k�nnen Ihnen versichern, dass bei Lidl zu keinem Zeitpunkt Kameras eingesetzt wurden, um pers�nliche Daten von Kunden, wie zum Beispiel PIN-Nummern, zu erkennen.

�bersetzung: Wenn in Ihrem LIDL-Markt die Kameras bereits abgebaut wurden, wird Ihre PIN-Eingabe nicht mehr aufgezeichnet. Bisher war dies der Fall. Das war zwar nicht unsere Absicht bei der Installation der Kameras - schliesslich wollten wir unsere Angestellten �berwachen, denen wir prinzipiell misstrauen. Dass dabei auch die PIN-Eingabe der Kunden aufgezeichnet wurde, haben wir billigend in Kauf genommen. Schliesslich geht es hier um (unser) Geld.

How I got started with Lotus Notes

J�rg Michael — Tue, 8 Apr 2008 00:15:53 +0200

Just before I got into Lotus Notes I was working in a job where Notes would have fit in perfectly. Unfortunately, the company rolled over dead before we could ever get a copy of Notes running. While looking around for a new job, I noticed a company looking for a Notes person to work on customer projects, both admin and development. Well, what used to be called development back in the days of version 3.0something. I can still remember installing 3.0c, 3.1.5a, and 3.3. Those were the days, when the server was running OS/2 on a Pentium 60 with 32 MB. On a Token Ring network!

T-Mobile und kein Blackberry

J�rg Michael — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:47:02 +0200

Heute habe ich bei T-Mobile angerufen. Die Zeit ist gekommen, eine Blackberry-taugliche SIM Karte in der Trickkiste zu haben. Schliesslich m�chte man seine MDS-Basteleien auch mal ohne Emulator sehen. So wollte ich also den Blackberry Enterprise Service f�r meine Karte freischalten lassen. H�tte ich gewusst, wie sinnlos frustrierend dieser Versuch wieder enden wird, h�tte ich es gelassen.

Jedenfalls kann T-Mobile den BES Service nicht einschalten, weil ich PK bin. Das ginge nur f�r GK. Ich konnte mir zwar denken, was PK und GK sind, aber dass die Callcenter-Leute derart Zeit sparen m�ssen, ist traurig. Nun bin ich zwar selbstst�ndig (und diese Schreibweise schmerzt immer noch) und k�nnte mit Fug und Recht als GK durchgehen. Aber so einfach ist das nat�rlich nicht.

Da m�sste ich mich einem Rahmenvertrag anschliessen. Zum Beispiel �ber meinen Arbeitgeber.

Hallo? Ich habe keinen Arbeitgeber!

Ach so, dann eben �ber die IHK.

Liebe Leute bei T-Mobile: Bevor ich das alles erledigt habe, habe ich viel schneller eine K�ndigung an T-Mobile geschrieben und mal bei Vodafone geschaut, was es da Nettes gibt.

Zumal der 8. April mein n�chstm�glicher K�ndigungstermin ist. Da passt das doch ganz gut.

ILUG 2008 session list V1 posted

J�rg Michael — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:15:47 +0200

The ILUG 2008 now has a preliminary session list. See if you can find the hidden gems in there. You may need to look at another view. I certainly didn't expect to see those names listed there.

Need a hotel for ILUG2008 in Dublin?

J�rg Michael — Thu, 6 Mar 2008 19:53:28 +0200

If you'll be in Dublin for ILUG2008, you will probably need a hotel. If you haven't made up your mind or haven't even looked for hotels in the vicinity of the conference venue, then you might want to hop over to Sean Burgess' blog, where he is trying to organize a group discount at the Camden Court Hotel.

What do I get out of this? Simple, I have already reserved my room at the Camden Court Hotel and wouldn't mind having more Lotus geeks staying in the same hotel ;-) BTW, I chose the hotel for the same reasons Sean did. Close to the venue, looks decent, overall positive guest reviews, not exactly cheap, but reasonable for Dublin.

Nice flying, buddy

J�rg Michael — Sun, 2 Mar 2008 23:54:16 +0200

Over the weekend, we have been hit by pretty rough storms over here in Europe. On Saturday, this Lufthansa Airbus 320 was hit by a gust just as it was going to touch down. The left wingtip touches the ground, and the pilots decide to get the hell out of that situation.

Going to Dublin in June

J�rg Michael — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:32:52 +0200

So, it's that time of the year when people in the Lotus Notes and Domino community are thinking about spending a few high energy days in Dublin. In June. At ILUG 2008. Registration opens next Monday, I excpect this one to be sold out (remember, it's free!) very quickly this year.

Luckily, I have the situation completely under control. Like all of last year's delegates, I was able to register one week earlier. So ... register for ILUG.

Of course, I'll need to get there somehow. After last year's never-again experience with RyanAir, I'm betting on Germanwings to get me there.

Plus maybe a place to spend the night, shower and grab some breakfast would be nice.

Well, looks like I'm all set up ;-) See you in Dublin.

I’m Ed Brill. And so is my wife.

J�rg Michael — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:40:54 +0200

Looks like these guys are having waaaay to much fun in Orlando. Hope to be there again next year.

Andrew Pollack: Why the Opening General Sessions fall flat

J�rg Michael — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:11:33 +0200

Andrew Pollack has an interesting piece on why he thinks the Opening General Session at Lotusphere 2008 was not all it could and should have been.

LOOKING at the content, a production company in their right mind is NEVER going to guess that Maureen showing source code editors is exciting. Dragging around video windows, however, looks cool -- even if its just more portal based crap that few of us care about.

Unfortunately, I am not in Florida right now, but he does not seem to be the only one complaining about the relative weights of different topics. The things he sees causing the problems make a lot of sense. And I think he's onto something with his proposal on how to improve things:

How should IBM correct this? Bring more people into the process to help. Partners, developers, and other industry people can help identify places where really big opportunities are missed.

More ...

Lotusphere 2008

J�rg Michael — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:12:00 +0200

Lotusphere 2008 started today. If, like me, you are not in Orlando to learn and party with the coolest crowd on earth, here are some links to help you follow along:

Planet Lotus is a relatively new but already hugely successful addition to the Lotus community. The site tracks (currently) 185 RSS feeds from people who have something to say about Lotus products. The site allows you to get a quick view of what is happening around our favorite products. There is also a mobile version

Taking Notes Podcast: Bruce and Julian intend to post several podcasts directly from Orlando. You'll also see these showing up on Planet Lotus. Hey, Bruce and Julian! Where's episode 75?

Bleed Yellow is a Lotus Connections based site set up by the guys at Lotus 911.

Car Talk podcast

J�rg Michael — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:25:32 +0200

I used to listen to these guys on the Frankfurt AFN station on AM radio. As life goes, I haven't listened to Tom and Ray, a.k.a. Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, for a couple of years now. Since I recently, finally, got an iPod, I stumbled across the Car Talk podcast. And yes, I knew about podcasts before and I was not assuming that you need an iPod to listen to one ;-)

So, if you don't have it yet and don't listen to Car Talk on the radio, go get it. These guys are hilarious.

Caught in cable hell

J�rg Michael — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:27:00 +0200

I've always had two PCs as my home setup. With all the cabling mess that involves. Just imagine all the cables required for the phone lines with DSL, two PCs with all the gimmicks. You need speakers, every PDA used to require its own proprietary cable. But throw in a serially attached IR device to remove the PDA cable. And a joystick. And some other crap. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Cable hell. You are in a twisty maze of cables, all with different connectors. Cable Hell 1.0

Here in Cologne, I only had my laptop and WiFi. Just one cable and I was set. Well, plus a mouse sometimes.

Until I figured that a webcam might be cool. And and external USB hard disk (3.5", external power supply). And maybe a USB TV receiver. Oh, and a small 2.1 speaker set to make music sound a bit more like music.

What have I got? A twisty maze of cable, all with the same connector.

Cable Hell 2.0

Beware the luggage eating locker

J�rg Michael — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:49:00 +0200

This actually happened on July 29, 2007. I wanted to post this sooner, but I managed to replace the pictures. So sue me.

I was on my way back to Cologne on a Sunday night. Unlike most other Sunday nights, I had plans to meet somebody in Cologne, so didn't head straight to my home away from home. The central station in Cologne has this high tech luggage locker system where you insert the money, a door opens, you put in your bags and hit a button, the door closes and the system whisks away your bags to somewhere down below the station. You get a paper ticket that you'll use to claim your bags later.

It's a really neat system. It justs works. A small miracle. No matter which of the magic machines you used to deposit your luggage, you can get your stuff back from any one of several of these around the station.

About 10pm, I come back to pick up my bag and head home. So, with my ticket in hand, I approach one of the miracle machines. At first, I didn't think anything about the rather large number of people standing around. So, what do you think this means:

Yep, it means exactly that.

There was quite an interesting bunch of people hanging around:

One guy needed to catch a train to Bonn where he had a job interview the next morning. And he had some documents he needed for his interview in his suitcase.

Another guy, some sort of contractor, needed to start work in Stuttgart early the next morning. Of course, he had his tools locked up in that crazy machine.

That weekend, there had been a HerbaLife convention in Cologne so a lot of HerbaLife sales droids needed to catch their trains back to Spain, Italy and Switzerland. Some of them had their passports and tickets safely locked up.

And of course, there was I, the dumbest of them all. You see, I would normally have said "ScrewIt! I'm going home and will pick up my bag tomorrow." But nooo, I had been so clever to leave my keys in my bag. Safely locked up.

Much fun was had by all, and just before midnight, the machine started working again.

Google Maps 2.0 on Nokia E61

J�rg Michael — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:07:32 +0200

With the "old" native Google Maps application for Symbian S60 I could zoom in by clicking on the joystick thingie. Life was good. Of course, I had to try their latest version that now includes an innovative method of determining one's (very approximate) location without GPS. The method they use is so crazy that it's the logical thing to do for Google. They have a database of all cell towers and their location. Easy, eh?

Anyway, the new version also had some changes to the UI. Now you press 3 to zoom in and 1 to zoom out. On my E61, I could zoom out just fine. But pressing 3 would not zoom back in. So I decided that I needed to toggle into number mode by pressing the blue arrow key in the lower left corner of the keyboard before I hit 3. No luck.

Turns out you need to keep that blue key pressed while pressing 3. Strange. I've never had that with any other application on my E61.

But then, the E61 firmware I installed also seems to have put an end to Opera Mobile's keyboard shortcuts. Too bad, it was extremely convenient to scroll down an entire page by pressing a single key. Now it's back to scrolling line by line using the joystick.

Vielen Dank, liebe Bahn

J�rg Michael — Wed, 5 Dec 2007 23:32:42 +0200

Die Bahn ist ja immer ausserordentlich bem�ht um Kundenzufriedenheit. Manchmal funktioniert das ganz gut, manchmal eben nicht.

Bisher bin ich Freitags mit dem folgenden Zug von K�ln nach Wiesbaden gefahren. 49,00 EUR.

Mit dem neuen Winterfahrplan habe ich die folgenden Alternativen. Ich bin also nicht nur mindestens eine halbe Stunde l�nger unterwegs, sondern darf f�r das Vergn�gen mit 61,00 EUR auch noch 20% mehr bezahlen.

(Ja, nat�rlich habe ich eine Bahncard, aber 20% teurer wird's trotzdem.)

XING mobile launcher

J�rg Michael — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 22:58:42 +0200

So XING now offers a mobile launcher for download. It's basically a Java app that allows you to enter your XING login credentials on your phone and then launch XING through the mobile launcher. The idea is to easily start up XING and automatically log you in. So you'd think that the first thing you see is a big honkin' button to log you into XING. But noooooo, the first thing they want you to do is invite more people. Oh yeah, the "Hier klicken" is the top of the button I actually want.

Hint to the genius developers at XING: If and when I actually do want to invite new people, I'll find a way to do that. I really am smart enough to figure that out. When I start the XING mobile launcher, in 99 cases out of 100, I will want to actually go to XING.