Iedereen heeft het al een hele tijd over, maar sinds 3 november reis ik met de OV chipkaart in de Amsterdamse tram. Na drie weken ervaring dus tijd voor een balans: Ik heb geen flauw idee hoeveel het kost om van Amsterdam Centraal station naar de Kattenburgerweg (en terug) te reizen.
When I started working for ULURU earlier this year, I had never really worked with Apple Macs before. Sure, I’d checked my email on a friend’s IMac, but that was about it. ULURU however, is Mac only, so I was handed a sweet MacBook Pro and a nice Cinema Display “because you need that as a web developer” (I didn’t mention I’ve been programming just fine for years on a 15″ monitor) and was on my way to discover Mac territory. Barely half a year later and my job description has expanded to network administrator / support guy. Most of the people I’m supposed to help have more experience with a Mac than I have 
How about Bruce Sterling as a preacher?
Another great MoMo Amsterdam event yesterday afternoon! The quality of the speakers was high and they gave us quite some food for thought. The role of mobile in society was at the center of the discussions.
A remarkable afternoon ended with a remarkable Bruce Sterling climbing up the pulpit of the Rode Hoed and preaching us about the development of mobile technology: “As developers of mobile applications, you are living on a volcano and guess where the ashes will fall when it explodes?” (more…)
Populaire internetwerelden als Second Life en World of Warcraft groeien minder hard dan enkele jaren geleden, lees ik in de krant. Dat zou blijken uit onderzoek. Misschien is ‘het nieuwtje’ eraf of belanden veel mensen weer gewoon met twee benen in de echte wereld, denk ik hardop.
Het artikel citeert een deskundige, verbonden aan Het Platform Virtuele Werelden (PFW). Volgens hem willen mensen juist helemaal niet vluchten uit hun ‘droomwereldje’ op internet, maar missen ze een stukje stabiliteit en gebruikersgemak.
Augmented Reality art
Augmented reality (AR) is the combination of the real world and computer-generated data. The most fancy form of AR was demonstrated at PICNIC, where you could put on a helmet with special glasses, camera, GPS and motion sensor. On the glasses, additional 3D objects are projected in virtual space, so that you have the impression to walk around these objects.
Image by: twenty_questions (cc: attribution)
“Could life evolve on the Internet?” is the question raised in a recent article on Wired.com.
The answer of course depends on one’s definition of life, which is remarkably narrow for most people: if it doesn’t look like any of the life-forms here on earth, it isn’t really alive.
Smartly sidestepping this discussion, one could ask: “is evolution possible on the Internet?”. To which my answer would be: yes.
Some time ago, I was impressed by the Roomware project, an open-source initiative by a company called Alchemyst in Amsterdam.
The idea is to augment the reality of a room with virtual and digital stuff: Display the avatars of all people in the room, interact with the music being played by adding your wish or get information about the objects in the room by scanning your RFID-enabled phone along the objects.
The roomware server makes it easy to integrate the existing technologies and creating all kinds of interactions.
