codedifferent.com » Culture

Video of the special event: A celebration of Steve’s life.

Christian — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:09:47 +0000

Apple just published the video of the tribute to Steve special event at the Apple Campus on October 19, 2011. So kind, that the Apple folks are sharing the event with us. Thanks. It’s really moving.

Picture: Apple

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish … RIP Steve Jobs

Christian — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 10:06:43 +0000

Thank you for so much, Steve.

I was deeply moved by Your commencement speech in Stanford as I am when I watch it today …

RailsConf 2009 in Las Vegas: Now open for registration – call for participation extended

Christian — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:05:16 +0000

The registration for the – again – biggest Ruby-on-Rails conference in the US is now open: RailsConf 2009. O’Reilly organizes the conference again. but this time it’s not Portland but Las Vegas where the rails community meets again. Las Vegas is not only the US center of gambling and entertainment – it’s also one of the much sought-after conference locations
If you register before March 16th 11:59pm you’ll get an early-bird bonus and save 200 USD.
All rails-pros who want to share their knowledge and give a presentation at the conference, the Call for Participation deadline is extended to February 17th 2009. So you have to be fast!
The conference will be at the Las Vegas Hilton from May 4th to 7th 2009.

Viva Las Vegas!

Sources: rubyonrails.com, RailsConf.com

German universities publish free podcasts and videos via Apple iTunes U

Christian — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 07:42:32 +0000

Great! Now, also some German universities publish some free podcasts, videos and scripts via “iTunes U”. Until now, you can find content from the following universities from Germany:

Perfect! Especially high school graduates can get a first impression of the different universities. At the end there is no getting around visiting the favorite universities to make the decision, but the iTunes U content is another first impression.
But also for students, post graduates and alumni, there are quite interesting contents – and some real gems also

Source: Macnews.de (only German)

Mac and iPhone Browser Marketshare are Growing Fast

Christian — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 16:22:28 +0000

It’s quite interesting to go into the browser / OS marketshare statistics Net Applications is gathering.
Within the last 12 months, the marketshare of Apple Mac OS X powered computers increased from 6.38% in Feb 2007 to 7.57% in Jan 2008 – a growth rate of about 19%. This great news for the Mac community – but what’s really surprising is the significant marketshare of iPhone surfers in the last month. The iPhone was introduced to the US market on June 29th 2007 – and in Jan 2008 it’s internet surfer worldwide market share is 0.13% according to the Net Applications. Focussing only on the US market it’s share is even higher at 0.20%!
It looks like the iPhone really fuels the use of mobile internet.

Source: Net Applications

Internal news: WordPress security update to version 2.3.3 and reCAPCHA

Christian — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:57:51 +0000

A short message to all WordPress-bloggers: The actual security update version 2.3.3 is strongly recommended. Here at codedifferent no problems occure while upgrading.
Taking this upgrade as an opportunity – the anti spam plugin was also exchanged: In the future every commentator at codedifferent has to prove to be a pattern recognizing human. And by using the reCAPTURE-plugin we aditionally help others: The CAPCHA codes used here are not only some generated graphics – they represent words which could not be recognized by OCR-software. reCAPCHA was developed from Carnegie Mellow University and they actually support the project Internet Archive.

Microsoft 44.6 Billion $ Appetite: Yahoo! … will it be Microhoo!?

Christian — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:33:13 +0000

That’s a big one: It really looks like Steve Ballmer want’s to get into the search engine and online advertisement market. Today, Microsoft announced, that the company proposes the acquisition of Yahoo! at a premium of 63% to the current trading price.
It’s a teamup for competing Google – but we’ll have to see whether this transaction will be allowed by the anti-trust authorities and whether joining the forces of Microsoft and Yahoo! development teams will lead to innovation as they want it to be.
How should we call that company in the future? Microhoo!?

P.S. I hope they’ll now hire Ms. Dewey for the future Microhoo! search engine

[Update] You can vote for your favorite name of Microhoo at engadget

Free Magenta! … or how T-Mobile antagonizes the creatives

Christian — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 11:17:22 +0000

The Deutsche Telekom – and its subsidiary T-Mobile – antagonize designers and creatives by claiming a trademark for the color magenta at the European brandoffice. No other company should be allowed to use this color for their stationary advertising campaigns. Strictly speaking, this would lead to the fact that only the Deutsche Telekom would be allowed to print in full color: Finally nearly all full color prints are realized with the four colors C – cyan, M – magenta, Y – yellow and K – black.
Graphic designers in the Netherlands started a "consumer created content campaign" against the prohibition to use magenta in advertisement.

As a result, the claiming of the color magenta as a trademark may damage the value of the Deutsche Telekom image substantially.

Source & picture: freemagenta.nl, source: connectedmarketing.de

The next level of cyberwar started: China’s war against western search engines

Christian — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:30:25 +0000

According to techcrunch, Chine declared war on western search engines, like Google and Yahoo. All requests to those search engine sites from within China are redirected to Baidu. This takes cyberwar to a next level. Or should we say DNS-cyberwar? A cyberwar against companies like Google and Yahoo, but also a fight against the freedom of speech and the freedom of information. But to be honest … this cyberwar against honest citizens who want user their right for freedom of speech or freedom of information … is not only situated in China. Also in western democracies like, the US or within the EU these fundamental citizen rights are called into question also. So, let’s hope that freedom and democracy are on the winning side at the end.

Source: techcrunch.com

To think about: "Terrorists as legislators" from Heribert Prantl

Christian — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:40:16 +0000

This blog is normally not focussing on politics, legislation, the constitutional state or democracy. But the things happening in Germany’s domestic and legal policy these days, slowly but massively affect our life and work. It affects our rule of law, our democracys, our civil rights, our constitutions, our freedom. Not only in Germany. Especially, if you deal with the internet in private and business … as probably most of us do.

Heribert Prantl, domestic policy editor the big German newspaper sueddeutschezeitung, wrote a profound article in the NZZ folio titled "Terroristen als Gesetzgeber" – terrorists as legislators. I’m really sorry that his article is only available in German – but it’s really worth reading it. All of us, who love democracy and freedom should be concerned about the facts he describes precisely.

Sources: NZZ-Folio 09/07, lawblog.de