Monthly Archives: November 2008

Liveblogging from “The BOBS”

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Yesterday, I attended the ceremony of Deutsche Welle to award the Best of Blogs (theBOBS) which, according to the jury, are the best blogs in different national categories, as well as in video and audio in 2009.

Peter aka thewavingcat blogged live with a very fascinating tool called Coveritlive. It has a very smooth editor surface to write, comment and adjust stuff and codes which can be embedded in other websites where your twitterlike short news are flowing in and can be commented. He worked really hard in typing down the many informations from the stage, approving comments AND answering questions from a worldwide crowd. Respect! Also, Stefanie Suren and Andreas Schepers did a good job in guiding the audience through the evening with a plimpse of Hollywood feel: “And the winner is..!”
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What you can do with Arduino

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Arduino“Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.”

Hm, so what does that mean? Basically what you can with the little Arduino board is easily bring lots of input in and turn it into certain outputs. Sounds easy and maybe trivial but really is not. Because Arduino can process many different signals and trigger many different outputs. Kiss a door and it opens. Step close to a mirror and a video starts playing with the mirror talking to you. Turn TV picture into LED-signals. Connect it to the Wii and In general one might say it’s very nerdy and looks a little unready still. But it’s definetly the start into a development of selfbuilt robots and machines.

Below are some video examples. I particularly like the TV to LED part because it’s kind of what a friend and I did for a party once. We put 16 toilet paper rolls covered with translucent paper in fornt a tv and thus reduced the pictures to a 16×16 pixel screen. We taped it to video and had a nice party light installation. The posted below is slightly more elegant but, really, less charming.
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Scuba Dubstep mix for XlR8

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It’s not the typical noisy toothsayery dubstap massacre what Scuba serves us in another excellent XLR8 podcast but rather a very deep and flirry mix which accelerates veeery slowly and has a curve of tension which is hardly noticeable. Still, this mix contains some energy which is hidden deep in the bass. I love it.
[audio:http://xlr8r.com/listen/16852/mp3/Podcast_Mix_2008_11_13.mp3]
Check out the whole article and the tracklisting.

Ourmixes.com: The greatest source for classic house mixes

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Ourmusicmixes is a great source for classic, old and new, deep and soulful house music. Tons of mixes are stored there, Chicago deep Stuff, raw classics, in the ultimate haven for all lovers of what started from disco in the 80ies to warehouse stuff in Chicago, to the big house success in the 90ies. From gay clubs in churches, from Lerry Levan, to Mr Vegas, Kerry Chandler, Moodyman, Basement Soul. Thank you so much guys for giving us music that easily could be forgotten!

Here is one very nice and deep mix from Chicago Deep:
[audio:http://www.ourmusicmixesstore.com/our_music128.mp3]

Streetart in Lofoten, Norway

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streetart_lofotenThere are not many streets there. Still, in the very north of Norway, on the archipelago Lofoten two of the most known Norwegian street artists, Dolk and Pøbel have painted some house walls. Poppy, stencil-like paintings in black and white with few colour highlights and some surreal motives like superman with Dialyse, at old wooden houses in the middle of nowhere. Certainly one more reason to travel to Lofoten despite the breath taking nature. [via Elsbe]
Watch more pictures at Nrk.no or watch a slideshow with Lofoten pictures from Flickr
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Ford Fiesta commercial 2008 song

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Many ask: “What’s this track in the ford fiesta commercial with the pink car in front of many moving tv screens” or “Wie heißt der Song aus der Ford Werbung”? It’s “Transient” by Pluxus, Swedes who live partly in Berlin and come out on the label Pluxemburg. The song is very groovy, deep, longing, and a little glossy, perfect match for the commercial. Props to Ogilvy London to buy it!

Facebook for teaching and learning

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I wrote the following article together with Max Senges and Peter Bihr for the UOC Fórum Innovació.

Social Communities have grown rapidly over the last years, offering people the chance to publish personal information and connect with each other. The biggest social community today is Facebook with more than 120 million members. Due to the myriad possibilities to use Facebook, there many ways to support teaching and learning.

Facebook started in 2004 at Harvard University and was aimed at connecting students. Now, almost every American student and many Europeans have profiles on Facebook. They use it to share information, such as links, photos and videos, to arrange real life events and to communicate in groups.

digital native learners and digital immigrant teachersFrom: http://www.apple.com/au/education/digitalkids/disconnect/landscape.htmlFace

The use of Facebook also shows the current cultural differences between teachers who slowly have to adapt to new technologies and students who grew up with digital communication. The differences in media use and learning behaviour between so called “digital native learners” and “digital immigrant teachers” are shown below. Understanding how to use Facebook opens up a way to stepping closer to actual student behaviour and to create a more appropriate way of teaching.

Read on at the UOC Fórum Innovació.

Facebook for Services, students create job and service profiles