Posts filed under 'Fun'
… together with nic.at (Austria’s Internet Registry), we organised the so-called 4th “IT-Businesstalk“. Alex Mayerhofer (nic.at) gave an excellent presentation on how standards on the Internet emerge. I would like to share slide No. 2 of his presentation (the presentation can be found at http://www.it-businesstalk.at/fileadmin/www.it-businesstalk.at/praesentationen/event4/Alex-MayrhoferIETF_Nicat.pdf).
Here is slide No. 2:
Would you guess what this map represents?
- Broadband availability?
- Percentage of the population connected to the Internet?
- Standards for plugs?
It is amazing, the correct answer is (3): it is standards for plugs!
The image and further information is available at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Länderübersicht_Steckertypen,_Netzspannungen_und_-frequenzen.
 |
Here, there is map on voltage: it is already amazingly coloured, i.e. “non-interoperable”. |
 |
And one on plugs: and that one is pretty coloured (15 different plugs sizes/formats)! |
And in Software Engineering we often argue that hardware “is easy” and it is the software that’s the source for heterogeneity …
March 6th, 2010
This summer we are hosting a total of 9 students doing internships. The programme is supported by the ministries bmvit and bmukk and is called “generation innovation“.
The themes the students covered includes
- Usability
- Tag Clouds
- Flash Overlays
- geotaging on the iPhone
- Open Street Map Clients
- Rich-Client-Applications
We got some very good feedback by the students. Firstly, the got a completely different view of research and IT; they were exposed to a way of working with a high degree of self-responsibility (which was appreciated very much); and finally, they had fun.
Personally, I believe that the way of opening up research labs to young people means that they get to know what research in practise is; and the researchers themselves are confronted with new (and fresh) ideas and this is of benefit to both sides.
There is a German video available at Salzburg.com.
August 5th, 2009
Beginning with sunset (16:39) and lasting until midnight, the researchers’ night 2008 took place, also at Salzburg Research. All over Austria some 240.000 people participated (Der Standard, Salzburger Nachrichten, Landeskorrespondenz).
At Salzburg Research we had an immense amount of people coming to see some applications of our research work (tagIT – a Geo-tagging application; tourguide – a project about pedestrian navigation; a traffic control centre; and finally, a project showing the use of sensors using SunSPOTs). The response was truly positive!
Most amazing to me was that even at 11:30pm we had people coming and wanting to see our demos. We do not expect such a huge interest (overall there were some 300+ unique visitors).
Pictures are available here:
November 9th, 2008
www.arnetminer.org is a great (not to say incredible) site/tool implementing a researchers’ social web, see e.g. arnetminer.org with Siegfried Reich. I am impressed by the quality of the findings, the number (and quality of links) of people I have published papers with. Well done guys!
BTW: I came across arnetminer while looking at www.yasni.de, a site that I was pointed to by my colleague Sandra Schaffert. It also includes my Amazon wish list which is less desirable …
And: both, artminer.org and yasni.de are technically highly professional Web 2.0 sites with an almost desktop application like appearance.
May 10th, 2008
In April 2005, Salzburg Research celebrated 5 years of existence. Frau Landeshauptfrau gave us a pear-tree as a present. See the pictures below where we planted the tree, and, unfortunately, the place today. Somehow the tree did not survive last winter (it was still there late 2006) …
The “Forscher-Baum” (“Researchers’ Tree”), planted late 2005 by Andrea Mulrenin (left, red jacket), Pater Toni (blue jacket) and Sigi Reich (red jacket, supervision).
May 18th, 2007
… was on April 13th, see The Initial Entry.
So far there was only one comment (by my “old” friend Sunil – thanks for that); still, I meanwhile see blogging as a (personal) tool for me that helps me to archive, summarise, etc. highlights of the current week (similar to the intellectual capital report of Salzburg Research does for the current year).
April 27th, 2007
(image refers to glumbert.com)
A colleague pointed me to this media presentation about “shift” at glumbert.com. It is about the “exponential times” we are living in; the amount of new technical information is doubling every two years: this means that if you are studying a four year’s degree, half of what you learn in your first year will be outdated in your third year, … some very good phrases in that video!
BTW: Glumbert.com according to its own definition is “the most outstanding, zaniest, and downright amazing videos you’ll ever see…anywhere”www.glumbert.com.
April 3rd, 2007
See http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/portraits/thirteen.html.
BTW: www.0100101110101101.org is a pretty cool domain name, IMHO.
March 27th, 2007
In the current issue of CORDIS focus (No. 275, February 2007), there is an article (in “Around Europe”) about an initiative by the U.K. government that encourages discussions about (impact of) science: www.sciencehorizons.org.uk A pretty good idea, well worth supporting!!! (And perhaps mimicking?!)
March 18th, 2007
It seems that versioning of the web is increasing faster than the development of the Web itself. Quite an inflation of numbers! The following table lists google hits corresponding to the various versions.
| Web Version |
Google hits as of Jan 17th 2007 |
| Web 2.0 |
773.000.000 |
| Web 3.0 |
65.000.000 |
| Web 4.0 |
199.000.000 |
| Web 5.0 |
169.000.000 |
| Web 6.0 |
not really there … |
January 17th, 2007
Previous Posts
