June 09, 2005

What ONE really does, and doesn't do

While I'm endorsing and encouraging any effort to actually do something about AIDS and to fight poverty, I also have mixed feelings about this campaign. Is it truly about humanitarian motives, or is it another attempt to blend us, to raise lots of money that won't change a thing for good? Additionally I see there's a lot of fashion going with it. Granted, star celebrities making a statement in the ONE commercial are eye catching. If Al Pacino is saying it's cool and every girl's dream Brad Pitt shows up twice, hey, it's got to be cool. The wrist band at the top of the ONE website is really stylish too. Don't you want one?

More things about ONE are questionable. Is it just money that's needed, or is it a change of policies towards Third World countries? What would be required are true efforts by corporations, thinking over their Globalization efforts. It strucks me odd, the topic Globalization is not even mentioned on the site, while it actually is the main cause for current poverty in the Third World. It also annoys me that there is no word about what will be done with the money, if it is invested in permanent changes, such as long term planned education systems, schools and university programs for the poor and true help to support and maintain a locally bound economy, that is not driven by trade treaties with international company networks such as Nestle, Nike, Coca-Cola. Sorry, but stating this is "...in the best American tradition of helping others help themselves..." has a bad aftertaste. It's simply hypocritical to mention "best American tradition" and failing to make any comment about current U.S. policies.

I found World Vision among the names of the founders of the campaign. World Vision is on the black list for humanitarian organizations with a bad history in letting large amounts of money disappear.

For years, World Vision has used tv commercials in which they show closeups in slow motion, big eyes of african kids surrounded by flies. The only information they gave in these commercials was the bank account number of World Vision. Make people feel sorry so they send their money. Is that all there is to it?

You can talk to one.org and ask them to explain why they don't do anything beyond raising money: one@data.org

Globalization is one major reason for poverty. It is caused by the true powers ruling the world, leaders of the western economy, at the top Oil companies and the largest corporate networks.

Addiontal resources:
The ONE campaign
globalissues.org: Causes for poverty
A guide to giving: "World Vision is the largest of the right-wing evangelical organizations."

Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 05:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 07, 2005

It's true.

It was Monday morning and the conference room of the Moscone Center in San Francisco was filled with over 3,800 people, most of them developers. Keynotes of Apples Steve Jobs are always highly anticipated. Historically, it has happened before expectations were running high before a keynote speech of Steve Jobs. Too high sometimes. In some years, the actual news were not able to fulfill the dreams pushed up by rumors and bunch of wishful thinking. Apple is this kind of dreams-come-true company, one of the few that's left, that is about spirit and making things actually happen. At most times Apple has done this in an astonishing yet simple and very elegant sort of way.

It didn't take long until everyone in the Moscone conference room would hold his breath for a second, just moments before falling into applause and laughter, half proudly, half shocked. "It's true." was written in big letters on the black screen of a Keynote slide. The e was shifted down below the line, just like, yes—exactly like in the Intel-logo.

Apple had announced it would shift its entire line of products over to use Intel chips. Not from now on, not tomorrow, but within the next two years. Stocks for Intel and Apple rose that day, for Apple it was 2%. On Tuesday, Apple fell for 8%—not as low as before.

So yes, that means it's a good thing, right? A controversy begun. It had been simmering for a while, caused by the various rumors that had made their way from blog sphere to the surface of Cnet news and the Wallstreet Journal. "It can't be" was the immediate reaction of the community of Mac enthusiasts. Quickly, old experts emerged from respectable Mac veteran sites such as MacNN, finding various reasons why it was never possible Apple would seriously consider such a step.

And yet it has become reality. And there are good reasons why. The first I can think of is business. Jobs made it transparent in clear words when he said "We have great products in line... And IBM just isn't getting us that far...". So it clearly is about the growth and fate of the company. Wether it's also a decision about users is something only the future can tell. But Jobs didn't fall short in making sure everyone in the conference hall understand that Apple is indeed caring for developers and consumers. To put it simple, they made sure this won't fail.

The transition phase of two years is accompanied by a number of concepts that make it as smooth and easy as possible, in a very typical Apple-sort of way. Apple has taken all necessary steps to provide help for developers making the shift. Apple knows development of software is all about costs. Apple also knows, a crucial keypoint in making software for the Mac in the first place is having people using it, lots of people, and to never let those users down. And the third keypoint Apple is aware of is psychology. There had been three major transitions in the life of Macintosh already. Not all of them had happened that smoothly, none of them so quickly. This is going to be a major transition from a technical point of view. From a psychological point of view, regarding the user experience, there should be no experience at all—if it is not one that's very much improved.

Apple has set up developer boxes with both, Intel- and IBM-PowerPC-processors. They can't have those incredible G5/Intel machines float around, so of course, they want them back after development cycle. Apple has also prepared its own developer suite called Xcode for a smooth transition. A simple check box is suppused to grant output of binary code that works on both, Intel- and PowerPC-processors. And for the users of Mac OS X, Apple installs Rosetta in its next version of the operating system. Rosetta will translate the binary code on the fly, giving a smooth experience of programs starting seemlessly, even if they have not been compiled for OS X running on Intel. Jobs showed off this new function by using both, Photoshop and the Microsoft Office suite on a Mac with Intel inside.

For the past five years, Jobs said, Apple's Mac OS X had been leading a secret shadow life. Yes, there was a building on the Apple campus in which Apple had secretly developed the version of thes system for the day X, the day when they had to make the switch. It was a plan B solution, some people at Apple had never dreamt it would become true one day.

So what's the conclusion. Will this be a good thing for us? I guess that's a question asked too early. One day we might ask though what would have happened if Apple wouldn't have made this important move.

Additional sources:
Prior to the announcement:
Forbes: Why Apple can't embrace Intel
MacNN: Apple-Intel talks intended to pressure IBM
Associated Press: Markets stay strong on Apple-Intel report
Top Tech News: Apple, Intel Rumored To Be in Talks
Wired Magazine: Apple Switching to Intel Chips?
Information Week: The Dream Of x86-Capable Macs Remains Elusive
Macworld: Analysts: Apple, Intel talks probably not about PCs

After the announcement:
Wired Magazine: Jobs Drops Da Intel Bomb

Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 05:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 30, 2005

Think dense

For about three months I have been working on updating my website. It's been a work with lots of interruptions, mostly work in advertising and a couple of design jobs for friends. Equally abandoned was core, the blog. Not that I would run out of topics. I had to smile when I just stumbled over older entries, written in the heat of the last elections in the U.S. In the meantime my Powerbook's hard disk died and I a total of about 30% of my entire data, including pictures and music. My visa for the U.S. ran out. I had to go back to Zurich, where I'm now living with my brother for the next couple of weeks, possibly months. And still I'm looking for a permanent position in the U.S. as a Creative Director, ideally in internet business. In short, I simply didn't find the time to write anymore.

Once the heat had boiled down a little, I didn't waste time. This weekend I finally made progress on the site, establishing a new entry page with changing pictures and cleaning up the blog's interface. The blog has a new name, dense, which somehow emphasizes what core is all about.

The new core blog dense will cover all sorts of topics just like it previously did, but I will focus more on core related topics, such as design, usability, conceptual work and the entire internet experience. My last job as an internet consultant opened my eyes to what I had always assumed: This business needs a lot of work to follow up with the evolution of the web.

Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2004

Find your iPod to find your keys

Speaking of innovations, here is another one. You're gonna love this. It's something that makes your iPod even more useful. Griffin Technology came out with a plugin flashlight for your iPod. Yes, you can find your keys with it now. Isn't that amazing? Now you never have to look for your keys again. You just have to look for your iPod, and then look for that little white thingy that plugs into it, and voila, you have a flashlight and now you can look up your keys. That's a really useful $400 flashlight.

Am I the only one who finds that amusing, or do we all want to go out in clustered groups now, joining the hordes who came late to the iPod shopping party and arm ourselves with a brand new Griffin iPod flashlight? We can test it then and find out if it actually is as useful as promised.

But you know, I shouldn't be that harsh. Cause it's really hard. I mean, what do you do if you're third party developer for an uber-fetish. How can you top functionality of something that does, well, play music everywhere you go? Because Apple doesn't want to come up with a real PDA, you can already put text and your calendar dates on your iPod. So you can look up which date you missed cause you couldn't find your keys.

At least it sounds a lot cooler to say "I didn't hear your call cause I was listening to my iPod", even though that won't bring her back to you.

Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)

Skip or Skype

Every now and then, in between inventions like wars for presidency and frappucino light, somebody comes up with an idea that actually will change things. Just most people wouldn't think it would. In most cases it's not even a real invention. Often it's just recognizing something, seeing the time has come and we are ready for it.

Talking over the internet is such a thing. The idea is by far not new. Up to date, there must have been a good dozen voice over internet programs out there, all following their own protocols, all more or less flaky, crashing, disconnecting, worse than cells, but yet attempting to convince people to actually buy and use them. Sound is almost always choppy, most basic functions simply don't work. So how come one might be successful over another, if they're all of the same bad quality? Like with all brilliant solutions, the answer is simple. Even better, it is simplicity itself.

It's Skype, and it's for free. Plus, it works.

Skype sells itself with the line "Internet telephony that just works". That's not really an original line, except for the fact, it's actually true. I have been trying Skype for several times now, calling people online and -- here is the thing that makes the biggest difference -- also calling people in real life. Yes, that is land lines, cell phones, you know, the real world. Forget AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, iChat, Jabber and what else. You may have been fooled for some time, but come on, that was never really chatting! That was typing, dammit. And for every little 'oh!' and 'ah!', for every moan and smile, every blink of our eyes and the grumble in our bellies we had to come up with new incarnations of these ubiquitous smileys. They were never meant to go beyond the tee, you know. All of a sudden, you could find them in email, for christs sake, and an asterisk after an 's' meant something more than just a snake that spits, or something.

Yeah, I'm pushing it a little. I must admit I have been chatting too, or attempted it at least, but it didn't really work for me. Except if I really wanted to talk to someone and I just couldn't do it over the phone. Then it worked, as a beta version of real talking. It worked, but oh how clumsy.

So thank god, someone found out what people have been missing. Someone smart counted one and one together and came up with that little program called Skype. It rhymes with 'hype' -- almost scary how good they are in marketing, isn't it, and then the app even actually works! What an achievement. Hey, Microsofts and Apples across the planet, if you're listening, they did it, and they didn't ask you guys first. They just did what they thought was right, and it turns out more and more people don't think about who did it, if it just works.

Skype is available for all major platforms, it's a free download, and it's connecting to the real world. That's the summary formula of its success. Can you read that, Apple and big Micro, or do I have to repeat myself?

So how good is Skype, you're asking? Well, it works. It's like the first phone. It worked. It didn't look elegantly; it didn't work smoothly, sound was low, far and thin. It was not really amazing as an experience. But hey, the simple fact it worked at all, wasn't that something? That was at least the breakthrough of the century of that time. With Skype, well, I wouldn't go that far. But as long as it works, who cares if it's the breakthrough of the century. What matters is, people will start using it. And the last time that happened, we ended up with something we couldn't live anymore without these days. If you haven't guessed it, it's what you're looking at.

Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 02:57 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 08, 2004

Blog on

The blog story continues. Different domain, same guy. It's on. My first blog based on Movabletype. People who have been reading me should know I was using Greymatter with spill, my old blog. It can't be really called an old blog, because its short time of existence doesn't call for such a definition.

Installing Movabletype on corebasis.com was a nightmare. It's not Movabletpye's fault, not Six Aparts fault, it's got to do with our server configurations, and above all, mostly with the fact that I don't know shit about Unix. In the end it worked out though, and it's always a rush of endorphines in your system when you get something running. It feels like having fixed an old cars engine, or something like that. It was not supposed to run, after frustrating hours and hours you spent on it, and finally it just did run.

Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 09:12 AM

March 19, 2004

Liquid torture

Night falls, the sales girls in the stores become impatient, and there is this one entrance in a sidestreet, with a guy on a bar chair in front of it. It's my favorite place, among the three or four I know. Its walls are decorated with art, though only sometimes you notice it is actually changing. DJ's enter the podest, unfolding their speech of sound, filling the tiny cracks in the walls with crumbs from the grinding bricks.

After shaking my body of what seemed hours, I am sitting, which is one level lower than anybody else, just for a moment, until I realize it was more than just that. I can see everything that's going on. I am watching and separate, become the watcher, become an observer of flirty glimpses, a witness of couples falling apart, a surfer on the wave. And the sound and the motion and the bodies are fluid towards the end of the room. So much anticipation. So much energy. A bunch of garden hoses becoming lose under water pressure.

I am waiting, for the next drop of water hitting my skin. My eyes strive a table to my shoulder, it slowly fills up with bottles, soaked napkins and glasses. I smile, knowing, I am that glas on that table, with the remains of cranberry vodka on descending ice, slowly rocking towards the border.

Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 07:31 AM