viamala (c)spaetz, CC-BY

Da Almut an Olivers Geburtstag krank war, haben wir ihn letztes Wochenende einfach nachgeholt. Wir sind nach Graubünden gefahren und haben das Wochenende dort verbracht. Mit einem Abstecher im Schwimmbad in Chur (empfehlenswert), haben wir uns dann die berühmte Viamala-schlucht angeschaut. Die Wettergötter meinten es gut mit uns und haben uns trotz gemischtem Wetter immer dann mit Sonnenschein belohnt wenn wir ihn brauchten.

Nach einem Dorfbummel in Andeer mit Kafi und Schoggi (und einer Rutsche im Garten!) ging es dann hinauf zu unserem Hotel in Wergenstein wo wir den abend genossen, d.h. Oliver tobte wild im Bett herum und warf sich in die Kissenhaufen während wir gegen 20 gerne eingeschlafen wären…

Am nächsten Tag ein kleiner Spaziergang in Wergenstein… und… KÜHE! Wie spannend, Oliver war kaum noch zu bändigen und hüpfte in seinem Tragrucksack wie ein wilder auf und ab und zeigte auf die Kühe. Spannend. Seeehr spannend.
Auf dem Rückweg ein kleiner Zwischenstopp am Walensee um die Batterien mit Knäckebrot und Scheibletten wieder auf zu tanken und ein paar Steinchen in den See (und den Mund) zu schmeissen. Ein aufregendes und erlebnisreiches Geburtstags-nachhol-Wochenende.

KÜHE! …vor Wolkenbergen (c)spaetz, CC-BY-ND

Ich habs ja schon nicht mehr geglaubt, es gab in den letzten Jahren immer mal wieder “Open Source Car” Projekte, die nie irgendwas taugten. Und jetzt kommt da so eine Firma und bringt ein Soft- und Hardware Open Source Car raus. Hier ist der Prolinuxarttikel, der es vorstellt.

Great to have free Internet in the hotel but the SMS/Email/VPN websites/functionality of the ETH do not work, which makes my Internet access much less valuable. It seems the hotel blocks all HTTPS connections, so effectively all that require authentication. Crap. With a VPN connection to the ETH that shouldn’t be a problem, and it worked yesterday, but today even VPN connections fail. …

1. The safety pin in my trouser pocket made it securely through the airport safety check
    
2. Copenhagen is a city of bikes, there’s tons of them, I am amazed
    
3. My hotel offers free Internet, I am amazed again. Normaly expensive hotels charge extra while every youth hostel offers it for free.
    
4. If you happen to be close to the City Hall Place. The BrewPub is an place with 8 different home-brewed beers. I had a “William Wallace”, dark, bitter, and malty. Mmmh
5. 11 CHF for a beer (ok, in a microbrewery but still) and 20 CHF for a burger (and what a burger! but still). I’ll never claim Zurich is expensive again. At least I’ll never claim that it is more expensive than Copenhagen. But…
    
6. … 11 CHF for a beer (ok, in a that microbrewery! but still) and 20 CHF for a burger (and what a burger! but still). I’ll never claim Zurich is expensive again. At least I’ll never claim that it is more expensive than Copenhagen.
    
7. I forgot my belt, so I bought one at Zara. Am I getting more Swiss? It looked like a sellout with lots of cloths being thrown on the ground or otherwise looking untidy. I was annoyed by the general unorderliness of the store.
    
8. There is a cinema in the house where I live, and it looks like I have to see Terminator Salvation tonight. Update: Nice film if all you want is mind-blowing (ie mindless) action. They could have cut the few dialogs though, they were mostly crap :-).

A list of interesting pointers and examples that I have picked up during the presentation. This is in no way representative or complete, so feel free to add more examples :):

Crowd sourcing/User inno examples:

• MyMuesli (what is this?)
• M&M, community decides next color launched, 10m participants
• Threadles
• Austrian Green PArty: has it’s voters decide which ads are used in the next campaign
  
• Christoph Fuchs: Willingness to pay was 50% higher for “user innovated” products
• Jewell L Osterholm, PhD invented a method to deliver oxygen, glucose and amino acids through the brain. For this she needed to invent synthetic spinal fluid and a harness to guide the drill
• 232 CT scanners in Switzerland in 179 centers, 19% reported to “user innovate” on them (hard and/or software)
• Swarowski Design Contest (?)

Examples where companies did not react welcoming (at first, at least)

• IKEA Hacker Community
• Nike Sweatshop Emails
• Lego Mindstorm

Hamburg is amazing. Yesterday we had dinner at a cool place called FUH (subtitle: a room to eat). My brother had sold it to us as a vegetarian restaurant, but they actually had only 1 or 2 veggie dishes. We had to wait quite long for the food, but heavens, it was really good. Did you ever have frozen peach-espresso balls? We had a nice time with Wolfram and Stefan, thanks guys.

We feel a little like people coming from the country into a city for the very first time. After buying a public transport day ticket, Stefan and I entered a first class bus where those tickets were not valid (have you ever heard of first class busses?).

I haven’t been able to catch up with my mails the last couple of days though, so if you have written me, hold on… I’m still alive and I’ll be responding in time.

The conference is really nice. It is a small (compared to big conferences) community, but very friendly and dedicated. I enjoyed to meet old colleagues and friends and get to know new ones.

Saving the world

Am I the only one finding it amusing to see a ‘I hate global warming’ T-Shirt on a SecondLife avatar? (each virtual person in second life consumes more power than the average Brazilian person in real life)

Das deutsche Umweltbundesamt zeigt die Schadstoffbelastung in Deutschland mit einer Landkarte die OpenStreetMap benutzt, wie dieser Golem Artikel beschreibt. Cool.

The International Journal of Open Source Software & Processes (IJOSSP) has published issue 2 of volume 1. It is a special issue on “Recent advances in the Economics of open Source Software” by Eric Darmon from Université de Rennes and CREM-CNRS, France and Dominique Torre from GREDEG-CNRS and University of Nice – Sophia Antipolis, France.