tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67390342485543255142024-02-19T11:50:08.406+01:00Flexblog aka Flex BlockBits and pieces about free software and various other things.Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-56226843428185471062011-09-22T17:17:00.007+02:002011-09-22T17:52:08.459+02:00Introducing Gigger, a Realtime Javascript Monitoring Framework<div class="serendipity_entry_body"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><b>(originally posted <a href="http://blog.mayflower.de/archives/747-Introducing-Gigger,-a-Realtime-Javascript-Monitoring-Framework.html">here</a>)</b></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Monitoring your web application is essential for professional maintenance and development. Especially if you have a high load on your website and you want to keep the current users on your site, you definitely should stay alert for problems and be able to react fast in case of problems. Monitoring is also crucial for A/B tests, since you have to evaluate somehow which version of your website performs better. Many big players also measure constantly how much revenue the website produces. For them it is important to monitor if a new feature increases or decreases the revenue and take decisions based on that information.</p><br /><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Mayflower is currently developing a javascript framework which provides a smart tool for realtime monitoring and measuring. Read the full article for more information.</p></div><div class="serendipity_entry_extended"><a id="extended" style="color: rgb(186, 103, 36); "></a><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Monitoring your web application is essential for professional maintenance and development. Especially if you have a high load on your website and you want to keep the current users on your site, you definitely should stay alert for problems and be able to react fast in case of problems. Monitoring is also crucial for A/B tests, since you have to evaluate somehow which version of your website performs better. Many big players also measure constantly how much revenue the website produces. For them it is important to monitor if a new feature increases or decreases the revenue and take decisions based on that information.</p><br /><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">The time it takes to get your monitoring results is crucial for many web applications. If reports reach you after one hour or even a day, its almost impossible to react on potential problems in time. <a href="https://github.com/Mayflower/gigger" title="Gigger Source Code" style="color: rgb(186, 103, 36); ">Gigger</a> allows you to monitor your web application in realtime. Everything you want to track in the web application is transmitted to the monitor in realtime where it can be processed and visualized.</p><br /><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Most of current monitoring solutions focus on page loads and backend monitoring, but times change: Nowadays more and more web applications are single page websites. This makes the old approach difficult, since the only page load happens in the beginning, afterwards everything is loaded dynamically. <a href="https://github.com/Mayflower/gigger" title="Gigger Source Code" style="color: rgb(186, 103, 36); ">Gigger</a> solves this and brings the monitoring task to the javascript and thus to the browser. It allows you to monitor what is going on in the browser that runs the web application. Using <a href="https://github.com/Mayflower/gigger" title="Gigger Source Code" style="color: rgb(186, 103, 36); ">gigger</a> you can monitor the web application closely and find out about potential problems users run into.</p><br /><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">From a technical point of view, <a href="https://github.com/Mayflower/gigger" title="Gigger Source Code" style="color: rgb(186, 103, 36); ">gigger</a> uses <a href="http://faye.jcoglan.com/" title="Faye" style="color: rgb(186, 103, 36); ">Faye</a> to establish a publish/subscribe connection between the browsers where the web application runs and the monitor (which also runs in the browser). With <a href="https://github.com/Mayflower/gigger" title="Gigger Source Code" style="color: rgb(186, 103, 36); ">gigger</a> you can specify in the monitor, what should be monitored. The monitor transmits the requests to the web application and the web application hooks into the desired events and notifies the monitor when something happened. Since this approach is not perfect and only allows you to monitor simple things (DOM events), <a href="https://github.com/Mayflower/gigger" title="Gigger Source Code" style="color: rgb(186, 103, 36); ">gigger</a> also has an API on the web application side to manually emit signals. This requires some synchronization between the monitor and the web application, it only makes sense if the monitor is listening on the right channels where the web application emits its custom signal. Through this API you have the full flexibility to measure and monitor whatever you want. You could for example measure how long it takes for your ajax requests to return and calculate a mean ajax request time from a browser point of view.</p><br /><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">We currently have a monitor running, which monitors simple events on <a href="http://blog.mayflower.de/" title="Mayflower Blog" style="color: rgb(186, 103, 36); ">blog.mayflower.de</a>, you can find the monitor on <a href="http://gigger.mayflower.de/monitor.html" title="Example Monitor running Gigger" style="color: rgb(186, 103, 36); ">gigger.mayflower.de/monitor.html</a>. We are currently measuring how many hits the blog gets every minute and which topics are hot. There is also a log view which shows a new entry when someone hits the page and also when someone clicks on a link.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><br /></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFKC4gqGpBnfj_BBbquyzS5rmQLZc9R1XnxTaNfi41ZisTX-0VN9VnkITDygjgPwZBYIVFdkL4PlBr7ivFopTWDxWSMWzNWeI3GvLxyBCsz760vQ4R7vqd9wKpYgH7hZLoTVIEhNBu87pR/s1600/gigger_live_screenshot.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFKC4gqGpBnfj_BBbquyzS5rmQLZc9R1XnxTaNfi41ZisTX-0VN9VnkITDygjgPwZBYIVFdkL4PlBr7ivFopTWDxWSMWzNWeI3GvLxyBCsz760vQ4R7vqd9wKpYgH7hZLoTVIEhNBu87pR/s320/gigger_live_screenshot.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5655212124336066786" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 190px; " /></a></div><div class="serendipity_entry_extended"><br /><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><strong>DISCLAIMER:</strong> It's pre alpha! Don't expect it to be perfect. The project is in a very early stage, this is the first live test and it could happen that there are some problems with the service. It was tested with Firefox and Chrome.</p></div><p></p>Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-57510503997214359092011-09-01T11:41:00.001+02:002011-09-01T11:42:52.119+02:00Google+ AdviceSmall advice for all the google+ users out there:<div>
<br /></div><div><b>DONT MESS WITH YOUR CONTACTS IN GMAIL-->OTHER CONTACTS</b></div><div>
<br /></div><div>I did and afterwards all my google+ circles were empty!</div>Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-69939247364811894292011-08-31T15:57:00.004+02:002011-08-31T16:15:14.672+02:00Feature Branch vs Mainline DevelopmentToday our CTO at <a href="http://www.mayflower.de/">Mayflower</a> pointed me towards Martin Fowlers great <a href="http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FeatureBranch.html">article</a> on feature branch development. Since my work with GNOME I was convinced that feature branch development is the way to go, much better than mainline development where every developer is working on the same code.<div>
<br /></div><div><b>Some historic background (from my point of view):</b></div><div>Back in the days of svn, mainline development was the most feasible way of writing code in a (distributed) team. Branching (and merging) was not so easy and often made things worse. Working on the mainline was a real pain in the ass: you don't want to commit stuff that could break the build, so your commit grows and grows until all the bits and pieces are there to fully increment the code and reach a buildable state including your feature.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>With git many teams switched to a feature branch development, where every feature got its own branch, where you can commit often and early (since it only breaks your local build and does not affect others) and where you merge the branch once the feature is ready to release.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Martin Fowlers <a href="http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FeatureBranch.html">article</a> made me realize that feature branch development has its downsides as well. If you work with a bunch of colleagues on one product and you work on that product 8h a day, merge conflicts will be quite common. When you have a branch and work on it for a couple of days, the merge becomes a bigger risk with every minute. But since I cannot tell the story as good as Martin Fowler, read his <a href="http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FeatureBranch.html">article</a>.</div>Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-74446347122907029812011-08-08T15:25:00.003+02:002011-08-08T15:45:59.525+02:00Desktop Summit 2011 Berlin, AftermathI am sad to leave already, but tomorrow I'll start my internship at the <a href="http://www.mayflower.de/">Mayflower</a> office in Munich. I had a really good time in Berlin and enjoyed the talks at the <a href="http://www.desktopsummit.org/">Desktop Summit</a>.<div>
<br /></div><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7hJSoTnuzumY4Z9jJ7w5wNVyiC-emi8R5LPDKPv0vgBtUjxikwK3aBMyrC5SmjYQAWbjo5XI5YjwahB9zFF6WF2OI8XWa5f7Vj0k9QbIeB1LgjNs3FRtKAaNCtfHLSh9IUM9EYgGpnk1K/s200/IMG_4065_cropped.JPG" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 200px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5638479962302097890" /></div><div>(more pictures will follow soon on googles picasa)</div><div>
<br /></div><div>I would like to thank the organizers for doing such a great job. Thanks also to the GNOME Foundation for the sponsorship that allowed me to attend the summit.</div><div>
<br /></div><div><img src="https://live.gnome.org/Travel/Policy?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=sponsored-badge-shadow.png" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 230px; height: 230px;" border="0" alt="" /></div><div>
<br /></div><div>If anyone that has not attended the summit wants to look through some of the video recordings, but does not know which ones to choose, I've prepared a list of talks that I liked the most. Videos should be online soon.</div><div>
<br /></div><div><a href="http://www.desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/cost-going-it-alone">The cost of going it alone - Dave Neary</a></div><div><a href="http://www.desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/gnome-state-union">GNOME: the state of the union - Fernando Herrera, Xan Lopez</a></div><div><a href="http://www.desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/gnome-shell-version-%CF%80">GNOME Shell version pi - Owen Taylor</a></div><div><a href="http://www.desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/thoughts-gjs-based-development">Thoughts on Gjs-based development - Lucas Rocha</a></div><div><a href="http://www.desktopsummit.org/program/keynotes">UI design in a cloud of diverse devices - Claire Rowlands (Keynote)</a></div><div><a href="http://www.desktopsummit.org/program/keynotes">GNOME Shell: iteration's what you need - Nick Richards (Keynote)</a></div><div><a href="http://www.desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/software-quality-has-no-name">Software with the quality that has no name - Federico Mena Quintero</a></div><div><a href="http://www.desktopsummit.org/program/sessions/ramblings-retired-release-manager">Ramblings of a retired release manager - Vincent Untz</a></div>Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-69231967642241998992011-07-23T20:35:00.003+02:002011-07-23T20:42:21.831+02:00Desktop Summit Berlin<img src="https://www.desktopsummit.org/sites/www.desktopsummit.org/files/DS2011banner.png" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 333px; height: 110px;" border="0" alt="" /><br /><br />Yes, I am going to Berlin! I would like to thank the Gnome Foundation for supporting me financially.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><img src="https://live.gnome.org/Travel/Policy?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=sponsored-badge-shadow.png" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 230px; height: 230px;" border="0" alt="" /></div><div><br /></div><div>I will be in Berlin from 08/01/11 until 08/08/11. See you there!</div>Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-87294694407685768022011-03-31T09:40:00.002+02:002011-03-31T14:34:47.493+02:00Telepathy Support for Gedit-CollaborationDuring the last months I was working on telepathy support for gedit-collaboration, a gedit plugin. The plugin allows you to work collaboratively on files via an infinote server. The idea of giving it support for telepathy was to get rid of the extra infrastructure needed (infinote server) and collaborate directly with your buddies over XMPP.<br /><br />The branch is not finished yet but its functional. Thus I am looking for volunteers to test it and to give me feedback. Since I'm not a UI expert (more a UI non-expert), I really need some good ideas for the UI part, which right now follows the way gedit-collaboration handles infinote servers. That approach is not really intuitive for direct collaboration. So if you have an idea, please don't hesitate.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://people.collabora.co.uk/%7Ekaserf/collaboration/gedit-collaboration-telepathy.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 600px; height: 436px;" src="http://people.collabora.co.uk/%7Ekaserf/collaboration/gedit-collaboration-telepathy.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />You can find the branch with my work here: <a href="http://git.collabora.co.uk/?p=user/kaserf/gedit-collaboration.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/add-telepathy-support">http://git.collabora.co.uk/?p=user/kaserf/gedit-collaboration.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/add-telepathy-support</a><br /><br />I also opened a bug to collect all the feedback and ideas: <a href="https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=646312">https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=646312</a><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.collabora.co.uk/logos/collabora-logo-small.png"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 354px; height: 116px;" src="http://www.collabora.co.uk/logos/collabora-logo-small.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />A big thanks to Collabora Ltd. for sponsoring this work, to Jesse van den Kieboom (gedit-collaboration maintainer) and Armin Burgmeier (Infinote maintainer)Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-50448460751966239972010-12-21T17:12:00.002+01:002010-12-21T17:34:23.407+01:00Folks and its backendsListen up people, Raul Gutierrez Segales (rgs) wrote a new backend for <a href="http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/Folks">libfolks</a>. His backend handles read access to the Evolution Data Server (EDS) which means folks knows about the contacts you have in your evolution address books.<br /><br />In Rauls <a href="http://www.itevenworks.net/2010/12/an-eds-backend-for-folks/">blog post</a> you can read that there is also a <a href="http://git.collabora.co.uk/?p=user/bari/folks.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/libsocialweb">libsocialweb backend</a> for folks, written by Marco Barisione. The libsocialweb backend allows you to get your contacts from facebook and twitter (and potentially many other social websites and services).<br /><br />This is awesome work which brings us one step closer to a cleaner contacts future. Rock on folks....Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-60702956654686840222010-12-15T18:40:00.001+01:002010-12-15T18:46:35.174+01:00GNOME Hackfest Munich - The AftermathSome weeks ago, a group of old and new friends met in Munich at a secret location, to spend a day working on various ideas but all related to GNOME.<br /><br />Some of those friends blogged about it. They wrote down what we were talking about and what was the outcome of the Hackfest. Please read about it on their blogs, as they took a lot of time to write it down.<br /><br />Part 1 - Salomons Blog: <a href="https://ssickert.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/gnome-contacts-what-we-really-need/">https://ssickert.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/gnome-contacts-what-we-really-need/</a><br />Part 2 - Daniels Blog: <a href="http://www.dgsiegel.net/news/2010_12_15-gnome_contacts_our_ideas">http://www.dgsiegel.net/news/2010_12_15-gnome_contacts_our_ideas</a><br /><br />If you have feedback or more ideas you would like to share, please leave a comment on Salomons Blog and not on mine, since that makes it easier for us to go through all your comments.<br /><br />Thanks to those who attended and those who supported us, especially Murray for coffee and beer!Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-12508342319190639932010-11-27T13:38:00.002+01:002010-11-27T13:51:44.427+01:00folks api documentationI just generated the folks and folks-telepathy vala documentation.<br /><br />You can find the folks documentation here:<br /><a href="http://people.collabora.co.uk/%7Ekaserf/folks-0.3.2/">http://people.collabora.co.uk/~kaserf/folks-0.3.2/</a><br /><br />And the folks-telepathy documentation is here:<br /><a href="http://people.collabora.co.uk/%7Ekaserf/folks-telepathy-0.3.2/">http://people.collabora.co.uk/~kaserf/folks-telepathy-0.3.2/</a><br /><br />The documentation was generated from folks master, which should be the api for folks 0.3.2!Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-86993624581949391862010-08-01T10:15:00.005+02:002010-08-01T10:50:51.057+02:00Another GUADEC is overYesterday I've returned from my third GUADEC. It was amazing to talk to all the GNOME people again and get some insights about whats going on and where we are heading.<br /><br />The most interesting talks for me were:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >"Shell Yes! - Deep Inside the GNOME Shell Design" by William Jon McCann</span><br />A very philosophical talk about the future of GNOME.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >"GNOME: State of the Union" by Comrade Fernando Herrera and Comrade Xan Lopez</span><br />Amazing fun talk about whats going on in GNOME.<br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Lighning Talks" by the Summer of Code Students</span></span><br />Always good to know whats going on on that front.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >"GNOME 3: the Telepathic Desktop" by Guillaume Desmottes</span><br />It was nice to see my recent work (Empathy Live Search) as part of the presentation. Nice example applications how Telepathy can be used to connect people (Bookmarks sharing, most recent links posted in any telepathy chat, tomboy notes sharing).<br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Inside the Banshee awesome factory" by Gabriel Burt</span></span><br />They are doing an incredibly amazing job. I loved to hear about the Banshee Community Extension, an easy way to contribute to Banshee. I love the "create-extension" script which creates the necessary files, generates autotools magic and also calls git add. The only thing a newcomer has to do is filling the gaps in the files and commit the changes to github.<br /><br /><br />What I shouldn't forget is the <a href="http://inventedhere.de/design-thinking-workshop-at-guadec-in-the-hague">Design Thinking Workshop</a> which was held on Monday and Tuesday (and if I remember correctly also Thursday) by 5 awesome German students. Thanks a lot, it was great fun participating!<br /><br />A big thanks also to the GNOME Foundation which organized and payed the accommodation, Collabora for organizing and paying my flight and the amazing BBQ Beach Party. Although some Collaborans missed this year, I enjoyed to meet those who could make it at the conference.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjemMUtuZ0eNNaqCGG7pO2HtpVqRDQ13iECd7Z_N4C24u9S8Qe7LNdVxEx1vS3uxmxLBw66r3g0fQjHFdEZseuNr62eVQ9Tj76-oNHddpBTdnhn-N2eSHj-qN4zYk67U1A4ONAKQ_CcEUKw/s1600/IMG_2589.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjemMUtuZ0eNNaqCGG7pO2HtpVqRDQ13iECd7Z_N4C24u9S8Qe7LNdVxEx1vS3uxmxLBw66r3g0fQjHFdEZseuNr62eVQ9Tj76-oNHddpBTdnhn-N2eSHj-qN4zYk67U1A4ONAKQ_CcEUKw/s320/IMG_2589.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500358243148159522" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Marco waiting for more guests to welcome them, he and all the others helping out did a great job ;)</span><br /><br />I've tried to thank as many volunteers and locals personally, but I could never have thanked everyone of you in person. Thanks a lot for doing such a great job, you were awesome!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6mr-ViYqiM2A8tl46zsbL3tOZG3lHD0fEAnPejWWo9EfsLZgqIuc51bxdIcpIMsk5m6vsHXYMThQmmq5JGfTRF8sFqfsNV0lR7pnPD2uO4EjaDAl3dRaAXkeaZS9Qa8ioAtGr2BKlYHr8/s1600/IMG_2598.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6mr-ViYqiM2A8tl46zsbL3tOZG3lHD0fEAnPejWWo9EfsLZgqIuc51bxdIcpIMsk5m6vsHXYMThQmmq5JGfTRF8sFqfsNV0lR7pnPD2uO4EjaDAl3dRaAXkeaZS9Qa8ioAtGr2BKlYHr8/s320/IMG_2598.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500359598724231026" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Party people at the beginning of the Collabora BBQ Beach Party</span><br /><br />See you all in Berlin, at GUADEC 2011.Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-2524258156146709282010-06-10T12:51:00.002+02:002010-06-10T14:36:49.342+02:00Empathy Live SearchAmazing Empathy news: Empathy now features a live search for contacts (search-as-you-type).<br /><br /><video controls="controls" autobuffer="" height="480" width="640"><source src="http://people.collabora.co.uk/%7Ekaserf/live-search/live-search.mp4" type="video/mp4"><source src="http://people.collabora.co.uk/%7Ekaserf/live-search/live-search.ogv" type="video/ogg"><p>Could not use HTML 5 for playback. You can download the file as <a href="http://people.collabora.co.uk/%7Ekaserf/live-search/live-search.mp4">MPEG4/H.264</a> or <a href="http://people.collabora.co.uk/%7Ekaserf/live-search/live-search.ogv">Ogg Theora</a> file.</p></video><br /><br />Check out empathy master and try it! Feedback is very welcome, especially on the matching function. Tell me if you would like more things to match, less things to match or if you like it!<br /><br />Before you start writing bug reports because you miss some stuff, please read the known issues <a href="https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=608166#c31">here</a>.Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-78211195128459067452010-06-10T10:43:00.003+02:002010-06-10T12:17:06.132+02:00No Google(.de) DayI hereby declare today as the "NO-GOOGLE-DAY", since Google forces me to watch random backgrounds on the main page. Hopefully tomorrow everything is back to normal, or I have to make a "NO-GOOGLE-WEEK" out of it...<br /><br />[edit]: as the first comment pointed out: no google.de day!Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-53485178596996890262010-06-07T22:45:00.002+02:002010-06-07T23:02:38.160+02:00TEDxMunich, the most inspiring day of my lifeToday I was at the <a href="http://www.tedxmunich.com">TEDxMunich</a> conference at the BMW Museum in Munich. It was such a great event that I'm still speechless.<br /><br />To line up my favorite speakers here a short list, sorted by the order they appeared during the conference:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.tedxmunich.com/speakers/magnus-larsson.html">Magnus Larsson</a> - Creation of Landscape<br /><a href="http://www.tedxmunich.com/speakers/shaun-bailey.html">Shaun Bailey</a> - Child Soldiers in London<br /><a href="http://www.tedxmunich.com/speakers/patrick-frick.html">Patrick Frick</a> - The power of design process<br /><a href="http://www.tedxmunich.com/speakers/marije-vogelzang.html">Marije Vogelzang</a> - How food activated the brain<br /><a href="http://www.tedxmunich.com/speakers/chris-bangle.html">Chris Bangle</a> - Gina meets pInK<br /><a href="http://www.tedxmunich.com/speakers/paul-cocksedge.html">Paul Cocksedge</a> - Light design changes<br /><br />I really enjoyed the Think Tank session afterwards where we had a nice discussion (it was more an inspiring lecture then a discussion) with Shaun Bailey. Big thanks for that.<br /><br />Thanks a lot also to all those who participated and especially to the organizers and staff around <a href="http://www.tedxmunich.com/story/t-sonny-klawitter.html">Sonny Klawitter</a>.<br /><br />Some last words: Met the core team for <a href="http://www.tedxrheinneckar.de/">TEDxRheinNeckar</a> and also a lot of people with nice ideas for other TEDx events. Very interesting and inspiring students, I'm really looking forward to meet you again!Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-47176033583804666572010-05-25T09:16:00.000+02:002010-05-25T09:17:21.350+02:00Guess what...<a title="GUADEC 2010" rel="external" href="http://guadec.org/"><img src="http://guadec.org/img/guadec-oranje.png" alt="I'm attending GUADEC" /><br /></a>Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-19502469209764206902010-05-12T13:48:00.003+02:002010-05-12T13:55:15.082+02:00TEDxMunichI just registered for the <a href="http://www.tedxmunich.com/">TEDxMunich</a> conference which will be held June 7th at the BMW Museum in Munich. I was totally excited when I discovered the TEDxMunich website. I love the talks they have on their <a href="http://www.ted.com">website</a>.<br /><br />Here are some of my favorites:<br /><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html">http://www.ted.com/talks/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/michael_specter_the_danger_of_science_denial.html">http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/michael_specter_the_danger_of_science_denial.html</a><br /><br />Hopefully I will get the possibility to be there and experience some amazing talks.Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-59762769253615867922010-04-26T16:20:00.003+02:002010-04-26T16:39:46.282+02:00One Laptop Per Child at the TU MünchenMy message is short: we have two awesome students (scholars to be correct) at our University for the next few weeks, doing a sort of internship at the TU. They will be working with the OLPC (to be specific, one of the two XO1.5's we've got) and develop a game activity for sugar.<div><br /></div><div>My part in this was to inspire them to use the XO. They see it as a wonderful opportunity to participate in such a big project and I hope its a first step towards more open source at the University. Björn and Max are working like maniacs to progress as fast as possible.</div><div><br /></div><div>They are writing a blog, where you can follow their progress and give them feedback if you want to. I would be happy if they can get as much feedback as possible, because they can learn a lot from it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Read about what they to, why they do it and how far they are here: <a href="http://codingforolpc.blogspot.com/">codingforolpc.blogspot.com</a></div><div><br /></div><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCnWe9x_OCFopu_U5PvEK-2aw5tfPubGIlzOzEIDm6MMX8ZguD_yZuV29CZQfmKVnwhfHo8vdE-uOLou0-HO8Ixb1DRJFlAIFy8DmvwdQ5y1VKkLKLKqKT6nTY92w-0ky8bvHuZ0m8pgKI/s320/bjoern_max_olpc.JPG" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464455500988993874" /></div><div><br /></div><div>Thumbs up boys, you are great!</div>Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-56774249659402152282010-04-13T23:55:00.003+02:002010-04-14T00:05:11.323+02:00Zombie EmpathyToday something very funny happened! I was working on empathy - to be honest, I was chasing a segfault I introduced myself :/ - and after I made empathy crash and terminated the gdb session I thought: empathy has to be DEAD!<div><br /></div><div>...</div><div><br /></div><div>WRONG! Empathy came back to life when a friend of mine sent me a message!</div><div><br /></div><div>I couldnt believe what I saw, so I checked again and again...there was no empathy process running after empathy got killed, although running mc-tool showed that there are all my accounts still available (online). I guess mission-control restarted empathy once I got a new message!</div><div><br /></div><div>What this means: If you do not shutdown empathy nicely, you may be online without even knowing it! You can see whether you are online or offline, running empathy-accounts which lives in its own process now.</div>Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-13466240888412064752010-03-31T00:46:00.002+02:002010-03-31T00:51:04.292+02:00GNOME Release Beer in MunichAs Daniel already <a href="http://home.cs.tum.edu/%7Esiegel/news/2010_03_30-munich_meets_gnome">blogged</a>, we are meeting today (31.03.2010) at the <a href="http://faun.mycosmos.biz/">faun restaurant</a> to get some food, beer or wine and talk about how awesome gnome 2.30 is and what we can do to make the next release even more amazing.<br /><br />We have the table reservation at 19:00, so just come by if you want to join us! I suggest to make this the GUAD(EC) way, which means GNOME Users and Developers are invited!<br /><br />see you there...Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-29162290952475344242010-03-15T18:21:00.003+01:002010-03-15T18:29:06.535+01:00Today is a good dayTwo good things happened today:<br /><br />I handed in my bachelor's thesis and the shipment with the XO's arrived.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiWgiH5xVtstnmRgLEQS_SGvveLtZI30YBJIxAOWm0OacqRoh-CaEx5sX-03fzKcwMP4siaFQAAbbuuiwFseS2BpJ-DtxZBfbkXvsmDGgk8JVfW7qI6LORsWm78Fo_7V4QxoJ5vs9BaK_O/s1600-h/IMG_2485.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiWgiH5xVtstnmRgLEQS_SGvveLtZI30YBJIxAOWm0OacqRoh-CaEx5sX-03fzKcwMP4siaFQAAbbuuiwFseS2BpJ-DtxZBfbkXvsmDGgk8JVfW7qI6LORsWm78Fo_7V4QxoJ5vs9BaK_O/s320/IMG_2485.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5448913738842906498" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Time for some holidays!Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-78276786844781040542010-03-11T12:01:00.002+01:002010-03-11T12:10:17.476+01:00Vodafone Italy FAILA week ago I reported a problem on the site <a href="http://www.vodafone.it">www.vodafone.it</a>, because my SIM card was broken and the service to order a new one online was not working. Today I got a response from them: "In order to find the problem, we need some information from you, including your username, password, cellphone number and a detailed description of the problem. Please send us the information to our email address."<br /><br />My first thought: what the ****? I really got an email from the customer care to send them MY PASSWORD?! The rest of the email does not make sense either, because I had to fill in a form online which included my username, cellphone number and a description of the problem (when the site simply says: "error during execution, service not available", how more detailed can I be?).<br /><br />My response to them: you are mad, please send my a new SIM card and I will forget this. If I don't get a response by them in the next week I'm changing operator. Since I use prepaid cards only in Italy, that wont be a problem at all! I think I can keep my number too.<br /><br />The most frightening VODAFONE FAIL ever. This is sad and makes me angry!Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-53347666407634337802010-03-08T09:11:00.002+01:002010-03-08T09:29:40.257+01:00XO's incomingAlthough I'm in the final days of writing my B.Sc. thesis, I took some time to write a project proposal for the <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program">sugar contributors program</a>. The project I proposed will be the first of its kind for my university. Hopefully the collaboration will continue and maybe some time there will be a full blown "computer science students develop sugar activites" project.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://wiki.laptop.org/images/4/4b/Contributetree1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 305px;" src="http://wiki.laptop.org/images/4/4b/Contributetree1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Retrieved from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program</span><br /><br />The full project proposal can be found <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/ILF">here</a>. I have to admit that I had not the time to write down *all* the ideas we (my supervisors at university and I) had and all the plans we have with sugar. My personal goal is to give the people at university a taste of what sugar is and how important it is to contribute.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3F6QWh-CY29jxsE7vgecbpMgybhjQYujkDoKwjgMoTNzTcrrJz1NoDslqVsR-lVETDU6vgUmSTpkQUnkB9sdFBpPW6Ahm1JEq5NKQ-haA9YvttIkU-gZFM_lfXUR27As-x7l6Or6uP59H/s320/me_with_olpc.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3F6QWh-CY29jxsE7vgecbpMgybhjQYujkDoKwjgMoTNzTcrrJz1NoDslqVsR-lVETDU6vgUmSTpkQUnkB9sdFBpPW6Ahm1JEq5NKQ-haA9YvttIkU-gZFM_lfXUR27As-x7l6Or6uP59H/s320/me_with_olpc.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">me with the XO during a <a href="http://kaserf.blogspot.com/2009/04/sugar-labs-talk-and-gnome-three-dot.html">talk</a></span><br /><br />In the meeting last Friday, it was decided that the two devices we requested are appropriate and we will get them. At this point I have to thank everyone who helped me bring this proposal through. Thanks to Stefan Unterhauser from the OLPC project who will be our mentor and to Dennis and Damir from the university which are the real heroes behind the idea of the project.<br /><br />Stay tuned...Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-50300946030426306512010-02-16T23:47:00.002+01:002010-02-17T00:01:29.292+01:00Notion Ink AdamIts been quite a long time without any post from me. The reason for that is that at the moment I have a lot of stuff to do for university and not much time for anything else.<br /><br />Anyways, what I just found (thanks to <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/ohnewein">Patrick</a>) is worth a (short) blog post! The <a href="http://www.technoholik.com/news/sneak-peek-video-notion-ink-adam/">Notion Ink Adam</a>, a tablet developed in India powering Android. At the first moment I thought: "huh...this has to be a joke!" But no, seems like this thing is R E A L! It was shown at CES and now at MWC in Barcelona as well. It should be available in June 2010 for a price starting at $327...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/02/notioninklead03.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 600px; height: 510px;" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/02/notioninklead03.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">(picture from engadget.com: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/16/notion-ink-adam-hands-on-with-video-at-mwc-2010/)</span><br /><br />For those of you who have ever seen an apple <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBhYxj2SvRI">keynote</a> (or at least the short <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx7v815bYUw">110 sec.</a> version of it): This is really amazing...beautiful...wonderful!<br /><br />I'm not sure how the trackpad on the back of the device is supposed to be user friendly, but whatever, finally something new (*) and innovative!Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-40486267861283873462009-11-22T23:43:00.003+01:002009-11-27T14:55:06.679+01:00Thunderbird --> EvolutionI finally decided to migrate all my mails to evolution. I like Thunderbird, but the problem there is the poor integration into gnome and some bugs in the calendar (especially with google calendars). I hope that the Thunderbird development will continue and maybe put some effort in integrating Thunderbird into gnome.<br /><br />The migration took me some days...the first step was to get all my pop mails from my main freemail account into gmail where I can get them via imap. Gmail is really nice to aggregate various mail accounts because it can get your mails via pop from every server you want!<br /><br />Just be careful not to forward all the messages you get on gmail to the account you want to import :D You will get some nice messages from google that they are sorry, but they have given up because of a mail loop. I guess the message is worth doing it anyway ;)<br /><br />Some thoughts about evolution:<br />What I like about evolution is the build in calendar and how Evolution integrates into gnome. Thats really great.<br /><br />But I'm a little bit disappointed by Evolutions ui. I am used to Thunderbird and it could be that I just need some time to get used to Evolution, but as a "first user" the ui and the menus are quite confusing.<br /><br />One example is the creation of a new appointment. I've never seen a bigger button-salad: The "Save", "Print" and "Close" buttons are somehow "grouped" together. There is a toggle button ("Show time as busy") in between of some normal buttons and the "Alarms" button opens a new window which uses 7/10 of the space for the "custom" alarm which is only one of the options in the dropdown list (and maybe the most rarely used one).<br /><br />Another example is the compose mail window: half of the space of the window is used for other things then the text of the email, which should be the central part of the ui.<br /><br />The notification area at the bottom of the main window is confusing too, when there are more things going on you can watch the buttons and labels fly around like in one of the good old videos of the 90's.<br /><br />I really don't want to piss someone off: I respect the work everyone did for Evolution and I do understand as well that it's not easy to design complex ui's.Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-13362046362861695732009-10-22T23:49:00.002+02:002009-10-23T00:06:27.794+02:00Sketch2PhotoResearchers from several Chinese universities and research projects have developed a new approach to combine various images freely available in the internet to one composed image. What the image should look like can be specified in a little sketch.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/cheetah.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 582px; height: 221px;" src="http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/cheetah.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Photo: www.crunchgear.com</span><br /><br />Read a detailed report <a href="http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/05/now-your-ms-paint-sketches-can-be-rendered-into-full-blown-photochops/">here</a> or visit the <a href="http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/montage/main.htm">website</a> of the researchers directly.Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6739034248554325514.post-27351097839658034432009-10-15T17:30:00.000+02:002009-10-15T17:33:58.357+02:00Google Wave PreviewYesterday I got access to Google Wave Preview. I've tested it a little bit now, but for the moment I have only one other friend that uses it. That makes testing a little bit pointless ;)<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.s44.at/_f_blogged/images/uploads/technosexual/google_wave_logo_final.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 271px;" src="http://www.s44.at/_f_blogged/images/uploads/technosexual/google_wave_logo_final.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I was really excited when I got the invitation, now I have to say that it's not that awesome as it seemed in the presentation. It's nice but still work in progress and you can see that a lot. It seems a little bit buggy to me.<br /><br />Now to the big question: will it be the new email + im + everything in one?<br /><br />I guess it will never substitute email as it was originally intended nor will it substitute IM between two persons. I see a big advantage in Google Wave when more than two people are involved in a discussion. Mailing lists are really a pain in the ass to read, so are Skype chat sessions with more than 2 buddies. Google Wave could be very nice even for two people to write wiki-like documents or to brainstorm, but not for a solid conversation.<br /><br />Google Wave has some potential with the widgets you can use. For now there are not many widgets included (only Map, YesNoMaybe and Sudoku ;)), but that will change in future and there are a lot of people out there with good ideas for widgets.<br /><br />For now: let's wait and see what comes next and how people accept it!<br /><br />[EDIT]: Please don't comment on it wanting to get invited, I already used up my invitations.Flexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17918678441012746486noreply@blogger.com8