desirable things

Old Maps

There is something fascinating about maps, especially old maps. Maybe it’s because they are attempts to explain the world, or new views of the world revealing patterns and shapes or maybe just attempts of other people to find their way.

The webpage for the Norman B. Levanthal Map Center at the Boston Public Library has a pile of old maps in digital format (The library has digitised many highlights from their 200,000+ collection of maps and atlases from all times and places) and an excellent mapviewing tool which allows you to zoom in on the details.

detail of Novus planiglobii terrestris per utrumque polum conspectus (1695)

Start with the virtual tours for an overview.

Posted on by mklang

Stallman Fever

According to Computer Sweden Göteborg is gripped by Stallman-fever well it might be a good headline but there is no real fever here. In our offices we are getting the final preparations done as I write the atmosphere is one of calm expectation. But we fully expect to have a great time when the event begins at 5pm.

Posted on by mklang

Da store is closed

The Apple online store is closed… this usually means that they are busy bringing new objects of desire to our attention. Mmm… shiny new laptop….

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Presentation technique

Teaching and presenting is an handicraft. It is, unfortunately, an underestimated craft. Most presenters are too boring and too disinterested in their own material. This becomes even more obvious when you see a great presenter in action.

Take a look at Hans Rosling debunking our impressions about the third-world myths on poverty, families, health and growth. Not only is he enthusiastic but he also uses some of the most exciting statistics rendering software I have ever seen in a presentation.

Youâ??ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called â??developing worldâ?? using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid — toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Roslingâ??s hands, global trends â?? life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates â?? become clear, intuitive and even playful.

Download this talk in full SD resolution.

Hans Rosling is very cool this is from his bio:

Rosling began his wide-ranging career as a physician, spending many years in rural Africa tracking a rare paralytic disease (which he named konzo) and discovering its cause: hunger and badly processed cassava. He co-founded Médecins sans Frontièrs (Doctors without Borders) Sweden, wrote a textbook on global health, and as a professor at the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm initiated key international research collaborations. Heâ??s also personally argued with many heads of state, including Fidel Castro.

As if all this werenâ??t enough, the irrepressible Rosling is also an accomplished sword-swallower â?? a skill he demonstrated at TED2007.

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Questioning Technology

Kevin at Question Technology was at the CHI 2007 conference and found a really interesting paper and presentation called “Questioning the Technological Panacea: Three Reflective Questions for Designers” (Eric Baumer and Bill Tomlinson).

They discussed three questions that product designers should ask:

  1. “Given a technological solution, are there other, possibly non-technological solutions that could address the same problem equally well, if not better?”
  2. “Is the problem being addressed perceived as a problem by the proposed users, or is the situation being unnecessarily problematized by designers?”
  3. “By focusing on a specific problem, is the solution treating a symptom and hiding the cause?”

This paper was part of the “alt.chi” program at CHI, which is a forum for unusual work that wouldn’t ordinarily get published by the conference.  Alt.chi submissions are posted and reviewed in an open public forum.

Read the paper!

Posted on by mklang

Greener Apples

No need to be cynical or pessimistic about the effect of lobby campaigns or the power of collecting people online. Greenpeace launched an environmental campaign against Appleâ??s lack of environmental policy. On 2nd May Steve Jobs published a second public letter (the first was against DRM) listing environmental hazards connected with Apple computers and the steps Apple was taking to remedy the situation.

It is generally not Appleâ??s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished. Unfortunately this policy has left our customers, shareholders, employees and the industry in the dark about Appleâ??s desires and plans to become greener. Our stakeholders deserve and expect more from us, and theyâ??re right to do so. They want us to be a leader in this area, just as we are in the other areas of our business. So today weâ??re changing our policy.

This is a good first step towards taking Apple to the forefront of environmental concerns as well as its firm position as a design leader. This approach also shows that design and environmentalism are not incompatible.

Greenpeace has responded on their campaign site with the words “We are cheering!”…

It’s not everything we asked for.  Apple has declared a phase out of the worst chemicals in its product range, Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) by 2008. That beats Dell and other computer manufactures’ pledge to phase them out by 2009. Way to go Steve!

It’s nice to know that the machine of my choice has just made a little less guilty.

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Economist Against DRM

Not bad. The Economist is against DRM making bold statements in a recent article:

Belatedly, music executives have come to realise that DRM simply doesnâ??t work. It is supposed to stop unauthorised copying, but no copy-protection system has yet been devised that cannot be easily defeated. All it does is make life difficult for paying customers, while having little or no effect on clandestine copying plants that churn out pirate copies.

and

While most of todayâ??s DRM schemes that come embedded on CDs and DVDs are likely to disappear over the next year or two, the need to protect copyrighted music and video will remain. Fortunately, there are better ways of doing this than treating customers as if they were criminals.

Nice to see that serious media has begun to realise that rhetoric alone is not enough to legitimize DRM. Articles such as this show that media is beginning to practice journalism and report not only what is written in corporate press releases but are looking at what is happening all around them.

(via Boing Boing)

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Devil's Bible on Tour

Devil_medium_small_1News from Humaniorabloggen (the humanist blog) about the Codex Gigas, more often referred to as the Devils Bible.

From the Royal Library website (The Swedish National Library): The Devil’s Bible contains the Old and New Testaments in pre-Vulgate Latin translations, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, Josephus’ History of the Jews in a Latin translation, the Chronicle of Bohemia, written by Cosmas of Prague, etc. The manuscript was written in the early 13th century in the Benedictine monastery of Podlazice in Bohemia. It is called the Devil’s Bible after the impressive picture of that potentate. According to legend the scribe was a monk who had been confined to his cell for some breach of monastic discipline and who, by way of penance, finished the manuscript in one single night with the aid of the Devil whom he had summoned to help him. In 1594 the manuscript was acquired by the Imperial Treasury in Prague. When the Swedish army conquered the city in 1648, it was brought to Sweden and presented to the KB the following year.

The Codex (89,5 x 49 cm, weighs 75 kg and is 624 pages long) and was written on, the calf skin vellum (previously believed to be ass skin vellum). During the last year it has been analyzed and digitalized and is now going to be sent to Prague for a few months for an exhibition at the Prague’s Klementinum palace, the National Library seat, from this September till January 2008.

digitalization process at The Royal Library

The name “The Devils Bible” comes from the fact that the Codex Gigas contains images of the devil (pictures above). The Czech Republic will receive copies of the high quality digitalization and will borrow the Codex. The results of the digitalization and analysis are available online at the Royal Library’s website later this year. There has naturally (?) been discussions concerning the return of the work but apparently The Czech Republic does not contest Swedish ownership.

Cultural artifacts are always a sensitive issue in particular if they were taken in times of war or imperialist occupation. Some items in museums are more connected to specific cultures (the Egyptian collections in Berlin and London for example) but works such as the Codex Gigas are much more complicated to associate with one specific nation state.

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Through the roof

Richard Stallman is going to give a lecture in Göteborg which is really cool. We booked a hall with a capacity for 400 but the amount of registrations has now increased to 600! We had no idea what to expect but with over 600 registrations we are naturally very happy. This can now be classed as a major event.

Naturally this means that we will be moving the venue to a new site. The lecture will now be held at the Draken cinema on Järntorget. The cinema is an old style movie house and seats 700 people. You can see a plan of the theater on their website (in Swedish).

For more information about the talk see the website www.rms2007.se…

Posted on by mklang