archive/July 2006  <

Good news: Rhizome Navigation is now running live in your browser (click the image above). At first it loads and visualises last week's user behaviour of Metaportal der Medienpolemik and then continues with current traffic (Don't think it freezes after a while, this just means that traffic isn't actually very high on MdM. If you continue browsing the site you'll see that the graph will adapt to your behaviour.) The application is non-interactive for now. Navigation and usability is the next step. This is just a tech demo drawing a graph.

Requirements

I did not do a lot of platform testing. Here it runs on Mac OSX in both Safari and Firefox. You'll need Java installed. Beware, it's still an early release, your browser might crash. If you have any problems loading the applet or want to leave me a comment, please let me know.

Thanks

This would not have been possible without the wonderful proce55ing.

For more example work head over to the Rhizome Navigation homepage.

Rhizome Navigation is an interface framework which provides tools to aggregate attention data and visualize user behavior.

_{The images above link to videos (also here and here)} Head over to the Rhizome Navigation Youtube Playlist where you can find video screencasts of prototype applications in action.

If you have questions or feedback regarding Rhizome Navigation please head over to the discussion boards at berlios.de or contact me directly.

MelGibson auf dem Weg zur Selbsterkenntnis.

I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse.

Tags: Mel Gibson, alcoholism

Tags: Web 2.0

http://www.semantics2006.net/

Tags: Semantic Web

Wahlkampf ist und die OEVP startet eine
Web-2.0-Unsocial-Network-Campaign.

Tags: Politics, Austria

Slap your laptop:
http://blog.medallia.com/2006/05/smacbook_pro.html

With this article I start a series about my thoughts on the media business. media meaning everything which enables people to communicate or interact with themselves through culture technologies. In the first article I'll let loose some thoughts on the gaming industry and my own history.

Recap: I work now for more or less about eight years in some sort of a technology/media related kind of business. I studied multimedia art and production and had been learning autodidact in that direction since I got my hands on a Commodore PET when I was eight years old. I've always been fascinated by the potential of computers being a creative tool. creative not only meaning the output of your work but also the way you work.

In the early 90ies I became a big fan of the then popular computer games like Ron Gilbert's Monkey Island and Richard Garriott's Ultima series, just to name a few. It became my dream to work with a small development team with a mastermind games designer like Peter Molyneux or the before mentioned. The computer games business seemed to me more like a creative playground than an industry, and I mean that in a positive way.

Still with this goal in mind I started studying. But from '98 onwards I became more and more disillusioned. Producing computer games turned into a real business, an industry. EA swallowed my heroes like Origin and Bullfrog. LucasArts dumped adventure games (with Grim Fandango as last man standing) and focused on a movie franchise (like many others). Of course, all this seems good from a business point of view. But what happened to game designers? They left. Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer from LucasArts. Richard Garriott and Chris Roberts from Origin/EA. Peter Molyneux from Bullfrog/EA. Warren Spector from so many companies I cannot remember. Certainly everyone of those has his own story and was tied to this certain companies in different ways and the circumstances under which they left varied. But I think what they have in common is that they were confronted with changing working environments where their creative minds and search for new ideas where no longer needed (or affordable). You don't need a Tim Schafer to create FIFA 2000.

Watching this progress I lost confidence and motivation. So a few things happened which got me on another track (still don't know if it's the right one). I (re)started doing short movies and animation. I designed web pages and (re)started programming. I did 3d visualizations for dubious province companies. I even made an e-card for a political party I do not support, but don't tell anyone. So while doing some stuff worth mentioning and lots of crap I didn't stop following the developments in the gaming industry.

I must confess that I've never been "in" the gaming industry but apart from that I recognize parallels between my own efforts and those of those "lost designers". I've never been employed by someone, because I thought I couldn't stand a Monday to Friday 8-to-5 schedule working for someone else. Of course that didn't stop me from working sixteen to eighteen hours a day for someone as a freelancer. There always was that kind of feeling of freedom being self-employed. Haha.

But look, I'm still self-employed, I'm still doing my own projects. And I'm still looking forward. And although I'm as far as I could possiblely be from the business I once wanted to spend my working life in, I still see hope. Even now that the gaming industry turned out to be that big (and McKinsey-like), there's still hope for small independet developers. There's even an utopia in my head: That somehow things in the gaming industry will develop like they did in the movie business, so that there's room both for the big studios and for small art-house-like developers. Reading that, don't think I like how the movie business runs. I'm just an optimistic pessimist.

http://burnfield.com/martin/2006/07/14/textmate-prototype-scriptaculus-bundle

1. - 9. September: Kurzfilmfestival in der Kaiserstraße.

There are only sinister post-Kissingerian type negotiations.

PRADO is a component-based and event-driven programming framework for developing Web applications in PHP 5. PRADO stands for PHP Rapid Application Development Object-oriented.

Seems it got a major upgrade in April. Looks interesting. Time for re-evaluating.

Auszug aus der abschließenden Zusammenfassung meines Berichts an das Innenministerium.

Ein Marktschreier braucht keinen Abschluß in Germanistik. Jedoch manchem Gendarm legen wir den Besuch eines Wifi-Kurses für Konfliktmanagement nahe.

public source code repository: http://www.snipplr.com/

Started a page with conceptual thoughts on effectively managing hierarchical data structures.

Ein Genuss war das Verschlingen von ChristopherFraylings SergioLeone-Biographie Something To Do With Death, und das noch dazu praktisch vor Ort. Ein paar Hinweise darin bringen mich wohl doch endlich dazu, mich eingehender mit RolandBarthes zu beschäftigen. Ebenfalls aufschlußreich: PierreBourdieu et al Elend der Welt, gelesen in der Nähe Marseilles. Insofern könnte man den kürzlichen Italien- und Südfrankreichaufenthalt glatt als Studienreise bezeichnen.

Back on the track with my little little green bag: memefest2006 - International festival for radical communication features Rhizome Navigation.

Da schau her: Die KPÖ macht neuerdings in Sachen Freibeuter.