Beyond text

Do you know Robin Sloan? Probably not. He's a Californian writer and media-inventor whose story Mr. Penumbra and the Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store I stumbled across a while ago, and I was hooked. His stories are smart, fast and full of surprises in a way that I've never seen before. The latest story (The Truth about the East Wind) is based on classical Greek mythology whereas the sci-fi crime novel Annabel Scheme is set in the future San Francisco dominated by quantum computers and Grail, the second best name for a search engine that I can think of. Very smart indeed, and just a little nerdy.

The creative way in which Sloan plays with formats gave me pause to think about how un-creatively today's media work with their formats on the web. For incumbent producers of print, the acme of production is text, while TV people produce video. To the man with the hammer, everything looks like a nail, I guess.

But in this day and age of cross-media, things have to change. Content needs to be optimised for effect and for convenience. Convenience means that content should always be available in all possible formats so that I can hear a text when I'm on the move, for instance. Effect is the best possible way in which content can be presented. A picture may say more than a thousand words, but often times, complexity is not open to imagery, but only to text. But - text is difficult to digest and demands a concentrated effort. So there's a number of dimensions across which to choose the most effective mode of communicating something.

Mad hatters!

Since I'm beginning to approach the advanced old age and degree of baldness where wearing a hat seems increasingly commendable, if not medicinally required in hot weather, I've been beginning to shop around. Obviously, the common cap hardly suits my sense of style, but conventional hattery somehow does not cut it either.

That's how I came across LeTom in a podcast programme. Have a look at their collection - it's about as smart and unconventional as their advertisement lets on. There's an interesting story behind that, too ... anyway, I'm looking forward to wearing my LeTom soon!

Digital persona

This is my digital persona - nice, isn't it. It's particularly interesting to watch its creation, so go ahead and have your own!

A musical black swan

Reading this fun conversation on literature ("I no longer understand what arrogant means") between Nassim Taleb and Rolf Dobelli gave rise to the discovery of a musical black swan when Taleb mentions that musicians don't do music about music. As you now know, Glenn Gould did, and he certainly was a musician, even though one of black swan quality.

A favourite of mine

This is a piece I can never get enough of - clever, smart, complex ... you can just see the composer having fun in writing it! Glenn Gould rules.

Another trip, another gadget

Coming home from my latest London trip on Thursday night, I found a nice surprise: Following my rather favourable comments and suggestions about their mobile charger, Lifetrons sent me their Xmini capsule speaker�- thank you very much! Now, although you're apparently not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, that's exactly what I'm going to do:

The Xmini is a tiny technical miracle the size of a golf ball that's been chewed on by Laika - when closed. When opened, it folds out like an accordion to provide the resonating cavity required for a mighty big audio effect. Hearing is believing! It comes with a double mini-USB cable that plugs into the device and a powered USB port (for charging only) or a 3.5 mm audio out port suitable for most devices. An amazing little thing!

But again, under-marketed. Those Lifetrons guys need to do something, and quick, the competition isn't sleeping. Compare the Powerstick - it doesn't even pack a sixth of the performance of the Lifetrons product (which is still not available on their own web store!)�with a similar form factor, but it is much more visible and will therefore sell a lot better. Wake up, guys!

Hidden gem for iPhone

If you think, like I do, that iPhone's only real hardware shortcoming (software ones such as missing video recording will hopefully be dealt with soon) is that there is actually too little of it, i.e. that its battery doesn't survive a day of heavy usage, then I have found a must-have little gadget for you: the portable charger LT025 from tiny Swiss firm Lifetrons. The charger takes a charge of 4800 mAh (probably about 3 iPhone charges), which it delivers actively to iPhone, i.e. it is not an external battery pack that needs to remain connected to be effective, it actually charges iPhone, and it does it very quickly. The gadget's power input is USB and it charges lots of other mobile devices via a plethora of adapters for its USB cable. The device's footprint is smaller than iPhone's, but it is about 2 2.5 times thicker. The device is well designed and nicely executed.

But as the title of this post holds, it is a hidden gem. So much so, in fact, that I only stumbled across it in a duty free catalogue. Strangely, Lifetrons only distributes via airlines and duty free shops, and they don't market their wares actively - it is not even available in their own online store. At least not for the moment, I'm told by their CEO. Another instance of under-marketed Swiss engineering ingenuity? You bet! I hope they get their marketing act together really soon, because they deserve it!

Here's the anecdote of the purchase: I saw the description on my way to Brussels and decided to hold off on buying until I could do a little online research, which I did in Brussels. But it yielded very little, there's virtually no online reviews available nor, as mentioned, alternative distribution. So, I decided to buy on the way back, even though Swiss has all three colours as long as it's white/silver. But I created a bit of a stumbling block for the friendly flight attendants - the catalogue advertises that you can pay with M&M Miles rather than cash, which I wanted to. But their payment appliance didn't work, so we had to use a regular credit card slip. Now, I'm a little nervous that I am going to be charged CHF 22'000 for the device rather than 22'000 miles ... keep your fingers crossed!�

Lili Z. Nix! Nix! Nix!

It's not often that I'm posting music videos, but my niece's (first ?) foray into that specific genre is definitely worth it! Hint: She's every bit as mad as she seems to be - have fun!

Betting against Jobs

We've been fairly early in beginning to speculate that Steve Jobs might sooner or later end his tenure at Apple - some will say, way too early, especially seeing how discussions are heating up again following Apple's cancellation of its Macworld participation. But now, we have it from His Steveness, namely that he is not intending to step down just now.�

On the very same day, intrade has opened two contracts where participants can speculate about whether Jobs will resign before June or December 09. I'll make sure to keep watching. There's no trading so far, and both contracts are at about 20% likelihood. If you own AAPL, you may want to go long those contracts ...

The Switch

I just switched. But don't worry, I am still a Mac fan. Although the switch is PC-related, because I switched the vehicle of my virtual PC. Hitherto I used to be a Parallels customer, but now, I've taken advantage of VMware's CyberMondayDeal which is only valid today. You get their Fusion 2 product for 50% off, which is just about as much as the upgrade to Parallels' version 4 would cost. Since reviews give a slight advantage to VMware over Parallels, there's not much point in staying with Parallels because they seem to be milking their customer base all along the upgrade path, which VMware doesn't.�

Hurry, the offer is up just a few more hours ...

J to L

The seventh of fourteen volumes of the Historic Encyclopedia of Switzerland�(HLS) has just appeared - yes, they keep printing encyclopedias on dead trees. But it's all good - the full text of all articles is available simultaneously in German, French and Italian (and partially in�Romansh, too!) and can be referenced directly. No pictures, though; strangely, they are reserved to the print edition.�

As an example, here's the article about eminent historian Jacob Burckhardt (1000 words), and here it is in the Wikipedia edition�(1438 words, 2 pictures plus a number of links, among others to the HLS article). For good measure, Britannica invests 1791 words. True, the number of words is not relevant: I prefer an efficient (terse?) text over a verbose one any day, but why they would use quite so many abbreviations in the HLS is beyond me. I prefer the Wikipedia article for its more comprehensive overview of Burckhardt, whereas the HLS shines on the substance of Burckhardt's work. It's a pity, though, that the editors haven't recognised that printed encyclopedias are definitely a thing of the past. Yet, their key remit is to produce a printed encyclopedia. But then again, they are historians for a reason ...

Banksy's Pet Store ...

You know you're in for a treat when Banksy opens a pet store cum grill ... enjoy!

Global manners

The latest issue of Monocle has a fun little Global Guide to Business Etiquette travelling along in its sleeve. With its only 25 hints covering the globe, it may not be all that useful, but it is certainly well done and caters to a number of national stereotypes.

Inchoate

It's maddening - there he goes again! Will self is among the 40 London heroes interviewed in Time Out, and as discussed earlier, he uses a word I've never heard nor could make sense of in the context: inchoate. Do you know it? If not, here's the definition.�

The way out of the moral matrix

Here's an excellent presentation about moral psychology. I particularly like the way in which the speaker comes across as very confident of his own political position despite of the apparent moral relativism (but it's actually moral humility) that he proposes. Being aware of and respecting your opponent's standpoint doesn't have to mean that your own position is weak.

Clarity of mind

Via 43 Folders, I came across the essay Politics and the English Language by George Orwell. Written in 1946, its subject matter is just as current today, although complicated (and amplified!) by the fact that written language becomes increasingly obsolete in the immediacy of the spoken word.�Does the written language still matter in politics, or would it enter the realm of the law with its own technicalities?

Safe

Wow - I want one! Not that I have anything to put in it, nor would my living room floor probably be sufficiently strong to support it, but I want one.�

Swan Upping

Haven't we talked about Swans before? Here's an interesting video on HM Swans - enjoy!

Trainspotting

No, not the movie - this! Amazing!

Apple pays

That was quick! Local newspaper BaZ seems to keep close tabs on the Apple-Suisa skirmish - we've reported earlier. �Now BaZ breaks the news that Apple has backed down on Saturday and will be paying up the millions that it has accrued in levies. But apparently not before getting a letter from a Swiss consumerism organisation demanding that Apple pays back the surcharge retained from consumers, should it be successful against Suisa. So that matter's settled - but Suisa continues to look into whether iPhone will be considered a media player that is subject to the levy.

Apple refuses to pay levy

This story is about our preferred purveyor of fine fruit, and I post it because I haven't seen it anywhere else - probably no netizen reads Basler Zeitung ... anyway: they have this story about Apple refusing to pay a blank media levy imposed on the sale of media players (i.e. the iPod) by Suisa (Swiss Society for the Rights of Authors of Musical Works). Apple apparently refuses to pay because their online store is located in Ireland and mails iPods directly to its Swiss clients and therefore, Apple thinks, it is not liable to pay. Suisa's levy on RAM-based media players used to be extremely hefty: until 1 April, the levy on a 32 GB iPod touch was CHF 153. Under heavy attack, Suisa decided to lower that levy unilaterally to 42 francs.

Now I am certainly no friend of Suisa's. Nevertheless, I think Apple's position in this matter is quite untenable. They claim that they never included any levy in the pricing of the players, yet the price difference between the Swiss Apple store and others magically is about equal to what the levy amounted to before it was lowered. And it hasn't been lowered still, so everybody who buys an iPod on Apple's Swiss online store is not very intelligent. This certainly does not generate much goodwill with clients either. What's more, Swiss VAT is applied to the goods sold online, and the store claims to be subject to Swiss law, so ... I'm guessing that the legal goings-on in a tiny province of Apple's vast realm (that doesn't even have the iPhone, yet - legally) has escaped the eye of Cupertino's lawyers so far. This is bound to change soon, and we'll hopefully see a levy refund to Swiss Apple Store clients soon.

Update: As this post creates so much traffic, I went back to check my facts and, lo & behold, the prices of the Swiss Apple Store have been brought back in line with the Euro pricing: CHF 719 (EUR 440) for the 32GB iPod touch, down from ca. 840 on last check. This is lower than the price at the German store (EUR 459), but not by as much as the roughly 10% points difference in VAT would suggest. The difference, again, is close enough to 42 francs. Therefore, the retail price includes the levy, but Apple refuses to fess up. Good policy?�

Mr Bragg's bees

Here's a nice interview with Melvyn Bragg, host of one of my dearest podcasts, In Our Time. Why don't you take out a trial subscription?

The End of an Era

That image says more about the end of 68 than all the brilliant analyses taken together. Good job, LV! Their apparent concept of displaying iconic characters in their very own, private fin de si�cle really plays out nicely.

Interesting numbers

Accumulated time spent on building Wikipedia ... 100'000'000 hours
Total time spent watching TV in the USA ... 200'000'000'000 hours per annum
TV time of global web-connected population ... 1'000'000'000'000 hours p.a.

That's what Clay Shirky calls Cognitive Surplus. An interesting thought indeed.

The Ampersand

Ever since reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman�("learned wit" - bah!), I like using and (&) per se and in any language, whatever the rules - learn more about its meaning & history here. Thanks to kottke for the pointer!

Xentonality

Wow - this article in NZZ Folio reports the Xentonality work of William Sethares - with plenty of free music samples. It's experimental music of the best kind: strangely harmonic even though it defies all conventional rules of harmony. Fascinating!

The Distillery List

I am a veteran member (#303) of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Swiss Branch, and I enjoy their bottlings a lot, especially from distillery 1. I used to keep the distillery list online myself, but since you only get it when you join, it would be rather dated by now. So here I found a pretty current one - thanks Julian!

Change, please!

How come most everything that the Brits do turns out in style? I'm definitely looking forward to getting my mitts on those shiny beauties next time I'm in London. Thanks to the Royal Mint's picture (watch the video - a modern classic in the making), I've now even understood the scheme that the coinage follows. You get multiple "dimensions" in terms of material (brass, nickel, copper), format (thick / thin, large / small / tiny) and shapes (round, heptagonic). While this baroque richness of form is not exactly in line with Bauhaus' form follows function, it probably harks back to the days of pounds, shillings and pence before D-Day on 15 February 1971. One wonders for how long this opulent memory will linger. (via DF)

April revisited

This one is perfectly worthy to be listed with its predecessor. Don't you just love the penguins taking off? This may also signal the beginning of a humouristic examination of global warming, which is awfully scarce.

Screw Yoga

This is excellent stuff!

Sounds like fun!

"Our business model is one of very high risk: We dig a very big hole in the ground, spend three billion dollars to build a factory in it, which takes three years, to produce technology we haven't invented yet, to run products we haven't designed yet, for markets which don't exist.

"We do that two or three times a year."

Intel CEO Otellini

Essential watching

This is essential watching for every Anglophone who stares blankly at continental Europeans quipping about the same procedure as last year. The video is a 1963 Swiss-German co-production that is traditionally aired on virtually every TV station on the last day of the year.

Good stuff!

If you ever happen to need a simple, efficient tool to produce maps, here it is!

Sometime along the way to Mac OS X, I lost touch with�SETI@home, the�experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Meanwhile, you can even use your spare CPU cycles in the screen saver to help calculate climate change models. How cool is that?!

Sir Peter's taste for swan

Speaking of Scotland: I came across a reference to Udal law and feudal tenure in Scotland in an article in the University of Edinburgh Journal. This led me to this rather amusing article about Sir Peter's alleged felony to partake of the remains of a deceased swan (Monty Python, anyone?). I guess I'll never know whether Sir Peter actually did time in the Tower, but it certainly was enlightening to read about it.�

Smart

There are not many smart commercials of which you will remember what they actually advertise. This is one of them - enjoy!

Fear, engagement, transcendence

On a US trip a few years back, I read a text about Abraham Lincoln's clinical depression. This text occasionally still resonates today with me because of its empathetic description of a complex man who paradoxically depended on his clinical condition for superhuman strength. The article was published in The Atlantic, and it is now available online.

The best funeral in London

Weird! One is tempted to say, Only in England will you find an article about funeral directors in a leisure magazine like Time Out ...

NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOM

Abbreviations are fun, are they not, and this mouthful, beyond all doubt, is the mother of all abbreviations! According to this, it stands for (translated) Laboratory for Shuttering, Reinforcement, Concrete and Ferroconcrete Operations for Composite-monolithic and Monolithic Constructions of the Department of Technology of Building Assembly Operations of the Scientific Research Institute of the Organization for Building Mechanization and Technical Aid of the Academy of Building and Architecture of the USSR. So, despite of being 56 characters long, it still entails a fairly decent abbreviation ratio of 5.54, which is better than NOPAT's 5.2, but worse than USSR with 7.75. Come to think, Russian words tend to be longer than English ones, so the homoglot ratio probably would be even better. (Thanks, RB!)

Rankings galore

If you are competitively minded, you will certainly be interested in the Economist's rankings repository. There you'll find a number of interesting rankings, from MBAs to operational risk. Eminently quotable ...

The best things in life ...

are free, they say. And they are probably right, as I am glad to confirm while listening to the second compilation of the Colonious Monk Collective. This is German rap at its best - full of funk, jazz and soul, just the way we like it.

As we may think

Vannevar Bush's July 1945 essay As we may think is a breathtaking piece of futurology. Have a look!

All is calm, all is Swiss

It would be a pity if you missed this unexcited travel essay about Switzerland in Saturday's Financial Times. Granted, it's stereotypical, but there's a grain of truth in it nonetheless.

Local news

Go check out local.ch! It's a very useful site if you're in Switzerland for it gives you a map based access to yellow and white pages as well as to events and classifieds. It's really useful and it works. Yesterday I was looking for a dental technician that I could visit on the way to the train station, and today I was looking for an unlisted hairdresser in Rheinfelden on behalf of my sister. Both worked perfectly smoothly. Oh, and it also displays blog posts from geotagged blogs from the map area. This is the Web 2.0 stuff that's really useful!

In other local news: My mom is currently in hospital to have both her knees replaced. She's had her second operation yesterday, and I am glad to report that everything went well. She's well on the path to recovery, which includes a few more weeks of hospital and rehab stays away from home. In order to make that easier on her, I gave her a digital picture frame today. It's a little TFT monitor that displays a slide show of all pics, movies & sound files that are on the memory card you plug into it. She's enjoying it a lot, especially since it contains literally hundreds of conversation starters. I tested a cheaper one before, but that was a bad experience: apparently buggy software, bad physical quality &c. I spent quite some time trying to get it running, whereas the Kodak one was just plug & play.

Rebus and his Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh Journal has a great article about Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series of novels by Rod Johnson. Neither the Journal nor the article appear to be available online, which is a pity. But if you are into Rebus or Edinburgh, then you should have a look at this three pages piece since it offers a knowledgeable insight into the linkage between the novels and the city. Also, it made me think that it might be fun to bring Rebus into an episode of House M.D. ...

Leviathan

Looking for a suitable folder to hold my corporate accounts 2007 (yes, I know ...), I stumbled across a huge batch of comics that I carefully tore out of the Independent on Sunday back when I was living in Scotland in the early nineties. Considering whether I should scan them or throw them out (which I probably won't anyway), I looked for the stuff online and - bingo! Enjoy Peter Blegvad's Leviathan, an immensely dark humoured, weird & witty set starring a toddler who despairs of the world. Wonderful!

Committology

Looking for Committology, I found this great collection of pretty serious committee work related laws - or not. Just don't ask why I was looking for committology ...

Fix this!

Check out this week's installment of the BBC's StoryFix, a weekly videocast. The bit about Imagine, a world where there is no news is fabulous!

A Parisian in America?

Here's a rare thing: a useful review of one of French presidential candidate Sarkozy's (who would get my vote, for lack of a more reformist candidate) books in an American online magazine. American.com is quite good, btw!

Bunnies rule!

Tiki Bar TV gives us just enough time until Easter to study the intricate set of rules that is the drinking game of Bunnies. For a flawless, yet necessarily superficial documentary of the game's enactment, see the reel referred to above. But beware, some of the bunny related action is rather rude - watch only if of legal age! That disclaimer is provided for the benefit of our transpondal client�le, which the Royal League of Bunnies (RLB) also refers to, somewhat disrespectfully - surely the same will apply to all non-English lookers-on:

"A competent game of bunnies should be played at such a pace that the casual observer is rendered mesmerised by the velocity of the action. Most commonly, American observers will be overheard expressing bemusement and disbelief at what they are seeing. As with cricket, the finer points of bunnies will forever remain mysterious to those from over the pond, due to their innate inability to comprehend such complex goings on."

Old sins

One's not supposed to be ashamed of one's past, but the pictured proof of my juvenile poor taste, I am having a hard time being proud of. I admit to having been a fan of Peter, Sue & Marc, probably when they were in their Eurovision song contest heydays. Yes, that sort of thing that DJ Bobo is now doing his controversial vampire thing for ...

Peter Doig

I came across this striking picture by Peter Doig in a newspaper article, and it seems to be stuck behind my retina ... in German, we have the expression Ohrwurm (earwig) which refers to a catchy tune, but includes an annoying quality. I wonder whether there is a similar term for the comparable visual effect - I know now that it exists! You get the impression of an almost naturalistic quality of the picture (with a bit of Monet's clarity thrown in), but it is not, of course, because of what almost seems like a chromatic shift - which again, it's not. Very annoying, and fascinating!