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Just for backup reason a summary of my Twitter messages. It is always a nice way to re-experience the developments of a certain time period. For this reason my most important Twitter messages from April 2016 until June 2016. Read more...

Just for backup reason a summary of my Twitter messages. It is always a nice way to reexperience the developments of a certain time period. For this reason my most important Twitter messages from April 2015 until May 2015. Read more...

Just for backup reason a summary of my Twitter messages. It is always a nice way to reexperience the developments of a certain time period. For this reason my most important Twitter messages from January 2015 until March 2015. Read more...

Since the publications of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, some of our worst worries became true. The Internet got infected by a few sources of power. Mass surveillance by governments and big corporates is the daily routine. People, who fight for transparency are chased (e.g. Netzpolitik.org, Eward Snowden, Aaron Swartz, and other whistle-blowers) or got into some weird trouble. For years, I have the feeling the public discussion about the importance of privacy is very abstract and disconnected for the normal "non-technic" crowd. Even more bad the Open Data movement  in the US got also kinda stuck, because there does not exist any really benefit for a goverment to be transparent. Failures (through bad management or even corruption) could be found easier by journalist, but that is not the intent of a running government. However, Edward Snowden tried to explain the problem with the mass surveillance with his famous tweet, which should emphasize why privacy is important and a basic right for a democratic system. Read more...

*** An updated version of the article is available here ***

A couple of months ago, I tinkered around with NodeJS on my local machine. After a while I got kinda addicted to the NodeJS Plattform for webservice (SOA) applications as well as Desktop Apps (Electron/NodeWebkit). Hence more complicated NodeJS experiments will start, I decided to set-up my own webserver environment for my (local) network with a Raspberry Pi 2 B. My tools of choice are:

• Raspian Jessie Lite from 2016-05-27
• GIT v2.1.4: Version control for source code
• NodeJS v6.2.0: for REST APIs and Websocket applications
• Nginx Webserver: Deliver static files, Reverse Proxy for NodeJS, and Load Balancing
• MySQL Server and Client: for Relational Databases
• CouchDB v1.6.1: as my NoSQL Database with strong JavaScript tools
• PM2: NodeJS Process Manager for starting and stoping NodeJS Apps
• Nodeadmin: Admin Tool for MySQL (like PHPmyAdmin)

Let's get started:

Download Raspian Jessie Lite from the foundation website and write the image on your class 10 SD Card. For more information please read this tutorial (in German).

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After launching the online guide for developing medical devices, our team had the chance to rest a little bit and dealt with some minor improvements for the platform in general (see our Kanban Board, other inspirations on Agile Board Hacks).

We used and adapted the Kanban Board method for our coordination.

Beside of those minor tasks on our board, we had to explore these additional user needs for our next milestone:

• Improve user engagement through a customized and personalized online guide
• Increase the level of learning for the online guide without being too theoretical
• Improve decision making  skills of a medical product development through online tools
• Improve the quality of grant applications for medical products

After some internal meetings with our copywriters and the medical engineering team, we figured out some key features for our new service in a very abstract sketch.

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Long time ago I started posting my last summary of my Twitter messages. It is always a nice way to reexperience the developments of a certain time period. For this reason my most important Twitter messages from Ocotber 2014 until January 2015. Read more...

The last introduced projects were characterized by its approach of attaching data to a plant. In this project “Charisma Garden” (2013 - 2014), the data will be directly integrated in the health and growth process of a plant. In comparison to the “Travelling Plants” and “Dead Tree Project”, the data is not added to the plant then rather the representation of the data is the plant by itself in this project. In relation to the chapter “3.1. Visualizing techniques with plants” on page 44, the “Charisma Garden” project can be assigned to the category plant displays and takes over the role as a data sculpture. This dynamic (visually changing) data sculpture presents the social activity of a Facebook user.

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Long time ago I posted my last summary of my Twitter messages, however for me it is always a nice way to reexperience the developments of a time period. For this reason my most important Twitter messages from July 2013 until October 2014. Read more...

The previous chapter described the artwork “Season Patterns”, which captured natural environmental changes. The interactive relationship only existed between the artist and his surrounding natural environment. In contrast to that, the collaboration project “Travelling Plants” with Juliane Springsguth created a direct interactive relationship between plants and humans as well as between humans and humans.

The interaction between humans and plants intended to improve the human well-being. This improvement was applied in an urban context, where the daily life is characterized by stress and appointments [Shoemaker2002, page 140]. Public transport as a public space is a location where people have the time to rest, although the environment does not provide a relaxing friendly atmosphere. Under these circumstances, a setting with plants has the ability to transform a stressful mood to a relaxing state of mind more easily [Shoemaker2002, pp. 181]. The famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted assigned plants a healing power for the human mind [Flagler1994, page 232]. Read more...