Parking App

One of the classes I took this semester was a seminar on Human Computer Interaction. It turned out to be a great and thoroughly enjoyable and interesting class. The goal for all the 3-person teams in the class was to develop a horizontal prototype of a mobile application which uses open data.

CNM Studios, the team consisting of Michael Smolle, Nemanja Dubravac and yours truly, developed the prototype of Parking App which (supposedly) provides information related to parking regulations, tariffs, garages, etc. for Austrian cities. At the end of the class we had to create a video presenting the project and I think ours turned out quite well:

I’d highly recommend you to check out this blog post which includes a longer description of our project as well as information and videos about the work by our fellow colleagues.

Welcome to Google App Engine

Last Friday I received an e-mail informing me that my account had be set up for Google App Engine. In Google's own words:

"Google App Engine enables you to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications."

Sounds good, right?

Anyway, after watching this series of videos on YouTube I thought I'd give it a try. While I'm certainly not a Web 2.0 kinda guy I have followed the developments when it comes to Web services and applications quite closely. So I figure this time 'round I can actually get down into the trenches myself and do some coding. Obviously I have something OLPC-related in mind but I'm not quite ready to reveal what ideas my brain is crunching these days. I'd love to try and hack together a simple prototype right now but I'm too tired already but I hope to get something up and running tomorrow.

At the same time I'm currently working on several aspects of our OLPC Activity Handbook where I've also made some progress over the last few weeks and things will be coming together nicely over the coming days.

But now, sleep.

interesting iPhone and Android comparison

Alexander Schatten posted an interesting comment called "Two Cultures: iPhone and Android" on his Software Engineering - Best Practices blog. He compares the very different approaches that Apple and Google are taking when it comes to the SDKs of their respective platforms and also the distribution mechanisms behind it.

From a philosophical point of view I also prefer the more open Android approach but having said that I believe that Apple is going to me more successful with the way they do things. As Alexander also points out "the open source model also had a problem in providing a consistent and user friendly UI experience" and I believe that UI is what makes or breaks a consumer electronics device such as a mobile phone. The open-source approach is particularly strong when it comes to enabling people (developers) to come up with customized versions that fit their unique needs. It therefore allows for a broad ecosystem of similar, yet not identical, sub-systems to emerge (e.g. KDE vs. Gnome). However I believe that when it comes to a 24/7 device such as a mobile phone less can be more and most people (customers) would prefer a product that may do less but does those things in a very polished way. This is exactly what the iPhone is doing and people like me might complain about the lack of 3G, video-recording capabilities and whatnot all day long but at the end of the day I still *want* an iPhone for the simple fact that it does its things so incredibly well.

Other than that I also believe that the iPhone application-distribution via iTunes is a relatively smart thing. Again I might prefer a 'marketplace' that's not 100% Apple-controlled but at least there's a single point where people (customers) can look for new applications. I'm afraid that with Android it's going to be much more of messy situation where there might be a significantly wider selection of software available but without an easy way to access it that might go unnoticed by most people.

Anyway, this is certainly a very interesting topic and I'll keep a close eye on the developments over the coming months...

Update (an absolute must-read): "How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong" (from the current edition of Wired)

OLPC Austria @ "Software Engineering - Best Practices" Podcast

Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Alexander Schatten, a professor at the Institute for Software Technology and Interactive Systems at my university (Vienna University of Technology) runs a blog called "Software Engineering - Best Practices". Apart from writing about current trends in SE he also has a podcast that focuses on software engineering.

After a recent presentation of Aaron Kaplan and myself as members of OLPC Austria - a group of people that contributes to the overall OLPC effort in whatever way deemed useful and is currently the largest OLPC group here in Europe - at the university he approached us and asked whether we'd be interested in talking about the OLPC project on his podcast. So today started very early for a Monday morning as I got out of bed at 7.30 a.m...

To cut a long story short, the podcast (mind you, it's in German!) is available over here with the accompanying blog-entry being there (also in German).

Enjoy! :-)