One Shot Design

As a GNU/Linux user I’m not particularly fond of locked devices. In terms of GUI, Apple raised the bar with the iPhone, but incidentally, they might also have shot themselves in the foot when it comes to sales across Europe: some countries won’t allow the sale of locked mobile phones and the iPhone costs 60% more than in the US.

A good solution to get rid of the lock and still have some software that can be upgraded from reliable repositories would be to run Android on iPhone hardware.

The Cast42 blog features the mock-up of an iTouch running Android.

This is an excellent book for readers not familiar with the world of Unix, Linux and Open-Source, as it features a Historical account and it lays a good foundation to help understand most of the issues and the concepts of free software, Open Source and collaborative development.

This 1954 post-apocalyptic novel by Richard Matheson tells the story of Robert Neville, an ex-soldier immune to an epidemic that changed mankind into a vampire species. Neville is struggling with aloneness through a routine he set up to survive and keep some mental sanity. However, one day, he encounters what seems to be another uncontaminated human being. That is where the story takes an unexpected turn, ending with a twist giving its full meaning to the book’s title. In the line of Mary Shelley’s 1826 book “The Last Man”, Matheson’s novel is a metaphorical dissertation on death, the emergence of society and the subjective notion of good and evil.

Keeping in mind that it is a fiction neither based on historical facts nor written as an essay on Theology, the Da Vinci Code makes for an entertaining thriller. Dan Brown cleverly combines the disciplines of History, Geography and Art History to weave a thriller about the Knights Templar and the quest for the Holy Grail. After gradually raising the tension, the well-paced story ends with a World-altering finding, much like René Barjavel’s “The Ice People” and “The Immortals”.

6th International Conference on Scalable Vector Graphics
26th to 28th August
Nuremberg | Germany

The world conference on SVG, the versatile ‘HTML of graphics’ standard, this year takes place in the beautiful city center of Nuremberg. That is in the south of Germany, a country in which many people watch Football through SVG-enabled phones, or maybe pick the seat for their flights on SVG-enabled websites. Nueremberg does even have its own SVG Logo that can be seen here!

On this conference you can learn about subjects varying from specialized technical visualizations to interactive multimedia art. On the program there are presentations, beginner and advanced level workshops, a technical exhibition, and the opportunity to meet people from the SVG community, industry and the W3C SVG Working Group.

SVG Open 2008 is organised by examotion in affiliation with W3C.