FRITZ!Box: get call notifications on a Mac

The FRITZ!Box DSL modem also connects telephones to an analog line. In such a setting, the nifty Frizzix can be used to receive call notifications on a Mac. All you need to do is install Growl and then run Frizzix. The following image shows a Growl notification being displayed in the lower right corner of the screen. Note that in this case, “Axel Rauschmayer” is the caller (as I’ve called myself with my cell phone).

What does a multi-touch desktop GUI look like?

R. Clayton Miller’s 10/GUI is an interesting look at what multi-touch desktop GUIs might look like. Obstacles are that it's difficult to position large desktop monitors so that one can comfortably touch-use them for extended periods of time; and that using hands to manipulate on-screen objects tends to obstruct the view to them. 10/GUI has two main ideas: First, to use a giant multi-touch track-pad. Second to rethink the window manager. The first idea makes perfect sense. The second idea is neat, but can probably still improved upon. The idea is still that an application should fill out most of the screen. Splitting a screen in half, vertically should work, but more than two partitions don't seem possible. My personal bet would be on 2.5-dimensional zooming user interfaces that restrict navigational movements (to improve usability). Fingers should work well to quickly organize files, documents, windows, etc. Bumptop solves this one aspect neatly. Windows 1, Eclipse, and Windows 7 have some intriguing ideas about how to split screen space between windows.
Interestingly, Apple's notebooks and their multi-touch trackpads are well positioned to implement something similar to 10/GUI. Already, multi-touch gestures for scrolling and zooming make some GUI widgets inefficient and unnecessary.

Canvas-based game: Ajax has come far

The online game “Berts Breakdown” is fun and there is no Flash involved! It is all done via JavaScript and the HTML5 canvas tag. Quite impressive. Warning: Canvas means that this game won’t run on Internet Explorer, only on Firefox and Safari (and possibly on Opera). [Source: Ajaxian]

10Gbps: one cable to rule them all

Intel has just presented a new kind of optical cable technology called “Light Peak”. At 10Gbps it is fast enough to handle any kind of wired data transfer currently in operation: networking, displays, storage, etc. As a bonus, it can transport several protocols at the same time, so multi-function devices only need a single cable (there is no word on whether the cables also carry electricity, though). Lastly, cables can be up to 100m long. Engadget has pictures of the connector which looks suspiciously Firewire-like.
Update: “Apple dictated Light Peak creation to Intel, could begin migration from other standards as early as 2010”. The headline sums up the article pretty well.
Update 2: A CNET article has more information on Light Peak. Apparently it did not originate at Apple.

Clip shows

Every now and then when following a TV series, an awkward kind of episode comes along: a frame story is used—rather heavy-handedly—as an excuse to sum up recent story lines by showing clips from past episodes. After just having watched one too many of those, I googled and found out that this kind of episode has a name, it’s called a “clip show”. The rationale for clip shows is as an introduction for newcomers to a series and to save production costs. A wikipedia article has more on this topic, including some history.

A kinder, gentler philosophy of success

This is a great talk on how modern ideas about success put us under a lot of stress. Many of the points the speaker makes is how chance and fortune relativize many of our unforgiving ideals:

• “Everyone can do anything” has to take into account that while some people do become very successful, it is also highly improbable that you will be one of them. The current prevalence of this idea is directly correlated to equally prevalent low self-esteem.
  
• “You are responsible for yourself” puts many people on a constant emotional roller coaster because they own their successes as well as their failures.
• In middle age England, poor people were considered “unfortunate” (=fortune played a role) whereas nowadays, they are often called “losers”, with far more (negative) personal connotations.
• Great quote: “A snob is anyone who takes a small part of you and uses it to come to a complete vision of who you are.”
• The answer to the question “what do you do” will often determine how much you are respected. So it is no surprise that people take career choices very seriously.
  

Incentives are bad for performance

The talk “Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation” makes a great case that incentives lead to worse performance for any moderately complicated task.
This is similar to the findings reported in the article “Praise Children for Effort, Not Intelligence, Study Says”:

“Praising children's intelligence, far from boosting their self-esteem, encourages them to embrace self-defeating behaviors such as worrying about failure and avoiding risks,” said Dr. Dweck, lead author of the study. “However, when children are taught the value of concentrating, strategizing and working hard when dealing with academic challenges, this encourages them to sustain their motivation, performance and self-esteem.”

Praise of intelligence makes talent and success seem like magic, leading to a defeatist attitude when failing. Praise of effort gives you the feeling that things are fixable.