Grimes: That should better be posted in German. It might work in english, too: Anybody who happens to be in Cologne from April 06th to 13th:
Look out for this cosy venue: The Motoki Wohnzimmer. Motoki will provide us with some happy days during the TRIMM-DICH-TAGE.

Motoki Kollektiv is a bunch of creative blokes and girls who want to share their knowledge, space and time with others. Here’s a panoramic view of the site, if you like that click here for more photos and info. I don’t know if religious habits are part of the program. I will judge for myself because I will attend some of the events. Hope nobody is offended by my name though ;).

The Motoki living room is located in the heart of [Cologne] Ehrenfeld, in 500m distance from Ehrenfeld station and close to Venloer Strasse.
The name Motoki “living room” puts a deeper meaning in the purpose of our place. It is social core of the Motoki collective. We invite friends, neighbors and visitors to events and activities here.

[via]

Here is a new toy for wannabe graphic designers and photographers:

Adobe just released it’s online image proccessing tool Photoshop Express. After creating an account, you are able to upload, edit and publish your photos. Let’s see if this becomes a valuable photo community.
Some info:

• It’s 100% Flash
• There are functions to integrate your work into Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa. Why not Flickr?
• The interface actually does not convince me: Too slow, too much fading effects and shaded buttons.
• Image processing capabilties are reduced, somehow. Do not forget: It’s an online tool, not an replacement of a desktop version of Photoshop.

And Beware: In Adobes General Terms and Conditions it says:

Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.
“Publicly accessible” areas of the Services are those areas of the Adobe network of properties that are intended by Adobe to be available to the general public.

Did I get that right: Adobe is allowed to earn as much dough with my pics as they want to? Without sparing me a dime? No way, this is not going to be used by me. No matter what you think about it - think twice.

Here’s a demo video:

[via]

What can we do? Start here:

• Get informed on the whole thing at Reporters Without Borders
• Look at some pictures and a first hand story from Tibet, thanks to Kadfly
• Sign the petition Stand with Tibet

I will not add my own opinion here unless I have time to express it properly, but please: .
The decision not to boycott the olympic games might be a diplomatic horse trade. I would have preferred rather strict actions, but as long as no officials take part in the opening ceremony, we have a signal at least.

Don’t forget that the incidents in Lhasa are not the only violation of human rights that is on China’s record. I was surprised when I heard about the following facts:

• Case Study: 632 Case Name: Prison Organs from China. American University, Washington.
• Ex-prisoners are a major source of organs for China on TimesUnion.com
• China Tortures & Kills Falun Gong for Human Organs on Conspiracy Planet
• Organ harvesting and extrajudicial execution on Wikipedia

More then 10.000 executions a year in China. How will democratic countries increase their influence on this regime? Frankly: I hope they will do so at all.

Gosh, this is going to be big. Look at those movements. I saw it, and first I thought it was a hoax: Just two guys covered with a technology junk disguise stumbling around.

Quoting the engineering team from Boston Dynamics:

It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog’s legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule.

Second thought: US Army wants one of those. Right, the United States Department of Defense resp. the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is founder of the BigDog Research Program; while Boston Dynamics is the engineering company that specializes in robotics and human simulation.
They began as a spinoff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where Marc Raibert and his colleagues first developed robots that run and maneuver like animals.

Question: Who holds the intellectual property? Engineers or military? I simply hope that civil usage of these walking robots will be first.

Recently on a party we started chatting about Skype. But nobody was able give a precise answer to the question how Skype makes money.

It’s a free-to-use service with more than 220 million users - where does the cash come from? To forestall this: Skype does make money, but yet no profit.

Skype Technologies do not need to provide an expensive server infrastructure because Skype is based on Peer-to-Peer technology.

Let’s look at some facts:

• Skype was founded and created by Niklas Zennström who is also responsible for Kazaa and Joost. These programs also base on Peer2Peer principles
• Skype was launched in August 2003 in an open beta version
• Skype is available free for all major platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile devices)
• Ebay aquired Skype in September 2005 for 2.6 billion Dollars
• In the beginning of 2008, Skype has more than 220 million users

Now, more than two years after the deal, Ebay had to admit that this was far too much: They had to take an impairment write-down of 900 million $, which means that they have taken a loss on its original investment.
To present, Skype earns money only when people use its Skype-In or Skype-Out services:

• Skype-In allows users be called from regular phones
• Skype-Out allows users to call outwards to regular phones or cell phones

And this is charged.
[News.com]

There were plans to integrate Skype into Ebay accounts. By that, buyers and sellers micght simply click a button on the screen to talk to each other, for example when a buyer has a lot of questions about pricy products or when an auction is only minutes from closing. So far, this did not work out. [USAToday]

As a conclusion, Ebay will start rebuilding th whole service:

The Skype service has been tremendously popular as a free service. But at some point, free doesn’t work anymore. It’s not a management problem. It’s a business model issue

[Jordan Rohan, RBC Capital Markets]

With an revenue of only 90 million in the 2nd quarter of 2007, we can’t talk of profit. Ebay is now desperately searching for new possibilities, as Hani Durzy utters:

Skype has been focused on user acquisition, and it’s done a great job. But we also feel like we can find new ways to monetize those users

Some ideas on that:

• Skype can start parsing voice conversations, like Google does by parsing email content with GMail [via]
• They can deliver advertisements on the program’s interface or during phone calls. That might leed to a loss of users who prefer ad-free services.
• Also, Skype might transform the software to open source and develop an additional charged version [A 2nd version of Skype Plus?] with extended VOIP options for companies, such as improved security, intranet functions etc.

Let’s observe it! I want to know how I will be monetized.

Pretty cool:

Food Fight is an abridged history of American-centric war, from World War II to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict. Watch as traditional comestibles slug it out for world domination in this chronologically re-enacted smorgasbord of aggression.

Watch the movie here and have a peek into the Official Food Fight Character Cheat Sheet
where the dishes are explained. Well, sausages & pretzels are the Germans, naturally.

via information aesthetics

Moritz Waldemeyer is a german designer based in London with a huge crush on tech gadgets. He created some really charmin items playing with lights, mainly using LED technology. They are attracting our nerdy eyes like shit attracts flies.
Start off with a portrait on BBC’s culture show here:

Here is the the last one, read more about Joyrider at Gizmodo. The bike that smiles when ridden:

Links:

• Dezeen on Moritz Waldemeyer
• Pixelsumo on Moritz Waldemeyer
• Moritz Waldemeyer on Moritz Waldemeyer [His own Blog]

It’s only on air in france, but going sky rocket on other channels. Why? Hum, it rocks all your sexual phantasies… Making love to an octopuss, for example. Meoooow.

Great Music also:
I Like it Like That
by Tito Nieves