It’s unbelievable how the iPad dominates any (technology) news. That’s one of the best things that can happen to a company. Good job(s).
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“I googled it” is a trademark violation
Last week I learned a lot about trademark law and the fact that you can only register a trademark if it doesn’t describe your service/product. Now I found this nice piece from Cameron Chapman with a fact I never thought about:
if you say you “Googled” something or you “Photoshopped” something, that’s a trademark violation.The trademarks there are technically the Google search engine, and Adobe Photoshop software.
The problem that companies run into is that if they don’t protect their trademarks from use like this, the trademark can become “genericized” and they can lose their trademark rights to it, meaning anyone could then use the name.
Why it’s worth spending $300 on headphones
Last week I bought myself some premium headphones (Bose® QuietComfort® 15 Acoustic Noise Cancelling® Headphones). Most of my friends and family didn’t understand how one can spend such an amount of money on headphones. For me, there are three reasons which justify this buy:
- Get rid of everyday distraction
- Enjoy clear sound
- Protect your sensible ears
Before I start: Bose doesn’t pay me any money for that – my blog isn’t famous enough to be payed for sponsoring … yet 
Get rid of everyday distraction
These days, it’s too loud out there. Acoustic distraction is everywhere. A good noise reduction filters out this disruptive factor. It’s not only the loud engines when traveling by train or plane, but also the people around you. They always seem to report something interesting which makes it impossible to concentrate on your current work. The problem is, that you can’t close your ears like you can close your eyes. With your eyes, you can also focus on one area, but sound waves always find their way into your ear – especially the noisy ones.
Some may argue that listening to music is just another way of distraction. I already wrote about music while working with the conclusion that it may even support you. But by the way, you can also just run noise reduction without listening to music.
Enjoy clear sound
This sound is brilliant. Not only because of noise reduction! You seem to sit next to every instrument playing. I was watching a film I had watched before and heard some sound effects I never realised before. It also helps me to understand some slangy words as a non english native speaker. A must have for every music-lover
Protect your sensible ears
Some may not have any problems being distracted by surrounding noises or voices. They just crank the volume up. This does damage your ears. It’s even more dangerous with in-ear headphones. For more details see “Preventing Hearing Damage When Listening With Headphones”.
Slow internet connection after Snow Leopard update
After my update from Leopard to Snow Leopard on my iMac I had problems with my internet speed. Websites needed minutes to load and downloads were unbelievable slow. On my PC with Windows7 there were no problems and the speed was all right.
After some time and sloooooow online research I found the answer: There are some property list files you have to delete (in User-Library):
- com.apple.internetconfig.plist
- com.apple.internetconfigpriv.plist
- com.apple.internetconnect.plist
I found this solution here: http://www.macgadget.de/Forum/WLAN-sehr-langsam
You should also be able to solve this problem by creating a new account on your mac
Grails with Microsoft SQL 2005
Because of my company’s IT infrastructure I had to prepare a grails application to work with MS SQL 2005. After having no problems with MySQL I didn’t expect any big problems. But being a newbie in Microsoft’s SQL world I had some problems that I want to share with you:
First problem was the right configuration of the MS SQL server. By default, there was only the windows authentification set, so I had no chance to access the server by SQL-Server authentification. (You can change this in the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio in your server preferences on the security page). If you want to use the so called “integrated Security”, you can do this by adding “integratedSecurity=true” to your connection url.
The next thing was to enable remote access by activating the TCP/IP protocoll (this is turned off by default). You can activated it in your SQL Server Configuration Manager. Expand “SQL Server 2005 network configuration” and select “protocols for ‘SQLEXPRESS’”. After that, right click on TCP/IP and click “activate”. Now double click on “TCP/IP”, go to “IP-adresses”, scroll down to “IPAll” and insert your TCP-Port (by default “1433″).
After I finished the configruations I was able to connect the database with my grails applications using this url:
jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=applicationDatabase;
But before that I added the the MS SQL JDBC-driver to the application’s “lib”-folder. Use the “sqljdbc4.jar” file. Now I only had to change the DataSource.groovy file. My dataSource now looks like this:
dataSource {
pooled=false
driverClassName = “com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver”
username=”bdb_user”
password=”password}
[...]
environments{
development{
dataSource{
dbCreate=”update”
url=”jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=applicationDatabase;”
[...]
After being able to connect to the database, an other problem occured. My application had a class called “User” which didn’t cause problems in MySQL. But MS SQL has the keyword “User” reserved. So I had to change this what really hasn’t been funny. The lection I learned from this: Test your app already after finishing the model development on the later prodution system.
Update (27th January 2010): You don’t have to worry about giving a class the name “User”. You can just change the hibernate mapping like this:
static mapping = { table ‘users’ }
(thanks to mb)
Posted in Development, Grails 6 Comments
Experiencing the new Magic Mouse at Bluewaters Apple Retail Store
Tonight, I went to Bluewater, a big shopping and leisure centre 20 miles away from the heart of London. I visited the Apple Store to have a look at the new Magic Mouse. She looks very nice, that’s why I call her ’she’ and not ‘it’. She’s a masterpiece in terms of design as nearly every Apple product. But that’s what I also saw on pictures. But what impression does she make in ‘reality’?
Apple Retail Store at Bluewater
As I first saw her I was surprised about the size. Very small. After some minutes I was also able to touch her. I knew that she was cordless, but there was a security cord attached. That led me to my first problem: A normal not cordless mouse (is there a word for it? Cordmouse?) has it’s cord at the front, where the buttons are placed, but the security cord was on the other side of the Magic Mouse. And if you look at this mouse, it’s hard to see the difference between front and back ( there’s a decent Apple that helps your orientation). Anyway, I started using her the wrong way around and was wondering why they inverted the mouse direction in the preferences.
Apple's new Magic Mouse
After some seconds I realised my problem and turned her around. The next thing I realised were the square-edged sides. This felt very uncomfortable to me. All the mouses I used so far tried to be very round so maybe it’s just a thing of getting used to it.
The Gestures of Apple's new Magic Mouse
Using the gestures and scrolling worked but needs some training. It’s difficult to judge this because I was standing and didn’t have a good position to test this properly. But one thing is certain: It’s not that easy going as shown in Apple’s video:
I was a little bit disappointed about the Magic Mouse, but that doesn’t stop me from buying one… Apple, how do you do that!?
Should we listen to music while working?
This Post is about a study by Chrisitine Philips called “Does Background Music Impact Computer Task Performance?“. As the title already tells this study is about background music while we’re working on the computer. I’m often exposed to the situation that I can’t concentrate because of distraction by other noises or voices. Then, I often put some headphones in my ear to center on the topic again. But does that really boost productivity?
To find out (and to have a subject for my homework in HCI), I read this study by Christine Philips.
Abstract
The study was elaborated at the Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) at Wichita State University. The SURL team specializes in software/website user interface design, usability testing, and research in human-computer interaction.
Christine Philips did this study five years ago in 2004. It was the time when the term “web 2.0″ was born, which was created by Dale Dougherty and Craig Cline. The world began to realize that the web was going to be an important part of life. New technologies arose and people used the opportunity to convince and surprise with their websites. Growing bandwidths made it even possible to transfer audio. This could have been a motivation for Philips to do this study.
To find out the effect of background music on computer task performance, participants were exposed to either Classical music, Punk music, or No Music. Two things were measured:
- Attention to the topic
- Quality of the task solution
Pilot studies
Philips lists a great number of pilot studies dealing with background music at work. However, those studies all deal with task of the “real” world an not with those done at the computer. Here are the results of some studies:
- “As a task increased in complexity, listeners preferred music that was simple” (Arkes, Rettig & Scougale (1986))
- “Background music on cognitive test performance led to improved performance when compared with a control condition” (Cockerton, Moore, & Norman (1997))
- “Calming music led to better participant performance on an arithmetic task and a memory task than no music” (Hallman, Price, and Katsarou (2002))
- “Participants who listened to Mozart performed better on spatial tasks” –>Mozard-Effect (Rauscher, Shaw, & Ky (1993))
Those results let us assume that background music has also an effect on computer tasks
The Study
Assumptions
Philips hypothesizes two assumptions:
- “Communication of participants would be more task-oriented when the music was perceived as conducive to the task”
- “Those in the timed condition would report more feelings of frustration on tasks and websites than those in the untimed condition.”
I do not concentrate on the second assumption because the time is a fact I’m not interested in. For me it’s important to find out if I can pay more attention to the topic I’m working at while listening to background music. (By the way, the second assumption didn’t bring any significant results anyway.)
Operationalization
There are two constructs that had to be operationalized:
- Attention to the topic: The participants were divided into groups of two. Those groups were able to communicate via chat. This conversation was recorded and evaluated. All off-topic comments have been counted. Operationalization: The more off-topic comments, the less Attention to the topic
- Quality of the task solution: The given task was compared with a suggested solution. Operationalization: The more accordance with the suggested solution, the merrier the quality of the task solution (less points are better).
In-/Dependent variables
- Dependent variable: Those are the variables that are not influenced by Philips. Those are the reached points of the task and the number of off-topic comments.
- Independent variables: Those variables were diversified by Philips (time and music)
Modifying variables
Modifying variables are variables that could have had an influence on the result. Philips doesn’t mention even one of them. Possible variables could be:
- Hardware
- Volume of the music
- Musical taste
Results
Unfortunately, Philips doesn’t tell a lot about result facts and so you have to belief in Philips statements of significance or not. The interesting result ist that participants listening to classical music reached a better score than all the other participants. But looking at the off-topic comments there was a surprise. Participants listening to no music made fewest off-topic comments though not bringing best score results. Here are there results in two diagrams (I killed the independent variable time, because I’m not interested in its results):
Diskussion
The results brings us two interesting facts:
- Participants listening to classical music have the best quality of task solution but no significant better result in off-topic comments than participants listening to no music
- Participants listening to no music bring less quality in task solution although doing less off-topic comments.
To combine those two results: Classical music brings better quality of task solution, but participants listening to no music brought a better attention to the topic. At first glance, this looks like a contradiction, but looking at a study of Jensen back in 2001 could bring an explanation for that. This study by Jensen says that people exposed to classical music told more about private stuff. If we can summarize this, classical music enables us to bring quality to a task solution without addicting oneself entirely to a topic.
For me it is important to know, that background music does not district me from my work but in some cases even supports me.
How I got this blog started
At the beginning, there was only a decision. A decision to create my own blog. I also knew which direction of the content should go. I knew, that I want to write about something I’m interested in, something I want to get known better. But to have those ideas in your head doesn’t bring you a post-ready blog. Okay, I could have gone through the famous 5-minute WordPress installation and just have settled for the default theme, but that wouldn’t have satisfied me as a student in online media.
The Logo
The first practical thing I did for my blog was the logo. My first draft looked like this:
But this was not cool. There are too many font styles and too many elements (thanks to mat.i.am). After that I decided to reduce the logo to this:
But after looking at it for a while I decided to change the color and bring it into a compact format. The result was the current logo:
The Theme
As I thought about the design of this blog, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted it to look like. I started playing around in Photoshop to create a mockup. I didn’t create a moodboard or a wireframe. I think that’s not necessary for a blog. Here are some mockups of which I’m really not proud!
I didn’t like any of those drafts, so I started once again. This fifth try was it. It’s nearly what you can see now on my blog. Now I had to bring this mockup into the web. I already had a server and a domain, so I only had to think about the content management. For a moment, I thought about Typo3 and its huge functional range, but in the next moment I found it too overdimensioned. The next thing in my head was WordPress. It’s the most famous blog puplishing application and makes blogging really easy. In the beginning I only wanted to give WordPress a try, but already after the fast installation I was convinced to use it. It was easy to get to know how it works and all I had to do now was to create a theme.
To fasten the creation of the lsonline theme as you can see it now, I used the Thematic Framework. The framework helps by giving you a solid base for your blog. It’s search-engine optimized, includes CSS-Resets, the 960 Grid System and some more useful things. After installing this framework, my Blog looked like this Thematic demo page. All I had to do now was to create a child theme which builds on the thematic theme. As you can see with a click on the images above, I also installed the Lightbox (Lightbox Plus Plug-In) and some other useful plug-ins. Now I can start blogging!
My Blog: Code – Design – Usability
Hey out there, I’m happy to introduce my new blog to you. This first entry is not only about this blog, but also about me and what brought me to write about code, design and usability.
About me
Since 2007 I have been studying online media at a German academy called “Duale Hochschule Baden Württemberg Standord Mosbach“. This academy is in Mosbach near my hometown Neckarsulm. The special thing about this program of study at “Duale Hochschule” is the strong contact to practice. While I study I’m also served in a business. In constant terms theory an practice change. This is an optimal way to transfer learned stuff into usable knowledge.
The study course online media is about web-development, web/media-design, HCI, e-Commerce, networks, multimedia engineering and some more technologies dealing with the world wide web.
The company I work for is a big trading concern near Künzelsau. To get to know all the departements there is a constant exchange of my work. I have already been in following departements:
- e-Learning
- Marketing/Advertising
- Design
- e-Commerce
I’ve also been part of some projects in my company and academy:
- Creating a podcastportal with CMS First Spirit
- Creating a generic ratings platform with Groovy/Grails
- Creating an image database with Groovy/Grails (in progress)
About this blog
As the headline alreade tells, this blog will mainly be about three things a web-developer should be interested in. Coming from the backend (code) to the frontend (design) directly into the users head (usability). I’ll write down my experiences, my discoveries but also my questions.
I think this blog will help me to think about topics intensely and critically. I will write in english to reach more people on the one hand and to improve my english on the other hand. It would be great if this blog became a comment-based dialogue. Let’s give it a try!