Happy New Year. Resolutions? Not making them this time; though I stuck to all of them last year.

 

Next week, my 9 month industrial project at Vodafone starts. Minor downside for now: it's in Germany and I don't have accommodation yet. The research I will encounter promises to be interesting. Unfortunately it will also be confidential – including my own project. So in 2009 you won't read much about it here.

Maybe I should devote a blog category to my adventures in Dusseldorf. The city looked really nice while I was there (Christmas market!) and the quality of living appears to be amongst the worlds finest.

 

Picture by Jörg Dickmann (www.joergdickmann.de)

I will be working in one of the buildings on the right. Although I don't know anybody nor speak any German, I'm very much looking forward to live there.

Auf wiedersehen!

For Christmas this year, I spread a silly little vid amoung my friends.

The Ocarina iPhone app converts your iPhone into a real – you guessed it – Ocarina. It uses the microphone to convert airflow into sound. It's been around for a while and received alot of attention since it came out. But what actually triggered me to check it out was the whole experience the creators offered.

There are heaps of music applications out there, but what separates this from the rest, is that there is a community actively generating so called "scores" for this app:



Next to this, you can also see other people play all over the world.

Obviously, the creators want you to learn how to play: they dedicated the startup screen to it. But when you take a closer look, you notice that they have put some effort in a PHP platform for the community to generate and share scores.

The power is in the usability / readability. Instead of notes, scores just show how to place your fingers. Every music newbie can play and share any tune with a bit of practice.

 

For me, without this platform, it would just be another application - a nice party trick you test once.

But now, it's more of an experience.