Well, as I found Jon Atherton‘s jaja project on Kickstarter, I didn’t have to think twice to back the project. Here’s a little video of the new pressure sensitive stylus for iPad:

In the past month, they made some improvements in design and so on, and I think they’re busy producing the popular technology project right now. The shipment date slipped from April to May, so I hope I will get my stylus by the end of May. If so, I’m going to write a review of the stylus at the beginning of June.

If you’d like to know more take a look at the newly launched website http://www.jajastylus.com/ ]]> http://tobsch.com/2012/04/27/jaja-pressure-sensitive-stylus-ipad-kickstarter/feed/ 0 http://tobsch.com/2012/04/04/why-spotify-isnt-the-thing/ http://tobsch.com/2012/04/04/why-spotify-isnt-the-thing/#comments Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:15:48 +0000 tobsch http://tobsch.com/?p=192 A few weeks ago Spotify finally launched in Germany. Here, the music business isn’t to manage as easy as in many other countries, because the artists and their work are “under protection” of the so called GEMA. But obviously Spotify got the right to let us Germans listen to (mostly) all the music on the network.

Now, on the first day of the service, I signed up on Spotify with my Facebook account and I could instantly listen to all the music. I got a Premium account for the first 48 hours, because I downloaded their iPhone app. So I was looking for many songs and artists which haven’t already been in my iTunes library. I have to admit that only a few songs and albums came to my mind, but nothing really special and by far not as much as I thought I could be looking for in Spotify before I had it. So what to do then? Hence, I listened to the international TOP 100, not to the Germany TOP 100, because there is so much German music in it I don’t really like.

Over the next few days, I liked Spotify really much, because you can find almost every artist and song you’d like to hear right now. But what striked me is the fact that you loose something, what I noticed right away. I remember the days when you had to buy an album or a song (on CD), you saved money for it and bought it with some passion for it. You took your time and listened to the new songs with excitement. The excitement is still the same, but the way you’re looking forward to it completely changed in my opinion.

And now, with Spotify, you don’t even have the feeling that you OWN the song, you just RENTed it in a way. For a true lover of music and a passionate listener, this is something what makes me worry and generates a feeling of letdown.. We don’t own the song any more, we just listen to it with a distance between myself and the musical work which is much bigger than before.

So in my opinion, for an admirer of artistic musical works, Spotify isn’t the thing.

Well, I had a meeting with one of their teachers there. He’s a designer and teaches all the things you need to know about 3D software like Rhino 3D and so on. The thing is, all courses are taught in English (I knew it before) and so I was expecting to have to speak English with him. But right after he opened the door, I noticed: He speaks perfectly German. So he could answer all my questions in German and I had quite a lot questions. We talked about many details of the school for about 2 hours, the study and the people who study and teach there. There are about 20 students in every class and he said it isn’t rare that there are 10 different nationalities in every class. So the FDA is a very international school in the heart of Florence and the heart of Tuscany.

Even if I just visited the academy, I felt very homey. There isn’t much space as far as I can tell, but maybe this is the reason why everyone feels so close with the school. Supposedly, if I start studying at Florence Design Academy for let’s say only a year, I know everyone there. Every student and every teacher. They have 200-250 students at a max every year.

If you have any more questions about FDA, the school and more, feel free to leave a comment with all your questions!

Because of his 7-inch size, reading of magazines is awful. I used the 14-day trial of Popular Science to test it. Everything is so small on this display and the processor (or the software yet installed) isn’t able to provide enough power to zoom in smoothly. The pictures that constitutes a magazine in combination with it’s texts don’t take effect. If you are used to an iPad, forget reading a magazine on a kindle fire, you are going to be very disappointed!
I use the kindle fire for one thing only at the moment: reading a normal e-book. It’s a pleasure to hold this device in your hands and you can read a book for a long time, much longer than you can do so on an iPad. Moreover the material of the kindle’s back is very sensitive while the front and the edges should be much improved especially in its quality. There’s too much pulpy plastic on the edges which links the front with the back, but this is another reduction in costs to have this very low price of $199.-

One last advantage of the 7-inch kindle fire: it fits in your pocket, at least in Levi’s 511′s trouser pocket.

By the way: Happy St. Nicholas Day!

It would be a waste of money. But wait.. Amazon released a new device called kindle fire a few months ago, didn’t they? Oh yes, but exclusively in the USA. I live in Germany and don’t have the money nor the time to travel to America in the next few month.

Fortunately a good friend of mine lives in San Francisco and he pre-ordered one kindle fire for me as soon as it was available on the Amazon online store. He had received a package from Amazon over a week ago and instantly sent it to my address in Germany. The package arrived on November 23 and I was really curious to hold my kindle fire – probably one of the first here in Germany – in my hands.

It’s a user-friendly and Amazon-like packaging. But here you’ll notice for the first time: it’s no Apple product and there’s no unpackaging ceremony like that of an iPad. Well okay, I knew that this product is much cheaper than Apple’s, so I didn’t care. The low price of $ 199,- is the reason why I bought this Android tablet, too.

The kindle fire is not as light as I thought. I got used to the weight of my iPad 2, but when you see how small the kindle fire is compared to the iPad, you think it has to be much lighter. When you press the power button (the only one on the whole device) at the bottom, the kindle fire starts and it takes a little time to load. When finished, there’s a short introduction to the features and next you’ll be able to finish the setup Amazon already started. You are going to see the information of your Amazon account pre-installed, but don’t worry, you can change the account and finish the setup with another one.

I’m going to tell you some more details about the new kindle fire and how fast/slow it is in my next blog post.

I graduated from school, visited Rome, Florence and Venice in Italy and so much more cities in Germany. The most exciting experience was that we released our first app at Splodge. We’ve been in Florence when we received the message from Apple that Markers was approved and is now available for sale on the App Store. We were so excited about the first sales reports and I can remember: we were quiet astonished! It was really amazing. But enough, I won’t let you get any insights.

However, I’m looking forward to the future, there’s so much to come. I never had any problem with the natural phenomenom of getting older and I will never have. It’s just an increasing number and this allows you to have a greater life experience. I think this fact is a good reason to celebrate my 20th birthday tomorrow, isn’t it?

With that said let’s have some lyrics by Linkin Park respectively a text written by Martin Luther King in the end of this article:

Wisdom, Justice, and Love

“I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice… A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love…” – Martin Luther King

Last but not least: What will the next 365 days bring for me and you?

What do the folks at Pixar do to produce such amazing animation films?

Although I’ve been to San Francisco and to Apple’s One Infinite Loop in 2010, I didn’t have the time and chance to visit the Pixar campus in Emeryville (they wouldn’t have let me in anyway). I heard that it’s a great place to work there and that so many people just love what they are doing. They almost live the life of the characters of their movies, of course in a more realistic way. What’s important is that for example “Toy Story” is about the life of toys trying to protect themselves by sticking together and fighting for only one purpose, to be the beloved little ones of young children. Everyone was a kid and played with toys. So a Pixar movie reflects times long past and takes its spirit from these memories. They succeeded in mirroring real situations to more childlike things, so everyone is able to understand it. Combined with beautiful graphics, great animations and such an attention to detail transformes all the movies to a goldmine.

I suggest watching “Toy Story” and all the other films to all the people who thought that watching a Pixar movie isn’t worth it. If you’re from Germany, Austria or Switzerland you have the chance to try it out on Pro7 today. If not, there are many short movies from Pixar which are really funny, too. Don’t miss it!

Always remember: This is another company Steve Jobs believed in and knew that it would be big one time. See what John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer of Pixar, and Ed Catmull, President of Pixar, think about Steve and his role to the DNA of this computer animation studio. ]]> http://tobsch.com/2011/11/20/the-secret-about-disney-and-pixar-movies/feed/ 0