The Powder Toy
The Powder Toy is an awesome goal-less, creativity toy, originally created by Stanislaw K Skowronek and now taken to the next level by Simon Robertshaw. It reminds a bit of the classing falling sands games (1, 2), but much more evolved (much, much more). It basically equips the player with a huge set of materials (elements), building blocks and a virtual 2D laboratory in which it simulates a simple approach to electricity, pressure, heat, wind and fire. The player may save creations on a server or just in a 'stamp' library, to reuse certain design elements. Creations can also be proudly published to the community, which will rate it and eventually develop it further. All of that is solved in-game, without any browser being involved. Standard creations in powder toy are nuclear bombs, flamethrowers, and basically all stuff that blows up. It is good for a start to get a rough idea. But advanced users build clocks, calculators, collections of logical gates and pixel-by-pixel creations of sub-miniature logics and electronics. There are currently only videos of the old version like the one below, which will give you a first glance of what this is about, but if you keep looking for 'The Powder Toy' on youtube, the new version should show up pretty soon. The powder toy includes an auto-update to new versions, which currently show up on a near-daily basis. The development process is fast and open to suggestions of users. There is a forum, that is closely reviewed by the main developer himself. You can download The Powder Toy from the website http://powder.hardwired.org.uk. While you are there, create an account to enable saving from The Powder Toy. It is all free and the forum and development is very active. The powder toy is available for Mac, Windows and Linux! I should issue a warning, though: The Powder Game is a serious health threat, it is highly addictive. Once your first creations get mostly-green ratings, you will find yourself worrying over single pixels/particles for serious amounts of time, just to improve your creations.
Edit: The Powder Toy recently opened its gates to other developers. Edit: The Powder Toy's website is now: http://powdertoy.co.uk Orbiter 2010
Orbiter 2010 is out! The free space flight simulator Orbiter by Martin Schweiger is now available to download in its brand new 2010 version (the last major version had been issued 2006). Orbiter allows you to fly your own spaceship into orbit. And if you want to, it brings you to the planet or it's moon of your choice. You can build your own space station, create and fly downloaded scenarios or just watch the beauty of earth from space. Being a space flight simulator which allows to fly a space shuttle in atmospheric approach or the imaginary Deltaglider IV with horizontal lift off, Orbiter is also a more and more enjoyable flight simulator. 2010's changes concentrate on graphics and openness for 3rd party developers, including API support and an embedded scripting language. The graphics were partly visible in the beta versions and are a huge step forward for Orbiter, the physics and the atmospheric model have been reworked or upgraded. With well known 3rd party developers releasing new models synchronous to the new 2010 version, a nice orchestrated roll-out has been done here. One thing that is still disturbing is, that Orbiter still does not provide native sound output: You will have to download and install Orbiter Sound from Dan's Orbiter Page if you want to hear your rockets roar. Installation is easy, but I just don't understand the reason not to pack the plugin right into the standard release. Gladly Orbiter sticks to its roots: Installation is mainly unpacking everything in a directory of choice. This allows running different versions of Orbiter for testing. If you are into flight simulations, this is a must. Download. Now.
 The new Orbiter logo
Opera reloaded - 10.50 Beta1
While Opera calls the beta version 10.50, the feeling is that of a major release. The User Interface is slick and slender and fits perfect to the current trend to reduce overhead screen space. While this is an assett for any user, it addresses especially owners of netbooks. Windows 7 and Vista users will like the neat integration into their OS, using transparency effects similar to Google's Chrome browser.
 Opera 10.50 Beta offers lots of transparency
But the Opera developers take it a step further and do not reduce any functionality, instead they top up the features with the improved JavaScript engine "Carakan". The engine is not only much faster (according to heise, using the Sunspider benchmark it is 11 times faster than the current stable's v10.10 release), it finally overtakes Firefox and Chrome, needing nearly 1.5 times as long. New is also that JavaScript alerts, HTTP notifications and password manager pop-ups are now handled as part of the regarding tab. It is possible now to keep browsing in a different tab, while another is showing a message pop-up.
But Opera's JavaScript is not the only feature receiving a whole new engine. With the new vector graphics library "Vega", graphics, transitions, scrolling and all other animations are made smoother, more scalable. A Linux version is currently not available, but the first impressions on windows systems are good. Speed, always one of Opera's big advantages, is now taken to a different level. Launching Opera on a windows 7 test system took 3 seconds, while FireFox needs 6 seconds. Opera 10.50 is a definite beta. Some features are not fully
imlemented yet, but the general experience makes hungry for more. As always, the beta can be installed parallel to a stable release of Opera to allow testing.
Edit 14.2.2010:
Serendipity update 1.5.2
The Serendipity blog engine is up-to-date now, with v1.5.2 Long time no see - or - Space. Final frontier.
It was a long time with a lot of silence. Now I quickly want to share a little gem I found: Orbiter is being actively developed. The new version has been called Orbiter 2009 until now, but it is being updated to 2010. First screenshot can be seen here. If you never heard of it: Orbiter is a realtime space flight simulation, created by Martin Schweiger with a definite focus on realism. It is highly extensible, there are hundreds of plugins and add-ons available.
 Delta Glider IV in flight
 Delta Glider IV Cockpit
One famous space ship is the DeltaGlider IV. Check out the author's Gallery for some beautiful picturers. I will be posting some more updates and infos, but for now: I am back :)
Flying Data
Surfing with 300 km/hThe experience of mobile computing and internet connectivity has never been that satisfying. Sitting in a highspeed train with vmax of 300 km/h and losing the internet connectivity only once in 21/2h is something, that never stops to impress me. Throw that in with batteries being able to power your laptop for nearly 9 hours of continuous work and WLAN access shows a more than just a blink of the big step to an always available, personal, virtual availability and presence - unarguably with the inherent potential of good and bad effects. "Information at your fingertips" can be a new kind of knowledge enhancement to the individual user, lacking mainly a non-distracting interface. The future is now - and tomorrow, tooNew interfaces are, as visible with the iPhone effect, turning simple, technophile cell phone users into unexpected tech nerds. Access to information becomes more than just a privilege of the tech savvy, leading to higher sales numbers and lower pricings. Mobile data flats cost only as much now as DSL flats some years ago and more and more productive, helpful or simply entertaining internet connected applications show up and connect users to a huge, always available knowledge base, not only provided by "traditional" knowledge creators like news agencies, publishers or organizations, but as an emergent part of the online community itself. Tell me and I tell you
Wikipedia as the flag ship of self controlled and organized information gathering and award-winning blogs show the tremendous potential of the connected society. In only thirteen years the landscape developed from the first AOL modem dial-up accounts to the always connected casual user, twitting (or twittering?) his or her experience to the world. Still, if you look at a vizualization of our world's data routes, you can clearly notice northern America and Europe as a technology satiated room. The author Dan Simmons established the term of the datasphere, but clearly, we have a long way before us. But the term is good! So, use it!  (c) by Chris Harrison
Look at more stunning vizualizations of Chris Harrison on his homepage Thanks for reading, and here's to technology :) Google Earth - German 3D cities
For all German fans of Google Earth:
There are extensive 3D packages for the cities Berlin and Dresden. Download and double-click the following files to add them to your places list. The files are small and will only tell Google Earth where to download the 3D data. Without further ado, here are the .kmz files: Berlin3D
Dresden3D  2008's Yahoo top ten search words
Ok, this can have one or several of the following causes:
I am sorry, but number two disturbs me a bit. Since I never search for WWE, some people must be really huge fans. However, marketing strategists must be close to crying, realizing how cemented the simple longings of humans are. ;) XBMC - The Media Center for everyone
In the last weeks I stumbled over one of my new favourite applications:
The XBMC Media Center. 
The name comes from XBox Media Center. It was first developed for the Xbox and is now also available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. XBMC is best described as a media hub, and it is free!I usually tend to more spartanic software like MPlayer without GUI, but this one is great. It is simply built for your comfort. You can view Pictures and Movies, listen to your Music and all that over your home network or you can use plugins and scripts to view YouTube videos, read your favourite RSS feeds, get the weatherforecast etc. And all that with a fluid and sexy interface that is even skinnable! Since XBMC comes from the Xbox, a great way to use XBMC is a gamepad or nearly any other input device. You have a wireless gamepad? That's perfect. Even the integrated filemanager works with it. You have to look at it yourself. Start or download it at the XBMC homepage, or go directly to the XBMC flickr page to get an impression. Eater Of The Worlds
Oh, Black Hole, Thee we fear and adore!orThe day the earth stood jittery.The CERN recently came to worldwide attention in a most flustering way: As a possible father of the Eater Of The Worlds, aka black hole. Please, read the whole article. Really, do it! (And have a look at Timo Grubing's blog, who kindly made the illustrations!) Continue reading "Eater Of The Worlds" Want some coffee?
From the section:
I recently had too much time and started cleaning my PC from the inside, leaving the side panel only leaned-on. Later that day I had a cup of Starbucks' Kenya coffee watching the Simpsons and - against my usual principles - put the half empty cup on the computer.
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When it started to rain I turned in my seat to close my window, catching the computer case with my knee, which left the sidepanel tilted sideways. The now falling coffee mug found the panel to be a nice springboard for it's final jump into the casing, spraying lukewarm coffee all over the innards.
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