Bioplastics, wallet, vinegar

Jay showed us how to make our own bioplastic wallets. Now I have one too, and apart from my own bad stitching I like it a lot. If only it didn’t smell so strongly of vinegar… but I did realized that I really like the very compact form factor. Forces me to cut down on stuff in my wallet, and that’s a good thing. Make sure to check out all the different workshops offered at Open Design City. (You can ask for different workshops, too!)

Collaboratory

We’ve had the first event of the Google-initiated Collaboratory “Internet & Society” with politicians to discuss the initial results of a survey we conducted. Quite an impressive and stimulating event actually: After an initial presentation of survey results by Google and the research team, the topic cluster “godparents” gave some insights into the wide range of answers we got. (All topic clusters hat one or two members of the expert groups as so-called godparents to split up the work. Yours truly was responsible for Anonymity On The Web.) Then we all split up into group discussions for an hour and had some in-depth discussions. Good stuff. We’ll be chewing the results to write up a final report.

Geek dinner

I was told one is random, two’s a trend, three’s a tradition. Or something. So I won’t hesitate calling our geek dinners at Kimchi Princess a tradition now. Lovely, inspiring dinner with Michelle, Igor, Johannes, Caroline, Matt, Ronen, Jan, Boris and plenty others. Nothing beats inspiring conversations with great folks over yummy dinner and cold drinks.

More speaking

Seems like there’ll be a number of speaking gigs coming up, both at smaller conferences and in-house client workshops. Also seems like this always comes in waves. One day I’m sure I’ll discover a pattern there so I’ll be able to line up a more coherent travel plan.

Android

I’ve been trying to root my HTC Hero to update to at least Android 2.1 (or even Android 2.2?) without much success so far. (No damage either!) Hints are very welcome!

Question

If you had to describe weeknotes in one word, which would it be: a) annoying b) useful c) don’t matter ? Feel free to let me know in the comments or any other channel. Turns out it takes more discipline than expected, and there’s only so many things I can write about at any given time while others I cannot discuss for awhile. So I’m not sure if I should keep sending them out or if you’d prefer not having them in this place. Thanks for your feedback!

Image: Das Fest 2007: Skateboard-Miniatur, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from leralle’s photostream