Posts from the 'Blog' Category

The Görlitzer Crater

One usual weekend program for Berlin is to sit around in Görlitzer Park, drink beers and have talks with friends while enjoying the Summer breeze. There is a huge crater somewhere in the middle where we used to settle – it is a nice spot covered with grass, but it’s quite a mystery as well: how did it get there? Was it really a bomb during the wars as other Berlin expats say?


Traces from the past: office building of the Görlitzer Bahnhof railway station

Because today it’s raining cats and dogs out there and we don’t have the option to go out anyway, I finally had the time to do my research on the topic. Who knows? Maybe I can end those rumors completely, or, if there was a bomb, I can tell when and where it actually went off.

Well, the story starts with Görlitzer Park being a railway station before.


Gleisplan from 1925 and Google Maps from 2012

The railway career of the now park and seasonal football stadium started in 1867, and lasted until 1951 – when all the trains going through West-Berlin from here were departing from Osktreuz instead. Although according to maps, the station was already demolished by 1954, it actually remained relatively undisturbed for ten more years, until the Wall has been built up and all the hopes for a reconstruction were gone. (More about the history on Wikipedia.)


The station in 1879, 1946, and people collecting wood in 1975, to use for heating their homes.
Images by © Landesbildstelle Berlin

Berliners are famous of reusing whatever they can – and traces of the railway station can still be found all over the park: some goods sheds and office buildings are used until this day, and there is a swimming bath built on the site of the former station. The old railway bridge offers a foot path to cross the Landwehrkanal and walk to Treptow.

I wanted to know about the crater though, and at this point it could have been a service pit as well as something made by the rumored bomb. The Wikipedia article mentioned the Görlitzer Tunnel that was opened to the public in 1910 – an underpass, connecting Oppelner Strasse and Liegnitzer Strasse. Suits well: it’s right where the crater is – was it maybe bombed?


The Görlitzer Tunnel in 1989 and the crater in 2012 (archive photo from the German WikiPedia)

The photo above shows the tunnel in 1989 in a rather good state, and according to the article the tunnel remained in use until the early 90s. When the area has been developed into the Görlitzer Park of today though, as soon as pedestrians had public access to the park, the tunnel became redundant – and later that decade it has been destroyed, creating the mysterious crater.

No bombs from the World War involved.

Sources of information used in this post, that were not directly linked (yet): 3D models of the station, Senate Department for Urban Development

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Touchscreens with something more to touch

Right after we got used to touchscreen keyboards and threw away our old devices full off buttons, a company wants to bring those keys back. Tactus Technology invented a user interface, where completely transparent physical inputs rise up from the touch-screen surface on demand, all controlled by the applications.

Tactus Technology Introduction from Tactus Technology Inc. on Vimeo.

One could say that for everyday users it’s completely useless to have buttons or physical feedback while typing: most of the people even switch off the haptic feedback while typing on Android. Nevertheless, it could be of use for people who need assistance, or work in a less ideal environment – say, a DJ playing and using an iPad on the stage, and with the Tactile Layer finds all the controls without looking.

We will see. Based on what the guys write on their webpage, the technology could come into our lives as soon as by tomorrow:

With the buttons enabled, users can push and type or rest their fingers as they would with any physical button or keyboard. When the buttons are disabled, they recede into the screen, becoming invisible and leaving a smooth, seamless flat touch-screen with maximum viewing area.

Our Tactile Layer technology easily integrates with today’s touchscreen-based devices (smart phones, tablets, personal navigation systems, gaming devices, etc.) by simply replacing the front layer of the display stack, known as the “lens”, “window” or “cover glass”. Our dynamic Tactile Layer component is the same thickness as the layer it replaces and requires no change to the underlying display or touch sensor.

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Coca-Cola cans and the new minimal

In general it’s worth watching how big brands redesign their products from time to time. Whether it’s carmakers applying facelifts to their vehicles, or Coca-Cola tailoring its image for a new audience, the design trends they follow can be determined with great accuracy.


London 2012 and Summer 2011 cans (images from DesignBoom and TheAWSC)

The idea for this blog post came from Coca-Cola’s limited-edition cans which they created for the USA team on the London Olympics 2012. Having Coke’s colors and image as a base, the graphics made full use of Transport For London’s strong corporate identity: its very minimalistic style is blended in the design as well as the original Johnston typeface.

Minimal is not completely new for Coca-Cola, last year they unveiled a summer collection that had a similar touch to it: simple silhouettes of every day objects with the company’s logo in them. That gives us a great opportunity to observe how “minimal” changed in a year.

Now, at least for London, the graphics became much softer, cleaner, the forms lack those sharp edges and tiny lines – but they are not monochrome anymore. The designers applied more shades of red, white and grey and even blue – and seem to used more tools: drop shadows, overlaying objects etc. With all these tweaks, the new can designs look cleaner and more minimal, while having significantly more detail. Quite a few magicians working there.

Called the Coca-Cola ‘Eight-Pack’, the cans designed by design studio Tucker Duckworth feature graphical silhouettes of some of Team USA’s Olympic champions, medalists and hopefuls in action within their sports.

More Coke cans from the last four decades at coke-cans.com.

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The future with Google Glasses

For the last ten years, if I want to see my inbox when on the road, I know to reach for my phone. This move for me is probably as natural, as it is for my father to check his watch for the time, or, for my future son, to check his whatever social network thing in his glasses. Yet, for me, for now, Internet in glasses is just proper craze.

If you give the task to engineers, to design a device that runs a distance between two points, they will most probably draw something with wheels. Similarly, if you want them to make something that’s connected to the Internet, you will get a screen of any size next to a modem in a soap shaped brick. Based on the proportions you will call it then a tablet or a phone or Galaxy Note.

And there are always those engineers out there who, with a twinkle in the eye, will keep developing those walking robots – until a point, when they are clever enough to actually be used. And then we have to get used to them.

I’m sure Google with the glasses is at this point now. These devices are so new that it’s almost impossible to imagine how we will get on with them: people still try to find out how the iPad fits into their lives, and that basically is just a big phone.

Hopefully by the time this new augmented reality and the non-stop connectivity arrives, we will be clever enough to know when to switch off and gain focus to things that actually matter. Otherwise, the network will have it’s greatest chance yet, to completely suck us in.

If you thought you are connected 24/7, now is time to think again.

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Baby’s birth on an MRI movie

The Charite University Hospital in Berlin recently released a video that documents the first birth in an MRI machine. (And it turned out that New Scientists has a video about how the baby got there!)


For the video, go to NewScientist’s webpage.

The video captures the active second stage of labour as the mother expels the fetus. The technique, called cinematic MRI, takes repeated images of the same slice of the body before joining them up to create an ultra-detailed video. It was recently turned on unborn twins for the first time to study a common complication where one fetus receives more of the blood supply and becomes much larger than the other.

By the way, there MRI video about the conception: Human sex from the inside out.

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Sea captain vs startup leader

During the last two weeks I was on a sailing course to become a licensed skipper. On the training ships, we changed the roles from time to time: everyone was on command for a while, as well as did some sunbathing on the prow – so that we could observe some leader archetypes at work.


Image for illustration purposes. Source.

Directing 2-4 people for a common goal is something I do a lot – and so did the others I was with: on our boat everyone had a company or office, but at least some projects to run. Our approach to leadership could be described by the way we were captaining the ship.

The nervous one wanted to have control over every task alone, and ended up micromanaging the team. The tasks were too many to pay attention to all of them though, and the boat did sudden moves – which, on stormy waters could lead to emergencies, and in breeze, slows the boat down to zero. Not to mention that the mood on the deck is not the best when someone is yelling all the time.

The silent one doesn’t say anything, just controls the ship and waits for everyone to follow the lead and do the job alone. The only problem is that on a sailing boat you have to set up everything according to the wind – and if the ship changes directions, your wind will come from somewhere else, too. Giving enough time for the crew to get ready for those events is key to keep the boat going.

The know it better guy, well, knew everything a bit better – and ignored even the instructor’s advices. Not listening to your crew might make you seem to be confident, but there are some objects or things you simply can’t see from where you are standing. Ignoring ideas and point of views leaves you with some missing opportunities, or perhaps puts your ship into unnecessary danger.

The dodderer was unsure what to do until the point when something really had to happen. Then he tried to do all tasks in a second – and ended up to be the nervous one: yelling, acting in haste and eventually missing the route, slowing down the ship and putting the crew in danger with ropes and rigs going every direction.

The undecided was even unsure if he’s in command. If you don’t know where you are leading your team, you probably are not leading them anywhere.

Which one of these was me? In the beginning of the course I was all of them – and hopefully, with time, I’ll end up being none. I learned a lot about running a ship (and a business!), and will try to keep a few principles on a ship and in my teams as well.

First, have and communicate a clear vision: if everyone knows exactly what the common goals are, they can think together and not only follow the orders been told. That way everyone has time to get ready for all moves, and eventually, the ship “controls itself”: it’s smoother, faster, and takes considerably less effort to drive.

Second, listen to the team members. From different point of views you see a whole different slice of the world – the clearer you see the picture, the more accurate decisions you can make.

Third, adapt. Sometimes if you want to go straight, you have to turn a few times before to get to your point faster. In a company, being unable to change will eventually put you out of business.

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Three minutes around the world

Chemin Vert is an immersive video of a trip on the road at supersonic speed spanning across five continents and four seasons. The title “Chemin Vert” refers to its soundtrack from musician A Ghost Train.

Chemin Vert from Giacomo Miceli on Vimeo.

Giacomo Micheli’s project is another great one that utilizes Google Street View’s pictures and creates something stunning out of it. It’s a beautiful age: we’ve got all the tools, and it’s up to us, what we do with them.

(You might want to watch Address is Approximate by The Theory if you missed it so far.)

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Tweet embedding in WordPress

With the new WordPress version, quoting a tweet from Twitter is as easy as copying the direct link to the post’s body. The blog engine then pulls the text (or the whole conversation) from Twitter, and replaces the direct link with the whole lot.

That means, this: “http://twitter.­com/wmguk/status/213682841010192384” becomes this:

The tweets seem not to be truly cached and embedded in the post though: they will keep being displayed in the blog only until the original texts on Twitter are still in place. After deleting those, only the original direct link will be displayed in your live website, which makes the whole thing rather fancy – but not very usable.

Update: another downside, the text of the tweet seems to be the only thing displayed in the feed.

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Getting rid of Google Maps

Being dependent on someone else’s technology feels bad. Especially if that someone can an does change it’s pricing from time to time – more so, if those changes could completely bail you out of business. That kind of fear builds mountains – or, for iOS 6 a new Maps service that replaces Google Maps.

Every time I design products where we need to use the Google Maps API, I have a certain feeling: the maps are great, we can estimate the short term costs, but the fact is that we are dependent on one vendor. I’m really glad to see that another player is entering the game now.

That’s the business perspective of course. As a user, I’m simply curious. The first screenshots of Maps are not that great (keep in mind that in Europe, we probably will receive that 3D sugar much much later than users in the US), but by doing my research, I’ve found a really promising fact: the new software is based on the services of C3 Technologies, which is a research lab of the SAAB group.

That means, at least in theory, with this technology creating those high resolution 3D maps might be closer than we think. “Since the high-resolution maps are accurately georeferenced, coordinates can be extracted and used for leading indirect fire such as artillery, as well as close air support targeting.”

And, of course, locating the nearest Starbucks.

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