Tanker fra den øverste gren i abetræet..

First of all - sorry for the extended period of radio silence.. I've been working on a new project concerning an IT system for a health project in Guinea-Bissau (www.bandim.org).

The Danish tech magazine ComputerWorld interviewed me for an article about my new job as well as a gallery from the work environment in Bissau.. check it out here (in Danish)

Some mobile statistics..

I've been doing some number crunching on recent figures (December 2011) from www.netmarketshare.com Denmark is still Apple country in comparison with the rest of EU. If we look at the numbers for desktop computers, Denmark also has an above EU average saturation of Apple products..

Notice also that Denmark is almost exclusively a nation of Apple OR Android users. It will be exciting to see how these figures change during 2012 - and if the fruity Mango (Windows Phone 7.5) will take part in the fun.

As a celebration of reaching download number 10 billion through Android Market, »big G« has released some interesting infographics regarding the usage of Android Market..

Interestingly Scandinavia is quite well represented in the statistics, with Denmark clocking in as the 8th most app crazed nation..

See the full infographic on the Android Dev. blog:  http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/12/closer-look-at-10-billion-downloads.html

As promised, the prosimian.persistence C#/MySQL database ORM library is now made open source and available on Google Code

Read more

Go directly to Google Code

Adobe's decision to discontinue flash on mobile devices is the de facto kill shot to flash.. Which could create a pressure for better HTML5 tools and further strengthen HTML5's position in the market.. But where will that leave Adobe Air? Hmm..

As an afterthought one might also remember that it's not long ago Adobe bought Nitobi - the company behind the phonegap-project..

It seems as i Adobe is fumbling a little bit regarding their mobile product strategy..

Oh don't we all know how difficult it can be to unsubscribe to some unwanted newsletter.. Especially compared to how easy it usually is to subscribe to these things in the first place. The internet's answer to a roach motel if you will.. (hrm hrmm.. The Danish supermarket chain Coop's "Plus-klub" for example)

Often this kind of deceptive user interaction design leads to a significant loss of trust and can actually harm a brand far more than the value brought forward by a couple of extra newsletter recipients. However these guerilla tactics are not as widely recognized as their SEO counterparts (black hat vs. white hat).

Harry Brignull has set up a wiki over at http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/ to identify evil user interfaces such as the afore mentioned roach motel..

So check it out Dark Patterns "evil user interfaces named and shamed! " ;-)

I recently tried using a "Smart TV" from samsung.. That was kind of a disappointing experience that reminded me of my first "smart phone".. Great potential, but... Ultimately things need to work a lot better to fit the laid-back user interaction that the TV normally allows for..

Verdict (for now): tv + computer = computer

And while we are on the subject.. Why is it that we are only slowly starting to see that the old chesnut about "computer + phone = computer" is changing.. Granted - the iPhone did make things a lot more phone- and appliance-like, which I am sure most people who owned an early Windows Mobile device would agree.. But there is still quite some very computer-like elements to the smart phones of today.. Of course it is nice to have all the functions, but I still miss some of the tactile phone-ness that I could get from phone like the Nokia 8800. I guess I am still torn between two fundamentally different design approaches; Swiss army knife or toaster-like, single-purpose appliance..

Let the samsung smart tv be yet a stark reminder to everyone to take care when adding "computer" to the equation..

Running your website on a single-disk computer with no backup-plan can be a risky business.. I guess I needed to learn that lesson the hard way (yeah right.. as I have actually learned it ;-)).

Anyway - out of the ashes from the old server, this brand spanking new website has emerged as some sort of phoenix. New website = new blog ( = no more old blog)