2017 (p. 2/4)

Film: "Democracy - Im Rausch der Daten" (de)

“Democracy” by David Bernet is an exceptional film. Who would think that the birthing of an EU law could provide enough drama to power a feature-length documentary, given that the Brussels bureaucracy machine is commonly seen as a closed […]
2017

Homebrew Website Club Berlin #10 on 28 Jun 2017

As we decided to establish a Homebrew Website Club here in the German capital, who would have thought we would make it to 10 meetups? (…and more in the pipeline!) It’s a little anniversary to be proud of for sure, and we have another interesting […]
2017

When services harm people

medium.com

Following introductory words on “service needs” and “business needs” vs. “user needs”, Maria Izquierdo and Martin Jordan showcase some instances where data is (even in breach of legal contracts) collected against […]
2017

A day without Javascript

sonniesedge.co.uk

It must have been in 2006, in my first full-time web-related job back at Satama Interactive that I was not only introduced to, but I myself actively promoted (in our then state-of-the-art web standards advocacy group, together with Harri Kilpiö and […]
2017

Homebrew Website Club Berlin #9 on 14 Jun 2017

The 9th HWC Berlin meeting marks the kick-off of our “Indieweb Starter Meetup Series”, four loosely scheduled meetups intended as an easy entry point to running your own website and utilizing the Indieweb toolkit. In this first intro session, we […]
2017

Homebrew Website Club Berlin #8 on 31 May 2017

Our 8th HWC Berlin meeting will be held on May 31. Still looking for a more permanent place, we this time are headed to Potsdamer Platz at the heart of the city. One of our main topics will be the review of the Indie Web week, a series of Indieweb-related […]
2017

Favouriting a Tweet by Joel Purra

twitter.com

https://twitter.com/joelpurra/status/863396343078940672
2017

Taking Control of Your Digital Identity

dmlcentral.net

This is great: while I see (university) teachers and course instructors elsewhere requiring students to join Facebook groups or the like, Howard Rheingold makes the participants in his “social media course” acquire a domain and server space for a […]
2017

Reposting a Tweet by HannahJane Parkinson‏

twitter.com

A great article, can’t decide which parts to quote - pls read the whole thing. And start working on alternative futures tmrw (designers!)
I quit Facebook in 2013, and as a direct result of this, I have fallen out of touch with many friends […]
2017

Homebrew Website Club Berlin #7 on 17 May 2017

As a rare exception from our regular schedule, we had to postpone the 7th HWC meeting, but we’re back on May 17! If you are interested in working on (or even just having) your own homepage, along with both conceptual and technical discussions around an […]
2017

Privacy in tech: a sociological, not a mechanical challenge

"Privacy settings" in social web services are only a small part of the complex social phenomenon that is privacy; looking at the 2006 "Privacy paradox" and the 2014 "New privacy paradox" could help leading the discussion on privacy in tech from a far more sociological rather than mechanical perspective.
2017

Still Blogging in 2017

tbray.org

An hommage to the web, its freedom and why it still is the superior medium for self-expression online, by Tim Bray:
The great dan­ger is that the Web’s fu­ture is mall-like: No space re­al­ly pub­lic, no store­fronts […]
2017

Themes from Datensummit 17: culture, responsibility, credibility, literacy, engagement

Time for a reflective wrap-up of last week’s “Datensummit”, the first national-level meetup on Open Data in Germany, co-hosted by the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany and the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. I was […]
2017

Responsible Data Forum

responsibledata.io

The Responsible Data Forum, a collaboration that develops tools and strategies to help data-driven advocacy with ethical, security and privacy implications of their work, was mentioned in Zara Rahman’s talk at Datensummit 17. The RDF defines […]
2017

Note, published 28 Apr 2017

2017

Note, published 27 Apr 2017

Homebrew Website Club Berlin on break next week due to scheduling conflicts; returning to the regular bi-weekly rhythm from Wed 17.5.
2017

PEW survey data on non-use of social media and smartphones

Two fresh data sets from Pew Research Center, highlighting realities I would love to see considered more often in design teams and boardrooms alike: “Not everyone in advanced economies is using social media”, and “Smartphones are common […]
2017

Homebrew Website Club Berlin #6 on 19 Apr 2017

In the previous meeting of our Homebrew Website Club Berlin, we again had inspiring discussions not only about approaches to decentralize the social web, but specifically about questions of ethical and fair design, as well as some of the privacy aspects […]
2017

We Need More Alternatives to Facebook

technologyreview.com

In an article on the MIT Technology Review, Brian Bergstein compares Facebook to the early days of televsion in the US:
The problem, the FCC chairman told the group, was the way the business was making money: not by serving the public interest […]
2017

Reposting a Tweet by Oliver Gutperl

twitter.com

Oliver posted:
“Why designing for #engagement #metrics is not always a good idea. Hint: Many people like crude stories.”
The linked article points out how the obsession with “engagement” around single items […]
2017

Homebrew Website Club Berlin #5 on 5 Apr 2017

The March 22 edition of the Berlin Homebrew Website Club was a rather private circle, with just three of us engaging in free-form discussions around tracking and privacy, WordPress and other CMSs, and the topic of enabling donations or micropayments on […]
2017

Homebrew Website Club Berlin #4 on 22 Mar 2017

Welcome to the fourth edition of our Homebrew Website Club in Berlin! After the first three meetings were rather unstructured, around a range of interesting topics - see the summaries of meetups #2 and #3 by Sven - we are thinking to try a “What are you […]
2017

How to get the most value out of remote user research (without breaking the bank)

wildbit.com

From my first-hand experience, this lightweight research process described by Rian Van Der Merwe is incredibly efficient. In the article it is summarized as chosing: The RITE testing method (Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation) The right remote usability […]
2017

The inaccessible web: how we got into this mess

uxdesign.cc

Mischa Andrews lists five reasons how the web, an accessible medium by default, ended up in an inaccessible mess: We can (and do) learn to make websites without learning accessibility We’re not held accountable for inaccessible products Assumptions […]
2017

Turning the Feb 2017 AWS outage into a case for "offline first" design

Allow me to begin my ponderings by picking up a point made by Karissa Bell on Mashable related to the major disruption of Amazon’s cloud services that took down a wide range of online services:
Amazon’s lengthy AWS outage Tuesday was […]
2017