I just arrived in Helsinki. Finally. For many years finnish things have invaded my life and it was usually a contribution: early Internet backbones, Aki Kaurismäki, Linux and Nokia.

So for the first time I am going to have a first time impression of this country. I am not going to make photos: I forgot my camera at home. But that‘s okay as I am going to cover this trip using my blog for the first time. It‘s the time for the first time as it seems.

Just left the airport bus. First impression: very european. Met Florian Cramer on the plane (he is going to give a talk on the READ_ME Software Art Festival as I will) and after some talk about permuted poems we agreed that the local architecture does not differ a lot from what we are used to in Northern Germany. But I didn‘t see much so far anyway as I was busy fiddling with my new Ericsson Phone and the local GSM setup.

Tried to send a SMS to somebody in Helsinki. All three providers signaled errors. After my last try the targeted person called me and told me she has received the message 20 times now and I should stop worrying about it.

I admit my first stop is McDonald‘s. I like McDonald‘s as it is a good benchmarking tool for international travelers. How much is a Big Mac Menu? EUR 4.90. Does it taste the same as in Germany? No. Is catchup included with the fries? Yes. Is the taste of strawberry milkshake okay? No. Traveling is fun.

I am using NetNewsWire for writing my blog offline while munching my Big Mac. Very convenient. A real productivity tool. Please keep on enhancing it, Brent. Thank you.

So much for now. I am going to have a walk looking for my Hotel and getting acquainted to the locals.

hi fuck off

I am busy fiddling around with Salling Clicker to prepare my new presentations on Project Blinkenlights that will be held this week and next week in Zürich (Switzerland) and Helsinki (Finnland).

It is not really easy to squeeze in all the material in a talk that is meant not to be longer than 60 Minutes. Our documentation videos alone would fill half an hour, so in the end I can only show parts of it along my other presentation.

But there is so much to show. The cude animations and the backstage photography in Berlin and Paris.

Following a small discussion on the (german) MacHackers mailing list about the obvious lack of a good project planning tool I poked a mid-size product request mail to the OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner users mailing list of OmniGroup.

It is a shame there is no good project planning software out there for the Mac. Admit it, FastTrack Schedule just doesn‘t cut it. The user interface is pure horror and therefore usuability is more than limited.

I would like to see a OmniProject done by OmniGroup. Their answer: „This is one of the ideas we kick around from time to time, but we‘re not willing or able to commit to anything at this point.“

Well, I hope they will, And I hope they will soon. Looking at their other tools I get the feeling they can‘t be that far from it anyway. They have many of the crucial „other“ things in place (outlining, doing graphics) so adding „project logic“ is the missing step.

I have been using FreeHand heavily in the last year to draw maps, especially for the Camp and the Congress.

But except for a couple of nice features Macromedia‘s software is a real pain in the ass. I am talking about carbon-ness, slowness and the long history of bad user interface design and so obvious omissions like transparency in colors (yes, there is the possibilty of making fills transparent but it doesn‘t work for strokes and it is not really tied to the concept of color at all).

Opening the stage for OmniGraffle. The latest update of this well-engineered piece of software, especially in the Pro version, is very strong step forward. Not only for OmniGraffle users.

Everything is so easy. Each shape can be rotated (yes, FreeHand can rotate, but you have just no chance of ever resetting it to it‘s original rotation). The layer feature is as strong as Photoshop‘s. And best of all: everything is so logical. OmniGraffle is easy to use, easy to learn and melds into Quartz perfectly.

I could continue for hours raving about this milestone release, but best is you check it out for yourself. The OmniGroup is cool enough to offer full-functioning license keys on a daily basis so that everybody can check it out as long as he wants with no crippled feature set. Well done!