While most of the times I work on commercial projects I also think it is vital to give something back to the community whenever you can. Today I am finally releasing a little side project of mine called PotsBlitz.

• PotsBlitz ready-to-use version
• PotsBlitz source code on Github

PotsBlitz is an educational program which is used for training dyslexic children. It is based on the theory of FlashWords. The idea behind FlashWords is simple. You show a kid a word for a short period of time and it then has to tell the teacher the word it saw. It can be used for a wide range of exercises one could be to train a certain reading strategy e.g. based on syllables. If you wanna learn more about PotsBlitz head over to the project page. Furthermore PotsBlitz also comes bundled with the reading training program "PotsBlitz - Das Potsdamer Lesetraining" which you can find here. While the training costs money the software part will always be for free.

By accident I stumbled upon this inspiring story. Tony Quan is a famous graffiti artist in LA however tragedy struck hard when he discovered that he got ALS. Since his body is failing on him he could not follow his passion anymore. A group of talented hackers did something truly amazing. First they build a low-cost eyetracker which allows Tony to draw by only using his eyes. After he used the device for the first time he said:


Learn more about the project here.

The following video was shot by Google in New York. They asked random people on the street the question: What is a Browser? People who work in the IT industry will probably cringe or even laugh when the hear the answers. But it is important to accept that these persons are your average users! When you design your next user interface keep in mind that not everybody studied IT. Build software which everybody can use which is probably still one of the hardest problems the IT industry has to tackle.

See also my post about guerrilla testing.

Last month I saw someone using YouTube as a music player and thought "what a neat idea!". I mean it is quite obvious once you see it. YouTube has all the ingredients to make it work: lots of music videos and a playlist feature called quicklist which allows you to play a list of videos in a defined order.

You can even take it one step higher. There are lots of air apps (e.g. FLVPlay) which remove the need to use the limiting web interface and replace it with a much richer user experience by using flash.

So the next time you are at a party and you need a music player just use YouTube's quicklist feature.

The Skype version for Linux is still lagging behind in terms of features compared to the Windows and Mac versions. One feature which most people miss is the ability to send text messages. For me it is quite puzzling how a company is not implementing features which would help them to earn more money (they charge you for sending text messages). However I discovered an alternative, today. It is called skysentials and works pretty well so far.

The way it works is simple. You start Skype first. Then you start skysentials which attaches itself to Skype and accesses user account information like your contact list. In the end you just enter the target mobile number and message text. Get it here. You might also want to have a look at this forum topic which offers advice regarding the installation and potential bugs