Posts tagged RWTH Aachen
Media Informatics Master
Feb 1st
In the Autumn of 2008 I joined the Media Informatics Master program, saying goodbye to Alensa Online team. It is part of the Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (B-IT) and was created through the collaboration of prestigious German institutions:
- University of Bonn,
- RWTH Aachen University,
- University of Applied Sciences Bonn Rhein-Sieg,
- Fraunhofer Institute Centre Birlinghoven Castle IZB
Supported by the B-IT Foundation and complementary state resources, B-IT offers highly selective International Master Programs in Applied IT, as well as the summer/winter schools for qualified computer science students.
Most courses take place in the beautiful B-IT building next to the former office of the German Chancellor on the banks of the River Rhine in Bonn.
The University of Bonn has almost 200 years of history, over 38.000 students from 130 countries, with an excellent research record and an excellent graduate education have made one of the ten largest universities in Germany.
In the context of more than one hundred first degree programs, the university engages in a broad range of international co-operations in research and teaching.
Founded in 1868, RWTH Aachen University is Germany’s top-ranked University of Technology and one of Germany’s nine Elite Universities. Of its 30,000 students, over 4,000 are international, including 900 students from the Asian-Pacific region. In addition to 65 first degree programs, RWTH offers more than 20 graduate programs in Science and Engineering.
Within the Fraunhofer Society of Applied Research, the four institutes in Birlinghoven Castle represent a quarter of the largest IT research organization in Europe. Over 500 post-graduate researchers investigate Autonomous Intelligent Systems, Applied Information Technology, Media Communications, Algorithms and Scientific Computing in a world-wide network of industry and research partners.
GPS vs aGPS vs WiFi vs GSM localization
Aug 26th
Each method presented has its strengths and weaknesses. None of these is the perfect positioning system, yet they all can collaborate in order to give the estimated position of a user.
GPS, the veteran of the group, has a plethora of satellites at its disposal, offering almost anywhere in the world a precision in meters. The devices which implement this technology are small enough to be inserted even in phones, smart enough to do their job or even more by tracking many satellites in the same time and eating less power, affording the usage of this service for hours in a row. But it needs clear sight to the sky in order to see at least 3 satellites and needs quite a long time in this busy era to get a clear position and be able to pinpoint the location on a map.
GPS – Global positioning system
Aug 24th
GPS is the oldest one from the frameworks available to the large audience. It isn’t the first positioning system, but it is the one with the most success and longevity. It started as a military project in 1957. Because of the cold war, once the Russians sent to space the first man-made satellite, a team of scientists started monitoring its radio transmissions. The crucial discovery was that, because of the Doppler Effect, the signal transmitted frequency increases as the satellite approached, and lowers as it continued moved away from them. This added to the fact that they knew their exact location on the globe, the logical conclusion was that one could pinpoint where the satellite was along its orbit by measuring the Doppler distortion.
SCRUM
Aug 23rd
What is SCRUM ?
- one of Agile processes
- use incremental framework for developing complex software
- managing new products
- considered more like a framework in which you can employ various processes and techniques
- Key principle: during a project the customers can change their minds
Manages complex processes by:
- Transparency
- The outcome of the product should be visible to the manager who is managing the outcomes. Also each process that affect the outcome of the product also should been visible to the managers.
- Inspection
- Various aspects of the process must be frequently inspected regularly so that quality of work and peoples can be seen.
- Adaptation
- If the inspection process find outs some process are outside the scope of the product or the outcomes will be unacceptable, then the inspector should response quickly and adjusts the process or data being used in the process.
Agile vs Waterfall
Aug 21st
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Waterfall model:
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eXtreme Programming
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Agile roots: Toyota Production System
Aug 19th
This methodology and set of principles has the root in the company with the same name. After the Second World War, the Japan and its companies were almost ruined both physical and financial. To recover the economy, they had to rethink all the processes of production in order to maximize their efficiency. This was required because not only that they lack financial resources, but even the loans that they could do as a country came with big price. In Toyota Company, a smart man called Taiichi Ohno, created a new way to build cars, focusing on creating as many quality products possible with limited amount of resources.
Agile – techniques, principles and methodology
Aug 16th
Because the software industry is so different than any other, the development model used prior of creating agile methodology was taken from the engineering disciplines, such as civil or mechanical engineering. Those disciplines put a lot of emphasis on planning before you build because the resources are very expensive and cannot be wasted because of bad synchronization or different physical characteristics like calibers, by example. The planning style is a predictive method that focuses on planning the future in detail. A team that uses these predictive techniques can report precisely what features and tasks are scheduled, both their order and length, for the entire time span of the development process. Predictive teams are very difficult to redirect after the client needs. The plan is typically optimized for the original destination and changing direction can cause completed work to be thrown away and done over differently. These teams will often institute a change control board to ensure that only the most valuable changes are considered.
Agile Lab – Coining the Agile techniques
Aug 14th
The roots of agile programming as we know it can be traced back to 2001. At Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, a group of seventeen people met have fun, but also to find common ground on a issue that was too much discussed but no result can be achieved. They were the leaders of different currents of improving software creation techniques. They were adepts of Extreme Programming, SCRUM, DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, Pragmatic Programming and other agile techniques, joined together by the need for an alternative to documentation driven, heavyweight software development processes.
iMeet application presentation
Jul 25th
Finally, the biggest moment: application is ready!! I am very proud of this application, as it represents my achievements in fast learning and adapting to:
- new way of programming, as XCode and Interface Builder truly represent the ModelViewController paradigm
- new language- Objective-C, which as any language has its pluses and minuses
- new device: mobile devices on which I didn’t work since my experience on Sales Force Automation in TotalSoft company, back in 2005, on Windows CE.
I’ve structured the application visually in few areas:
1. Login screen – the ‘”gate” to the application. Since the access to the
XML-RPC is done in a secure way, the application implemented also a credential input and recording mechanism. The mechanism is dual: user can enter the login into the first screen or in the iPhone Settings application. Depends only on him where and how he’ll manage his credentials.
The main point of this screen is to create a intuitive interface for users to insert their credentials, instead of having to leave the application and go to the iPhone settings.
Objective-C: Putting markers on Map control
Jul 21st
This article comes as a completion to my previous ones, XCode : using MapKit with no geocoding available out of the box and XCode: Modal windows – Google maps and shows how to add pins on your already created Map View.
First of all, adding the points to the map is not as intuitive as it might seem, so let’s start by creating a new class called POI – point of interest. Its header must be filled with this code:
#import <foundation foundation.h> #import <mapkit mapkit.h> #import <corelocation corelocation.h> @interface POI : NSObject{ CLLocationCoordinate2D coordinate; NSString *subtitle; NSString *title; } @property (nonatomic, readonly) CLLocationCoordinate2D coordinate;@property (nonatomic,retain) NSString *subtitle;@property (nonatomic,retain) NSString *title;- (id) initWithCoords:(CLLocationCoordinate2D) coords; @end
