We all here a lot of things that are definitely not right in Austria and around us, but here are three facts that I have come across recently that are just outstanding to me:

1. There is not enough garbage in Austria!

Austria needs to buy garbage from other surrounding countries!

• Italy constantly ships garbarge to Austrian garbarge burn facilitiies. So do other countries.

• Thereby, Austria is a big helper of countries that are very badly organized regarding their garbage management.

• However, Austrian garbage burn facilities (also called Waste Treatement Energy (WTE) Facilities) would go into under-production, if not receiving imported garbage!

I have checked the outputs of such a  facility in Austria (Arnoldstein):

Cleaned exhaust gas: 38,700 Nm³/h
Ferrous metals: 0.5 t/h
Ash: 3 t/h
Residues: 0.4 t/h
Waste water: 1.5 m³/h

I havent put more research into this matter, but the input/output balance of such a facility is quite positiv for the environment! There are even articles in the WWW that suggest such WTEs as the solution to waste problems of countries such as India!…

2. We have too much corn in Austria, but we still import corn from South America!

During times of hunger in the USA and food-shortage due to the production of fuel out of corn oil, Austria has too much corn!

• The price of corn dropped from $170 to $60 per ton. Farmers have a complete over-production of corn and cant sell it at such low prices! or have to but dont make a profit!

• Farmers in Austria still have corn stored from last year, thereby having made an even bigger mistake (with the falling corn prices!)!

• Still Austria buys corn from South-America!

3. There is too much electricity in Austria!

We are actually producing too much electricity in Austria.

• Self-sustained houses would actually not be necessary in Austria, because we have an overflow of electricity produced in our country!

• We sell electrictiy to other countries!

• Electricity is used to pump water back to mountain lakes, during the night when power is cheaper. Then it is pumped back down during the day to produce electricity and sold to other countries at a higher price (than the price that was spent to pump it back up during the night)!

Let me know what you think! Greetings,
Daniel

It has been two weeks since I wrote my last blog, I cant believe it! The last week flew by! 4 days of last week almost seemed like one day!

Tuesday morning I flew to California, where I visited the Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) from Volkswagen of America! There is a 3 hour time difference between Boston and California. The next day I spent the entire day at the lab and met with all project leaders and all engineers of the entire lab. The ERL and Palo Alto were great places to see! - more to come on that!

Wednesday night, I flew back to Boston on a so-called "Red-Eye" flight, departing at 11pm and arriving in Boston at 8am on

Thursday. This day also my 15 OLPC laptops arrived! They are amazing - again, more to come on that, as well! Same day, I packed all my things and flew to Austria at 7:45pm.

Gladly, I finally arrived in Graz on Friday, at 2pm, having spent the past two nights in planes instead of a bed.

Since then, time has flown again and today is already Tuesday and I am now in Eisenstadt, close to Vienna, where I met with INITS yesterday. Furthermore, I visited ICEP and listend to the talk by Damian von Stauffenberg von MicroRate zu "Kapitalmarkt und Mikrofinanz-Sektor - Trends, Chancen und Perspektiven fuer Kommerzbanken" - more on that, as well! ;_)

Other things to come:

I took another INvenTERVIEW, with David Merill, from the Media Lab, at MIT, who I collaborated with on his PhD thesis working on Siftables, throught this years i-teams class - soon to be posted on this blog! ;_)

Again, I got some cool links for you that I came across, over the past weeks:

Control your PC with your Voice
on the same topic: Use your Voice to Power Microsoft Word

Trying to sublet my apartment I came across the following:

20 Unusually Brilliant Bookcase and Bookshelf Designs
Apartment Therapy

Other:

A List Apart
Tag Galaxy
and for all of you, who like listening to OE3’s Fruehstueck bei mir and many more: Podster

PS:
The OST* featured a short paragraph about me and the 2fast4u exhibition in Hickory, North Carolina.
* TheOffice of Science & Technology (OST) is  "Building bridges of knowledge and expertise between Austria and North America" - this is the mission of the OST at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC. The OST is the strategic interface in the sciences, research, and research policy between Austria and North America.

The live streams have been an accompanying feature of MIT-Austria events, such as the 2fast4u High-Speed Photography exhibition, where visitors at the exhibition in Austria could communicate live with students at MIT.

The site at this time was www.redwired.org/tmp/2fast4u and we had 6 feeds running (meaning six cameras!) with 3 booths, where the users could also talk to each other and take snapshots of the different views of the cameras. Screenshots of the feed website can be found here.

At this time there are only two more feeds running: One at MIT, in building 4 in the basement, looking out the windows. The other one sits on a table on the 3rd floor in the Stiftsgymnasium St. Paul in Austria, viewing a former project of the school. The little house can be remotley controlled over the web:

…

European Career Fair @ MIT

2 - 4 February, 2008

…

An optimal opportunity for any company to present itself in a professional environment such as the MIT campus!: In 2007 more than 4000 students submitted their resumes to be selected by one of the many (more than 100) companies that presented themselves in 2007 at the European Career Fair.

. ..
Furthermore, companies will receive the opportunity to speak to the MISTI staff on how to present their company throughout the year at MIT. For example, the program MIT-Germany has already been established and many companies, such as Lufthansa are holding workshops at MIT all year long to recruit the best students for their company needs and future.

…

MIT-Austria Company BONUS: This will be the first event leading towards the realization of our program and for Austrian companies to set foot on the MIT campus, which will be very beneficial for the future of MIT-Austria. If your company should decide to become a member of MIT-Austria, there is a chance that your company can receive a reimbursement of the registration cost of the fair, as well as other costs.

…

Please contact DI Daniel Pressl with any questions regarding MIT-Austria or the European Career Fair under Contact and be quick, the deadline is the 14th of December 2007.

Klagenfurt, Austria, Fall 2007

iPressl.com
Kimeki.info

Cineatrix is a Kimeki, iPressl and MIT collaboration.

In collaboration with the MIT Edgerton Outreach program and iPressl in Austria in Europe, KIMEKI is working on a new project, Cineatrix.

The original idea stemmed from the knowledge that there is a new generation of children who are digital natives, kids who haven’t known a world without iPods and digital cameras, let alone a comfort level with computers.

An MIT student from Austria, Dipl. Ing. Daniel Pressl, is now working on a new idea for the project, Cineatrix. This will combine film, theatre and comics. There are two main thoughts to this program.

CINEATRIX: First and foremost, as a means of story-telling, children will be able to take movies, add special effects to the movies and be able to tell their stories in never imagined ways. The goal for the end of the course is every child will be able to bring a DVD home, to which they have contributed through filming, editing or storytelling.

KIMEKI: The second aim is that children, between 10 and 15 years old, get to teach their technological know-how in media and videography to children between 5 and 10. This extraordinary, media-pedagogical concept has proven to show great possibilities and a new way of learning for children and has been running for the past 4 years, in Austria.

We run parallel sessions in which the older children are trained on our particular hardware/software to do the filming, editing and other finishing stages, and have the older children then turn around and teach these same skills to the Storytellers, the younger children.
Foto Compilation of Cineatrix in Austria, Fall 2007: