30 Jul, 11
Sourceforge changed their SSL certificates or configuration and did not actually configure the intermediate certificates they need for their certs. The bug has been reported at Sourceforge Trac: #20935.
Lion, Sourceforge, SSL and homebrew
21 Jul, 11
So, I upgraded to OS X Lion today against my better judgement, and I have to admit, I like Lion. It is a pretty nice beta version of an operating system. Here are some of the bugs and annoyances I encountered only today:
gcc in Xcode 4.1 produces segfaulting code causing my rvm-compiled Ruby to die several timesUpdated with more bugs and annoyances:
End update.
But the single most unexpected thing so far has been the new “character picker” feature. If you hold down a key, instead of repeating the key as you would expect from 20 years of personal computers and video games, it does this:
There is no UI to disable this behavior. Luckily, there is a preference, so open your Terminal and run this:
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
This disables the character picker, but it does not immediately re-enable key repeat. You need to reboot for that.
The preference still says “Delay Until Repeat”, of course, even though it does not actually repeat the key pressed.
Oh, Apple.
Bugs, Annoyances, WTF, OS X, Lion, Character Picker, Keyboard and Beta
10 Jul, 11
Am 23. und 24. Juli 2011 findet im Betahaus Hamburg das erste Agile Design Camp statt. Es hat, wie unschwer zu erraten ist, das Thema “agile design”. Was ist nun aber “agile design”? Von der Kurzbeschreibung auf agiledesigncamp.org:
Agile Design dreht sich um die Integration der Arbeit von Designern in agile Softwareentwicklung, das Neudenken der Rolle von Design, und strukturiertes Denken.
Der Anlass war mehr oder weniger der Artikel von Jan Krutisch zum XING-Redesign und die darauf folgende Diskussion auf Twitter, aber auch die Gespräche und Sessions vom UXcamp Europe 2011 oder die Erfahrungen, die ich als CTO von Toptranslation mache.
Im Grunde geht es also darum, wie man die Methoden der agilen Softwareentwicklung (lies: Scrum, Kanban, kurze Iterationen, etc.) auch auf den Designprozess ausweiten kann. Design meint hier dann auch nicht nur das visuelle Design (vulgo: “Pixelschubsen”), sondern umfasst alles vom konzeptuellen über das Interaction Design bis hin zum Visual Design.
Sind die agilen Methoden in der Softwareentwicklung nun recht akzeptiert und werden immer mehr und immer erfolgreicher genutzt, so sind sie im Design häufig noch nicht angekommen. Nicht zuletzt, weil Design- und Entwicklungsteam immer noch zu oft nicht eng zusammenarbeiten, sondern fast komplett voneinander abgeschottet sind, wirkt sowohl der Design- als auch der Entwicklungsprozess auf die jeweils andere Seite wie eine Black Box, undurchschaubar und wenig verständlich. Das Agile Design Camp möchte also sowohl die Seiten überhaupt zusammenbringen und das Verständnis füreinander verbessern, als auch den agilen Entwicklungsprozess für Designer erschließen. Damit wir weder einen “Big Bang Relaunch” brauchen, noch der Entwickler über die langsamen Designer flucht, die ihn alle paar Wochen mit PSDs zuschmeißen, noch die Designer über die Entwickler, die ihre Designs bei der Umsetzung verhackstücken.
Hamburg, Design, barcamp, agile and development
29 May, 11
Ich war auf der GoodGoods beim Fablab Hamburg, bzw. OpenDesignCity, bzw. dem Verbund Offener Werkstätten. In einem Eigenwerkbereich hatten wir verschiedene Werkstätten, von Siebdruck und Folienschnitt über Nähen und Lampenbau bis zum 3D-Drucker und Lasercutter für die Besucher der GoodGoods zu bieten. Jede_r konnte unter fachkundiger Anleitung selbst T-Shirts drucken, Holz, Metall, Pappe und Glas gravieren und schneiden, nähen, mit Holz bauen usw.
Ich verbrachte den größten Teil der letzten beiden Tage am Lasercutter, einem Epilog Helix 24 CO2-Laser mit 40W. Das Gerät hat einen 60x45cm großen Arbeitsbereich, der in der Höhe verstellbar ist. Mit 40W Leistung kommt der Laser locker durch über 1cm dickes Holz, graviert mühelos Glas und Metall oder trägt einzelne Pappschichten ab. Die Software ist gutmütig und kann auch Bitmap-Grafiken einfach dithern und ausgeben, ist aber leider bisher nur für Windows verfügbar.
Die kurzen Pausen, wo wenig Publikumsandrang herrschte, nutzten wir natürlich, um diverse Geräte und andere Gegenstände zu verzieren. Diverse Handys, u.a. mein Nexus S, ein Blackberry, ein Nokia E66, ein Samsung Galaxy, und ein iPhone 4, wurden mit Schriftzügen und Logos graviert (das Galaxy litt dabei an einer Vorlage, die den Lasercutter in den Plotter-Cutter-Modus versetzte, und hat jetzt ein “Sankt Pauli”-förmiges Loch in der Rückseite). Außerdem wurden bearbeitet: zwei Kindle 3, zwei Kindle-Covers, fünf Notizbücher, drei Geldbörsen, Filz, Balsaholz in verschiedenen Stärken, Aluminium- und Glasflaschen sowie Kanthölzer.
Mehr Informationen über das Fablab Hamburg findet ihr auf der Fablab-Webseite.
28 May, 11
The morning train brought me to Amsterdam. I had not been in this beautiful city for over a year and so was happy to get the invitation for SIME 2011 and thus a good excuse to go to the Netherlands again. It was a bright and sunny day as I stepped out of Amsterdam Centraal, walking down Damrak, passing tourists, locals, and being passed by a lot of bikes.
Upon arriving at the SIME venue, the name badges were not ready yet, so I was ushered straight in to catch the end of Ola Ahlvarsson’s talk on “A Global Journey in Digital Opportunities”.
The “Fireside Chat with the SIME Amsterdam founders” gave an introduction to the people and ideas behind the Amsterdam version of the “Scandinavian Interactive Media Event”, ending with Joris van Oers of De Telefoongids on how no one uses phone books anymore and how DTG transformed.
It was followed by “Making Marketing Go Ka-Ching” with an introduction by Erinn Leahey Marzo of Buddy Media was pretty interesting, with lots of stats and data on social marketing with a focus on Facebook. More interesting, actually, then the following panel with Heleen Dura-Van Oord and Maks Giordano, that did not seem to find a point to converge on. What disturbed me during this session were all the people tweeting about how Erinn Marzo reminded them of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, especially when she sat down for the panel. Such an objectification and sexualization did not happen to any of the male speakers and, in my opinion, casts a bad light on the audience at SIME.
During and after the panel, people were picking up their badges, and the Wifi password was also finally made available.
“Amazon’s World” with the CTO of Amazon.com, Werner Vogels, who struck me as a pragmatic guy with a strong vision. He also uttered the memorable “Your teams should be no larger than you can feed with two pizzas” that made Quote of the Day at SIME Amsterdam 2011, as well as lines like “Yes, I believe engineers are artists. But the difference is, they make money”. His suggestion to hire only the very best was echoed by many in the audience, including myself. He continued to say that the very best did not need to be given orders and were more efficient when they are given a lot of freedom, and again I agree.
This quite interesting session was followed by “Companies that make us go wow!”, an advertising slot slash stage pitch. While JamesList, a marketplace for “ridiculously expensive luxury goods”, was entertaining at least, the following presentation about StarStable, or “World of Horsecraft”, missed the audience by a long shot and sounded like a too-long and rather boring sales pitch for a game that is not even released yet, focusing on girls under the age of 14 with an interest in horses. The presentation also repeated tired clichés of boys favoring games where they shoot, slay, or blow up stuff, while girls are interested in riding horses across landscapes. This kind of thinking needlessly reinforces social gender conditioning and must culminate in “World of Housework” sooner or later… not a fan.
The next panel, “Innovation at the Speed of Life” with Anil Hansjee of Google and Jake Hsu of Symbio, was much more interesting. Anil talked about Google’s acquisition history, how they mostly buy companies for the people, and how to get bought by Google (“don’t go public, be valued under $50m”). Jake Hsu shared insights from his life.
“Master Class 1: Mobile Sells – or does it?” did not teach me anything new, despite having people from Layar, MobyPicture or Whatser on the panel. Considering the tweets during the session, most of the audience seemed to feel the same. It certainly did not help that the beginning of the panel felt like a round of elevator pitches when everyone introduced their respective company or service.
“Inside the Head of a Serial Entrepreneur” started with an introduction by Peter-Frans Pauwels, the founder of TomTom, explaining how TomTom started and how long it took them to really get the market and start making profits. Interesting enough until it turned into a too-long sales pitch advertising the new TomTom service. However, the panel, with people like Stefan Glänzer (founder of Ricardo, investor in last.fm, and business angel) and Oded Vardi (founder of Superna Group, son of Yossi Vardi) and Erik Wikström (founder of Result and others) saved the slot. I was especially impressed by Stefan Glänzer’s calm and dry wit.
Even though I did not know Ad Scheepbouwer before the “Fireside chat” with him, it was pretty captivating listening to the former CEO of a huge telecommunications company, KPN, talk about change and how to adapt in a world that is changing ever faster.
It was followed by the panel on “Re-Shaping the Media Industry” with Sara Öhrvall (Bonnier Group), Patrick Mesterton (De Telefoongids), and Tobias Oswald (CondéNast Digital Germany), which was off to a very slow start. For the first ten minutes, the most interesting thing on the panel were the shoes of Sara Öhrvall (Swedish Hasbeens, “[of course](tweet by Sara)”). It did not get much better when the panel appeared increasingly self-referential, and I did not take any insight from the panel that went beyond “know your customers”. Other members of the audience seemed to agree, but another group seemed to really like the panel, so maybe I simply wasn’t the intended audience.
“Meet the next Skype” was a chance for the CMO of Rebtel to introduce their service to the audience. While Rebtel is an interesting enough success story, the slot’s title promised too much as Rebtel competes merely in the VoIP space, but does not seem to have anything comparable to Skype’s desktop clients and peer-to-peer mesh. While their marketing is quite good, the actual quality of the Rebtel service, from my friends’ and my own experience, is mediocre. However, the VoIP space is and will certainly be interesting to watch for the next few years, and Rebtel positioned themselves as a strong player.
I took the break as a chance to look aorund the venue a bit more. SIME Amsterdam took place in the “Beurs van Berlage” building, a few walking minutes from the main train station. The Beurs, formerly the Amsterdam stock exchange, has been turned into a spacious event venue without compromising the original substance of the building, and they even have an active Twitter account.
“Fireside Chat with Puck” was one of the high points of SIME Amsterdam. Puck is an 11-year-old who taught himself English so he could then learn to program. By now, he has written a number of webapps in PHP as well as several apps for iOS. When asked what he wanted to be when he grows up, he says “a programmer”. While his story is less uncommon than one may think, the exposure he has gotten allows him and his father to spread a message of support for similarly interested and smart kids.
The “Fireside Chat – Top Dutch Media Communications & High Tech Innovations” afterwards was mostly a showcase for several Dutch companies, most of which I did not know before. However, Shapeways were mentioned, and I shall take this opportunity to try and make them more known. Shapeways was founded a few years ago (!!as a subsidiary of Philips?) as a 3D-printing company. While the selection of materials and methods was limited in the beginning, they now offer over !!number materials for 3D-printing or milling. If you want to create a custom shape for jewelry, lamps etc., you should try Shapeways.
Finally, the second high point of the afternoon, “Your Brain is the Best Marketer” with Kim Cramer, neuro-marketer, and Victor Lamme, professor of cognitive neuroscience. The team used MRI scanning to gather insights into how marketing and advertisements are received and processed by your brain. Test subjects are put into a MRI scanner and are then shown TV spots or print ads. The activation of different parts of the brain is measured and later evaluated. Their conclusions from the data gathered so far is interesting – the decision to purchase something is driven by desire, but tempered by pain. Humans seem to want pretty much everything desirable, but “paying money makes your brain hurt,” as Victor Lamme put it. They also showed examples of spots and what responses they triggered, for example two versions of a spot for the Renault Clio, one which ends with the protagonist meeting his girlfriends’ parents, the other with the couple kissing while a number of other men watch jealously. The latter showed significantly higher activation in the brains of subjects, for reasons that can only be speculated about for now.
The Wrap-Up session marked the end of talks for the day, with only two “master classes” to go. Since we were running about thirty minutes late by then, I decided to skip the final master class to instead socialize and network for a bit before I had to catch my train. I talked to a number of people about what I do and what hackers are, how they are different from crackers, and how hacking is not limited to software. Some other people only came by to congratulate me on my hair and how it was a great marketing instrument, which was fine with me, too.
In closing, I would like to thank the organizers for a good conference with interesting people both on and off stage, and especially Bob Stumpel for the invitation. Even though I was not the primary target audience for SIME, I feel that the day trip to Amsterdam was well worth my while and I look forward to visiting other SIME conferences in the future.
conference, amsterdam and SIME
27 May, 11
The day began with Bright Simons’ talk “mPedigree”, about a way to fight the counterfeiting of drugs that kills many and prevents from being cured many more people in developing countries. From Aspirin or Viagra to Malaria medicine, the counterfeiting “industry” floods the local markets with imitation drugs that look very convincing, at times going as far as putting holograms on the fake products when the real products did not sport them. With mPedigree, the combination of a pervasive and available mobile network with a cryptographic code under a scratch field allows everyone to ensure that the medication they need is genuine.
Up next was Peter Seeberger with his talk on “Carbohydrate Vaccines”. The vague title did not give away the actual topic of the talk: A new approach to vaccinate against germs that our immune system can not normally fight or grow a resistance to. From (!!???) to multi-resistant superbugs, using a new kind of vaccine (carbohydrates that bind to the pathogen and expose a “known” signature to the immune system) combined with new methods of synthetisizing long carbohydrate chains allows for the creation of vaccines that were previously impossible to attain. Most of the new vaccines are already in trials and could be available to the public by !!year.
Video: “The Invention that unlocked a locked-in artist”
Afterwards, Michael Trautmann got on stage to propose a new top-level domain “.hiv” that companies could use to support the fight against HIV simply by registering a domain. Personally, I don’t see the point of registering a new TLD (for a respectable amount of money), then establishing a new controlling body for and actually running the TLD (again costing money), so that you can then try and sell a “.hiv” domain to companies like Facebook or Google that already have well-known, well-established, canonical URLs. It seems much more simple and reasonable to me to just ask those companies for direct monetary support for fighting HIV. There are a number of established charities that allow companies to trade monetary support for badges and logos already.
Thomas Auer of Transsolar gave a talk titled “Green & Sexy” (like the Transsolar blog about how to combine beauty and sustainability in the design of buildings and incorporate “green” technology into buildings from the start. Examples given were a school building in Damascus that does not have air conditioning, and the Manitoba Hydro Building in Winnipeg that uses 65% less energy than mandated by the Canadian Energy Code for buildings. Very good talk with a lot of information.
Following the coffee break, session 2 started with another strong talk: David F. Flanders talked about “3D Printing”, a topic that I have been interested in for many years now (we built a MakerBot for the Berlin fablab/hackerspace Studio 70 and are currently trying to get a fablab going in Hamburg). He gave an overview about what is currently possible with 3D printers and in what price range, outlined his idea of near-future developments in this space, and finally spun a grand vision of the ubiquitous 3D printer enabling everyone to manufacture or re-build pretty much any thing, any time. The slides for the talk are online, and you can follow DFFlanders on Twitter.
I honestly have no idea what “The Power of Art Thinking” was about. Draw your own conclusions.
Stephan Balzer then introduced himself and “Interview Project Germany”. Certainly an interesting project, interviewing people to document their lives for posteriority, and well-made technically. However, I still recommend against introducing oneself or one’s own projects as the moderator of an event like this.
Music by Alin Coen, a singer-songwriter born in Hamburg, now living in Weimar. Very charming and a great voice – if you like singer-songwriter music, you should definitely check them out. I also got to meet Alin during lunch break, and she is every bit as charming and nice off stage as she is on stage.
In “Service Design”, Joost Holthuis touched on how to best incorporate user feedback into a product or service. While an interesting topic, the mode of presentation was too long-winded and unfocused.
Video: Morgan Spurlock: The Greatest TED Talk Ever Sold
Christian Wiebe gave a short talk about their project Viva con Agua titled “Be clear like water”, showcasing their work all over the world, and explaining the origins of project and how it grew to its current scope.
The first two talks of the third session, “Motiv Zukunft” and “WZGÜZSK”, were both held in German and (especially the latter) rather hard to follow along with, so I took the opportunity to get some fresh air and a cold drink.
Video: Deb Roy: The Birth of a Word (Definitely watch this if you’re at all interested in language!)
An interesting topic presented in an university lecture style, “The Contribution of Brain Research to Male Self-Understanding” by Gerald Hüther tried to make some point related to gender behavior and neuroscience, but I could personally not make it out. There seemed to be an attempt on tracing back male behavior to a biologically rooted, pervasive feeling of insecurity and loneliness in males, but I did not see any actual scientific evidence.
The second musical act of the day was “Performance on Tabla” by Stefan Keller on the Tabla and Martin Grütter on the computer, modulating the sounds from the Tabla in realtime. Neither too rhythmic nor too melodic, the performance drove a good number of people out of the room and elicited some tweets expressing confusion. Certainly an interesting musical experiment, but just as certainly not popular music.
The short talk on “SoVIET” was a sales pitch for a tool/service to combine streaming video with social media in a single widget. Apart from being blatanly commercial and thus out of place at a TED event, the tool is based on Flash and rather limiting in functionality on the frontend. However, the backend, which allows for curation of content, might make up for the shortfalls of the user-facing parts (if you believe Social Media should be curated, that is). You can get some insights into the tool from the 4=1 blog post about SoViET.
It was followed by one of the most interesting talks of the day: Linda Polman told the story of “What’s wrong with Humanitarian Aid?”, following her journey as a travel journalist turned front-line reporter of humanitarian crises. She explained the why and how of Humanitarian Aid, and the reasons that it all-too-often does not reach the people in need, instead gilding the pockets of those in power. She closed by showing the competitive nature of aid organizations and how they are trapped in a humanitarian dilemma between helping people in need and competing for donor’s money at the same time.
The day closed with Elisabet Sahtouris’ talk “Celebrating Crises”, which was very intriguing content wrapped in rather gaudy slides, with a touch of mysticism. Most of what she said about cooperation and evolution rang true enough, but as we all know, it is not enough to merely speak truth.
Hamburg, TEDx and TEDxHamburg
08 May, 11
Soeben ging QUOTE.fm online, mit einer “So you’ve got a code?“-Seite. Ich schäme mich nicht, öffentlich zuzugeben, dass ich bisher keinen QUOTE.fm-Code bekommen habe. Aber ich habe mir den QUOTE.fm-Code angesehen! Und da fallen zwei Dinge auf:
Man sollte unbedingt mal TIGERBLOOD auf der Seite eingeben (einfach so, nicht notwendigerweise in die Eingabefelder).
Ach, seht selbst. Am besten in Firebug oder so.
Auf jeden Fall sind die Jungs (UARRR, @_martinwolf und @Knuspermagier) aber sehr gut in Design (shiny!) und Marketing (woot). Und auch alles andere an QUOTE.fm sieht ziemlich verdammt gut aus, was man so am Rande mitbekommt.
Also, noch etwas Geduld, bald wird’s awesome.
Code, Javascript, Twitter, quotefm and TIGERBLOOD
03 May, 11
Could I kiss those scarlet lips of yours and taste the winter / When I shed my December skin
29 Apr, 11
Vor zwei Tagen begann auf Twitter ein Mem:
Ich wurde gebeten, dieses lustige Symbol kurz zu erklären, und da das nicht auf Twitter passt, hier der Blogpost.
Schauen wir uns den interessanten Teil des Tweets mal genau an:
 on Twitter.jpg)
00000000 2e cc b8 cc b8 cc a8 cc b8 cc b8 cc a8 cc b8 cc |................|
00000010 b8 cc b8 cc a8 cc b8 cc b8 cc a8 cc b8 cc b8 cc |................|
00000020 a8 cc b8 cc a8 cc b8 cc b8 cc a8 cc b8 cc b8 cc |................|
*
00000040 a8 cc b8 cc a8 cc b8 cc b8 2e cc a8 cc b8 cc b8 |................|
Das 2e am Anfang ist ein ganz normaler Punkt – “.”. Danach wird’s spannend: Es folgen Kombinationen aus zwei UTF-8-Zeichen: Hexadezimal 0xCCB8: Unicode-Zeichen U+0338 “COMBINING LONG SOLIDUS OVERLAY” (Solidus = Schrägstrich); und hexadezimal 0xCCA8: Unicode-Zeichen U+0328 “COMBINING OGONEK” (Ogonek = Schwänzchen). Dann folgt nochmal ein Punkt und nochmal ein paar dieser “COMBINING”-Zeichen. Das “COMBINING” bedeutet, dass die Zeichen nicht für sich allein stehen, sondern zu dem Zeichen gehören, das vor ihnen steht, und sich mit diesem, nun ja, kombinieren.
Ich habe diese beiden Zeichen hier nochmal “allein” dargestellt, also über ein Leerzeichen gelegt:
U+0338 ̸ COMBINING LONG SOLIDUS OVERLAY
U+0328 ̨ COMBINING OGONEK
Und hier nochmal als Beispiel für die “Kombination” über den Buchstaben “a” gelegt:
a̸ = a + ̸
ą = a + ̨
a̸̸̸̸ = a + ̸ + ̸
ą̸̸̸ = a + ̸ + ̸ + ̨ + ̸
Und mit der Kombination aus dem Original-Tweet:
ą̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̸̨̨̨̨̨̨̨̨̨̨̨ = a + ̸ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̸ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̨ ̸ ̸
Die Kombination aus mehrfachen “COMBINING”-Zeichen akkumuliert also – an ein Zeichen mit Häkchen unten wird ein weiteres Häkchen angehängt. Damit wächst das Zeichen natürlich in der Höhe. Durch die Slashes wird die Fläche “ausgefüllt”, durch die Häkchen wird es nach unten erweitert.
Für mehr Spaß mit Unicode empfehle ich als Einstieg den Wikipedia-Artikel zu UTF-8. Viel Spaß beim Durchlesen sämtlicher Unicode-Planes – Unicode kodiert momentan ja nur 1.112.064 Zeichen.
PS: UTF-8 ist leider immer noch nicht perfekt umgesetzt. Schaut man sich z.B. den Original-Tweet über den obigen Link an, sieht man die einzelnen Zeichen statt der Kombination, weil Twitter offenbar eine Dekombination in ihrer Pipeline haben. In der User-Timeline und in Twitter-Clients sieht es aber richtig aus.
21 Apr, 11
“Das ist mal was zum Aufregen: iOS speichert eure Location, ewig, unverschlüsselt: http://oreil.ly/dOPf6L #apple”
Heute muss ich das ein wenig relativieren.
Korrekt ist, dass iOS Ortungsdaten speichert, offenbar ohne zeitliche Begrenzung, seit dem iOS-4-Update (Update: vorher auch schon, aber nicht ganz so leicht zugänglich), und diese Daten unverschlüsselt auf dem Gerät liegen und standardmäßig auch unverschlüsselt im Backup landen. Das ist ein “Big Deal”, weil es sich um Daten handelt, die bisher nur der Netzbetreiber in dieser Fülle abrufen, durchforsten, und ggf. den Behörden zugänglich machen konnte. Otto Normaluser bzw. das gern bemühte Beispiel vom eifersüchtigen Partner mussten bisher das Phone des “Opfers” jailbreaken und Spionagesoftware installieren, um an solche Daten zu kommen. Jetzt genügt Zugriff auf iTunes und ein paar Minuten, um ein Backup zu ziehen, oder Zugriff auf ein existierendes Backup.
Nach Analyse der Daten hat sich aber gezeigt, dass offenbar nicht alle Locations jederzeit gespeichert werden, sondern dass die Datenbank mehr als Zwischenspeicher dient. Wenn Location-Dienste benutzt werden, holt iOS die Daten zuerst von Apples Servern, speichert sie dann aber auch zwischen. Beim nächsten Mal kann man dann auch ohne Datenverbindung eine Ortung bekommen (ausprobieren: Flugzeugmodus an). iOS speichert vorausschauenderweise auch gleich die Ortungsdaten für einen gewissen Umkreis um den aktuellen Ort. Ruft man Locationdaten ab und hat Netzverbindung, werden die lokalen Daten nochmal aktualisiert.
Die Spekulationen, wofür diese Datenbank eventuell noch dient, gehen in verschiedene Richtungen. Denkbar wäre, dass Apple außerdem bei jeder Location-Benutzung ein Site Survey macht, also feststellt, wo welche WLAN- und Mobilfunk-Zugangspunkte wie stark empfangbar sind. Damit könnte man dann die eigene Ortungsdatenbank verbessern, schneller und kostengünstiger, als wenn man die ganze Welt mit Autos abfährt. (Google erheben diese Daten übrigens zu genau diesem Zweck auch mit Android, man muss aber explizit einwilligen und sie werden lt. Google sofort anonymisiert.)
Update: Apple erhebt diese Daten ohne ausdrückliche Zustimmung und gibt das auch zu: Original-Thread im Apple-Forum und Apples Stellungnahme im House of Representatives: “to help Apple update and maintain its database with known location information, Apple may also collect and transmit Cell Tower and Wi-Fi Access Point Information automatically”. Apple sagt zwar, das geschehe anonym, aber Bewegungsmuster sind extrem personenspezifisch und schon wenige Datenpunkte reichen, um Personen zu unterscheiden.
Wer sich selbst ein Bild machen will, was auf ihrem iOS-Gerät so gespeichert ist, kann das mit der kostenlosen iPhoneTracker-Anwendung machen. Die Auflösung, sowohl zeitlich als auch örtlich, ist dort künstlich begrenzt, damit es nicht ganz so einfach als Spionagetool verwendet werden kann. Da die Anwendung aber Open Source ist und auch die Datenbank ein recht einfaches Format hat, sollte man sich auf diese Beschränkung nicht verlassen.
(Im Übrigen weiß euer Mobilfunkprovider natürlich schon seit immer, wo ihr euch so aufhaltet und bewegt, so lange ihr in ein Netz eingebucht seid.)
2. Update: Der Sicherheitsforscher Alex Levinson hat einen ausführlichen Artikel zum Thema und erklärt dort, dass die Datenbank nicht neu ist und die Berichterstattung nur so, na ja, halb gut. (Er erwähnt aber nicht, dass Apple auch Ortsdaten des Nutzers “nach Hause” sendet. Das hat allerdings auch nichts mit der consolidated.db zu tun.)