22nd of November 2008 — Altes Rathaus, Steinfurt, Germany

Yesterday they announced Diablo 3 at the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational in Paris!

Screenshot from the gameplay video

Here are some facts I figured out.

• Five different characters (all in male and female version) can be played.
• A new, inhouse developed 3D engine is used together with the Havoc Physics engine.
• You will be able to return to Tristram.
• The game will offer an interactive environment that can be modified (e.g. destroyed) by the player or scripts.
• The new version of the Battle.net (which will be introduced together with Starcraft 2) will be used for Diablo 3.
• It will contain more than 100 different monster classes.

For more information check the official FAQ.

Diablo 3 is the other game beside Duke Nukem Forever that I can not wait to be released. :-)

Robby
Summer 1995 – 01.06.2008

We will never forget you!

My reasons for blogging are:

1. somehow every developer has a blog
2. I wanted to have some kind of personal knowledge base
3. I like writing as a way of focus my thoughts on something and express my opinion
4. I wanted to practice my English
5. I always somehow liked the idea to actually write thoughts or feelings down and then look at this texts a few years later...

I make much use of the possibility to schedule posts and write entries when I have time and (sometimes) tweak them a little bit before they get published. For example every Optimizion Monday entry is published on the first Monday in each month.
I also like just writing down thoughts that are on my mind and observe in which way the entry is going while writing...

Jonathan Rass
Alte Straßburger Straße 3
77652 Offenburg

New phone number: +49 781 124 796 6

Not only my home changed, but also my workspace will change by the end of this month. I am leaving the business intelligence sector behind and will completely focus on web technologies. Stay tuned for updates, I will definitely write more about this.
It feels sad to leave such a great city as Freiburg and it feels even worse to abandon "my" project. I will also miss my co-workers badly because we had a fantastic time the last 27 months.

Nevertheless I am excited and curious about my new job: so much to learn, so many new techniques and methods to discover and so much stuff to blog about ;-) .

With slightly sentimental thoughts,
Jonathan

Youtube will become the ideal platform for content from all TV stations. Today the TV stations are quite busy searching for videos which break their copyrights. They are afraid of loosing money by having their expensively produced content on the web without commercials in it. Imaginate the TV stations would upload their original content to Youtube. But why uploading a static video with a commercial starting at 37:25 and ending 48:40 when the video is streamed from a server? Not the times the commercial appears, even the content of it can be changed dynamically based on the person watching the video. And who knows its users better than Google?
By having the user data of each user's profile, plus the likes of the user gathered by the information he searched on, Google knows exactly who is sitting in front of the screen. Also interactive ads will be possible, since the videos are embedded in a flash file. You do not like ads and would prefer continue watching the video without interruptions? Just pay a few cents or more by using your Google Checkout account the get grid of the commercials. After buying this video you will also be able to download it and watch it again on your iPod or other mobile video players. And last, but not least this will be the connection of the social web and television.
You will be able to post a small part of every video on your blog for free. If you take all funny parts of "Germany's Next Topmodel" and comment about it you might push Stefan Raab out of business. ;-)
Not only other users will suggest videos, Google also will make recommendation for you — based on your profile

So... how realistic is this scenario? The most important step is, that the TV stations must be courageously to leave their classic way of presenting content. Some stations have already started uploading content on Youtube, such as the The British Broadcasting Corporation. Others might follow and when all stations have made this step, this will be the next generation of television.
This might get some people back on watching TV, including myself. ;-)