— unpredictable thoughts

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design

Remem­ber­ing work­ing on my friend’s Lisa. #Steve­Jobs #design #tech­nol­ogy #humanity

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Here’s a bit of adver­tis­ing for the new Alice book for the iPad. It’s pretty darn cool. A whole layer of activ­ity on top of the text. It’s head­ing in the right direction.

Still more mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tion would be so much bet­ter. Inter­ac­tion that really illu­mi­nates to con­tent not just bells and whis­tles. I have high expec­ta­tions in this new space. We need some­one like Cyan who orig­i­nally cre­ated Myst to step up and shift the expec­ta­tions in this read­ing environment.

If Alice in Won­der­land was the text and an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence like Myst imag­ine the experience!

You can down­load Myst for your iPhone and you can now play the next level of Myst online here.

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Expe­ri­ence Mobile Mobile from James Théo­phane Jnr on Vimeo.

Yes the phones were pro­grammed with timed ring­tones. Nice video. Nice installation.

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Loved my SX-70. Find­ing this video on the web actu­ally made me a bit sad.

This cam­era cre­ated a paradym shift in pho­tog­ra­phy. Instant and high qual­ity the SX-70 was a joy to use. This film made by the Eames Office to explain the tech­nol­ogy and uses for the cam­era. It is a won­der­ful lit­tle film. It is inspir­ing from a prod­uct and design view. The Eames office took a lik­ing to explain­ing com­pli­cated concepts.

Enjoy a tech­nol­ogy of the past that set the bar for the future.

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b-and-n-nook-press_8

OK. Now we’re talking.

I would buy this device. I know it only does books — a one trick pony. But it let’s you lend your books to oth­ers and it doesn’t look like a Texas Instru­ments cal­cu­la­tor. This device looks like BN hired some prod­uct design­ers and some inter­face design­ers, and a mar­ket­ing crew that knows how to do point-of-purchase.

Barnes and Noble have lis­tened to the crit­i­cism of the Kin­dle and have brought a more sophis­ti­cated and attrac­tive device into the fray.

  • The price is rea­son­able from the start.
  • Design is clean.
  • Multi-touch.
  • Color nav­i­ga­tion panel (for swip­ing through book cov­ers, a la iTunes)
  • You can buy it in a BN store. (many dis­tri­b­u­tion points — one a few blocks from me)
  • You can browse dig­i­tal books
  • You can lend your book to oth­ers on a num­ber of devices
  • It has a mem­ory expan­sion slot
  • It can play MP3’s
  • It can read PDF’s (essential)

Did I men­tion that the design is clean? The device is a bit thicker and weighs more than the Kin­dle. The other impor­tant part is mov­ing away from pro­pri­etary formats.

Lend­ing is good.

I’ll be head­ing down to the Barnes and Noble to check it out. I’ll let you know if I am as impressed when I can touch it.

—–

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Cover cre­ation from Peter Belanger on Vimeo.

Hav­ing done this kind of work for more years than I’m actu­ally inter­ested in admit­ting to — this video stripped away the intel­lec­tual and con­sid­ered part of the process for me.

It’s sorta depress­ing actually.

All this work for that cover. Hmmm.

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Craig is here for the month. My brother is happy to be on vaca­tion from his shel­tered work­shop. Three whole weeks! That doesn’t mean there isn’t work to do.

Yes­ter­day Mr C. did lots of labels for mov­ing our office.

Craig making labels.

A sharpie is a labeler’s best friend.

Half way there.

Half way there.

Craigs labels put to work

Done.

Awe­some!

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iPhone RFID: object-based media from timo on Vimeo.

What if every object could tell its own story? Haven’t you wished that you could just google any­thing? Well if you use RFID you can get infor­ma­tion from any object that has an elec­tronic tag. Each object in a way is a smart object.

If you have a reader attached to a device like a smart device, in this case an iPhone. You can come in prox­im­ity of the object and tell you the object’s story. It’s pretty inter­est­ing tech­nol­ogy that can be used say for tour­ing muse­ums. You step up to a paint­ing or sculp­ture and put your iphone next to the label. It rec­og­nizes the paint­ing and allows you to see con­tent about the work. Add links to sources on the net and an expan­tion of infor­ma­tion based on your interests.

This is a nifty video show­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of using RFID. If you want to know more Check out this post: http://www.nearfield.org/2009/04/iphone-rfid-nfc

What if every object could tell its own story? Haven’t you wished that you could just google any­thing? Well if you use RFID you can get infor­ma­tion from any object that has an elec­tronic tag. Each object in a way is a smart object.

If you have a reader attached to a device like a smart device, in this case an iPhone. You can come in prox­im­ity of the object and tell you the object’s story. It’s pretty inter­est­ing tech­nol­ogy that can be used say for tour­ing muse­ums. You step up to a paint­ing or sculp­ture and put your iphone next to the label. It rec­og­nizes the paint­ing and allows you to see con­tent about the work. Add links to sources on the net and an expan­tion of infor­ma­tion based on your interests.

This is a nifty video show­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of using RFID. If you want to know more Check out this post: http://www.nearfield.org/2009/04/iphone-rfid-nfc

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1241-9

Been work­ing on the design of the new Heavy­bub­ble HQ. This space will server as stu­dio, HQ, and gallery for exhi­bi­tions. This is one of my ear­lier ren­der­ings using the mar­velous free SketchUp from Google. To see more of the design process of the new space head over to the art­log.

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Do you usu­ally pay to be a beta tester? Not me. I usu­ally get some­thing free for debug­ging somone’s product.

Well today Ama­zon released the big­ger dog of their reader and will charge you about $500 bucks for a device that looks like a card­board pro­to­type of a tech­nol­ogy prod­uct from the 80’s.

Expec­ta­tions for elec­tronic devices are con­sid­er­ably more sophis­ti­cated than what the Kin­dle offers. Now of course Ama­zon is just warm­ing up the mar­ket for a smart inno­v­a­tive com­pany like Apple or a smart startup to take over much like Apple did with the iPod. I actu­ally think that Ama­zon doesn’t care. Ama­zon is all about the dis­tri­b­u­tion chain. They want to sell you the con­tent not the device. They just cre­ated the device to cre­ate more inter­est in read­ing. Cer­tainly the pub­lish­ing indus­try doesn’t under­stand how to do that. But will this actu­ally rein­vig­o­rate the read­ing mar­ket? That remains to be seen.

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