ste!!a gassaway: unpredictable thoughts

Epson Expression 10000XL- Graphic Arts Scanner

Just got a tip on this sweet tool. I’ve been looking for a scanner for my smaller drawings and digital collage pieces. Nice features/specs. It’s on the wishlist. Now to find a good price.

Features:

This vid is bouncing around on tumblr. It’s a look at how interaction can be so intuitive, and feel so real that other beings interact and experience something very real. Watching this “smart cat” play with an iPad just like it would with a string or a keyboard tells us how far our interfaces have come. How rich a good touch interface can be is very exciting.

Enjoy.

John Maeda lives at the intersection of technology and art, a place that can get very complicated. I understand that place very well. I’m posting this talk because there is so much of it that I relate with.

This talk creates more questions than answers. It is about observing, questioning, and experimenting. Creating something new that adds to the universe. Something that brings joy. Organizing found objects and everyday things to make something totally new.

John Maeda uses imagination to inspire. Walk one day in John Maeda’s shoes. Think, what would John Maeda do with this? Open your mind to new and creative ways to move forward in whatever you do.

BTW, Mr Maeda is no longer at MIT he is now President of Rhode Island School of Design. Makes me think about how much fun it could be to be back in school. You can find out more about what he is doing there. http://www.risd.edu/president/

Experience Mobile Mobile from James Théophane Jnr on Vimeo.

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

Simply, Square is a company that will let you make credit or debit card transactions from a smartphone. Square is a new company who has a founder from another interesting company, twitter.

Credit and debit card transactions take all kinds of devices physical and technical including merchant accounts that cost you a bundle each month whether you make a transaction or not. This is difficult for small businesses, sole proprietors, craftspeople, and artists.

The story is that “In February 2009, Jim McKelvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as payment” and the next day Square was born.

The whole process seems terribly slow for a small transaction but the advantages of marketing offers to frequent customers, an identity verification system, text and e-mail receipts, and transactions to the cloud make it a player in this service space.

I know that I’m ready to try it out.

video from TechCrunch:

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.

—–

” We are not living through an economic recession, but a reorganisation of our society.”

I believe this quote is true what about you?

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.

I’ve been looking at some cool new themes for WordPress that use Sandbox. It’s a great environment to get in and use css to control the look and feel.

Problem is that most of the really cool skins that create thumbnails and size images can’t cope with photos from flickr. I almost never upload images twice. I refer to their location usually at flickr. These cool magazine and creative layout require that I upload the image I want to use. This means that blogging about an image located elsewhere requires a download and then an upload. I want to be able to linkback to the original instance for several reasons including giving proper credit for the image.

I don’t want to ask someone to write a plug-in or sript for this. Anyone have any ideas?

Tags: wordpress, flickr, images, feeds, plugin

This is the story of trying to get high speed internet access where i live in philadelphia.

Let’s start with Verizon.
Call them up. Give them the address. Can’t find the address in their database. Hmmm. We’d like to see if we can get FIOS. Waiting on hold. Time passes. The rep can’t find our address. Three people have lived there before us. Still can’t find our address.

Ok so no Verizon. If they don’t even know our address that spells bad news for the whole process.

Try Comcast. (I can’t stand Comcast. I don’t like their identity, I don’t like their new building, I don’t like that they got a huge tax break to build it. I don’t like their culture.) But, I need high speed internet service. No television, just internet.

Ok, they know our address. They’ll have someone out to install tomorrow at 11 am. They’ll bill us. Excellent.

We’re moving and our internet service will be up and running before we move in. This is terrific. While unpacking we can work from home. Cross that off the list.

Ok, I’m packing and my partner is at the new location to talk to the painters and wait for the Comcast guy/woman. Believe it or not the guy shows up on time. Ok, lets hook ya up he says.

Bad news.

Cable isn’t run to our new abode. It’s out on the pole but they can’t run it from the pole. New construction has to run it underground and it’s in our courtyard somewhere. History is that Comcast have been out five other times to try to hook up cable. Somehow our cable has been paved over. We could pay to dig and find it. I don’t think so. We rent.

Now what to do? How can this be. This is America we have telecom competition that’s better for customers. We get choice.

I won’t rant on how I think telecom is a public utility. But what am I to think when no one really wants to make an effort to give me service?

I call CTO Phil. Mr. IvesDigital.
He says EVDO.

Hmmm, this is a very interesting alternative. This means I can take my network connect to places that don’t have free wireless internet. This is a REALLY GOOD idea.

Now I can stop freaking out.

Margaret goes to the Verizon store. She gets an EVDO card, she buys a plan and she heads to the office. We install the software and plug in the card. We put in the password.

We’re on the net!

Sharing my airport network.

Tags: EVDO, IvesDigital, telecom, internet,

The first time that the people that made the Bernoulli Box became iomega with removable drives that were all about YOUR STUFF I thought their was some very savvy thinking about the desires or consumers. Then the CD burner came into being and smashed their success in the portable storage marketspace. Well, It looks like Iomega is returning to its old smart self creating a very desirable, very sexy new ego 320 GB hard drive. The reviews I’ve read are very good and the drive is exceptionally good looking.

It reminds me of a flask with something warm inside for when the cold winds blow. Or maybe a cigarette/cigar case — something very personal. The kind of gift you give to someone you are very fond of, something to inscribe.

This is a product with a very interesting emotional connection.

Tags: hardware, hard drive, fire wire, iomega, usb, design, red, desirable

The Boston Globe and 140 Seconds on Twitter

In case you haven’t seen it yet, Twitter is a micro-sharing website
where you describe in 140 characters or less what you’re up to. You can
send and receive messages via SMS (text messages) on your phone,
through Twitter’s website and third-party applications such as Twitterific.
If you want to talk “with” someone on Twitter, you add @theirusername
to the front of the message and it shows up in the person’s replies
tab. This was a feature that was added several months after Twitter
first launched in 2006 based upon how people ended up actually using
the service. That’s been the consistent story for Twitter — it’s
definitely evolved beyond “I’m making an omelet for breakfast” to now
include sharing info about late breaking news, making plans with a group of cohorts, etc.

BTW, Biz Stone is a co-founder of twitter.

This is a great place to experiment in the social network space. It’s sorta like it use to be in the old days. Sorta free wheeling, unexpected, and fun.

Tags: twitter.SMS, social networks, culture, 140, technology

MobileMe Update

We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users’ patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around. Read this article for more details.

The MobileMe Team

No this hasn’t been Apple’s finest hour.
I still haven’t purchased my iphone.

I will when its right.

I don’t get my voice mail from ATT now I just can imagine what life will be at the premium price they want for their swiss cheese service they call 3G.

Tags: apple, iphone, mobileme, technology