Usergland

Things #2.1: Apple's Developing Strategy.

2009-01-22T02:50:00.000Z

Ok, so in my last post I tried to sketch out the position that Apple has secured over the years since the launch of OS X, but it's worth noting too that it's been handed some significant things largely because of others' greed, laziness or downright incompetence. Here I might mention that it seems Microsoft has largely given up on usability or innovation in the GUI space, and a is mostly reduced to introducing interface features, which isn't the same thing at all. A half-dozen different, all non-optimal ways to achieve the same task isn't the way forward anymore, though it worked for Windows 95 and eventually for the NT team. Neither does a $10k back-projection table count, though I might concede that the photosynth purchase was a real coup. If those guys can deliver within Live Labs then MS might just get its UI mojo back. But I digress.

Stability and security is another area where Apple has been handed the prize without really trying. Building on NextStep with its UNIX roots was natural for Steve's incoming team, and the sluggishness of Redmond's response to the whole 'broken Windows' security nightmare has left Apple able to claim leadership in that area too, whilst doing relatively little. It's been said often that the almost non-existence of Mac OS X malware and viruses is because there's no point in writing such things for a tiny installed base, and that the advantages of OS X's supposedly superior architecture will crumble if and when Apple's market share grows significantly. Actually the opposite is true: Truly dangerous viruses are significantly harder to architect and construct on the Mac, and when one finally emerges the relatively low concentration of Macs in an explosively expanding universe of connected devices will make propogation much harder.

When it comes to Apple's newer role as a producer of consumer electronics goods and associated services, the apparent lack of amy real competition is even more startling. Do we even need to recount how the major music recording labels handed Apple the keys to the digital music kingdom when they assumed that technologists couldn't possibly know more about their audiences than they did? Suffice to say that Apple were allowed to take the lead in the digital music revolution by providing simple hardware solutions tied into services while the competition were either offering clunky hardware players or betting on a software solution that would work anywhere. That last strategy belonged to Microsoft of course, until they rolled over their Plays for Sure partners to emulate Apple's model, just as Apple was building its own 'iPod as software' strategy with re iPhone and iPod touch. Now MS is back singing the 'software running anywhere' refrain, but it might just be too late to catch up again.

When it comes time to write the history of the post-macintosh Apple, then I'm willing to bet that the extraordinary hubris of the entrenched phone manufacturers and carriers will feature heavily. This might just dwarf the foolishness of the record industry, and contribute even more to Apple's success over the next decade. Remember, we're talking here not of an industry which produces things that people like in a generally unpleasant fashion, but of one that has systematically placed its own ability to extort money from what it laughingly calls its customers at the very top of its agenda.

People love recording artists, if not the companies that record them; I've never met anyone who loves their phone company, and until recently no-one went misty-eyed talking about their handset. The phone companies, and most handsets, are tolerated because they provide something we generally can't do without, and many of us dream of replacing the carriers with an IP-solution.

It's in this context that the attitude of the entrenched players to Apple's 2007 launch of the iPhone seems hubristic, even downright foolish, and I'll talk a little more about that as I try to unpick Apple's forward momentum in my next post.

Things #2: The future of Apple.

2009-01-17T03:32:00.000Z

Ok, let's get the elephant in the room out of the way: Steve Jobs is taking time out for medical treatment, and plans to return to Apple in the summer. Too many words have been written on this, and I don't need to add to them.

Instead, this is the post that I've been gestating since before MacWorld, but wanted to delay lest I look like another wishful thinker pushing his own fantasy technology list. That's not my intention, so forgive me if I lapse into indulgent fandom now and then. What I hope to do is to rehearse a few possibilities in the hope that we can be better prepared should the future actually work out even vaguely similarly.

Steve Jobs aside, it's clear that Apple has since the turn of the century been putting in place the technological pieces necessary to dominate the next fifteen to twenty years of consumer computing, just as Microsoft dominated the last, and IBM the twenty before that.

This architecture wasn't all planned at the beginning, but then these things never are: They grow organically and benefit from the mistakes (and greed) of others, as much as the genius and opportunism of the prime movers. Thus Microsoft was able to blindside hardware-focused IBM, turn its command line advantage into a GUI one, and then hold onto it through successive generations of upgrade. Pretty much all of these software upgrades required hardware upgrades too, but they were relatively painless and distributed over the 3-5 year buying cycles of most corporations. For consumers the deal was harder but pretty inevitable: you buy what industry uses.

This remained true until the skyrocketing demands and specialised requirements of consumer apps (home media, digital appliances, gaming) began to direct the market. In each of these areas specialised technology starts to look like the way forward and then there's little to be gained from buying the same tech as the Fortune 500. The Internet was a great leveller too: it's remarkable now to recall the difficulty and cost of cross-platform work back in the late 80s and early 90s. Now it's truly trivial, and matters much less that you're running distinct platforms.

So just at the moment that a generic single OS running on existing hardware starts to look less important, and just as a simplified, largely consistent and usable interface gets more critical, Apple positions itself with a solid OS that's up to the tasks that consumers want to throw at it, and none of the architectural baggage of backward compatibility with four or five generations of PC software. This is good, and while it may not have been entirely part of Apple's gameplan, neither was it entirely the result of Microsoft's mistakes.

Track forward by 3 years or so and Apple is also in the consumer electronics game, with what's beginning to look like a fairly major hit on its hands. The upshot of this is that Apple is shipping vastly more devices with an embedded OS than it is traditional computers by about 2003. That's quite a game changer for the whole company, and for the corporate culture, and by my reading nowhere more so than in the mind of Steve Jobs, who has been pretty focused on the desktop up until this point. Remember, he's the guy who killed the Newton. Three years later they're building Apple TV and the iPhone platform, leveraging the work done on Mac OS X for sure, but fundamentally thinking about platforms in a way that's new both for Apple and for the mobile industry.

It's this platform focus that's central to Apple's future, and hence to all of us who live and work with digital technology. While it's fun to speculate about specific devices or software functions that Apple might choose to introduce, it's a largely futile exercise and matters much less than the overall emerging strategy. A few aspects of this seem fairly clear now and I'll talk about those in a later post.

Things #1: Seeing the future.

2009-01-17T03:28:00.000Z

Just before Christmas, as if to pre-empt the usual spate of 2009 predictions from anyone who fancies themselves a technology pundit, music industry consultant Andrew Dubber wrote a passionate rant (his term, so no criticism implied) against prediction.

I've never been afraid to critique punditry, especially where it's based upon little else than speculation, but Dubber's post got me thinking about the whole area of prediction in technology and everything that's mediated by technology (which might just mean everything that involves people and their myriad interactions over distances). Is it really a fool's game? Is prediction and speculation so meaningless as to be consigned forever to the realm of charlatans and snake-oil? When I (only half jokingly) described myself as a "network futurist" did I condemn myself to ridicule and mistrust?

The weeks pre-CES and MacWorld are notable each year for a dramatic increase in idle speculation and opinion, and this year was no exception, with dozens of analysts and bloggers producing thousands of words telling us just what we should expect from the technology companies.

Apple in particular is subject to this kind of empty analysis, partly because of the secrecy surrounding their future moves, but also because Apple and its various products touch us culturally and creatively in ways that few other technology companies do. The various developments around iTunes and the iPod ecosystem, for example, have ramifications for the whole music industry and for the digital distribution of all kinds of intellectual property (some of which I'll expand upon over the next few days).

It's this degree of influence that brings analysts, speculators, pundits and, yes, self-proclaimed network futurists out in a cold sweat, and leaves us feverish over the possibilities. In our predictions we embody our wishes for the future of technology, media and ways of living, as if the words on the screen (and the attention they garner) will magically bring our desires into being.

Now for the most part this is a futile exercise, and little better than sitting in a bar waxing lyrical over the future of digital media, politics, or sport. If the past is a foreign country then the future is another universe entirely, and we have no right to expect it to behave as we wish. Most of us are condemned to live in the future as tolerated outsiders, watching the next generation unpick the mess we left behind and bring something decidely alien and unexpected into being.

Sometimes though, this act of prediction is less selfish, motivated not by a desire for recognition (or worse, profiteering) but by an acceptance of constant change and the need for social advancement. The genuine spirit of futurism lies not in pretending to see the future, but in recognising that we all have to live there, and that although the best way to predict the future is to invent it, first we have to imagine the possibilities and work out which of them we want. Or, just as importantly, which of them we wish to avoid.

So while Andrew Dubber is right, I intend nevertheless to spend the next few days recklessly gazing over the horizon. Here in Bangkok, seven hours in the future from the UK and on the continent which will likely dominate the next fifty years, I'm looking forward. Not from a position of special insight, but from one of optimism and excitement, tempered by the knowledge that there are crucial things we need to imagine now if we, and the alien race we call the next generation, are to actually make it happen.

A Few Things

2009-01-15T23:13:00.000Z

As I write I'm several thousand metres in the air, en route to Bangkok once again for another five days teaching and the required weekends which bookend the work and allow a little recovery from the jet lag. The altitude must be doing something to my head, as I've finally determined to revive this long-dormant blog in order to get a few things done.

Over the ten days or so of my time in BKK I'll be posting every day. At least, that's my intention, but we'll see how I get on. The aim is to rehearse a few ideas which might turn into some other things. Or not. When I hit the ground I'll be checking in, sleeping, and then beginning the weekend afresh with some posts that I've been meaning to make for a while. Wish me luck.

EOS 450D first impressions

2008-03-30T20:39:00.000+01:00

After eagerly anticipating the release of Canon's new 'entry level plus' DSLR, I finally got my hands on one this afternoon, and I was decidedly underwhelmed. It was the briefest of hands-on, and it's possible that with more time I'll really grow to love it, but the first impression was that Canon still haven't managed to build a starter DSLR that feels good in the hands. I can't help comparing it with the Nikon D40 that I've been using for the last month (and the new D60), which manages to be affordable and still feel substantial. I prefer Canon's control layout, and the newly-added ISO button and superb display are very welcome, but as a long time user of metal-bodied compacts (my lovely Ixus 700 is still going strong) and of bricks like the T90, I really can't get excited about paying over £600 for something that feels so flimsy (I'm sure it's perfectly sturdy in reality, but perception is everything here). I'm much more likely to step up to the EOS 40D. Maybe that's the intention, but I think it's a misstep on Canon's part that will hand a chunk of the first-time market to Nikon, and quite possibly Sony.

Technorati Tags: Design, Futurilla, photography, Usability

Personal Use isn't Fair Use

2007-12-31T12:12:00.001Z

Almost as if on cue, to stress the point I made in response to Pete Ashton in this post's comments, the RIAA are now ready to take on even those of us who steer well clear of piracy:

In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings. (via DF)

It's tempting to laugh at this kind of action in a 'what can they do?' kind of way, but it's more serious than that. This is essentially direct action against iTunes and the iPod, as that's almost certainly where most legally purchased but format-shifted content resides. The industry will pretend (again) that they're happy with some kind of kick-back from iPod sales, but that's the thin end of the wedge for them to wring whatever kind of money they can out of the electronics industry in order to compensate for the failure of their business model. More hope perhaps lies in Apple's ability to convincingly put in place technology that lets owners of CDs legitimately and securely format-shift content in a way the industry can grudgingly accept. In the long term, Pete (and others) are right and DRM isn't the answer, and we need to press for the recommendations of the Gower Review to be implemented soon in this regard.

I'll say it again though: I'd sooner have a unintrusive (and Pete, while I've no desire to be some kind of DRM-apologist, it is largely unintrusive as long as you're staying within your usage rights) Fairplay-style lock to my devices than have the music industry propped up with cash from device sales.

Technorati Tags: Apple, copyright, digital, iPod, Media, Music, technology

Cracking open the new aluminum iMac

2007-08-08T15:27:00.001+01:00

This detail is lovely, but begs a question: How do you get inside?

With iMac, details make all the difference. For example, because it’s made from a single sheet of aluminum, you won’t see any seams or screws except for a single compartment on the bottom that provides easy access to the memory slots.

Well wonder no longer, design lovers. The lovely glass panel which sits over the screen (which BTW is a non-glossy panel under shiny glass, AFAIK) is secured by sixteen small magnets. Apple service engineers use a glazier-style suction pad to pull it away from aluminum frame. It's this kind of detail which makes Apple so special.

The one place you won't find a magnet however, is in the side of the case, where the Apple Remote used to hang. You'll need to find some other way of remembering where you put the old-fashioned glossy white plastic remote, which is begging for a shiny metal replacement now, natch.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Computing, Design, iMac, Macintosh, Product Design, puppy, technology, Usability

In Lisa Milroy's garden

2007-06-16T17:05:00.000+01:00

Actually, it's in the Ikon Gallery, but a kind of garden as her rich chalk pastel sketches and expansive oil canvases create a garden of the senses, all roses and oranges, and evocative sense-provoking objects. I'm writing from the third section of the three-part show, where sofas, free orange juice and books about gardens await the jaded gallery visitor. I chose to peruse Infinite Spaces: The Art and Wisdom of the Japanese Garden as I sipped my Pago.

Technorati Tags: Art, Birmingham UK, Exhibitions

Closure

2007-06-11T12:29:00.000+01:00

Long overdue I know, but done.

News

2007-05-22T21:14:00.000+01:00

As posting here has turned into a less-frequent, more long-winded affair, I've decided to try something a little different. Newsgland is a sort-of little-sister site. Check it out, and I promise a proper posting here soon. Much more to come.

Television

2007-04-06T19:45:00.000+01:00

Back in January I called Mike Elgan on his criticism of Apple's iPhone launch and in doing so questioned his comments about how the iPhone "undermined (the) Apple TV hype":

Apple should have focused on the Apple TV at MacWorld? I guess you don’t own Apple stock Mike? The Apple TV is a headless iPod with wireless and HD output. It’s a fun product, a strategic one even, but it’s not a game-changer.

Well by and large I stick by that comment, but I've now had a chance to play with the Apple TV and follow some of the discussion over what it's actually capable of, and there's more to say on the subject. By now everyone's heard how hackable the Apple TV appears to be: It's running a modified OS X that includes its own Quartz screensaver modules (hacked), QuickTime plug-in architecture(hacked), and a network architecture that makes it possible to control it over ssh, install a VNC client and access the Internet. Installing OS X's System Preferences .app gives access to the screen resolutions needed to drive a standard Apple DVI display. All of this is of course possible because of the eminent scalability of the BSD-based OS X (soon to be available on an iPhone near you), but also because the hardware is essentially a stripped down, specialised Mac Mini (which has already made upgrading the HDD possible - if not trivial - and allowed booting from a USB drive). The stripped-down bit is important (slow single-core Intel processor, simple I/O, no Bluetooth) but not as important as the specialised part. Playing with the Apple TV interface for more than a few minutes is enough to convince that, while the main processor needs to do very little most of the time, the separate graphics processor is no slouch. Crisp, rich graphics fade and scale without any of the stuttering and general tardiness of the Mac Mini (or of the MacBook on which I'm writing). Accessing media on the Apple TV leaves FrontRow in the dust. This is a specialised box built to do a job, certainly built to a price, but one where the compromises appear to have been the right ones. Turning an existing Mac into a media centre might have been a disaster of Pippin-like proportions, but it isn't, partly because of OS X, and partly because the iPod experience has focused the new Apple on the kind of attention to detail that really matters in the consumer space. It's pure speculation on my part, and I've seen no evidence either way, but I wouldn't be surprised to find the forth-coming OS X 10.5 (Leopard), or at least elements of it, at the heart of Apple TV. I'm not suggesting this is the first 10.5 public device, but some of the accelerated graphics stuff makes me think that parts of Leopard's Core Animation are in the mix in some way. This would make a lot of sense in the medium term, making developing screensavers practically identical to the Mac (the Quartz Composer crowd must be hyperventilating at the possibilities), and unifying development with a little thing called iPhone. Why would anyone want to develop something that runs (in some form) on a 42" display and a 2" one? Well despite the big difference in screen real estate, the Apple TV has a lot in common with OS X's smallest home. Limited screen space has some of the same constraints as using a large screen from a distance, as widgets and interface elements need to take up more of the available space. Usage patterns are likely to be similar too, with users spending short amounts of time with simple, single-function widgets. There's little extended use of an individual application in the way there is on the desktop (watching a movie doesn't count, as once it's selected, located and playing, the user sits back and rarely interacts). We're likely to see the development of mini-apps that are cheap to buy, simple to install, and intuitive to operate. Think Dashboard Widgets or iPod games and you're in the right ballpark. It's important to remember that both the Apple TV and the iPhone are, like the iPod, satellites of a desktop OS X or Windows system; none of the complex configuration happens on the device itself, relying instead on a system with a mouse, a keyboard and a high-resolution display. It's this paradigm which is absolutely key to the superiority of the iPod experience over competing devices, and applying this to traditionally desktop-bound activities will be critical in developing successful apps for these new platforms. That's why, for now, there's no ability to purchase songs or movies directly from the iPhone or the Apple TV, but it's also why being able to do just that in a usable, understandable way is crucial to the future success of iPod, iPhone and Apple TV. In the final instance it's that usability which may determine whether Apple retains it's early lead in this space or not.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple TV, Computing, Design, Mac OS X, Macintosh, Media, Product Design, reviews, technology, Usability

March

2007-03-30T09:59:00.000+01:00

Since events have conspired to keep me from posting for a month, this entry amounts both to breaking radio silence and to 20:20 hindsight; making sense of a number of things and finding patterns where none might exist. Nevertheless, March has been a month of intriguing developments which might offer some clues both as to how the rest of the year will shape up technologically and the directions my own activities will take me. I'll deal with the technology in separate entries. This one is about me. It's no secret that the evolution of the University department in which I do the majority of my paid academic work has created some issues for me. This is largely a simple case of the department moving, over time, away from the areas of expertise for which it hired me, and of my relatively sudden exposure to this disconnect because my involvement in other projects (which to an extent shielded me) drew to a close. This seems to happen to more than a few HE lecturers, and responses vary widely. Some reinvent themselves as 'professional teachers', finding the meaning of their work in teaching and learning expertise. Not a few bury themselves in specialist areas of research or funded activity, building walls to protect them from the vicissitudes of curriculum and educational fashion. A few brave souls get out entirely. Now I'm as yet uncertain as to how my own relationship with teaching will pan out, but a number of things have happened which make me less convinced that getting out entirely is the only way of avoiding the Teaching & Learning or Funded routes, which both seem to me deeply unsatisfying. The first of these was my trip to Karlskrona in February, and I've commented before about how satisfying it was to be exposed to a different kind of establishment and a different attitude to the educational process. It's too easy to get sucked into a dogmatism that says there's only one way of doing things, especially in a large and successful department where a general consensus can become a serious deterrent to debate, at least in the medium term (divergence of opinion can sound like revolutionary talk, and that never makes people popular, especially when the good guys are in control). In short, seeing other good guys running academic courses in different ways shows you the fallacy of the "if you're not with us you're against us" line. The second important event was the second Future of Web Apps conference in London. While the previous year's, inaugural, conference was a heady affair, all possibility and froth, 2007's expanded conference seemed largely grounded in the emerging realities of the web apps business in all its diversity. The consensus seemed to be that, yes, this was a new kind of web, but that some fundamental ground rules were beginning to coalesce. This vindication of our initial enthusiasm around what might have turned out to be another bubble brings with it some sober realities (your crazy half-baked web 2.0 scheme is unlikely to make you a billionaire), but it makes it significantly more likely that there'll still be a web apps ecosystem to talk about in 2 years' time, and less likely that those of us who've been talking up this new (ish) paradigm within design education will be seen as irresponsible lunatics. I even entertain a vague hope of future respectability, though I won't be holding my breath. This month has changed the outlook in a couple of ways. A few weeks ago I was approached to design the theoretical components of a new undergraduate degree in Animation and Animation for Game Design, and while it's not necessarily my area of specialism I'm interested enough in the cultural and technological shifts in art and entertainment over the last century to make this a welcome challenge. I've also been co-opted by the new course in Theatre, Performance and Event to develop their digital practice; a shift in the culture of a department, student cohort, and craft which won't be smooth or easy, but will be interesting. Seen together, these new academic responsibilities look like the beginning of a new vector in my day-to-day teaching work which might just turn out to be something important, though time will tell on exactly what that is. In other news:

My guest slot teaching HI and design to Electronic Engineers has drawn to a close for this year (a smaller group this time around, but more cohesive and interesting than before in many ways).

The Theatre/Film collaboration project has also just finished, producing 6 intriguing student short films inspired by dead film-makers (I'm looking forward to reviewing them here soon) and putting some of the newer film-making resources at BIAD to use for the first time.

I spent a very satisfying day in Canterbury this week as an external examiner revalidating a revised Digital Media programme which adds a dedicated Multimedia specialism (and which may finally begin using the full talents of my friend and sometime-colleague Garrett Lynch in the digital arts/responsive systems area).

I think that's enough for now, and some small compensation for not posting sooner. In a few weeks I'm off to Hong Kong for some sightseeing and teaching which will take me up to the end of April. Before then I have some course modules to write, and some thoughts on a few new products to gather together. More, I hope, soon.

Technorati Tags: Education, fowalondon07, Future, futureofwebapps, Teaching

FOWA

2007-02-20T09:37:00.001Z

I'm in London for the Future of Web Apps conference. Ryan Carson's onstage now giving everyone the lowdown on how things work this year. Networking seems to be the order of the day, though the WiFi network is pay-for this year, and that's going to seriously limit the amount of live coverage online (a qualified 'boo' since I'm covered by my T-Mobile partner agreement with sponsors BT).

UPDATE: Ryan Carson has apologised for the lack of network, explaining that there's been a big technical problem and it's killed the chance of a free network for any part of the conference. The guy from BT's going to talk to someone and see if the pay network can be opened up. Considering how slow it's been today, that'll kill it outright..

Technorati Tags: Computing, Conferences, fowalondon07, futureofwebapps

Karlskrona

2007-02-07T15:14:00.001Z

Karlskrona
Originally uploaded by sharl.

Here's where I'm at.

Sweden

2007-02-07T09:11:00.000Z

This is my last full day in Karlskrona, where I'm staying until Thursday. Monday was spent largely in transit, in that fabulous/terrible nowhere land that is modern air travel: Subtle shifts of airport architecture, scaling up from Birmingham's smallish International Airport to the enormous and efficient Schipol and the aging national pride of Stockholm, and back down all the way to the tiny but serviceable Ronneby on the southeast coast of Sweden, conveyed by largely uniform 737 all the way. Karlskrona is a coastal town built on 33 tiny islands, and the streets speak with a quiet modernity layered on aging architecture. The coffee bars hum with gentle contemporary dance music and encroaching global brands jostle homespun stores. The Hotel Conrad is modern and clean yet satisfyingly basic, all wooden floors and Bjorn Borg shower gel. Wifi is free, and TV airs US shows (including the deliciously dark "Dexter" which I don't think has reached terrestrial UK screens yet) and Bowdlerised versions of hardcore porn movies.

This afternoon I'm heading back the Blekinge Tekrnska Högskola where I'm meeting Maria Bäcke and Fred Young to discuss further their plans for a Digital Media & Humanities Archive, with a view to getting involved in the longer term. Maria is also instrumental in the League of Worlds conference, which is also coming to Karlskrona this October, so I may well be back for that. We'll also present the emerging archive strategy to second year students on the Literature, Culture and Digital Media programme as we'll be needing their help in gathering and processing some of the media involved.

I'll post soon on how this strategy comes together, but it's an interesting opportunity to try and tie some of the Web 2.0 stuff together in a functioning educational/academic setting, and probably good for the basis of a paper or a few lectures in itself. Let's hope it brings me back here soon: I intend next time to spend a few days in Stockholm, and perhaps even travel west to Copenhagen on my way home.

Technorati Tags: Airlines, Airports, Media, Sweden, Travel

Wrong

2007-01-19T11:56:00.001Z

Mike Elgan at Computerworld (and then again at MacWorld) tells us why he thinks Steve Jobs blew the iPhone launch, big-time. Here's why he's wrong, point for point. 1. Jobs raised buyer expectations too high Elgan reckons the enormous publicity surrounding the iPhone will backfire as users and analysts figure out what it can't do. This was already happening less than an hour after the keynote, as geeks realised they couldn't load up their Java apps or use it as a modem for their laptops, and it was entirely calculated to happen that way. By the June launch these people will have settled down to play with their Linux smartphones again, and the rest of us can focus on what actually matters in a phone: Features that the average person can use, not bullet points on a spec sheet. If running a Terminal SSH session to your ISP's telnet account is important to you (or if you even know what that means) then the iPhone isn't for you. Buy one for your mother instead, and they'll love you for it. If you know what an Ogg Vorbis file is, you probably didn't want an iPod. Newsflash: They sold pretty well without you. 2. Jobs raised Wall Street expectations too high Elgan points out correctly that the 10 million sales target is way higher than 1% of the smartphone market. Spot on, and that's why this isn't a smartphone, no matter what SJ had to say to launch it. At least it's not a smartphone in the way you think it is. It's more correctly a featurephone, like my K610i or my 6280, only this time with features I can actually use, or even find. Email on every phone I've ever owned has been a nightmare; even using the halfway decent Opera Mini browser to access the web is a less-than-pleasant experience. I gave up with Nokia's WebKit-based browser on the N80 after 3 minutes of struggling with the unresponsive and badly-designed hardware. 10 million is still a tall order, but you don't really think Apple is going to try that with a single $599 phone do you? Do you think the iPod sold that many in its first, or even second iteration, and at its $400 launch price? 3. Jobs gave competitors a head start By announcing in January, Jobs gave competitors 5 months to match the iPhone it would seem. I guess that's true if you think that we've seen all the iPhone will offer. Me? I think Jobs could have personally delivered product schematics and specifications to Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Panasonic, and they'd still screw it up. And while they're all pitching the features their smartphones already have (remember these guys are convinced the iPhone just spins things they've been doing for years in a pretty box) Apple may just blindside them by selling a premium product to a market segment that's been grousing about phones that don't work as well as their iPod do. This is a much longer game, and it's not about killing the Blackberry or the Treo. Trust me, Apple wouldn't even touch a market that small. Oh and Elgan neglects to mention that Apple didn't have a choice about not announcing the iPhone – the FCC would have announced every detail of the phone long before launch, no matter how tight Apple keeps things. 4. Jobs undermined Apple TV hype Apple should have focused on the Apple TV at MacWorld? I guess you don't own Apple stock Mike? The Apple TV is a headless iPod with wireless and HD output. It's a fun product, a strategic one even, but it's not a game-changer. Anyway, with the hype surrounding the iPhone, and the subsequent disappointment that one can't actually buy it yet there's bound to be a whole bunch of Apple TV boxes sold. It would have taken a brave man to go to the MacWorld stage with just an Apple TV to pitch, and the time was right for the iPhone. 5. Jobs put iPod sales at risk Ok, so I have a bunch of Christmas money, term's about to start, and there's a really sweet 4Gb iPod nano in the Apple store, but I'm going to wait 5/6 months to blow $500 on a new phone instead. Give me a break. The pricing and announcement-to-availability window are calculated entirely to maximise iPod sales. Like everybody didn't know this was coming already. I suspect a bunch of people who were waiting for the phone to launch just decided to get that nano, or that 5G, right away. 6. Jobs wrecked Cisco talks I don't see how Elgan can call this one without knowing a lot more about what really went on. To me, it looks like Cisco were trying to spin a pretty spurious trademark (one that trades off of a lot of goodwill around the iPod, with very few products to show) and get some kind of agreement from Apple to inter-operate with their VOIP products. That's a lot of work, and would likely create a lot of confusion around the Apple product (not to mention really pissing off Cingular). I expect Apple was willing to pay for the name, or for licensing it, but Cisco were demanding something much more involved. I suspect Cisco's gamble will prove regrettable, as Apple can afford to pay for the name, or just change it. Either way they win.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Business, iPod, iPod nano, MacWorld, phones, iPhone, technology

Details

2007-01-18T23:22:00.000Z

This week I met with Gregory Sporton, and we formally ended my affiliation with the Visualisation Research Unit, which he heads for UCE. While from my perspective this was long since a done deal it was still a poignant moment: I worked very closely with Gregory and Mike Priddy in establishing the unit under some very difficult conditions, and it consumed inordinate amounts of my emotional and mental resources for a considerable period of time. I'm still dealing with the ramifications of that. It was a valuable experience though, and some fun was had along the way, for which I'm grateful. I won't be rushing to invest quite so much of myself in an institutionally-led project for some time, I think.

2006 was filled with big, dramatic events. If I have a hope for 2007, it's that it brings a renewed emphasis on the small things which have too often managed to escape my attention. I'll continue of course to watch the developments at the VRU with interest and enthusiasm, and I'll most likely blog them here often.

Technorati Tags: Future

Predictions

2007-01-09T11:44:00.000Z

Steve Job's Macworld keynote today means that it's once again the time of year when countless pundits and technologists lay out their expectations, beliefs and hopes for 2007. It's really astonishing how Apple has become the focal point for so many of us in terms of our broader hopes for technology and the ways it can transform our lives, and no other company looks even close to taking over this role any time soon, no matter how much attention we pay them. In contrast Microsoft has become for many the embodiment of practical, pragmatic technology; workable but a long way from the elegant, gleaming future we vaguely recall being promised. Perhaps inevitably then, Apple falls semi-naturally into the role of anti-reality, offering a glimpse of a brighter world in which everything just works, and in which design embodies qualities of humanity so often lacking in consumer technology. Now Apple doesn't always deserve to be granted this role as it's as prone as any other company to getting things wrong, sometimes spectacularly so, and it can take an inordinate amount of time to fix (or abandon) the things that aren't working. Witness the .mac service, which continues to languish somewhere between merely inadequate and downright embarrassing. This isn't the time for me to add my suggested fixes to those already out there from a considerable number of users and ex-users, but I think 2007 needs to be a make-or-break year for the Apple's web services strategy. It's tempting to suggest that the solution begins and ends with Google, but things are rarely that simple, and I suspect it'll have lot more to do with iTunes than anyone to date has speculated. What I mean is that if we want to see the near future of Apple's strategy we should look very closely at what makes the iTunes-iPod ecosystem so successful, and imagine some close equivalents across the whole Mac /digital hub space. Think smaller components of Leopard and its progeny tying into paid-for services with the emphasis on consuming and publishing digital content, and you're getting a lot closer to the future of .mac, which won't be called .mac at all. I don't expect to see SJ announce much, if anything, about .mac at today's keynote, but we might see the general direction in the iLife and iWork updates, and potentially in any new iPod ecosystem products that appear.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Computing, Future, Internet, iPod, Mac OS X, Macintosh, MacWorld, Rumors, technology

Momus over Middle England

2006-11-16T14:34:00.000Z

Much more interesting than my presentation tomorrow is the fact that hero of these parts, Momus is flying to Birmingham as we speak to give this lecture. While I'm normally happy to take credit for great things, I'm not responsible for organising the event (though happy too to get a name check on Nick's blog); that's all down to Gregory and Mike at the VRU, and no doubt to a host of other people behind the scenes. I will though take credit for introducing Dan Hunt, in whose memory the lecture is dedicated, to the Momus oeuvre. I've no doubt he'd be enjoying Ocky Milk right now, were he here.

Technorati Tags: Birmingham UK, Future, Music, technology

eScience and Transformative Technology

2006-11-16T14:20:00.000Z

This Friday I'll be speaking at the Ikon Gallery Birmingham, as part of the e-Science for the Arts series organised by the Visualisation Research Unit. I've loosely live-blogged my notes from the first two sessions over at Futurilla, and it's been worth attending the events if only to enjoy being infuriated/exasperated/inspired by the nature of attending artists/designers' engagement with digital culture and technologies. For every sensitive collaboration of the human and the digital there are three art/design hacks railing against the hegemony of the computer and proclaiming it a fancy electronic paintbrush, accessible only through the high priests of technology, and protected by obscure arcane incantations. My purpose, as I see it, is to offer up an alternative to this world-view, perhaps more akin to that of modern futurists like Ray Kurzweil, one in which digital technologies differ in startling ways from their analogue predecessors, and transform the domains they touch in ways not predicted by a simplistic view of the computer as a digital paintbrush. The main theme of my presentation will be the contrast between these two world views – of digital technology as a tool and as an environment – and the implications for arts practice which flow from these positions. I'll draw upon the experience of configuring the Visualisation Research Unit for illustration, and try to articulate some of the challenges in embracing the environment model within e-arts practice. Finally I'll touch upon some of the long-term implications this perspective uncovers, implications which are challenging, disruptive, and dramatically transformative.

Technorati Tags: Art, Birmingham UK, Computing, Conferences, Creativity, Design, Futurilla, Networks, Science, Software, technology, Transformative

More on Hegemony

2006-11-16T14:15:00.000Z

My thoughts on the massive expanding super ego that we call Graphic Design seems to have provoked at least a little interest outside of the 'gland, not least I suspect because I rashly connected the work of smart folks like Made Media and 3form with the broader notion that the industry's conversion to the church of Jakob Nielsen won't save it from its obsession with surface and the dominance of the visual. Well it was a spurious connection, prompted merely by the coincidence of graphic design student assessments and the Plus+ Design show; in hindsight these should perhaps have been two separate blog entries, but such is the immediacy of the medium and its ability to capture the flow of one's thoughts, however disorganised. Ah well, mea culpa.

Technorati Tags: Birmingham UK, Conferences, Creativity, Design

Michael Gartenberg hits the nail on the head

2006-11-09T22:06:00.000Z

Good stuff, including this:

Bottom line, carrying a phone along with a Shuffle, Nano or Sansa is not a burden. Those devices are so small as to be ubiquitous. Unless the phones can start to meet even the most basic function of dedicated players, they will have a hard time co-existing with them, much less displacing them. Forget OTA song purchases. Make the phones better first. How to make a music phone good enough to use

After carrying the new shuffle around for a week this is more obvious than ever. I've been using it pretty heavily, and the second charge cycle isn't even dented. It's so light that if I knock it off my clothing it just hangs harmlessly from the earbud cable, and so small that I can lose it in a pocket. Yes, the whole thing is barely bigger than the screen on my favourite (smaller) cellphone yet has a better interface for playing music although there's no display; and when the battery dies I just pocket it and move on, not panic about missing calls.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, iPod shuffle, phones, technology, Usability

First thoughts: One Day with the New iPod Shuffle

2006-11-02T12:24:00.000Z

Apple's announcement of a replacement for the iPod shuffle at September's special event was hardly a surprise, considering that the original white USB stick-form player had been around for well over 18 months with no changes other than price reductions. That's a long time in the fast-moving low-end music player market, but rather than cramming in more memory or releasing new colour schemes every 4-6 months Apple seems to have preferred to wring every last sale from the first-generation device while working hard on a complete reworking behind the scenes. This seems like a sound strategy: The higher-priced models have been more important to Apple's platform strategy (and profit margins) than the low end, and the component cost of the shuffle must have fallen considerably since its release in January 2005, making its continued availability a no-brainer. Most of the iPod owners I know have a shuffle or two lying around by now as a stylish USB memory device that doubles as a backup player (when I've drained my 5G playing games and videos, the shuffle is still there to provide audio sustenance on the remainder of that long-haul flight). When Apple redesigned the hugely successful iPod mini , it maximised impact by transforming it into the entirely new iPod nano. However, with the new shuffle they've retained much of what made the original successful: The flash memory architecture, the 1GB capacity (dropping the 512MB version to simplify further the product matrix), the shuffle or play-through option, the screen-less design, the reduced control interface – pretty much all of the stand-out features of the original are unchanged. Contrast this with the punditry of the usual suspects who've had Apple adding new features left right and centre. Rumours have circulated of single line displays, audio interfaces, integrated laser pointers (I think I made that one up), all of which completely miss the point about what makes Apple good at this stuff, and illustrates why almost no other company gets it enough to dent Apple's dominance so far. The new shuffle takes what you liked about the original (and liked enough to buy one although you already had a regular iPod) and turns it up to 10. Where the original was small and light enough to hang around your neck, cram into a sleeve pocket, or strap to an arm, this generation demands to be attached to a bag strap or clipped to a lapel. Wearable is now the marketing message. Where the original gave you a choice of player when leaving the house, this one will be with you all the time anyway. You could clip this to the case for your regular iPod and hardly notice it. The iPod Radio Remote is hardly smaller. I've had 256MB camera memory cards bigger than this. It's that small. Small doesn't mean insubstantial though, and the fit-and-finish of the new generation shuffle is a much more consistent with the rest of the iPod range. Taking its cue from the new nano, and from the mini before it, the extruded aluminium shell reeks of quality (and really opens up the chances of getting this in a range of colours before long – look for a (PRODUCT) RED model in '07 if the equivalent nano proves popular). The original shuffle had razor-sharp lines and a fine quality plastic, but the relative softness of the material shows its age after 12 months, with slightly chipped edges on every one I've ever handled. Time will tell how the metal case holds up, but based on my experience with the silver iPod mini I'm much more optimistic about durability. The clip feels pretty durable too, with a solid extruded profile that takes engraving well (though the lettering is necessarily tiny), although the spring isn't as powerful as I'd like, and the player needs to be clipped to something pretty thick to hold securely. I expect this to be improved on later revisions. Expect too to see the original earbuds replaced with the new improved version as the component costs fall (I wasn't expecting the new ones to come with the shuffle as others seem to have been, though undoubtedly it would have been a nice surprise). Other design refinements are notable, from the newly-separated (and tiny) power and play mode switches (much easier to operate and much more solid than the original combined switch) to the tiny indicator LED and its duplicate on the opposite end of the player, making it much easier to see what's going on no matter which way round you clip it to your clothing. The biggest change, and probably the most controversial, is the removal of the integrated USB plug which made the original so convenient as a memory device. This generation isn't being pitched as a convenient USB 'stick', but nonetheless that additional feature made the white shuffle more compelling for existing iPod owners, and over time I've probably made greater use of mine as a file-store than I have as an entertainment device. Including it in a device of this size was probably never really an option, and it means there's no end-cap to lose, but it also means that a dock is necessary to sync or charge the shuffle. The included dock is wonderful though; smaller than even the inserts from the regular dock, but just as solidly-built as its larger namesake, and utilising a 3.5mm jack into the headphone socket to supply power and data. There's too much cable to make this a convenient thing to keep with you (though the promised battery life makes it less of an everyday necessity), and this opens up a new third-party opportunity in simple 3.5mm to USB adaptors. I don't think we'll have to wait very long to see something from Belkin, Griffin, or even Apple itself. When I've spent more time with the shuffle I'll have things to say about sound quality (sounds great on first hearing), battery life, and how the design holds up in everyday use. My first impressions though are excellent, and at £50 I can see the new shuffle decorating the shirt pockets of many an existing iPod owner, as well as those looking for a quality budget player. Now if Apple wants to do a version in black…

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, Product Design, reviews, technology, Usability

Interventions, Type, and the Hegemony of the Designer

2006-10-18T20:37:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was spent moving between a variety of creative spaces, and the gaps in between (literally and figuratively) gave me some much needed thinking space. First up was the assessment presentations for the Interventions task I set last week for my Expressive Use of Graphic Design students. My relationship with graphic design as a discipline is ambivalent at best (those who know me might find dysfunctional a better term), and the task was intended to be a spanner in the creative works of a world that, for me, too often deals only in surfaces (where application forever means applied, and interface resolutely occupies middle ground, a cultural translator that eschews truth and beauty in favour of expedience and the tragedy of the commons). For the most part the students (as they often do) rose to the challenge without necessarily getting it (the whole notion of intervention is pretty alien within the client-led world of design, and the EGD module is already out on a limb in terms of the usual practice-led GD fare that education typically serves up). There was certainly some good work, and I think a few preconceptions were dented, if not shattered. My concern is that the new things we offer up tend to become absorbed into a culture of ego that dominates creative design, and that even disrupting the systems of the ego-boosting creative industries becomes an arch comment on how clever we are as creative individuals. In this way Banksy inevitably becomes the feted media artist, rather than a disruption to the processes of big media hegemony. I'm not sure I know what the solution is - perhaps if we just ignore the Star Designers then they'll all eventually go away. Equally problematic, though in different ways, was the Plus+ Design exhibition as part of the Fast Type Slow Type conference in Birmingham. As a strange mix of trade show, chill-out zone, and art show it both worked and didn't work simultaneously, with the latter mostly because the staff of the exhibiting design outfits were conspicuously absent from their stands yesterday afternoon (probably all at one of the talks by some Star Designer), lending the whole thing an uninhabited, all surface, no feeling ambiance. Inevitably such shows are parades of the usual suspects in the regional design scene (in quality terms the equal of their counterparts in any major city), and here and there are flashes of inspiration (David Osbaldestin's loose collective Fresh Punk comprising mostly new graduates bored with their day jobs, Karoline's Miss Pussy cartoons, and some lovely Beat 13 cushions). Perhaps the best, and certainly the least obvious response to the trade show/exhibition format was from 3form who took the typography theme to heart, covering the walls of their booth with a variety of assertions placing 'usability' and 'the user' at the heart of their philosophy. It's respectable, even admirable stuff – few visually-led companies would have the self-confidence to use a Mac Pro and TFT screen to show merely an emphatically and deliberately useless 'loading' screen. Nevertheless there's an undeniable safeness in usability as manifesto which says more about the industry's clients (and the design landscape) than it does about the designers (3form, and fellow exhibitors like Fluid, Clusta, and Made Media are all run and staffed by some of the smartest people I know): When manifestos on usability are still considered edgy then those of us who are supposed to be educating the next generation of designers and clients should be ashamed of ourselves. Ironically, it's the industry's new-found celebration of 'the user' as ultimate audience and development focus which most clearly shines a light on the over-amplification of the ego within the Creative Industries as a whole (and consequently within this show too). In the post-Neilsen era the anonymous end-user is becoming the new Star Designer, a generalisation reified as the ultimate ego to which even the creative impulse is subjugated, in an industry which values the creative impulse above all others. In this world even the parodic, useless, and ostensibly vilified loading screen is beautifully designed, partly because we've all seen that employed without irony, but also because, well, this is a design show, and we all appreciate great, useless design, even when we simultaneously reject it. The antithesis of useless beautiful design is still subject to the aesthetic values which dominate its enemy! Of course we shouldn't be surprised by any of this, and companies like 3form are still the good guys, canny enough to position themselves just at the point on the curve where they win customers (and lots of them) rather than alienating Joe Corporate with antidesign manifestos. That's the job of educators, who can well afford to blaze trails, because the public purse is footing the bill. It's when we're failing in that task that we need to be worried, because then we're all going to hell in a beautifully designed, and thoroughly user-tested hand basket.

Technorati Tags: Banksy, Birmingham UK, Business, Cities, Conferences, Creativity, Design, Education, Futurilla, Graphic Design, Media, Teaching, Usability, Web

Je Ne Regrette Rien

2006-10-17T14:21:00.000+01:00

David Weiss on Woz at Microsoft:

Someone asked if he had any regrets to which Woz replied: "Regrets about Apple, no. Regrets about my own life? Yes, I wish I would have put floating point in Basic, but I wanted to get it done quick."

That's not a bad thing to have to regret. We should all be so lucky.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Computing, Creativity, Macintosh, technology

Q: Why Am I Famous?

2006-09-03T21:03:00.000+01:00

Why Am I Famous?
Originally uploaded by sharl.

A: Paris - I have no idea. Banksy - Because you're a genius. I was lucky enough to find two copies of this in Birmingham HMV today, and the staff there didn't know that I wasn't just a regular insane person buying two copies of the PH cd. The Flickr stream has picked up ~~5312~~ ~~9901~~ 19066 views for these images as I write, in the few hours since I posted them, and no-one else seems to have them online yet. It's nice to be on the crest of a meme, for once.

Technorati Tags: Art, Banksy, Birmingham UK, Graphic Design, Media, Music, Paris, Paris Hilton

Less New Build Space

2006-08-21T11:11:00.000+01:00

The DIRN Workshop Has Begun:

Patrik Svensson, the director of Humlab, is talking about digital humanities in his keynote lecture, and how digital media transform the humanities and the social sciences.

Maria Wåhlström Bäcke of Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona is live blogging the Digital Interaction Research Network Workshop at Humlab in Umeå. Director Patrik Svensson's suggestion that "altered spaces might be more interesting and dynamic than some of the newly built and perhaps rather sterile ones built specifically for working with digital technology" is interesting, perhaps primarily because I've always worked in reclaimed spaces, and whenever I've been involved in the development of new spaces the process has been over-complicated by the competing demands of the influential and highly-paid partners that such projects inevitably attract. I don't think it impossible to build excellent digital spaces from scratch, but there's something very appealing about reclaiming and reinterpreting spaces. I've been told that I'm particularly good at thinking about the use of space, and I've been lucky enough to work with colleagues like Michael Priddy who's excellent at planning things like cabling and networking, so maybe I'm biased. I'm with Svensson though; an unwanted existing space will beat a new build in terms of cost, time and convenience anyday. Maybe the constraints of an inherited building are just what you need to be creative, and nothing kills a muse like staring at a blank canvas.

Technorati Tags: Conferences, Creativity, Design, Sweden

Jelly Bean Woman

2006-08-08T17:37:00.000+01:00

Light relief, in the form of a woman made of jelly belly beans. Snapped in Birmingham Selfridges.

Notes on SteveNote

2006-08-08T14:30:00.000+01:00

So the Apple WWDC has landed, and the SteveNote had some interesting stuff, unpicked in fascinating thoroughness by many others, elsewhere. A few things that piqued my interest though:

iChat is now a proper calendaring solution, since it supports CalDAV in Leopard. That's good news, long overdue. My own efforts to establish a lightweight, usable system for room bookings and staff timetables amongst my University colleagues was definitely stymied by iCal's inability to edit shared calendars (though also by many other things besides), and the in-built resources handling and conflict resolution (if sensibly done) will be a big bonus. We might yet see a useful solution within my department.
Rails is now part of the standard Leopard Server install. That's great news for the Rails guys, and for Apple generally as it'll make using the Mac a no-brainer for Rails dev (if indeed it isn't already). It'd be even better to see it included with the dev tools. A lot of development is done on MacBooks Pro or not (and the iBook/PowerBook before them), and this would get Rails into lots of hands. I'm eager to see what can be done with the DashCode/Rails combination. We're going to see a lot of interesting stuff, I can feel it in my bones.. [UPDATE: According to this press release, rather than the 37 Signals announcement, my wish came true and Rails is shipping on the client developer tools too. Yay!]
Now that iChat can replace the background for an iChat video, does this mean that motion tracking is built-in (either to the application or at a system level)? Note that they're not using chroma-key to accomplish this, just sensing the pixels that change when a person sits in front of the camera (yes, it's going to look strange when something moves in your room shot - the hands of a clock for instance, or your cat). I look forward to lots of motion-sensing applications. A few might even be useful..

The internal redesign for the Mac Pro is a big deal and definitely indicates the direction of the line. Despite the 'pro' moniker generally being applied to things that aren't, this Mac lives up to its suffix. Accordingly, the cost of the components is higher too (though the base entry machine is affordable), and I wouldn't bet on those drive caddies or that heat-sinked (sunk?) memory becoming cheap anytime soon. The message is clear: This is a workstation-class Mac (not the long-rumoured "gamers' dream mac" or the oft-rendered Cube-on-Steroids), and it both positions the iMac as the clear solution for ordinary people and opens the way for the Mac mini to evolve into a home media-oriented box (with no doubt a stripped down entry/education version). Don't expect to see this line up take shape until Leopard ships though, alongside iLife 07 ("Next Spring" is code for "When Vista's due to ship, though probably won't": I expect a ship date announcement at January's consumer Mac expo).

Technorati Tags: Apple, Conferences, iMac, Mac OS X, Macintosh, Computing, technology, WWDC

Of Leopard Mail and iPhones

2006-08-07T10:32:00.000+01:00

Brian Lam at Gizmodo writes:

It's the day before Apple's WWDC, and we're dreaming of what goodies Stevie J. will reveal at the keynote. Last week, O'Grady got his O'Hands all O'ver what looks like details of the next revision of OS X, AKA Leopard. Giz took a look at the long-ish post, and sorted out what we thought were the new operating system's five best features. (All speculation, of course. Please don't sue us, Steve.) Apple Rumors: OS X Leopard's Six Best Spots

Personally I'd be happy if Mail in Leopard gets the ability to connect directly to Apple's .mac through WebDav and web browser protocols. Why do I have to copy and paste outgoing messages from Mail to .mac's hopelessly outdated webmail interface just because my employer (or my WiFi hotspot) is blocking IMAP/POP? This is the kind of reason I pay for .mac (or why I might not cancel it). I'm more than a little intrigued by the rumours of a significantly-beefed iChat: If Leopard is going to deliver a proper Apple VoIP solution (it had better work with Skype) then all of the iPhone rumours might not be related to a GPS handset after all. Here's my prediction then: iPhone as a software product (perhaps rolled into iChat, perhaps something else) and an Apple-branded handset for talking. Initially I'd thought it might be Bluetooth to your Mac (Apple might not want to compete in the low-margin computer handset market, though they do make a Bluetooth mouse); now I'm thinking it'll be a WiFi handset with display and integrated functionality (address book, SMS, maybe iSight) and an upgrade to Airport basestations which turns them into simple VoIP phone hubs. I'm not betting on a WWDC launch (it's a consumer product), though I think we'll see a teaser for the telephony features in iChat. We'll see very soon what WWDC brings. I'm betting that Apple takes a very different line in tackling the phone network operators to the one people expect. It won't be head on, at least in the first instance. Every dealing I have with my phone network convinces me more and more that the answer is simply to bypass them for more and more services. My SkypeIn number, voicemail and the SkypeOut service (along with my very sweet Ipevo USB handset) may not deliver the greatest quality or most reliable calls I've ever heard, but it saved me a fortune in Bangkok last month. While it's true that mobile phone design needs a rethink, the bigger problem is the network. My K610i has a functional Blogger client and a workable web browser, but the damn network doesn't want me to see my blog, because it might not work well on a phone sized screen. Sigh.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Internet, Macintosh, phones, Rumors, Mac OS X, Software, technology, Telephony

Kitchen Garden Cafe

2006-08-05T15:52:00.000+01:00

This picture was taken and stitched on the K610i, which gives some indication of just how sophisticated the software in cameraphones is getting. Of course this still is no rival for my Ixus, but it will be interesting to see how Sony's Cybershot phone range begins to stack up. I might try and test the 3.2 megapixel K800i soon just to see how close things are getting. I'm a big fan of dedicated devices, and I can think of many reasons why I'll continue to carry a pocket camera as well as my phone. Still, this has great appeal as a simple blogging tool and more besides, if I can just get it onto a network where Internet access isn't deliberately crippled.

Technorati Tags: phones, Product Design, photography

On train, new phone.

2006-08-04T16:11:00.000+01:00

Well my K610i arrived this morning and my initial impressions are good. The integrated blogger support is excellent with the camera software initially creating a new blog but blogger letting you switch posting to any existing site easily, and merging the posts you've already made. The camera seems faster than the Nokia 6280 I've been using (actually, everything seems faster) and the mail client seems more functional. The keys are pretty close together though which makes typing a bit harder for my sausage thumbs, but I'm hoping I'll get accustomed to it. There's a lot to like. On a more negative note the phone isn't unlocked as the ebay merchant claimed, and getting it unlocked today has proved impossible. More on that later. For now I've resorted to a prepay 3 network sim card in order to test it out. This makes testing some of my usual accounts problematic, and means getting used to the new network services at the same time. It's a pity 3 is so behind in offering cheap and flexible Internet access, or I might just have switched over. As it is I'll be trying much harder to get this unlocked tomorrow; I'd hate to have to give up on this phone just because the evil networks don't want us to move around.

Technorati Tags: Networks, phones, Product Design, Sony, technology, Usability

1 Million Pages in your Pocket

2006-07-29T10:55:00.000+01:00

What's Apple Doing With eBooks? - Cult of Mac weighs in on the rumours of proper eBook functionality for iPod:

That would be a radical move for the company, as no eBook has achieved the kind of breakaway success predicted for the devices during the overly optimistic early '90s. ... It's a great idea, and if libraries get on board with this, I might never read physical books on my commute again.

I'm definitely with you on this one Rui, but I don't think it's such a surprising move. Apple made the only (non-dedicated) handheld device I would ever have considered reading a whole book on way back in the 90's, and if they can beat the Newton's clarity of text and battery life then I'll be one happy commuter too. The other aspect of this that makes it a natural for Apple is precisely what Rui considers radical; the lack of success of others in putting the pieces together in an area with so much untapped potential. It's what Apple did with the mp3 player market, then with podcasting, and (Apple hopes) with short-form download videos too. With the right deals (please tell me O'Reilly are on board and, while we're dreaming, Dorling Kindersley too), the right device (a music player with expanded functionality, intuitive navigation, sharp on-screen text, and good-to-great battery life), and a smart technical implementation (a compact format with lots of sources of free content - something like pdf), the eBook revolution might take a giant step forward. The need for sources of 'free' content is key. Ripped CDs - and file-sharing - provided the kindling for the iPod, and we all have huge amounts of documents we could be persuaded to carry around on our iPods. Create a Gutenberg Project section in the iTMS. Let me autosync an iPod bookmark folder in Safari via iTunes just like I do with my photos and podcasts. Build hooks into Leopard to let other developers easily add this functionality (what wouldn't I give for Newsfire to go every morning?). Grab my unread mail as a continuous scrollable eBook and let my iPod read it to me, Nike + Apple style. None of this needs to add unnecessary complexity to the basic iPod functionality - it can all slot nicely into what's already there. What's more, this parlays well with Apple's education strategy for the iPod and iTMS, adding serious functionality for those Universities who've already built iTunes portals, and a major lure for others to jump on board. Many of the educators and edu administrators I work with would kill for a good cheap eBook reader, never mind one that students willingly purchase themselves. If Apple get this one right 2006 could turn out to be the year eBooks really start to happen, and while the other players are fussing over downloadable movie content the iPod could become even more entrenched in the mainstream through the humble medium of black on white type.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Books, Business, eBooks, Education, Future, Gutenberg, iPod, iPod nano, Macintosh, Media, Newsfire, podcasting, RSS, Software, Teaching, technology

Zune and the Art of the U-Turn

2006-07-27T07:12:00.000+01:00

Magic 8-Ball Answers Your Questions Regarding Microsoft’s ‘Zune’:

Q: And so now that Microsoft is abandoning the licensing model (or at least deprecating it) in favor of a closed model that they completely control, will all those pundits who’ve been predicting doom for the iPod for the last four years declare that Microsoft, like Apple, is now making the same mistake with Zune that Apple made with the Macintosh in the 1980s? A: DON’T COUNT ON IT.

Daring Fireball, right on the mark as usual. I expect that the usual pundits will claim that Microsoft's entry into the own-brand mp3 player market is a repeat performance of what they did to Apple on the desktop, when it's almost the polar opposite. On the PC Microsoft changed the business model from a proprietary closed OS (Mac OS and others) or a bought-outright OS (what IBM wanted with MS-DOS but didn't get) to a license-to-all-comers model. With a hard-to-use platform like the PC this worked beautifully (at least in business terms), freeing manufacturers from having to invest in software but forcing them to compete on price (and to keep outdoing each other in performance), while software companies (can we guess who that would be?) cashed in big-time on the huge expansion of marketplace for applications. As Roughly Drafted and others have pointed out, this platform and licensing model has failed on pretty much everything that Microsoft have tried to apply it to with the exception of PC Windows. It's failed for Windows CE and Mobile on PDAs and the mobile phone. It should hardly surprise anyone that the mobile device manufacturers want to avoid getting locked into a relationship like the one the PC vendors have with MS. Even on the desktop it only works while things are spiraling upwards: more desktops, more speed, more OS innovation, more application sales. Microsoft's complete failure to deliver Vista anything like on time or spec might be an indicator that the tornado has begun to die down. Hell, it might even be the cause of the slowdown. So now MS have been forced to completely abandon the model that common wisdom would say wiped out Apple's early GUI lead and adopt the very same end-to-end proprietary approach that Apple have used to build the iPod ecosystem (in the process screwing all the companies that bought into the Plays-For-Sure platform model). This of course is similar to the XBox, but there are important differences. For one, MS never had a platform license model in the game industry. Secondly there's never been a really successful platform license model in the game console market (even back as for as the home computer market - remember MSX?). Thirdly the XBox is a standard razor blades business model like all the other consoles - throw huge amounts of development cash at the hardware, stuff the boxes with cash, and make all your money from games licensing. This is exactly the opposite of the iPod, where the content has been priced to drive sales of (and profits from) hardware (this has forced Apple to design simple, relatively cheap devices and to make them appeal to the broadest audience possible - hence the lack of advanced features with geek appeal). So can Zune make the games strategy work for music? Will MS stuff Zune with $600 of hard-to-use technology selling for $250 and try to battle it out on features (wireless networking, music sharing)? Certainly there's no evidence that's what consumers are looking for in a music player (it hasn't helped Creative, and their shares didn't exactly rebound on the news of the Zune either). And while MS have deep enough pockets to make no money on either player or content just to put a cap on Apple's growth in this market they've shown little ability in turning expensive complex hardware into consumer-friendly devices. All of sudden, Microsoft isn't on home turf: I don't think we're in Kansas anymore Bill. The strategy that won the desktop won't work here, the battle for the home is far from done, and this is still Apple's game to lose.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Business, iPod, Macintosh, Music, technology

Notes on Hotels

2006-07-25T05:57:00.000+01:00

But the Bed's Still Useful: Michael Gartenberg writes:

As I'm sitting here in the hotel in Chicago working and waiting for my Chinese food to arrive, it occurs to me that I haven't used a hotel phone, hotel TV set of Hotel internet access in a very, very long time.

I certainly couldn't say the same thing. Here in Bangkok I'm pretty dependent on fixed Internet access from my hotel room (charged hourly or daily) and the network access (occasionally ropey but no worse overall than at my University in the UK) from where I'm working. Judging by the constant trickle of people through the hotel lobby taking advantage of the free but slower wifi, and the use of the half-dozen Wintel machines there, other visitors are pretty reliant on the hotel facilities too. I can get (and have gotten) email via my UK mobile phone's roaming agreements (GPRS, but no 3G here it seems, at least not for me) but the cost is extortionate. Eye-wateringly expensive in fact. So for now the hotel is where it's at, and it was pretty much the case in Hong Kong earlier this year too (though there, in-room wired fast network was gratis). Of course Gartenberg's right when it comes to the long-term prospects, and the idea of hotels making wads of cash from this sort of thing in 5 years' time just seems ridiculous. Richard Watson over at Fast Company tracks some current trends in hotel innovation, but for what it's worth here is just a few of the things on my wish list after almost 2 weeks in the Royal Orchid Sheraton Bangkok:

Technology Locker: It's a hit and miss affair knowing whether your in-room safe will hold anything more than a wallet, some jewelery and your passport. Don't make me buy a sub-notebook just so I can stash it in my room safely; give me a sensible sized secure locker, and while you're at it put some kensington locks around the place too (extra points for the luggage company that starts adding security lock ports on their hand luggage).
Lighten the load: Have you seen what we have to carry with us now just to keep going? Spare batteries, chargers for cameras, chargers for phone, chargers for laptop, chargers for PDAs, and cables to connect them all together. When I book my room let me choose from a variety of common adaptors and connectors that are ready-to-go when I check in. A powered USB port and set of phone cables will handle a lot of models, and is there any reason the same thing can't trickle feed my camera batteries too? Feeding a laptop that way might be a bit much to ask, but there are multi-adaptor chargers there too (though as yet, no MagSafe adaptor). Again, manufacturers could help by giving us more standard power ports (kudos to Canon for giving their pocketable camera battery chargers a standard 2 pin (radio style) power lead and to Apple for their tiny plug-in international power plugs on their chargers (with a standard port underneath, natch). I shouldn't even have to ask for an iPod dock and speakers, I really shouldn't. Really, get with the program.
My Space: I might be one of the few people in the world who quite likes hotel rooms, but even I would love to feel a little bit more at home. Think of all the things I could customise from the comfort of a website: Pillows, room temperature, reading material, choice of toiletries (I'll have Body Shop or Lush thanks very much, some cooling talc, and I won't be needing the sanitary towel disposal bags), fresh pressed pyjamas waiting for me, and the Thom Yorke cd that I haven't yet gotten around to hearing. Flowers and fruit would be nice too. You can skip the lousy beer in the minibar, but I'll take a couple of Erdinger Dunkel, or a nice Paulaner.

Notes from Bangkok

2006-07-22T17:47:00.000+01:00

Sadly I missed the futon gig at bed supper club this Thursday through a combination of being tired out and having a day full of student assessments on Friday morning, so futon's live presence still remains an unknown. Word is they're great though, and I'll try to catch them when they play London later this year. It remains possible that they'll prove to be that rarest of birds: an asian band that translates to a western audience. Of course futon aren't really an asian band, in the same way that Bangkok isn't really an asian city; more an amalgam of influences that add up to something called Bangkok, and it's only partially Thai in character -at least to farang eyes- though it's administered and branded with ruthless nationalism. In fact National Pride seems to be the main national product here, in a sort of amplified version of the way that's true in Capitals the world over: The Nation's outpouring of concern over the health of the King seems manufactured to cynical western liberal neo-european-republicans like me, but there's an undeniable authenticity about it (witness also the swarms of yellow commemorative shirts worn semi-voluntarily to work on Mondays in this the 60th year of the monarch's reign) and an eagerness on the part of people to play the role of loving citizens that reminds me just how far Britain has moved from the relationship it had with its own monarchy in the first half of the twentieth century. Momus' comments about national cultural identity being largely arbitrary seem apposite here: Who's to say that this blending of east and west, this at once everywhere-ness and nowhere-ness, isn't precisely what constitutes Bangkok, just as it constitutes Hong Kong, Singapore, London and so many other capitals? Perhaps the capital city is becoming an idea of connectedness, as between-places a space as the international airports that sit on their periphery. Maybe it's this very quality that makes futon a truly asian band (after all they're a Bangkok band in which the majority of band members are from countries other than Thailand), whilst making them easy to love in London, Hong Kong, Singapore, KL, Paris and Tokyo. A Capital act indeed.

Technorati Tags: Bangkok, Cities, Hong Kong, Music, Paris

A cool 28ºC in Bangkok

2006-07-14T04:21:00.000+01:00

Well I arrived yesterday afternoon Bangkok time, remarkably fresh as a result of flying business class by Swiss Air from Zurich, and the temperature here being noticeably cooler than it was on my first visit in April. Thunderstorms are forecast as the rainy season gets well-underway, but as of this morning I've seen nothing but blue/grey skies. I'm in the sumptuous Royal Orchid Sheraton again, which is particularly handy for getting to work: I can completely avoid the legendary Bangkok traffic and take the river taxi up the Chao Phraya. It's about 10 minutes and 18 Thai Baht (€0.40) and I'm practically on the doorstep of Silpakorn University of Arts where I'll be teaching for two weeks from Monday. If anyone in the UK wants to call me they should use my SkypeIn number (+44 121 288 9576) as my mobile phone is extortionately expensive. I'll be picking up voicemail a couple of times a day, at least. If I can get my old Sony Ericsson T610 unlocked here I'll put a local SIM card in it, for local callers. Who knows what the next two weeks have in store? The last time I was here the Multimedia Design course at Silpakorn was still being finalised. Since then there have been quite a few staff changes, and there's undoubtedly a lot to get my head around but I'm looking forward to it. The University, and Bangkok itself, has a great deal to commend it, not least the delicious food for implausibly little money. In the meantime I've some hooking up to do with various people, mostly farang artists, that I met last time around, starting with lunch today with lecturer, photographer and multimedia designer Peter Mantello, who I'll be quizzing about his research and his forthcoming exhibition back at Birmingham Institute of Art & Design. It's a hard life, but hey, someone's gotta do it.

Technorati Tags: Art, Bangkok, Cities, Teaching, Travel

Calling Time on the iPod Phone?

2006-06-28T10:39:00.000+01:00

The iPod Phone Myth:

According to proponents of this myth, Apple's success with the iPod is about to be crushed by an onslaught of music playing cell phones, so Apple needs to desperately come up with an iPod + cell phone

Daniel Eran is currently dissecting the myth of the ever-imminent iPod Phone, and he makes some excellent points. Though I have no doubt that Apple labs have examined the potential for a hybrid phone/music player in extraordinary depth, and that they have interface designs that look like alien technology in comparison to the nightmares of UI that Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and MS would have us use, there's no real reason to believe that we'll see such a device from Apple anytime soon, and plenty of reasons to believe that phone and music functions are a poor fit. A stills camera is something that the average person uses occasionally and intermittently, and one that doesn't interfere with the operation of the phone. When I'm deep in Steely Dan Land, the last thing I want is another junk call breaking my reverie.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Communications, Design, Futurilla, iPod, Motorola, Music, phones, Product Design, puppy, Sony, technology, Usability

WiFi Pie in the Sky?

2006-06-26T10:17:00.000+01:00

from Engadget:

Boeing looking to sell/scrap Connexion?: After several years of unsuccessfully attempting to coax people into surfing the Internet for a fee instead of sleeping during their international flights, it looks like Boeing has finally given up and started seeking buyers for its Connexion service, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal (subscription required, as usual).

I'm really disappointed to hear this, though surely it's a matter of time before it's standard on long-haul at the very least. A wave of WiFi-equipped mobile phone devices seems to be coming for the business market, and if Brain Training and the Nintendo DS lite pushes little WiFi handhelds into a few million exec pockets we can all forget about the terrible in-flight gaming options that the airlines provide, and do something more interesting instead. The big limiter for my in-flight WiFi use was battery power and the lack of a power socket in Tourist Class, not the $27 fee.

Technorati Tags: Airlines, Internet, Networks, technology, Travel

Post Future of Web Apps Summit

2006-02-19T15:20:00.000Z

Mike Priddy and many others have already posted lots about the Carson Systems Summit in the nearly two weeks since 820 delegates got together to chat, blog & knock heads on the Future of Web Apps, but I thought I'd add my two cents, with the benefit of some thinking time having elapsed. Mike's made a lot of the salient points about the way Carson tapped into the interconnectedness of blogs, Flickr, Technorati and collaborative tools, empowering the audience with little more than lots of 240v AC, some WiFi and the futureofwebapps tag to generate numerous on-the-spot reports (including my own notes), photostreams, and groupthink media. Carson's audience is tech-savvy, plugged-in and laptop-toting in a way most conferences can't hope to match, but there are still things that we can learn about getting audiences involved in the documentation and extension of content-driven events. Can we do this for HE lectures? Having watched lecturers (myself included) struggle with generating meaningful online content to support students before and after a class or module, it was amazing to witness what can happen when you let an engaged audience use their tools of choice to participate in documentation at the point of delivery. That last point is probably critical: No-one's going to go home and type up 4000 words of speaker notes, but if you can remove the friction on the spot (free network and power, the simultaneous presence of the speaker and the slides, and the 'many hands' collaborative help of your peers) and incentivise the contribution (kudos, links, and Technorati rankings) then you might just get your audience making better, more timely, and more relevant media than you could possibly hope to do so yourself. There's another important point wrapped up in this, and that's that the systems you choose/build/deploy need to be optimised for this sort of real-time audience participation. Trying to use our regular e-learning systems simply won't cut it; they're generally far too geared towards the delivery of official documentation (module profiles, assignments), records of events (eg presentation slides or prepared video) and after-the-fact support (discussion forums, follow-up notes). The sorts of tools we need will emphasise live annotation/tagging/editing, media sharing, and groupthink pattern identification. At a later point we'll get to some specifics, but this will serve as a starting point for further discussion of just what fits the bill for our own experiments with this.

Technorati Tags: Conferences, Creativity, Education, Flickr, Future, futureofwebapps, Futurilla, Internet, Long Tail, Media, Social Networks, Software, technology, Web

Future of Web Apps Summit

2006-02-08T09:23:00.000Z

A quick posting from the Future of Web Apps Summit in Kensington, as I take advantage of the complimentary WiFi access. Already the hall is filling up, the event is sold out and there are 820 delegates. The seats are packed closely together, so I guess we'll be making some new friends. I guess Joshua Schachter is the hero/anti-hero of the day, depending upon how you feel about Yahoo. Hopefully we'll be hooking up with some people we know here and sharing ideas, and I'll post any interesting pics to the Flickr stream (UPDATE: Check out Mike Priddy's stream and follow the FOWA tags for more). It's a long day ahead.
UPDATE: I've been taking notes during the speakers so far and posting them pretty much live at http://futurilla.blogspot.com our emerging internal notes blog. Check it out for fairly good notes from the presentations by Joshua Schachter (del.icio.us), Cal Henerson (Flickr), Tom Coates (Yahoo), David Heinemier Hanson (37 Signals/Ruby on Rails), and Shaun Inman (Mint). More to come, I hope.

Technorati Tags: Conferences, Design, Future, futureofwebapps, Internet, Long Tail, Social Networks, technology, Usability, Web

Night & Day

2006-01-18T12:05:00.000Z

Watching the sun go down on the world to the rear of the plane, while we fly towards daylght ahead. Pretty amazing. Dusk is an arc of deep blue and purple curving up from the wing-tip to the tail. Below is all clouds. Germany in about five and a half hours, which according to my body clock is ninety minutes ago. Time travel can get you down.

Technorati Tags: Time Travel, Travel

Leaving Hong Kong

2006-01-18T08:58:00.000Z

As I write I'm in the air again, flying to Frankfurt and from there on to the UK. I've lots to say about HK, which I'll try to catch up on over the next few days. For now I'm enjoying the amazing view of the mountains of what I think is China/Nepal below me, and luxuriating in the relative quiet of my new earphones. My second set of Apple In-ear headphones died on me whilst in HK (I don't know.. I put them back in their case, I treat them gently, I only listen to nice things - let's hope Apple switch them again), so I treated myself to a pair of Etymotic Research Isolator ER6i earphones. Though the reviews on Amazon are decidedly mixed, and they don't look like the toughest things in the world, I'm finding the audio superb. The ER6i earplugs seem to fit my ears well, the bass is good but natural, the sense of space is palpable. While they don't quite drown out the low rumble of the jet engines, they block enough of the mid and high frequencies to make the flight much less unpleasant (even with the iPod turned off), reduce the required audio volume dramatically, and put the flight attendant with the annoying voice on mute (even though he's sat behind me). There's also the pleasure of pushing something really quite deep into your ear and not being told off for it, which must be worth £80 of anyone's money.

Technorati Tags: iPod, iPod nano, Music, Product Design, technology, Travel

5 days, 300 photos, and 2600 feet of escalators

2006-01-11T13:10:00.000Z

That's not counting all the escalators in the MRT stations either. In fact it's just the 2600 feet of the Mid-Levels Escalators that I rode on the weekend. Moving around is quite an art form in Hong Kong, with the most efficient MRT system imaginable, trams, buses and, yes, escalators moving 6,898,686 people around a few lumps of rock hanging off the bottom of China. The next MRT you need always seems to be directly opposite the one you're disembarking, and sometimes I've had to wait as long as 60 seconds or so for the train to arrive. Everyone pays with the Octopus stored value card and there are no queues to be seen. How do they do it? More to the point, why can't we?

Technorati Tags: Cities, Design, Future, Hong Kong, technology, Travel

33000 feet, south of Moscow

2006-01-05T23:07:00.000Z

Well the transfer at Munich was smooth but rapid, leaving no time to post anything, or even to photograph the very swish and rectilinear airport terminal. This makes up for it though - WiFi on the flight itself. 30US Dollars for broadband via satellite for the duration of the trip. How could I not try it out. I suspect I'll recall this with nostalgia one day, the way we now recall Mosaic or 14k modems. See you in HK.

New Year Adventures

2006-01-05T13:24:00.000Z

2006 is barely five days old but somehow it feels much older. Perhaps it's because Christmas was a blur of various family visits, brief returns home, endless festive meals, gift-giving and glass-raising. In any case I've been back at University for only two days and I'm off on a foreign teaching trip for the first time in almost four years. In previous times it was Singapore where the department franchised various courses; now it's Hong Kong, and my first visit to the New Territories. Though I'm anticipating enjoying HK I'm far from looking forward to the long haul. My iPods are charged, and in 8 hours or so I'll be in Munich for a 12 hour Lufthansa flight; I may even post from there, WiFi willing. I'm staying at the Metropark in Causeway Bay HK (if anyone wants to hook up), and I'm expecting that the complimentary Internet access in the rooms will make my 12 nights there fairly productive in terms of online posting. Watch this space, and my Flickr photostream for updates.

Technorati Tags: Cities, Hong Kong, Travel

Remix Culture and the Singularity

2005-12-04T15:10:00.000Z

As I write I'm travelling to Broadstairs for a lecture I'm giving at Christchurch & Canterbury University on the Digital Media programme there (by the time I post it'll be over, and I'll post an update). Garrett Lynch, who was a student of mine many moons ago teaches there, and we've finally managed to organise my visit around everything else that's happening. I've been asked to talk about my research, which I guess means the Transformative Technology paper from Prague that Mike Priddy and I are working up into a book chapter (18 days to go, so I'm hoping this lecture will speed things up on that front too). How am I planning to relate this to new media, and to new ways of thinking around existing forms? During the session I'd like to kick-start some thinking about the new kinds of things that will emerge from dramatic shifts in technological progress, and specifically on the art and new media fronts. This is quite a challenge for most undergraduate students (imagining the future is hard, even for digital natives), and it might be easier to get there by looking at some of the things that, to my mind, signpost the approach of such shifts. For the most part, the obvious examples fall under the oft-maligned Web 2.0 banner, as they combine important aspects of People, Personalisation, Network, Software As A Service, Modularity, Distribution, and the Web of Things. This wasn't intended to become a definitive list, but it might serve as a seven-point checklist for starting students thinking about how they might transform their projects, and their thinking.

Technorati Tags: Creativity, Design, Education, Future, Internet, Long Tail, Media, Networks, technology, Transformative, Web

Alternative Currencies

2005-11-23T15:20:00.000Z

Ok, now I'm not suggesting anything as strange as this eBay item, but I've been thinking for a while about alternative value exchange systems like the LETS scheme and others. Shouldn't the Internet have made this much more workable sometime ago? Were we waiting for Web 2.0 to establish the flexible types of glue that a true exchange system needs? Alternatively are we just not interested enough, or already well-served by the US Dollar/Euro and Paypal? Perhaps we're looking in the wrong place and we already have a perfectly good system of attention exchange, built on the foundations of Google Ranking, blog inter-linking and article rating. If so, how do we monetise our assessed value, and more to the point: What's the web now worth?

Technorati Tags: Future, Internet, Media, Networks, technology, Web

Insane Artists

2005-11-06T21:13:00.000Z

Berlin artists use parasitic Mac mini in Subway:

A group of artists in Berlin have released a movie of a suction cup equipped suitcase which contains a Mac mini, a digital projector, and a battery power supply. They stuck the suitcase on the side of the subway and projected images in the subway tunnels as the train was moving.

Woah, hold it right there.. Having watched the video showing what they did I'm astonished that they're still alive. In London they would have been shot dead before they could say "But officer, I have an Arts Council Grant". Let's get this straight: A guy walks into a subway and fixes a metal case to the side of a tube train. People get onto the train and it pulls out of the station. No-one stops the guy, and he leaves the subway. This would seriously make me think more than twice about the safety of using the subway, and someone ought to be fired for letting it happen. Unless it's all a ruse of course, and the subway are in on the act. Would that make it less interesting artistically?

Technorati Tags: Apple, Art, Cities, Creativity, Macintosh, Terrorism

First look at the new iPod

2005-10-30T12:19:00.000Z

The new iPod is now in the Apple store Birmingham, though curiously the only model on display is the 30GB white even though they claim to have the 60GB too. The first thing to say is just how damn thin this thing is; its more prominent curves sit nicely in the hand, and the proportions make the screen seem a lot wider than it actually is. The picture is bright, the frame rate good, and in the Apple store lighting it was easy to see - we'll need to get one outside to know what it's like in daylight. Other than that there's not much to say about the device itself; it's an iPod first and foremost and doesn't mess with that formula. I think that's still a good thing, though you can find any number of people who disagree. The new Universal iPod Dock is good news too; for me because it'll work with our household iPod minis, nano, 3G (and the inevitable 5G); for Apple because I'm bound to drop £25 on the dock and another £20 on the lovely Apple Remote. Ah well. As for the iPod itself, I've been waiting a while for a smaller model with more than 40GB to hold my audio library (currently at 35.6GB over 7519 tracks), my photos, and some space for audio recording. The specs on the new model include stereo recording at CD-quality, but there are no microphone input adaptors yet. I'll be waiting for those to hit market, then I'll bite.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, iPod nano, Music, podcasting, Product Design, technology

6 Keys Good, 41 Keys Better?

2005-10-22T14:22:00.000+01:00

Nathan Weinberg at InsideMicrosoft on Blog News Channel wades into the discussion over Apple's Remote Controller and Front Row on the new iMac G5: In Steve Jobs Universe, Less Features Is The Biggest Feature:

Front Row is an interface for iTunes that uses a six-button remote. It just doesn’t compare. Maybe after Apple has worked on once/twice yearly revs for four years it will have a competitive product, but I don’t think so. MCE 2002 had more features than Front Row has; and MCE Vista makes Front Row look like a little leaguer to Microsoft’s major league MVP. I love how Jobs compares the remotes to say that six buttons are better than 40+, while the only reason Front Row has six buttons is because it has so few features. My MCE remote has 41 buttons.

Specifically Nathan's points about his MCE remote in comparison to Apple's Front Row remote are as follows:

10 keys on the MCE are digits, while Apple's doesn't need these since it doesn't do TV.
2 are phone keys * and #, again keys that Apple doesn't need because FR doesn't do phone calls.
2 keys on the MCE are for channel up/down
2 are for skipping commercials (and again, something that doesn't even figure in FR)
1 record button (same argument)
1 mute button. Nathan thinks this is an oversight and presumably something that ought to be on Apple's remote.
4 directional buttons which Nathan says Apple have "integrated into the six, meaning you can’t control video and navigate at the same time".
1 info button
4 feature-specific buttons (essentially mode buttons)

As I posted to Nathan's blog, I think these are very questionable assertions which most product designers would disagree with. Would Apple be forced to have 10 number buttons if it had TV channels? Why doesn't my iPod have 10 of them then, or 1000 for that matter? Phone features? Video conferencing is there in iSight, and for that you use the mouse (and probably sit pretty close to the screen). A mute button? For what precisely? If you're watching/listening to media under your control then pause is what people do generally. Mute is only necessary for something you can't stop (like live TV when you have no PVR function - the best option there would be for the play button to 'pause' the live stream by spooling it to disk/memory). I think Nathan hits the nail on the head when he compares MCE 2002 with Front Row: This isn't about product revision and version-to-version feature creep, it's about focus, deciding what makes sense in the context of what you're offering, and ruthlessly iterating before you release in order to make something work better. I don't think Front Row has all the features it might ever need either, but I know it won't need a 40-button remote when it does.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Design, Futurilla, iMac, Macintosh, Product Design, technology, Television, Usability

The End of TV

2005-10-16T21:30:00.000+01:00

From Tao of Mac:

One thing's for sure: This is the end of TV as we know it. It's been heralded time and again, the BBC has been running their little trial, etc., but even if Apple somehow fails to leverage their lead, the media industry will never be the same - again.

Rui's opinions are always informative and worth reading. It'll be interesting to see what the BBC do as a part of this, though they seem to understand that media is moving towards a long tail, narrowcasting model, and that even the big hits will have to adopt the networks and paradigms that are slowly taking hold. Mark Cuban goes just as far, and a little further perhaps, especially in detailing how this paradigm shift might work economically.

Its not inconceivable that just as DVDs have surpassed box office in revenues and the theatrical release has become a commercial for the DVD sale, the network TV broadcast could become the commercial for the download sale. I dont see download sales surpassing advertising revenue, but I do see it as likely that the download sales could more than compensate for any advertising market weakness brought on by ratings erosion and / or changes in how ads are delivered on TV. I also think it wont be long before we see an ad or two in front of the show that will further increase revenue.

I'm just about losing count of the industries that this will affect, but I'd bet that Education will be one of the first. Though it's typically slow to adjust to paradigm shifts, this one is just too efficient (and clearly monetised) to ignore. Apple didn't invent distibuting video in this way, and there'll be a lot of players (the iTMS is hardly the only way of getting music, or even podcasts, onto an iPod), but 200 million copies of iTunes and a lot of iPods in students' pockets is pretty hard to ignore.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Creativity, Education, Film, iMac, iPod, iPod nano, Long Tail, Macintosh, Media, Networks, podcasting, Television, technology, Transformative

Artist/Producer/Distributor/Consumer

2005-10-10T12:43:00.000+01:00

Owen Kelly asked me to point him to some more information on how these traditional roles are breaking down (as we casually assert in the Transformative Technology paper), and I struggled to find references to precisely what I'm talking about. Partly this is due to it being educated (or at least informed) conjecture on my part, but it's also due to there being a sense in which it's just assumed now, and a baseline for any further discussion about what the future holds (for consumer tech, for big media, for creative education). Each new technological conduit (the railways, telegraph, telephone, fax, sms, email) has increased the participatory potential of big media (from letters to the editor to the BBC turning R1 playlists over to the whims of SMS-equipped listeners), but the flattened, symmetrical landscape of the emerging media really takes this to a new level. 10 years ago it cost the equivalent of a small house to do digital video at anything like production quality, and not a whole lot less to do what was called desktop video. Nowadays there's hardly any video that doesn't happen on the desktop, and plenty of people watching video on equipment as good as or better than that which was used to create and edit it. Add P2P into the mix and you might be consuming it on something that's also serving it up. You can see the general direction of this, and why I called it a baseline for further discussion rather than an end in itself. In fact I think this recombining (hmm, I'm going to have to justify the use of that word at some other point aren't I?) might well be a feature of the anthropology of digital natives which is the starting point of the paper we're writing for League of Worlds in Melbourne. More on that soon.

Technorati Tags: Creativity, Design, Education, Futurilla, Internet, Media, technology, Transformative

The Social Hyperspace

2005-10-01T14:07:00.000+01:00

The Transformative Technology paper is done and dusted, and off for compilation into the electronically-published proceedings of the Cybercultures 2005 conference. The last paragraph of the paper is for me the one that interests me most in terms of exploring this further:

Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns inevitably creates dramatic effects which will begin to be felt more widely within creative practice as the curves of technological advances progress beyond their initial stages. While these effects are by their very nature unpredictable, we might reasonably expect them to be characterised broadly by a displacement of existing centres of power in the creative industries, by the further breakdown of the defined roles of artist/producer/distributor/consumer, and by the sudden rise and fall of new forms which evolve and propagate in net-time, mutating and sometimes disappearing literally overnight. We have been conditioned to consider the possibility of "Business at the Speed of Thought", yet we are still encouraged to view serious creativity as a more measured and mediated activity. Given the personal panopticon, the supernetworks, and tera-transaction computing, the ability for new kinds of information/software/media/art to coalesce around the sudden requirements of micro-communities will transform how we think about production, and create vehicles for creativity at the speed of ideas themselves.

While the paper is written from the context of creative practice, I'm much more broadly interested in the transformative effects of technology as it moves beyond appliance-centred and performance-driven modes. Some of the effects of this are visible today in Web 2.0 oriented services and the variegated, richly-textured and densely-layered social web that's emerging from the interweaving of what Mike Priddy refers to as our personal hyperspaces and the oft-derided but still advancing collapse of distance (or, at least, the tendency of latency towards the asymptote). To put it plainly, though the coming of me-dia (Negroponte's Daily Me) was meant to shatter social cohesiveness we seem to have been remarkably adept at using technologies to create a new, and much more complex, form of commons. My networks overlap some of yours, and a url (or increasingly an automated aggregator) is all it takes to clue you into something that I want to share. The move from broadcast simultaneity to podcast/Tivo timeshifting doesn't seem to have reduced the likelihood of us having heard the same show: If anything the dramatically-improved opportunity for access and the multiplying of the available forms for the same content seem to have made it more likely that we're on the same page (though we might get there at different times, and by different routes).

In practical terms I'm hoping that we can begin to get into the detail of how applications and services are beginning to reflect this transformative stage of technology. I think that before we begin the next paper (Mike and I still plan to develop the abstract that we submitted to League Of Worlds in Melbourne despite not hearing anything back) I'll be working up an article around some of the best examples of the emerging nodes on this emerging social hypernetwork.

Technorati Tags: Creativity, Hyperspace, Internet, Networks, podcasting, Social Networks, technology, Transformative, Web, Web 2.0

Live-ish from Apple Expo Paris

2005-09-20T14:59:00.000+01:00

Well I finally managed to find an open WiFi connection here on the floor (literally) at the Porte De Versailles, so it would be churlish of me not to post something. The show seems smaller this year (and I say that every year), but that might be because everything's shrinking. The floor is dominated by iPod accessories, and with the advent of the nano even those are approaching the invisible. Things to mention so far: 1. A gorgeous collection of Japanese iPod and PowerBook accessories from Keiko Mase Napier's Power Support company (They're based in Burbank CA, but they really need to do something about that name). The iPod Kimonos are wonderful, and their traditional Japanese fabrics and designs are being rolled out into a collection of laptop cases too. I'll be talking to Keiko for Radio Usergland later this week with a little luck. 2. Apple seem strangely disinterested this year, which might be to do with the fact that they have nothing brand new to announce. The nano is the big (little?) news, but we got that already. Last year the iMac G5 was everywhere. This year it's ubiquitous on everyone's stands. Today's changes to .mac could easily be missed, for all the attention they're being given (though I fail to grasp how .mac groups will avoid the pit of irrelevance that iReview fell into.. I'll look at it in more detail soon). 3. A little company called RealMac Software from Brighton UK are here pitching their Audio Express and RapidWeaver products. Both look potentially excellent tools for doing things like podcasting, and I've suggested a few features which would make this a no-brainer. This stuff used to be coded in RealBasic of all things, but they've made the jump to Cocoa, and good luck to them. 4. IrisPro OCR software wins the Usergland award for outrageous use of brushed metal. I'm not rabidly anti BM, but this just has to be seen to be believed. My eyes are bleeding from 5 minutes with this interface.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Design, Education, iMac, iPod, iPod nano, Macintosh, Paris, podcast, podcasting, Product Design, technology

A few updates

2005-09-15T23:33:00.000+01:00

It's been a few days since I posted last, so I thought I'd try to roll a number of things together in this entry. Here goes:

1. The iPod nano continues to behave beautifully (and Maria's ordered hers now, in white), though my Apple In-Ear Headphones have mysteriously given up the ghost. Actually it's even more mysterious than that, as they seem to have lost all power, producing about 20% of their usual volume levels. Surely both ears couldn't have become identically blocked at precisely the same moment, and my ears aren't that waxy. A trip to the Genius Bar tomorrow, methinks.

2. The New Researchers Day at which I presented yesterday threw up a few useful things, including an excellent session from textile designer & fashion lecturer Zoe Hillyard which focused on hand knitting in Peru. Zoe recently spent 3 weeks in Andean villages and has some real insights into how traditional producers work without the centralised structured networks of the UK industry and without anything resembling a precise pattern for the garment. A conference on emerging models for networks and e-commerce would bite her hand off to get this stuff onstage, and I'm going to be coaxing her to chat on Radio Usergland.

3. Fellow presenter David Osbaldestin continues to update the Business As Usual project; the gallery has some excellent new submissions, and David's published the properly-formatted version of the Ronnie Chance article which I authored (plus the mysteriously-added paragraph, but you can't have everything). That you probably need to be some sort of designer to participate is a problem which remains, and I'm keen for David to do something about that soon. I might even lend a hand.

4. Amongst everything else tomorrow (breakfast meeting with DO, check in my headphones at the Apple Store, catch up on a number of outstanding emails, attempt to catch Wolf Creek at the cinema, collect daughter from school) I really want to pin down what I'll be offering to final year Undergraduate students this year. I'm intending it to be two linked 16-week programmes connecting some of the dots between areas like transformative technologies, virtual environments, digital products, community and social networks. Already the map is turning into a sprawl, and I'm feeling like a low-rent Buckminster Fuller. I'll see if I can shape it up tomorrow.
[UPDATE: While the cause of my In-Ear Heaphones losing volume remains a mystery, I'm delighted by the service at the Apple Store. They didn't even test them, simply trusted me that I wasn't going mad and replaced them with shiny new ones. This is why they're doing so well, and why some third-party resellers are whining their way towards bankruptcy.]

Technorati Tags: Apple, Art, Education, iPod, iPod nano, technology

One weekend with the iPod nano

2005-09-12T13:52:00.000+01:00

As I sat in a cafe this morning listening to Anthony & The Johnsons' delectable I Am a Bird Now, I was aware of something missing. The coffee was fine, the bagel fresh and fruity, and the music just as it should have been. Different though was that normally my jeans pocket feels like it's straining to take the shape of my iPod mini, especially when I'm seated. In fact I usually have to take it out and lay it discretely on the table next to my coffee cup. Today though my headphone cable was snaking into my pocket and I had to keep checking that my newest iPod, a shiny black nano, was actually still there (yeah, I know the presence of music should have given me a clue). It's been said hundreds if not thousands of times since Apple announced the iPod nano last week, but I have to say it again: This baby is small. I have to repeat it, mostly because it's been the gist of a dozen slack-jawed responses to the nano over the weekend from friends, family, and casual acquaintances. They love the screen, the jewel-like finish, the (as per usual) sound quality, the fact that I have 5200 photos on the thing alongside my podcasts and latest music purchases; but the first thing they comment on is the sheer lack of mass of the thing. The nano arrived on Friday afternoon. I'd ordered it at about 8PM BST on Wednesday evening, a mere 2 hours after SJ took the stage in SF to announce this and the Motorola ROKR. This alone speaks volumes: Apple knew what the demand for this thing would be like (it's not like I don't have enough iPods already, but like many other 1st generation mini owners I was itching for an upgrade to what's become the most useful iPod for me on a day-to-day basis), and they ramped up their manufacturing and distribution to cope. When I walked past the Apple store on Friday evening stocks of the nano were good, and other Apple dealers had them in Birmingham city centre on Saturday. That'll please a lot of people, particularly the dealers who couldn't get the iPod shuffle for love or money, and resorted to cross-selling onto other brands (I witnessed it on several occasions, even though the customers were fixated on owning the Apple product). After the relatively low-rent packaging of the shuffle and the latest iPods, the nano box feels much more upscale, with rich black satin print and foil block lettering. Similarly to the original iPods, the feel is of good jewellery or perfume, though simpler than the foam-packing of the 3G and earlier models. Here the cable and accessories are together in a sealed bag that occupies one half of the box, reminiscent of a thicker cd digipak. The first impression of the iPod is (of course) how small it looks in the box, and when I dug it out of its little recess I was genuinely awestruck: The nano really is slimmer than a pencil. This is further confirmed when plugging in either the USB (no FireWire) or headphone cable, as the whole device is as thick as either of the plugs. In fact I have headphones on which the plug is actually thicker than this device. Set-up was typically smooth; I already had iTunes 5.0 and didn't need to update any software. The nano ships in Windows format, and the Mac automatically started updating it for native use. This is fine; the bulk of purchasers will be on Windows (boo!) and besides, can you imagine what this would be like in the opposite direction? The instruction manual seems thicker and more targeted at brand-new users than with previous iPods. This could just be how it seems to me, but everything here (from the availability to the software, to the instructions) seems to indicate that Apple are expecting to sell lots of these to people who've never owned an iPod before. That's not to say they're new to mp3, but they may be moving from a shuffle or a rival low-end device. Even the signature iPod design says this. This is a real iPod, with a full feature set, and a classic Apple user experience. I fully expect this model to outsell the mini in a matter of months. So to that feature set: This is an iPod photo, bar the bulk, the remote connector, FireWire support and a double-duty AV jack. Other than that, it's all here. iTunes optimised my fairly sizable image library to fit the screen, my podcasts were transferred automatically as I selected in the settings, and I pulled my latest cd/iTMS purchases across manually. USB 2.0 felt as speedy as the previous FireWire option (there are issues with this of course, but most new users won't feel a thing, and I suspect that dumping FW was the only way to get the size down to this), and the slowest part of the process (other than converting my iPhoto library (go make supper, unless you're on a dual G5) was deciding what to name the device (seriously, I'm running out of names - I settled for nano noir). The decision to go all-flash on the memory front has implications beyond size and battery life: The device often feels speedier, particularly on booting and accessing data. Scrolling through image libraries is especially smooth and, were this AV-enabled, would make the device a no-brainier for portable presentations. That'd add bulk and complexity though: This is an iPod for listening, like the mini before it, and its rapidly disappearing mass makes it a pleasure to carry everywhere. Who needs a combined phone/pda/camera/music player when this little additional luggage gets you such a slick experience? There are lots of issues opening up around the iPod: Apple's ability to innovate in an expanding marketplace (80% market share may not be sustainable, but they seem to be interested in growing the market rather than just shoring up share); the effective customer lock-in that they're defending (much of Steve's state-of-the-iPod address was targeted at showing how they're the only game in town if you want a mature, functioning ecosystem and a base of paying customers); and Apple's wildly out-of-proportion-to-its-size power over the industry (sure the labels carp on about a still-tiny download market, but ask them about profitability and where they think things are heading. I presume that not even Sony think we're all going to buy our albums on UMD). The iPod nano is Apple's response to all of the articles saying how the labels/cellphones/carriers/chainstores are going to eat Apple's lunch. How do you like them eggs, Sim Wong Hoo? UPDATE: I'm picking up a few other interesting takes on the iPod nano, and issues which impact on it, and I'll post them here. Check these out: LameZone: Nano. Amazing. Confessions of an Undercover Geek:My iPod nano First Hand Experience Tech Shout! Samsung builds 16 Gb Flash Memory Chip

Technorati Tags: Apple, Design, iPod, iPod nano, Product Design, Music, technology

Hybrid composite ghost-written article online

2005-09-11T22:21:00.000+01:00

The latest edition of Fused is out, and features the article I wrote on David Osbaldestin's Business As Usual/Secret Art Project. As I mentioned earlier, I was asked to write it under the assumed guise of one of David's own alter-egos, and since I did it seems to have grown an extra paragraph somewhere towards the end promoting a design book. It won't take a genius to spot it. I don't think David's making any money from promoting the book, so it obviously gets a mention because he loves it, but nonetheless it looks oddly out-of-place in a promo for an art piece.

Technorati Tags: Art, Birmingham UK, Creativity, Design

We'll always have Paris

2005-09-09T11:23:00.000+01:00

Usergland will be in the French capital from Monday 19th September for the Apple Expo, so expect some postings from the ever-delighful rive gauche. Actually the Apple Expo is just my excuse, if one is necessary, for spending some time in Paris on, an at minimum, annual basis. This year's Expo is gearing up (if the media is to be believed) to be a bit of a damp squib, with little new to announce, a way to go to the Intel-based Macs & Leopard (and they won't be talking transitions at a consumer show), the big iPod announcements done in SF this week, and (shockingly) no keynote. I'll be wearing my 'K' marked Expo badge as a sign of silent protest. So what is there to look forward to? Well the big thing for most folks will be hands-on time with the iPod nano (mine has shipped, I'll review it here soon), the beginnings of an ecosystem of nano accessories (Paris last year was one big fashion show for the iPod), and most likely the European launch of the Motorola ROKR E1 with iTunes. While I'm not the market for this phone, and I'm not a fan of Moto's kit (ok the RAZR is cool from an industrial design perspective, but the UI still stinks) it's the iTunes integration (and the licensing of Apple's DRM) that makes this an important move. It's a fair bet we'll see some new moves on the pro software side, and there's an outside chance of a final increment on the G4 PowerBooks. There's almost no chance of a G5 Mac mini, though a space on my shelf awaits one, and I fancy pairing it with one of these Sony TV tuner/monitors, unless anyone can tell me a good reason why I shouldn't. Entirely co-incidentally, the fantastic 7" Cinema is holding a French-themed night in Birmingham the following week (27 Sept), and I'm hoping for a chance to interview some of the contributing film-makers for Radio Usergland while I'm in Paris. We'll also be teaming up with Ian Francis and the 7" team to bring some exciting content to the podcast on a regular basis, beginning in October. Stay tuned, and if anyone wants to hook up in Paris during the Apple Expo, let me know here.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, Paris, Macintosh, Film, technology

Long Tail Education

2005-09-08T10:26:00.000+01:00

Dan Hunt and I have been trying to pick apart some of these issues around graduate retention, art & design employment, and curriculum design, and I wanted to share a little about how these things are beginning to tie up for us. Dan was a final year student on the Multimedia Design program that I helmed, just at the time that we were beginning to see real changes in our expectations in terms of student employment in our specialism. A couple of years earlier it wasn't unusual for students to see themselves as fodder for the New Media machine, heading from education out into the world of the new media design agency (either freshly-minted or newly-reinvented as such). By the time Dan was graduating the .com bubble had well and truly burst, and the people with the smarts (us, of course) were beginning to bet on a much more fragmented future. We talked a lot at the time about how the bulk of new media-savvy graduates would increasingly enter niche vertical industries, hungry for clued-up employees to help them make the leap. Dan headed for the world of medical IT, but others have turned up in retail, local government, music promotion, video training, and TV production. Of course it's clear we were seeing the long tail in action, where the old behemoth industries would cease to command the bulk of employment opportunities just as big media is less and less in control of the majority of eyeballs. At the same time we were designing a New Media & Performance degree designed specifically to cater to these multiple (sometimes single student) niches, largely at the behest of Gregory Sporton, a firm advocate of such boutique courses as both profitable and relevant. For the most part the structures of Creative HE are still tied into a big head model rather than long tail: We pitch to large uniform student marketplaces, we design courses for big numbers of students, and we prepare them for a big media employment model (even though most of them will now never experience this). Even our eLearning models reflect this thinking, and that's one area where we'll be doing some work over the next few weeks.

Technorati Tags: Creativity, Design, Education, Employment, Long Tail, technology

Gartenberg on the iPod Nano

2005-09-08T10:00:00.000+01:00

Hands On with the iPod Nano:

I had a chance to chat with Steve Jobs about the decision to drop the mini and go with the shuffle and I believe it’s a pretty wise move. With mini competitors like the Dell DJ and Creative Zen Micro, it was getting hard for the mini to stand out of the crowd. Apple could have done the expected and upped the capacity of the shuffle to 2gb and tweaked the mini but instead chose to take the road less traveled, to kill a successful product at the peak of success and create a brand new family of product. But making decisions like that is how you make all the difference.

This chimes with the way I see it too. In the conversations I've been able to have about the iPod nano so far a few things stand out: The move to the iPod signature look and (almost) full-feature set is hugely significant, and will make this device connect with the those who aspire to own the iconic player; the miniaturisation is stunning, and plays to Apple's strengths in getting this stuff right before the competition have figured it out; the price is $50-75 more than many people would have hoped – in other words it's spot on (remember the mini was the same, and they sold as many as they could manufacture, dropping the price a little when demand settled. In all, I'll miss you iPod mini; you've been a great little (silver) bulge in my pocket, but I'm greatly looking forward to meeting your highly-evolved descendant. My podcasts, latest music purchases, a few photos, notes and calendars, all in a (black) package that I don't even notice carrying. 3 days to shipping is just too long to wait. Can I cancel my order and buy it retail this weekend?

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, Product Design, technology

Inclusive Learning

2005-09-06T21:05:00.000+01:00

Back in 1996 the UK Further Education Funding Council Learning Difficulties and/or Disabilities Committee chaired by Professor John Tomlinson published its Inclusive Learning report which defined inclusion as as the greatest degree of match or fit between individual learning requirements and provision. The summary of the report is definitely still worth a read, and it proposes a "learning eco-system" as the means of achieving this best fit.

From a traditional educational perspective this is still pretty transformative stuff, and while academics widely acknowledge the need for curriculums which take account of learning styles they often seem to do so, at least in my experience, in a way which minimises the effect that this model has on their own planning and delivery. This notion of a process in which we commit to learning in detail about our students and their individual needs, preferences, abilities and challenges is far easier to accept if the resulting learning methods, curriculum, and assessment strategies are in pretty much line with the sort of thing we can deliver. We're unlikely to embrace something that indicates our approach is redundant.
One of the ways this manifests itself is that we appear to believe that this process of matching provision to requirements can be frozen and captured in a traditional course document. Indeed our usual interpretation of the validation process appears to actually require this, and there's no doubt that it encourages it. In truth, the process implied by Tomlinson suggests a dynamic which reacts on a student-by-student basis and continues throughout the course. Some of our work with Personal Development Planning moves in this direction, but it would seem to have little chance of making a real difference if the curriculum itself is static. Some aspects of such a dynamic curriculum can be treated as 'snapshots' and reused, but in light of an accelerating rate of change this itself will very soon become outmoded, and the 'survival time' of our strategies will begin to approach zero.

If you think this sounds like negativist carping, you'd probably be right. I'm a keen advocate of transformative change in curriculum design, and the idea of absolute personalisation just really rocks my boat. I'm developing a paper on next-generation electronic learning which is bound to incorporate some of these notions (I'll post the abstract at the very least here soon) and I'll try to develop some of them here in more detail over the coming weeks.

Technorati Tags: Creativity, Education

Graduate Retention

2005-09-05T19:15:00.000+01:00

Spent a pleasant Saturday afternoon last weekend catching up with Dan Hunt, one-time student on the (now-defunct) Multimedia Design Subject route in Visual Communications that I headed up. Dan's always been an interesting guy; he's by nature inter-disciplinary, and not in the dilettantish way it often shows up. Rather he seems to find himself drawn towards areas that he knows little of, in the process expanding his own knowledge just enough to give him a new perspective on his core concerns. He's been back working in his home town of Oxford for a little while now, at Minervation who are deeply entrenched in the world of web design and usability for medical applications. Dan's well-suited to such a vertical company though web design wears on everyone after a while (how long depends on how easy you find it to turn off your critical and intellectual faculties in pursuit of a pay cheque), and he's being lured back towards the world of creative education, with a potential role at the VRU.

A good part of me hopes Dan comes back to Birmingham for a while, as it'll be interesting having him around, but much of our conversation centered on more interesting places to be (such as Berlin, from where Dan's architect girlfriend Catha hails), and how the concept of graduate retention in the city (which government types view as highly desirable) increasingly rubs up against the goal of creative education being a springboard to lots of possibilities. Students I've worked with at BIAD are now scattered globally, some returning to their home territories (Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Japan, Norway, France..), others venture outside of what they've known after coming into contact with a much broader cultural base at university (studying for Masters degrees in Paris, teaching English through multimedia in Osaka, web design in New York).

The broadening and cultural enrichment is only part of the equation too; students are attracted and excited by courses that leave them with a global rolodex and a plethora of potential destinations. The counter-argument says that in order to create a culturally-rich city we need to be able to offer graduates employment right here. This is of course partially true, but it's a landscape far more likely to emerge from a fluctuating diverse population of creative individuals attracted to the city as a means of prototyping their future life/work vectors than it is to come from pouring money into ill-advised exercises in cultural parochialism.

Technorati Tags: Art, Birmingham UK, Cities, Creativity, Design, Education, Employment

Secret Art Project

2005-09-04T14:38:00.000+01:00

David Osbaldestin's Secret Art Project kicks off with Business As Usual, a project around business cards, identity, and networks. He's been distributing business cards on eBay and encouraging others to alter them and redistribute. His best idea IMO was to create ASCII versions and email them out, meaning that a reworking was accessible even to those people like myself who can't be bothered to open an image editor. The first reworked card is from me, and it's in the gallery.

Technorati Tags: Art, Design

Printmaking and the network

2005-08-31T20:25:00.000+01:00

When artists Garrett Lynch and Frédérique Santune came over from Canterbury earlier in the month to visit, they trawled the local galleries, and Garrett later, impishly, remarked to me that the Ikon exhibition of prints wasn't of interest to him because it wasn't networked. I finally managed to see the exhibition myself today, a collection of Max Klinger prints from Liepzig, and I'm awed by their beauty and resonance. The catalogue (which I, uncharacteristically, bought) really struggles to do them justice, and I'll be seeking out a better collection of reproductions. The original prints have an incredible clarity of line with which Klinger could render light scenes of dropped gloves and ice skating, breath-takingly dark symbolic or surrealistic dream imagery, and melodramatic tableaux of life, love and death. Christiane Baumgartner's video-derived woodcut prints which accompany the Klinger work at Ikon are themselves deserving of attention. In fact it's these prints which for me connect Klinger (and the painstaking technology of print-making) to the work of people like Lynch and Santune. Baumgartner works like an organic fax machine, literally transcribing images from electronic media by hand, in the process simultaneously making them about speed and freezing them in time, wood, and ink. The printing process both prefigures the world of the network and establishes many of its metrics (accuracy, reproducibility, speed). While for Klinger drawing seems to have been a means of locating the dreamlike and super-real, Baumgartner embraces the instantaneity of the photograph then teases out its means of establishing and propagating image. This doesn't seem so far removed from what artists like Lynch are doing with the technologies of the network.

Cybercultures Audio

2005-08-21T00:07:00.000+01:00

I finally got around to one of the Prague trip things I needed to follow up: I'd recorded the Cybercultures session which I chaired on the closing day, and I promised Nicole Anderson that, assuming the audio was listenable, I'd post her fantastic presentation. It was, and I did. You can pick it up in the Radio Usergland podcast.

Who do you want to be today?

2005-08-18T15:09:00.000+01:00

While there are still lots of loose ends to tie up from the Cybercultures conference ('thank you' notes to write, promises to keep, abstracts to devise, and somewhere along the way a paper to wrap up) I've still managed to be diverted by David Osbaldestin's Business As Usual project over the last 24 hours, and I've just put the finishing touches to an article about it for Fused magazine. Amusingly, it won't be published under my own name, as I'm sort of ghost writing it for one of David's alter-egos. While I wouldn't say it's especially different from the sort of thing I'd post here it felt rather liberating in a strange way to (a) write about art without feeling like I was on shaky ground, and (b) to know that few people who read it will know it's me writing. I also got to quote myself in the article, and to dub myself a "self-styled network futurist", which I enjoyed. I'll link to the article here when it's published somewhere, or maybe I'll post it myself, under yet another name.

Praha

2005-08-14T10:45:00.000+01:00

Well the Cybercultures 2005 conference is over and, nerves aside, my presentation seems to have gone down quite well. In truth it was a bit of an oddity; only one other presentation (an excellent paper on AI by Ursurla Drees of Berlin Technical University) was speculative and future-oriented. For the most part I felt like a sci-fi author at the Booker Prize. A good bunch of people though; 28 delegates from 14 countries. There's an invite to Melbourne for a Virtual Worlds conference too, which I need to move on as soon as I return. Today though I'm relaxing. After I check email and such on the free wifi here in Cafe-Cafe we're off to do the tourist thing at the Castle, and hopefully a puppet show this evening. Prague itself seems like a virtual world; a strange mix of fairytale and nightmare, all grafitti and golems, beer-for-breakfast cafes and footballers' wives fashion. I'll almost certainly come again (especially if I'm co-opted onto the Cybercultures Steering Group), though I'm not sure I could live here.

Arty Party

2005-06-23T15:59:00.000+01:00

I've just added a few photographs from last night's private view at the Margaret Street Art School in Birmingham to my Flickr stream. The consensus after the show (at least with those I asked) was that while the work itself was overall no better or worse than in previous years there's a feeling that the whole model for a show of student Fine Art work is running out of steam. Is it possible that what became true for us running Multimedia Design a few years ago is now becoming true for other disciplines? This year's Graphic Design showing seemed to reject the notion of individual student spaces, and it seemed a very out-of-date approach for Fine Art too. It may be that much of contemporaneous student work deals with similar issues ('this year's meme'?) and that there are common points of reference in form too. This year video imagery featured heavily: LCD screens, projections, pixels adorned the most unlikely pieces. These similarities contrast the strict serialisation of individuals' displays, and make a thematic structuring difficult; at odds with media-based arrangement. Perhaps it's time for undergraduate Artists to begin collaborating more fully, locating work appropriately, and for the department to begin treating the show as a starting point for and a representational sample of the sort of critical and practical debate that's at work within their institution. The old way of doing things doesn't seem to offer much in the way of exciting future possibility, nor much of an incentive for excited young individuals to join us.

Day Out

2005-06-22T12:08:00.000+01:00

Spent yesterday out of the office at Birmingham University for the first Birmingham School of Computer Science Apple Day. Essentially a bunch of Phd students there have decided to evangelise the Mac platform within their primarily Lintel/Wintel environment, and they'd persuaded the manager and a few geniuses (and no, the plural in this sense is not genii) from the Apple Store Bullring to come along, answer questions, and support the day. Turnout wasn't too bad considering the zero-publicity levels, and there was a fair bit of interesting debate. Best part of the day by far was Robert Goldsmith's Xcode session where he stripped an 80-line currency converter program down to about 25 lines while adding significant functionality. I've seen Apple presentations on using things like Shark, but this was the best intro to object coding models and the practical use of Xcode I've ever seen. Robert's definitely a guy to watch.

Last Chance to See

2005-06-17T10:30:00.000+01:00

So on the same day that US Target stores announce what amounts to a gradual phasing out of VHS movies, Kodak pre-announces the end of Black & White photographic paper production. Mike, who's knowledgable in such things, tells me that few photographers in his acquaintance are Kodak paper users, and the whole thing says more about the economics of selling something based on silver than on the death of traditional printing. After all, Kodak also announced they're pulling out of Digital SLR production. Over time though it's a dead cert that regular photo paper (and film for that matter) will become the preserve of a specialist few, with the materials sourced from (expensive) niche producers. This doesn't mean it's going away entirely, any more than letterpress printing has disappeared completely, but it starts to look more and more like a fine-art/craft than a genuine medium, and the decision to continue teaching it in art schools has to be considered in that light. We certainly couldn't make a case for mass education in hand-lettering anymore either, no matter what Steve Jobs owes to his Calligraphy teacher.

Adventures in Sound

2005-06-15T14:13:00.000+01:00

The VRU is assisting Birmingham Conservatoire in staging Luca Francesconi's "Lips, Eyes, Bang", which features live and pre-recorded performances and interactive video. We're specifically working on getting some iSight cameras around the space streaming into Max/MSP/Jitter for performer feedback and live video processing. Some of the stuff looks like old pop videos (largely reminiscent of the cromakeying in the 'Ashes to Ashes' promo). Greg remarks that the thing about new technology is that it generally reminds you of old technology, and he has a point, though I think that's more to do with the observer rather than the technology itself. As usual, we've got some cruder (ie. more reliable) solutions on hand for the camera feed, and that's what we go for in the end; the streaming solution seems like overkill, though we'll definitely use it in the future. Right now the important thing is to have the performer see herself in both untreated and treated form ('Before' and 'After'), and Max/MSP seems to allow us to do that in no time at all. It's back on our list of software purchases for the VRU (it's been on and off it at least twice now as our specs change), which gives us a neat complement to our expanding set of midi input/processing components. I'd like to see this stuff using Core Video in Tiger, especially as Qurtz Composer has a MIDI input module. That's another experiment though, for another time.

Showing Off

2005-06-15T09:57:00.000+01:00

Today's the day of the student shows at the Art & Design Institute, and it already feels odd being less involved than in previous years (that's to say hardly involved at all) since for the previous 4-5 years the graduate shows for multimedia dominated my waking hours each June. Some thoughts though:

There's a definite shift this year towards the approach that we pioneered in Multimedia Design: more selection, less free-for-all, less work on walls and more variety of presentation (screens, projections, video, interactive displays).
The 'experience' approach has spread from the 2 small rooms we used to occupy to a larger portion of the show floor. There's a drama to the layout and use of spaces like the large photo studio (check my Flickr stream) and the flow from one space to another (largely due to the persistence of my friend and colleague David Osbaldestin, who's managed this year's show, but yeah we advised a bit too). This was notably lacking in the previous years' 'mish-mash of student displays.
If there's an sense in which putting a show together should be treated like retail design, it's only because good retail understands how the visitor experience plays out over time and space. In this sense it's pure theatre, and nothing that retail can claim to have invented.
Selectiveness isn't the same as selection, and while a curated show is appealing for a host of reasons it's also a mistake to think of ourselves as professional selectors in a design competition. I won't mention the phone calls that some lecturers have been getting from irate parents that think their kid's work should be the main feature.

Adobe & Macromedia

2005-04-18T20:32:00.000+01:00

This one's going to take some time to play out, but the implications could be far-reaching. Adobe has a good record of creating standards. PDF wasn't the only candidate for document exchange, but it was handled quite well in hindsight, and Mac users in particular have benefited from this (initially in terms of creating documents that Windows users could read, and now in terms of supporting PDF display very well at system level - and much more to come in Tiger). I never had confidence that Macromedia could really turn Flash into a true standard; they seemed far more concerned with tying it into their proprietary (and frequently Windows-centric) creation tools than in developing it for the common good. Perhaps this will change over the next few years. While Adobe may kill GoLive, it may equally mutate into a tool for creating SWF and SVG on a more equal basis, or provide the basis for merging the two formats. Adobe aren't perfect by any means; their behaviour over After Effects on the Mac has been appalling, but I think they've had their nose bloodied enough by that one, and they won't want to repeat the fiasco of Premiere being destroyed by FCP. Motion 2 HD has a very interesting means of incorporating content into AE, and that may indicate a willingness for the two tools to co-exist to the benefit of all (I'll be incorporating After Effects into our media creation strategy now, so there's a couple of extra sales for them already ;-). I'm optimistic about this overall, but then I'm a futurist, and maybe that's just my orientation.

Hiatus

2005-04-08T12:25:00.000+01:00

The first three months of 2005 have flown by with barely a word here, and that's bad. In the meantime however all sorts of things have been happening, including some serious work on the Xserve cluster and the Visualisation side of the project, some interesting experiences with Motion Capture, and even some teaching, amazingly. Of my 2005 Resolutions I've been mostly concentrating buying more stuff, and we've some fascinating new kit to experiment with over the next few months. So what's currently occupying us? Here's a selective update:

Remote Configuration: When no-one in your immediate organisation has ever deployed more than a few computers at a time, and when the configuration is usually done ad-hoc, it's a revelation to see how cool tools like Apple Remote Desktop have become. Despite some issues with IP subnetting life here would have been much harder without ARD, and I've not even scratched the surface yet. Remotely deploying OS X Server updates to several headless machines at once is a dream come true, and I'm definitely enjoying accessing my PowerBook screen remotely from my Mac mini :-).
Visualisation Toolsets: The hardest part of all of this is pinning down the notion of deep visualisation in an organisation that is necessarily dealing with surface aesthetics. The easy way in for colleagues is through fantastic tools like Shake which start to use the power of the kit we're deploying in the service of comprehensible goals like high-end video (6.8TB of RAID storage helps somewhat too). The ultimate destination however looks increasingly like a Science/Arts hybrid, and it'll be interesting to carve a way through to there from here.
Space, Politics, Funding

iPod maxi

2005-01-21T16:04:00.000Z

cluster and ipod
Originally uploaded by XaOS.

We have the World's first 3.5 Terabyte iPod. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Must Try Harder

2005-01-03T22:27:00.000Z

Welcome to 2005, year of the supercomputer. Technorati has a New Year's Resolutions feature. I don't normally make them but Iet's make an exception here. There's also no guarantee that these will be my resolutions this time next week, but there you go. 1. Budgeting Time. 2004 was a good year for sorting out money management, but the most precious resource is still leaking out of my schedule. This is the year to finally tackle the time management problem seriously. It'll probably take a few months to get started, but I hope to end 2005 with the sort of reserves of time that'll begin to allow me to tackle some serious stuff for more than a few hours at a time. Any tips are extremely welcome. What's the Excel equivalent for timeflow? 2. Buy more stuff. I keep being accused of updating my technology more frequently than everyone else does. It's not true; laptops go 3 years or more, phones 12-24 months, my favourite digital watch hung in nearly 22 years before recently succumbing to the ravages of time (remind me to link to my new one here). Ok, so we bought 3 iPods this year, but that's an exception, and it's time to begin living up to my reputation. I end the year having just paid well over the odds to get my hands on a Nintendo DS before they ship here (March? April? May?), and I have my sights on the PSP too. If Apple gets the iTunes phone together (please let it have a decent camera and an interface better than Moto's usual crud) and upgrades all my favourite software next week then I'm hitting the Apple Store. Preferably with someone else's money. 3. Work on the details. If there's one thing I consistently find difficult it's this. While I do the big picture pretty well I've left too many of the details to others. I'm not suggesting pulling back on trusting others and delegating, but there are certain aspects of detailed implementation I now need to make my own. The selection and follow-through on this is critical to the success of my contribution to the VRU this year, and I'll need all the help I can get. 4. Articulate the vision. Seeing the big picture isn't the same thing as communicating it effectively. As the extraordinary professional events of 2004 played out I became increasingly aware of the over-complexity of what I've been trying to articulate. The vision needs simplification, and I need to use every means possible to get this vision across in as direct a fashion as possible. 5. Be kinder.. Most people are fighting a hard fight, and I forget that too often. I might still make some exceptions to this one though, so watch out.

Last week's Mocap training

2004-12-22T23:25:00.000Z

Carla in Gypsy IV with Ali
Originally uploaded by XaOS.

With everything else happening I only got to sit in on some of the training for the Gypsy system, but what I saw was excellent. Ali Kourd was his usual sharp, witty and patient, and as intimately familiar with the system as only the inventor could be. The more we find out about the system and its inherent strengths (wireless, joint-located, real-time) and failings (bulky, requiring expert operation, breakable in the hands of us novices) the more we're in awe of what Ali's achieved. We're also pretty excited about the development potential of the system, and we'll be developing a paper on this in the new year. I'll link to the abstract when we've finished it.

RoboLecturer

2004-12-10T14:36:00.000Z

Robert lecturing in a Gypsy Mo-Cap suit
Originally uploaded by XaOS.

This was fun! We had a SIG-VR meeting for the Virtual Worlds project group, and wanted to demo how the Gypsy turns raw data from the joint-located potentiometers into positional data, finally producing a live stream that we can pull into Kaydara Filmbox. So I arrived early, got trussed up in a suit for the first time since delivery, and talked students through the process. Consequently I spent most of the rest of the morning in the suit talking through video chat with iChat AV. While the Gypsy is not bad to wear, this morning's comfort break couldn't couldn't come soon enough. There are some things you just don't want to see motion captured.

First Gypsy Demo

2004-12-02T10:50:00.000Z

The Lord Mayor of Birmingham with Dr Gregory Sporton
Originally uploaded by XaOS.

Talk about a baptism by fire! We had about 6 hours to prepare a demo (for the Lord Mayor) of the motion capture suits that we've only just taken delivery of. Fortunately we had the inventor on hand when we were asked, and he was very keen to see the system shown off. In the event it all worked better than we could have hoped; we had the suit on Greg in under 10 minutes and a 5 minute phone call to Ali guided us through the process of using the live wireless data feed to control a character in Filmbox. The Lord Mayor was duly impressed. How long would this have taken us with an optical system?

Look Deeper

2004-10-24T20:50:00.000+01:00

The guys at mekentosj really know how to look beneath the surface of stuff. Not content with winning an Apple Design Award, they set about discovering how it worked (the apparently solid metal cube glows from within when touched) by CT scanning it and reconstructing the data as 3D visualisations. Aside from everything else, it's a beautiful example of what can be done with Open Source medical visualisation software on the Mac, and indicative of the rich possibilities for serious visualisation work on the platform.

First Batch of Xserves Installed

2004-10-24T18:50:00.000+01:00

Back of the XServes before the cabling
Originally uploaded by XaOS.

On Friday we got the final few Xserves installed, though a few more nodes will be added when the UPS and switches are installed. They went in like a dream, problems with the rack aside, and by the 4th or 5th we'd got them going in in under 10 minutes a piece. I think I'd hire someone if I were installing 1100 though.

Building the cluster

2004-10-21T21:47:00.000+01:00

Looking good
Originally uploaded by sharl.

Well, we got the call this morning to start construction of the prototype cluster that's at the heart of the Creative Supercomputing project, so that's just what we did. Those Xserves go in pretty smoothly. When all 10 are finally clustered together they'll form the most significant computer in the Institution, and we hope a powerful catalyst for creative arts research. More later, of course.

Deep Visualisation

2004-10-17T21:45:00.000+01:00

One of the key things to emerge from our work over the past few days is the critical role visualisation will play in the Creative Supercomputing initiative. While we realised some time ago that rapid visualisation of data (motion capture data, for instance) was a means of embedding clustered computing in the world of artistic practice, it's now becoming clear that we need to go far beyond this view of visualisation as a means to a creative end. This is bound up with the need to establish a new perspective on the role of coding in arts research, and it requires a considerable mindshift to reach the point where our work is as much technology development as application. It also means exchanging competence and comfort in our current fields for a daunting learning curve and a slow process of establishing credibility in a world rightly dominated by software engineers and mathematicians. This is a difficult transition, but it makes possible the sort of serious engagement between technological advancement and artistic practice that will be necessary to make sci-art research sustainable over the long term. In practice and in the short term it means de-emphasising surface effects and examining the nature of data sets at a deep level, trading our renderers for data mining tools. I'll be exploring the rationale and impact of this in some depth in the next few days.

WYSINWYG

2004-10-14T23:59:00.000+01:00

We've been working today on the Creative Supercomputing project, and it's both illuminating and disturbing to see how component projects tend to distort through the the lens of the visual arts discipline. The cross-disciplinary collaboration which gave rise to some of the projects too often seems to give way to a view of the world in which everything is treated as a design problem. I'm as guilty as anyone of seeing the penetrating gaze and shaping touch of design where there may well be none, but it's clear that not everything is a visual problem. Visual comunications and software development might both be enabled by people we refer to as designers, but one is an engineering discipline, more akin to architecture than to art. The net result of this distortion is that those of us in the visual arts tend to dramatically underestimate both the importance of underlying technologies and the burden of the necessary commitment to their continual development. We view technology as an enabling tool rather than a contextualising environment; something you deploy rather than something you populate and grow. It's a serious error, and uncorrrected it condemns our sci-art collaborations to peripheral effect and irrelevance. How we escape this fate is a theme I hope to explore more fully in the Ultraparallelism paper Gregory & are due to deliver in the next two weeks.

The Phantom Supercomputer

2004-10-14T10:16:00.000+01:00

Artist and Canadian Technorati Michelle Kasprzak has blogged the Vivid Hothaus Progression Seminar where we gave our Creative Supercomputing initiative its first public airing. What she didn't blog (hey it was a long day) was something really interesting that emerged from our presentation. After we'd waxed lyrical for 40 minutes on the joys of building a technology project in an arts establishment one canny member of the audience wondered whether we were really building a computer cluster for the arts, or whether we'd just made it up, and whether it mattered either way. Indeed it's becoming rapidly apparent here that the catalysing and political/social power of technology is as much in its promise as in the delivery. Its the notion of the Internet as a connective force, for example, that has transformed the way we think about the world as much as the computers, software, and telecommunications that it's built from. Another way of putting this is: If we didn't have a Creative Supercomputer, people would have to build one.

Photo iPod Redux

2004-10-13T21:22:00.000+01:00

So the rumours of an imminent update to the iPod (colour screen, bigger HD, photo sync, TV output, hip flask, yada yada) are back again, quel surprise. Our considered opinion, based on what we know of Apple and some partially-informed speculation, is that (i) colour is eventually inevitable but battery life is more important, (ii) flicking through cd covers is natural and necessary but it'll take more than a screen update to make it work properly, and (iii) you don't screw around with a 92% market share.

The second point is worth expanding upon: The whole text tree structure of a 10,000 track iPod can happily sit in memory and be scrolled through in under 20 seconds. That's 500 titles a second. Now try that with 128 pixel-square images. Any acceptable scrolling experience has to at least match the 25fps or so we're used to in video, and even that's probably not high enough. Of course Apple could opt for just displaying the cover of the track that's playing, but we rather doubt that'll be considered an acceptable user experience. Give us direct digi-cam connection and bi-directional iPhoto synching however, and we'll trade our 40GB 3G in a heartbeat.

Community Culture?

2004-10-13T10:14:00.000+01:00

Is Community the new rich media? Twelve months ago we were struggling to get students to understand the power of communities and the sheer common sense of leveraging social phenomena in online development; they were much more interested in engagability (spinning logos and splash screens as far as I can tell). Yesterday our new Web Publishing cohort presented their early project plans, and they were almost all smart social networking concepts. Of course there's a lot of blood, sweat and development between a good idea and a workable business plan, but it's heartening to see young designers finally waking up to the pointlessness of throwing multimedia experiences at disconnected individuals through a web browser.

Radio Usergland

2004-10-12T22:02:00.000+01:00

I'll need that title again when I finally get around to creating my own Podcast. I'm pretty excited about the possibilities since the whole Podcasting phenomenon brings together a bunch of things I've been thinking about and discussing with colleagues: RSS feeds, iPods, targeted radio stations. There's still a huge potential for a company like Apple to come along here and really change how P2P and personal broadcasting is seen by the major labels (I'll expand on this at a later date; for now imagine every copy of iTunes turned into a legal streaming radio station through a digital certificate and a performing rights licence). Until that happens there's a window of opportunity for budding broadcasters (that'll be us) and coders to shake up both the world of radio, and the listening habits of the iPod generation.

Do you Flickr?

2004-10-12T14:25:00.000+01:00

DSC00430.JPG
Originally uploaded by han solo.

Here's one of my friend Gregory's first Flickr pics, posted (and showing up in an rss feed no-less) within 5 minutes of my inviting him to see my picture stream.

If I loved Flickr any more I'd have to marry it. They've really thought clearly about the ways people might want to get photos in and out of their sites, and they even make blogging images easy. I'm impressed too by the lack-of-friction in signing up friends to the site.