Monthly Archives

October 2013

Technology

How Designers Destroyed The World

Webstock ’13: Mike Monteiro – How Designers Destroyed the World from Webstock on Vimeo.

You are directly responsible for what you put into the world. Yet every day designers all over the world work on projects without giving any thought or consideration to the impact that work has on the world around them. This needs to change.

I think that it is so important for any organization or company that creates applications or tools that millions use to be responsible and accountable. Without clear and passionate thought, bad design has real world consequences that affects human beings.

Technology

October 9, 2013

T-Mobile reportedly set to unveil “global data” plans for 100 countries 

…free global coverage in over 100 countries, with plans to launch the service later this month.

This is shocking and amazing all at the same time. I’m actually incredibly excited to hear this announcement become official at tonights T-Mobile UnCarrier event.

Imagine a world where you can be accessing the internet at home, hop on a plan, land in Paris and access your same data plan for no extra charge? T-Mobile is really doing some amazing things.

I can only hope that other carriers around the world can provide this to their customers.

Especially Canadian carriers such as Rogers, Bell and Telus. C’mon get it together guys!

Otherwise I would be tempted to purchase a T-Mobile plan and use data from Canada. Would that work?

How I Taught Steve Jobs To Put Design First

In fact, Steve didn’t really know much about design, but he liked German cars. Leveraging that connection, I explained that design like that has to be a complete package, that it must express the product’s very soul; without the excellent driving experience and the history of stellar performance, a Porsche would be just another nice car–but it wouldn’t be a Porsche. We also discussed American design, and I offended him when I insisted that American computer and consumer electronics companies totally underestimated the taste of American consumers–Sony’s success with clean design being the proof. He was gracious enough to concede that Apple didn’t make the cut, but he also said that he was out to change all that, which was why he was looking for a world-class designer.

I look forward to reading Esslinger’s new book “Keep It Simple – The Early Design Years of Apple” in it’s entirety later this month.

Samsung Unveils “Galaxy Round” Curved Smartphone

Samsung today outed the Galaxy Round, which it’s touting as “the world’s first curved display smartphone.”

Okay, I’ll admit that Samsung is the great company to mass produce a large smartphone that wraps around your leg. Why? So that it doesn’t bulge  like a brick in your pants? Or so that it can more effectively direct radiation onto a certain part of your body? Innovation at it’s finest.

HP Admits What We Already Know: Microsoft Is At War with its OEM Partners

Microsoft has to bloviate and state that it remains committed to its partners — in part because it is, which is underscored by the simple reality that the company has no choice in the matter; Surface sales are hardly the entire PC market. But at the same time you can’t directly undermine your partners with billions of dollars in investments into your own competing products and not risk slight message incoherence.

Microsoft is in such a mess that its not really funny anymore.

Technology

October 8, 2013

The Nobel Prize in Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider”

Congrats to both Mr. Englert and Mr. Higgs for their contributions to science and mankind. I’ve been following news on the Higgs Boson particle for many years and this in a way completes it.

Nest Smoke and Carbon monoxide detector

There’s no ambiguous beeping or mysterious blinking LED on the Protect — the entire product is designed to more clearly communicate what’s actually wrong. When it senses rising levels of smoke, heat, or carbon monoxide, it simply says “heads up,” and tell you what’s wrong — Fadell says they picked a neutral phrase to avoid panic if you’re just burning the toast. If there’s something more serious going on, the Protect gets straight to the point and says “emergency” while sounding a horn. Voices include British, Canadian, and US English, as well as Canadian French and US Spanish, and they’re localized: the “heads up” warning is “please be aware” for the British voice, and “attention” in French.

This looks like an amazing product that majority of the population overlook. I need to pick up a couple of theses Nest Protect devices soon.

Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel – the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.

Here’s to hoping for sustainable and affordable energy for all.

Why tablet magazines are a failure

When a magazine is organized as an app rather than as a website, its articles can neither be indexed or searched on the web. And even if they could, clicking the link in Google at best takes readers to an app store, not to the article itself — cutting the magazine out of the greatest traffic driver in today’s world.

The pattern is the same on social media. When you can’t link directly to an article, the urge to tweet or tell your friends about it drastically shrinks. And curators like Flipboard and Zite can’t look into, link or grab content from within magazine apps.

Also, each issue of a tablet magazine can be fairly large and bandwidth consuming. Most of the time, they are around 80-120MB.

Inspirational

Remembering Steve

Sometimes I still can’t believe it happened. But today marks the second anniversary of the passing of Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc. No one can ever replace someone like Steve and my Thank You continues forward.

Steve appointed Tim Cook as Apple CEO shortly before his death. Since then, the leadership team at Apple has brought forth iOS 7, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPad mini and record breaking sales. Yesterday Cook issued the following letter to his staff:

Team-
Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of Steve’s death. I hope everyone will reflect on what he meant to all of us and to the world. Steve was an amazing human being and left the world a better place. I think of him often and find enormous strength in memories of his friendship, vision and leadership. He left behind a company that only he could have built and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple. We will continue to honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to the work he loved so much. There is no higher tribute to his memory. I know that he would be proud of all of you.
Best,
Tim

Also, The New York Times published a piece regarding the time leading up to the famous introduction of the original iPhone back at MacWorld 2007.

The impact has been not only economic but also cultural. Apple’s innovations have set off an entire rethinking of how humans interact with machines. It’s not simply that we use our fingers now instead of a mouse. Smartphones, in particular, have become extensions of our brains. They have fundamentally changed the way people receive and process information. Ponder the individual impacts of the book, the newspaper, the telephone, the radio, the tape recorder, the camera, the video camera, the compass, the television, the VCR and the DVD, the personal computer, the cellphone, the video game and the iPod. The smartphone is all those things, and it fits in your pocket. Its technology is changing the way we learn in school, the way doctors treat patients, the way we travel and explore. Entertainment and media are accessed and experienced in entirely new ways.

I wanted to find something special that showed off the genius of Jobs. And I ended up watching a clip I’ve never seen before. This is a 20-minute documentary-style video observing how Jobs brainstormed with his team at NeXT, the company he started after getting fired from Apple.

And what surprised me was that under his light blue untucked dress shirt lies the notorious black turtleneck. In this video, I was intrigued at the 17:40 mark when he talks about not looking too much at the “smaller battles”, but to focus on the war at large.

Personally, Apple made an impact on my life as I clearly remember the first video game that I ever loved. It was a game called Treasure Mountain that I played on a Macintosh in grade school.

Again, thanks for everything you contributed to us Steve.

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