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Technology

Technology

October 14, 2013

This is how a Helsingin Sanomat journalist tried to save Nokia

In the evening as the parents were going to bed, the drowsy four-year-old appeared at their bedroom door with a question: “Can I take that magic telephone [iPhone] and put it under my pillow tonight?”

It was at that was the moment that the Nokia executive understood that his company was in trouble.

That is an absolutely powerful observation by the Nokia exec. Apple’s manifesto of delight, surprise, love and connection shine bright here.

Banksy sells original art works for $60 in New York

Many of the pieces, estimated to be worth up to £20,000 each, remained unsold at the end of the day.

What a genius stunt pulled off by a genius artist. I wish I was there, not to ever make a profit off them, but I always wanted an original Banksy painting. Please lurk in Toronto!

Ray Kurtzweil: When Man and Technology Merge

Despite being perceived as an extreme optimist, Kurzweil is the first to admit that this technology could very quickly bring an end to the world as we know it. Stuff like gray goo is a concern, but a biological terrorist attack could happen tomorrow that is based on the very same type of technology he touts as the harbingers of the unimaginable future. He believes we’ll exist in a permanent virtual/”real”-reality hybrid.

Kind of cool and kind of scary all at the same time.

Timelapse of Ai Weiwei’s Forever Bicycles at Nuit Blanche

Ai Weiwei’s Forever Bicycles, a colossal assemblage of 3,144 bikes, took a crew of workers more than two weeks to put together in Nathan Phillips Square.

This was one of the featured projects at this years Nuit Blanche event in Toronto. Boy was it beautiful.

2013/10/14
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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.

2013/10/10
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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.

2013/10/09
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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.

2013/10/08
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