Tim O’Reilly:
[...] Apple makes poor use of the networked capabilities that they do have.
Media and application syncing across iPhone and iPad is poorly thought out. MobileMe, which should be Apple’s gateway drug for lock-in to Apple services, is instead sold as an add-on to a small fraction of Apple’s customer base. If Apple wants to win, they need to understand the power of network effects in Internet services. They need to sacrifice revenue for reach, taking the opportunity of their early lead to tie users ever more closely to Apple services.
The iPad in the Eyes of the Digerati – NYTimes.com
Longform.org
In case you’ve got time to kill: Longform.org presents a curated selection of articles that are “too long and too interesting to be read on a web browser”. Anyone can submit suggestions. They recommend Instapaper, probably my favorite and most heavily used web application, for reading. I’m currently reading The Curse of Xanadu, a fascinating Wired article from 1995, as per their suggestion.
Curious Displays
Curious Displays from Julia Tsao on Vimeo.
The project explores our relationship with devices and technology by examining the multi-dimensionality of communication and the complexity of social behavior and interaction. In its essence, the project functions as a piece of design fiction, considering the fluctuating nature of our present engagement with media technology and providing futurist imaginings of other ways of being.
Curious Displays by Julia Tsao
Important things were announced at the f8 Facebook developers conference (read the relevant tech bits here). My gut reaction in a nutshell:
- Unified online identity: Scary, probably bad.
- Open Graph Protocol: Anyone (but especially someone as big as Facebook) building towards the semantic web is good news in my book. The Open Graph Protocol seems so unambitious in its current incarnation, it might just actually work. If it works, everyone can benefit from it. I’m not entirely sure they’ve taken proper precautions against spammers, though…
Bonus link: Why f8 was good for the open web
Edward Tufte on Windows Phone 7
Edward Tufte is not very impressed by the Windows Phone 7 interface:
The WP7S layout and typography have a looseness found in posters, commercial art and marketing, an inappropriate metaphor for a handheld information and communication device. In the splashy panoramas, there are hints of design-by-focus-group (which is like hiring temps as your design consultants). Instead of impressing focus groups, designers should do a thought experiment: Imagine what Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive would have to say about your interface. As Jonathan Ive said: At Apple “we don’t do focus groups.”
It doesn’t get much nicer from there…
Site-Specific Urban Design
Some great street art and good thinking in this post by Scott Burnham:
What continues to inspire me is the ongoing relational design that is taking place at the margins of urban culture – the interventions which form intrinsic relationships between individual creativity and the physical city.
Most dismiss these non-sanctioned urban interventions as playful tokens of creativity at best, and vandalism at worst. But there is a lot more going on beneath the surface of this activity.
The accompanying article can be found here.
Apple, Please Fix These Problems Before the New iPhone Comes Out:
Each new major piece feature seems to contribute its own little bit of design horror. In some cases, things that worked—like the old double-tap for favorites—get morphed into more complicated moves (double-tap and hooooold) to make room. Swirling the new features all together—the visual noise of the wallpapers, chintzy sliding animations, strange textures, even the reflective dock—iPhone OS 4.0 is a cloying, hyperglossy, barf-y mess, far from the straightforwardly iconic image of the original iPhone. We just want it to look clean and elegant again. Is that even possible?
Those were pretty much my thoughts while watching the announcement of iPhone OS 4 a couple weeks back. Especially the wallpapers perplex me – that gaudy raindrop wallpaper used during the announcement was clearly not an improvement at all over the old, simple, black background.
It’s time to delete stuff off Facebook again:
Today, Facebook removed its users’ ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users’ profiles, “including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests” will now be transformed into “connections,” meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don’t want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.
There’s also this: Privacy issues? Google engineers leaving Facebook in droves
Touch Gesture Design Resources
Luke Wroblewski compiled a very comprehensive touch gesture reference guide and also an interesting collection of different touch gesture diagrams from various vendors and sources.
If you’re looking for icons to use in your own touch gesture wireframes and illustrations, Gesturecons has you covered. Interestingly there seems to be another project titled Gesturecons, proposing much more abstract representations of touch gestures.
Computer Vision Camouflage
Adam Harvey researches makeup patterns to camouflage from visual face recognition software for his thesis. This is probably the coolest thesis i’ve ever heard of, the topic could be straight out of a William Gibson or Bruce Sterling novel. (via)