“I think I’m getting the fear.”
– Dr. Gonzo, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I thought it was a false alarm at first, but yes, it’s real. I have the fear.
Adobe’s problems extend beyond my current complaints of bloat and feature creep.
Their individual products are now mutating, spawning strange offspring resembling their parents but also taking on strange new dimensions. Apparently it’s no longer sufficient to have one version of Photoshop, we now need to pick from three:

It reminds me of another product lineup I’ve thankfully never had to directly confront (or install):

On Newsvine, AP writer Ryan Nakashima asks us, ‘Can Blu-ray save Christmas for Hollywood?‘
Answer: No.
Blu-ray just isn’t relevant. This isn’t the switch from VHS to DVD we did about 10 years ago. This is a move from high quality digital to higher quality digital with higher capacity discs. For the average consumer this step up is not that important.
The DVD-to-Blu-ray upgrade is going to take a lot longer than the VHS-to-DVD one. It will be indirect upgrades, such as gamers who buy the PS3 for the games, not for the Blu-ray format.
The other big reasons for a slow adoption are convenience and portability brought to us with the advent of iTunes. Sure our downloaded music and movies aren’t nearly as high in bitrate and quality as our CDs and DVDs, but I can get them right when I want them. And when I’m traveling I don’t have to carry discs along with me for my laptop or as the case is now, my iPhone.
When you live in the world of iTunes, Youtube, Hulu, Amazon Unbox, Netflix ‘Watch Instantly’, Vimeo and Blip.tv adopting a new physical storage format seems silly.
If everything else in my life lives ‘in the cloud’ on servers, like my email, social network and my photos – why not my video entertainment? At least put it in a format I can carry on my computer without the need for discs.

I was talking with Victor and John the other day in our office at Roundarch about Adobe’s products and the problems we’ve been having with them as well as our ideas for what they could be.
Victor took it upon himself to crystallize the discussion very nicely:

Adobe’s software offering is growing so robust, and their control of the content creation pipeline so complete, that they need to look to another model for what the future will look like precisely because there no longer exists a sensible explanation for why Photoshop does not allow me to create a non-closed vector shape with a stroke – other than software bloat. Enter the case for an aggregated experience – with a twist.

and:

Imagine the Adobe footprint/OS as a (relatively) low cost software that bootstraps the ability to use other Adobe content creation modules at a metered rate – let’s say yearly for instance – with an integrated way to dynamically load modules from the cloud, as needed/wanted to your local machine through a subscription service.

I’m a little late on this, but Razorfish dropped a new site not too long ago (thanks vb).

diller scofidio + renfro (via Pentagram)

My friend Jory has an interesting new project going on called birdsinthemorning.
The idea?

It’s really quite simple. One moment captured everyday and made available for download on the same day. A daily glimpse into my life over the course of a year.

These moments are also available as a video podcast on iTunes.

It’s not often you see design from the political realm influencing design within the artistic realm, but that’s what Obama has done (by hiring talented people from the artistic realm):
influencer:

Influenced:

Obama’s CTO: Watch out for the turf wars – A president who understands the importance of technology enough to create a new position in the administration for it. (via Techmeme)
Let G.M. go bankrupt (via DF)
Damn straight:

G.M. is in trouble, according to the latest news. The company has some contracts and other obligations that it can’t afford. What can the government do to help?
Answer: The government has already done everything that it needs to in order to help G.M. The government established bankruptcy courts so that a company like G.M. can go through a Chapter 11 reorganization. During the Chapter 11 process, a judge has the power to adjust the company’s obligations so that they can be paid from the company’s likely future revenue. Chapter 11 was designed specifically so that employees can keep their jobs, albeit possibly at lower salaries, while shareholders and creditors suffer and/or are wiped out.

LinkedIn Apps – My favorite one so far is BlogLink by TypePad. If your connections have their blogs included in the ‘websites’ section of their profile, BlogLink will aggregate all the posts for you on one page.

The picture you see above is my third V-Moda Vibe Duo headset. It most likely be the last product I buy from V-Moda.
Let’s start from the beginning.
I bought my first generation iPhone in late January 2008. Knowing well the shitty quality of Apple’s included earbuds, I decided to get the only other headset that (at the time) had an inline microphone – the V-Moda Vibe Duo. Having a headset with a microphone is crucial when you have an iPhone as the iPhone doesn’t have the loudest speaker and it’s not comfortable to hold to your ear (what mobile phone is for that matter?).
Let me note that I read through a few dozen reviews on the Apple Store website prior to making my purchase. There were five or six reviews describing V-Moda headsets that broke after a short time. I decided I’d give V-Moda the benefit of the doubt and buy their product (that’s how much I hated Apple’s included earbuds). Perhaps these people got a bad batch.
My first pair of V-Moda’s lasted about three months before they stopped working for me. What I mean by this is that they stopped producing sound. Completely.
When this happened I went onto the V-Moda website and followed all the instructions for returns (I’m OCD about keeping recipes and boxes, especially for electronics). I wasn’t happy I had to pay for shipping, but other than that, it was cake. My new headset was delivered to me within about three weeks. Perfect. Great job taking care of your customers V-Moda.
This second headset only lasted about a month before one of the earbuds came apart, only the wire holding the speaker to the earbud base. Also, there seemed to be a short in the base of the cord where the headset jack connects to the iPhone. Depending on how I bent the wire, it would flicker from stereo to mono sound from the left earbud only.
I repeated the return process above and received another pair promptly.
I’m a few months into my newest headset and everything is working fine, but I don’t think I have the trust in the V-Moda brand to buy another product from them. I respect V-Moda for doing the right thing and not arguing my return issues. They were real and don’t seem to have been the only one with issues.
I wish V-Moda the best and hope they resolve their quality issues. When they’re working, the Vibe Duo headset is a great product.

Microsoft doesn’t seem to know the difference between interesting experiments and consumer-ready software.
Below is a screencast of Windows 7, demonstrating a shake gesture. When you grab a window bar and shake it with your mouse it minimizes all the windows behind it.

As Chris Rock said in reference to being a single parent, “Just because you can do something don’t mean it’s ta be done!”
A shake gesture is very appropriate (and fun) interaction model for something like a mobile phone. For anyone who’s used the Facebook App for the iPhone, you might know that in order to refresh the results of a given screen, all you have to do is shake your phone. Navigating to the refresh button that’s only a few dozen pixels big takes much more concentration and time than simply shaking the phone. In short – a shake gesture on a mobile phone simplifies actions.
A shake gesture on a desktop experience makes no sense and doesn’t simplify anything for the user. The shake “innovation” is good – it’s it’s implementation that doesn’t work.
Microsoft has seen how Exposé works on OS X, why don’ they just weakly copy that, like they usually do?

My mother scoffed at the idea that Obama is “this generation’s JFK”.
If this Acceptance Speech doesn’t move you, then you’ve got a problem:

We will all be able to focus on things other than the election very soon, but I’ve run across some good examples of interactive content and data visualization about the election.
perspctv – They do a great job of aggregating data from disparate points on the Web into a great Human Experience.
Yahoo Political Dashboard 2008
ELECTION DAY 08 – What One Word Describes Your Current State of Mind?
* I’m curious if the last link is the work of Jonathan Harris or stamen design.