Category:Business

Tina Roth Eisenberg believes everyone should have side projects. So do I.

Jason Giddings came up with an idea for a multitouch, glass keyboard and mouse and launched a Kickstarter project late in 2011 to get it funded. I remember coming across it when I was launching my Kickstarter. He was aiming for $50K in funding but ended up getting over $143K. Amazing.

My thoughts now are the same as my thoughts then - while the project is gorgeous, it's a step backwards in usability. A desktop keyboard with no haptic feedback (translation: you don't know where the keys are unless you look at the screen)?

If I have any smack to talk about my iPhone and iPad, it's that it's a pain in the ass typing on a glass keyboard, because, well, there's no haptic feedback.

I don't intentionally seek out projects to trash, but Mr. Giddings has taken the main interface to computers and made it less usable.

In addition to function following form on this Kickstarter, Mr. Giddings' project also shows how hard it can be to turn a 3-D rendering into a real product. Have a looks as his project updates to see what I mean. In short, things have gotten complicated.

It's exciting to fund projects on Kickstarter, but be wary when you do. My Kickstarter was a screen-printed poster series and I thought that was more than enough to handle. I can't imagine what goes into product design, with machining, protyping and software/hardware integration.

I love headlines like these.

Makes me laugh.

Reuters: Dell sees room to challenge Apple in tablets

Asked whether he envied Apple's ability to produce such coveted objects, Felice [Dell's chief commercial officer] said: "We come at the market in a different way ... We are predominantly a company that has a great eye on the commercial customer who also wants to be a consumer."

What the does that even mean?

If I were Dell I wouldtake the money they were going to use to produce an iPad competitor, and instead give the money back to Dell shareholders.

Couldn't resist.

Over at paidContent, Robert Andrews sends word that Game Retailer Group is on the brink of collapse.

Europe's biggest plastic-box video game retailer Game Group has warned its shares may become worthless, as it struggles to avoid the same fate that has beset retailers of physical-format music.

The group says it is trying to renegotiate its lending facilities with banks and its supply shortages with game publishers that are withholding stock while Game tries containing its financial problems.

I don't get it. I don't understand how the video game industry, an offspring of the computer industry, can continue to attempt to sell physical media and expect everything to be cool. We're entering year 5 AI (After iPhone). Things need to have changed by now.

It's like squatters staying in an apartment, refusing to pay rent, just waiting to be evicted.

Mike Daisy reacts to David Pogue's response to ABC's Dateline special on the Foxconn factory producing Apple's iPads:

You can't get "informed consent" in a country without real personal freedom. These arguments are pathetic--they're structurally nearly identical to the ones made in the 19th century justifying slavery. The fact that workers take these jobs because they feel they have no economic, social, or political choice, and this is the only path, is not an endorsement of the current system--it's actually a condemnation.

It is cute how he makes a point of noting that there are no payroll taxes on your $2 an hour.

Do you think Mr. Pogue verified that, or that he's spent any time digging through Foxconn's history of deceptive paying practices--like how it pretended that it raised employee salaries 30% in 2010 by simply moving money around?

No, I don't think he did, either.

Josh Halliday, reporting for The Guardian:

Sony Music has come under fire after it increased the price of a Whitney Houston album on Apple's iTunes Store hours after the singer was found dead.

The music giant is understood to have lifted the wholesale price of Houston's greatest hits album, The Ultimate Collection, at about 4am California time on Sunday. This meant that the iTunes retail price of the album automatically increased from £4.99 to £7.99.

Classy move, Sony. Classy move.

via The Loop

It annoys the fuck out of me whenever I see commercials for a product or company who want you to follow them on Facebook or Twitter. Hey! Check it out, we're tweeting! We tweet! And put something on our wall too! Like us!

Aside from this annoyance, I could never quite put my finger on why social media doesn't work for companies, but Randy Murray nailed it:

The opposite is also true: businesses are not people. For a business to be social, it has to be focused and friendly, but it can never be your friend. I really like Apple products, I own Apple stock, but Apple isn't my friend. I don't need a social relationship with the company that made my car, where I shop for food, or the local dry cleaners. I do find it useful to get news and information from them, and someone to listen and act when I have a problem, but I really don't need another channel of happy talk from businesses.

Enrique Allen on The Designer Fund:

For the last few years, I was teaching start-ups to think like designers. But I eventually realized that you can't simply teach this stuff. If you don't have a designer in your founding group, you can't have a culture of design. You see the reasons why all the time: A consultant comes in to improve a design and when they leave, the transformation eventually dies.

This was my aha moment; it challenged whether I was making an impact. My solution? Do the opposite of what I've been doing. Rather than spending as much energy training nondesigners, I figured I'd help designers succeed as part of the founding DNA of startups, thus making great design a natural expression of their operations.

The Designer Fund via Co.Design

Ben Brooks responding to MG Siegler's post on why he hates Android and how Google doesn't put the customer first like Apple does:

The relationship Apple has with carriers is fascinating to me -- Apple seems to outwardly despise them, while knowing that carriers are (currently) necessary for Apple.

I wonder if Mr. Brooks remembers when Steve Jobs was interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at D8 Conference in 2010 (around the 4-minute mark):

Mossberg:And another time you talked about, you weren't going to do a phone because you had to sell them through, I think you called them, 'The Five Orifices' at the time.

Jobs: Four, I think.

Good times.