Smoke & Panels

There’s a post over at Engadget about Sony Ericsson’s new XPERIA X1 mobile phone. It features a ‘panel interface’. There’s a commercial showing the phone in action – if you can call it that.
All we’re able to see is these ‘panels’ – which bring to mind the window effect of Exposé on OS X – except, I have no idea why this is effective or how it improves productivity on the XPERIA X1.
Here’s the commercial:

Now this phone could very well be a winner and have an easy to use interface, but we have no idea from the video. Update: I skimmed through the comments of the Engadget post and found a link to another equally useless video from a mobile show in Barcelona. The guy showing the phone won’t even interact with it, he hits one button on it and spends the rest of the the time pointing at the phone. Bullshit.
If you’re going to make a video highlighting how innovative your product is, why don’t you show it actually doing something innovative instead of just using smoke and mirrors?
Like how you say? Like this:

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Technology

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Free Tip of the Day

My drink, the café au lait.
I think of it as a poor man’s latte.
If you go to a good coffee shop (Not Starbucks), they’ll have strong coffee, and once they drop in that steamed milk, you’re really not that far away from a latte anyway.
…and you’re saving yourself at least a dollar.
cafe_au_lait.jpg

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Technology

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Some People Prefer Analog

I have a client that has never seen the website I designed for her.
I launched the site 6 years ago.
Correction – She saw it once when I burned her a CD-ROM of it so she could view it on her laptop.
She doesn’t have Internet at her business or home but understands (now more than ever) the value of an informative web prescence. Over the years she has invested money in CitySearch and has become fanatical about her keywords and description. Street traffic in her neighborhood in Manhattan has dropped significantly over the years, being replaced by digital street traffic on Google.
This past weekend I shot some new images for her website.
Along with the image updates, she also wanted to review all the pages so she can edit the copy.
She asked that I send her printouts via postal mail.
Wow.
It’s so archane, but I actually got a little excited folding up the printouts, sealing them in their envelope and dropping them in the mail.
It was a combination of feeling like I was getting punk’d and being involved in some weird art experiment.

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Advertising, Technology

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SilverLoad

I installed the Silverlight plug-in on my computer at work. I knew that Microsoft had created an inferior, derivative product to Adobe Flash, but I went with the thinking of the Godfather – keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Well, I’ve seen it and interacted with it, and the company I work for is doing their best to make lemonade of the lemon that is Silverlight.
Silverlight isn’t worthy of being an enemy.
Or competitor.
It’s third-rate. Bush league. Meh.
I’ve been using Flash for 9 years, and over those 9 years Macromedia …and then Adobe, have continued to make more and more improvements to it. You’re telling me that I should consider a new program that is in many respects equivalent to Flash 3?
Some developers out there will correct me and point out all the integration points that can be made with Silverlight. My reply to this imaginary combative developer is that presentation is essential. You have to look good.
If you look good and sound good – you’re in a good position.
If you work well too? You’re set.
Microsoft sees looking good and working well as two separate entities, when they should realize this equation:

working well + looking good = great design

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Technology

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Distillation

So the second project I’ve assigned to my interactive design class at Rutgers Newark is to design a widget (like the ones on your iPhone and Dashboard).
The strategy behind the widget is to create something that would help them with their day-to-day college schedules. It’s a widget and not a website, so they have to focus on one or two (maximum) functions. Widgets are all about distallation, both visually and informationally.
The widget could delivery information specific to the student, or it could be something all the students of Rutgers could use.
The students should not limit themselves to what they think is possible. They should start out like this:
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a widget that let me see…. [insert functionality]
It’s going to be a really fun project. I wish I had time to build a widget too. 🙂

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Education, Technology

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Soft!

Yes. This is what you get when a Microsoft eats a Yahoo!
Soft!
So Microsoft is offering $44.6 billion for Yahoo! Great, good for them.
This whole deal is soft.
I mean, this whole deal is Soft!
If Microsoft has proven anything with its many acquisitions, it’s that money can’t buy you market dominance (licensing your product can, which is why they are where they are today).
Daring Fireball has a great little breakdown of things.

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Art, Image, Technology

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RAW RAW

I don’t many people who dig her, but M.I.A. rocks. She’s weird, innovative and extremely talented, drawing on tons of musical references and genres.

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Music

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Know the Ledge

Educators have a lot of power.
I somewhat understood this when I started teaching at Rutgers University in the fall semester of 2007, but I didn’t have that Eureka! moment until I started this spring semester for 2008.
The class I’m tag-team teaching along with Professor Brenda McManus is Interactive Design. The first project is get into teams of 2 and audit a website (from a pre-selected list we created). They have to break down the site through the scope, strategy, skeleton, and surface (based on James Jesse Garrett’s Elements of Human Experience) and then make a presentation to the class on their research.
I told the students they have many options on how they can present – Powerpoint, JPGs, PDFs – whatever form they feel most comfortable with and which is most appropriate.
While keeping things open to the class I strongly recommended they all open GMail accounts. I explained that using their Google accounts allowed them to not only collaborate with each other remotely (remember how crazy college schedules can be), but it also had Google Presentation – an alternative to Microsoft Powerpoint. I told them that this was how Brenda and I collaborated when we were developing class assignments.
It was at this moment that not only realized the power of a good educator – but also how collaborative paradigms are completely changing AND how I could effectively sway students away from Microsoft products and services. I feel the need to move the students away from Microsoft products, not because I don’t like Microsoft – but because Microsoft does not make well-designed software and products. Google Docs is a better alternative.
Prior to that moment I took things like Google Docs and Basecamp and all the other web-based applications for granted.
Prior to that moment I was talking the talk, but not walking much walk.
I guess I didn’t know the ledge.

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Education, Technology

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