via PSFK

John Gruber on spec-based reviews:

Spec-based reviews of computers and gadgets are inherently flawed, a relic of an era that’s already gone. Movie reviews are about what the movie is like to watch. Is it enjoyable, is it entertaining, does it look and sound good? Imagine a movie review based on specs, where you gave points for how long it was, whether the photography is in focus, deduct points for continuity errors in the story, and then out comes a number like “7.5/10”, with little to no mention about, you know, whether the movie was effective as a piece of art.

Spec-based reviews are only important to are the companies building them and geeks. Once you have the fundamentals, like battery life and memory/disk space you enter a realm where the average consumer doesn’t give a shit.
Dual core, quad core, megahertz, open platform/closed platform. Bah!
Just show me how great the experience is.

via asaucerfullofwheels

occupyhtml.org

I’d like to welcome Bryan Larrick to Daily Exhaust. I owe him for catching many of my typos and grammar errors over the years on this site.
In addition to being a gifted front-end developer, he writes on a variety of topics on his site, Missile Test (he’s got a penchant for shitty movies). He’s also a pretty awesome photographer.
He scores extra points for the fact that shoots with analogue film on a Holga, a Minolta SR-T and a Mamiya.

via Able Parris

Influencer: Sony DVD Remote, 1999

Influenced: Apple iPod, 2001

A couple days ago, the New York Times published a post on its Bits blog by Nick Bilton about the disruptive effects 3-D printers are set to have on product design. From the post:

It won’t be long before people have a 3-D printer sitting at home alongside its old inkjet counterpart. These 3-D printers, some already costing less than a computer did in 1999, can print objects by spraying layers of plastic, metal or ceramics into shapes. People can download plans for an object, hit print, and a few minutes later have it in their hands.

The thought of being able to torrent household objects is a game changer not only in design, but also in retail, ownership and copyright, Bilton feels. Is this the death of manufacturing? The death of stores? Will refills for a 3-D printer’s jets be the only physical thing we will need to buy in the near future? In many ways it’s a chilling prospect.
We’re already seeing the deleterious effects on creativity that digital conversion of music, books, movies, etc., has wrought. It’s harder to make a living these days being creative. If it can be disseminated, it will. Money that would normally go to a creator instead never enters into the transaction. This is less of a problem for big time projects like blockbuster movies, but pirating has cut off much of the funds that smaller projects need to keep their creators out of an office.
But all that is kid stuff compared to what Bilton hinted at. The death of retail and the death of ownership, while not inherently bad things on their own, represent a fundamental shift in how we’ve ordered capitalism and western society. This shift will alter the interrelations we have that keep us fed, sheltered, and prosperous. We are a people that trade. First goods and services, then metal and paper money, then zeros and ones. That could all go away.
Once upon a time, it was pure science fiction to think that we could get whatever we wanted out of a box on a shelf. It seemed like a little bit of paradise. In the future, there would be no war, no prejudice, no injustice, and no want of either material necessities or food. It’s a compelling pastiche. Will our reality be so enlightened? I hate to be a pessimist, but war, prejudice, and injustice look like they are here to stay. And want? 3-D printers, on their face, look like a sure fire way to tackle the problems of deprivation. But before we get too far ahead, remember that these printers do not spin objects out of whole cloth. Even the most advanced 3-D printers that are realistically possible require raw materials to function.
So we’re on the cusp of a new way of life. Will 3-D printers mean the end of want? Will they mean the major economies of the world will move completely into the digital realm? Will they mean control of raw materials will pass to a small power elite? Will they result in a lack of motivation among the populace to produce anything at all for themselves? We will not know the answers for decades, but home manufacturing will change how we live more than anything that has come out of the information revolution before it.

Rob Beschizza over at Boing Boing takes a look at Sony’s new Vaio X and how they keep monkeying with their product features, like the keyboard:

The computer keyboard isn’t a place where radical UI design changes are desirable. To extend the marketing metaphor, it’s like the typeface of a book. You’re stuck with the same old alphabet, in the same configuration, and your job is to preserve its usefulness while investing the work with with a certain character. The smart choice is to design something good and stick with it.

But Sony does not. The changes to the chiclet keys in the Vaio Z, however slight, show that it can’t even refine its own winning ideas. It’s as if Sony was using Helvetica before almost everyone else, then switched to Arial when the world followed suit.

I see the same behavior in the Android market, where new models get released each month and very few companes bother to stick with a phone and refine it, over and over again until it’s amazing.

Bill Gates wants to get rural Vietnam online:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has provided the donation, alongside $3.64 million worth of Microsoft software, towards a $50.6 million government initiative that is expected to provide basic computer skills and the benefits of the Internet to 760,000 people in the Southeast Asian country.

The project will see 12,070 Internet-ready computers set up at 1,900 public libraries (65 percent of the country’s total) in 40 of Vietnam’s most disadvantaged provinces. The price of access to the computers, which will be available for local Vietnamese to use until 2016, is varied with some free to use and others reportedly set to charge 50 percent less than typical local Internet cafe rates.

Donating software is nice, but you need hardware too. And the best form factor is the tablet, and since Microsoft still doesn’t have a Windows 8 tablet on the market, I say he buy and donate some Android tablets and some iPads.
After watching the video of Gates Jory posted last week, I’m sure he totally be down with the idea.
I mean, he says it himself in the video, that tablets and technology is “no longer his area of expertise”.
Do what’s right, Bill.

via Modern Mechanix