The illustrations by Phil Noto are off the hook.

via Back to Work

John Gruber on Google’s new $249 Chromebook by Samsung:

“You know what I’d like? An ARM-based computer that doesn’t run anything other than a web browser and gets only 6.5 hours of battery life.” —No One

I can think of one classy guy who would might like one.

And we know how that ended.

Shawn Blanc nails Microsoft Surface in one sentence:

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Microsoft’s Next Big Thing was a keyboard.

See, what Shawn doesn’t understand is Microsoft isn’t going into the future with their new product, they’re going back to the future. The Flux Capacitor in Microsoft’s Delorean is all screwed up, hence the eternal catch-up game they’ve been playing since Windows 95.

They were stuck in 2002 with their original line of tablet computers, and they’ve mistakenly traveled to present-day 2012. They intended to travel to April 2, 2010, one day before the original iPad was announced. They have no idea Apple already announced a second generation iPad on March 2 2011 with a magnetic Smart Cover (in an array of colors and also featuring a pleasing *click*).

The whole time-shifting thing is complicated.

A bitmapped ‘b’ by Jason Santa Maria for UPPERCASE magazine:

via asaucerfullofwheels

PJ Rey tries to get to the heart of hipsters and their obsession with low-tech media and devices:

the fetishization of low-tech is about the illusion of agency; it provides affirmation for the hipster whose identity is defined by the post-Modern imperative to be an individual, to be unique.

While agree that I have seen many hipsters who try to identify themselves with ‘old school’, analogue gadgets, I also know people my age (35) and older who love and rediscover old technology from their childhood. It’s not just hipsters who want more than the (fake) skeuomophic interface elements in iPad apps (and conversely, the flat, stoic, hard-edged tiles in Windows 8). Antique shops are not the sole domain of hipsters.

I think many of us long for real things, with real moving parts and real buttons. Our brain and our nerves might be an electrical network of neurons, but our senses are analogue.

I love Bill Murray.

Microsoft really does think it’s hot stuff with their magnetic keyboards.

I still find it ironic that in today’s age of mobile computing and tablets, Microsoft is emphasizing the least mobile component of their new product as the differentiator.

I wonder if the keyboard inclusion is twofold – 1) they don’t want to let go of Windows and the PC Era and 2) without the keyboard, it’s too close, hardware-wise to an iPad.

Fellow Exhauster Bryan has been doing movie reviews for over five years on his site Missile Test, under the title, Shitty Movie Sundays.

While we have enjoyed some hilariously bad movies together (Trancers, anyone?), I could not subject myself to the volume of shitty movies Bryan watches.

He explains his philosophy in his review of Resident Evil:

Regular readers will be aware of my affinity for shitty movies. I relish the escape. The right shitty movie can create an emptiness of mind similar to that attained by meditating. Done correctly, all conscious thought is pushed aside while considering a single, meaningless word, like ‘ohm’ or something. When I watch shitty movies, the carnival in my mind stops, the racket quiets and slows, and vision becomes separate from consciousness. I can enter the mindless, the pure and content, through the medium of terrible cinema.

Movies like Resident Evil, then, are therapy. They are escape from the pressures of work and the intellectual workout required in the reading of politics, history, and philosophy, etc. Shitty movies don’t reside in the realm of the vacuous. They are a pressure release valve, a way to expunge the stress of overusing the mind. I’m only partly joking.

Regardless of what I’m willing to watch, I can appreciate his thinking.

via Mitt Romney

I traveled back to Manhattan for work for the first time since my wife and I moved out to Los Angeles in April. It felt great to be back. I started going into the city when I was a little kid to visit my grandma in Queens. I’ll always have a soft spot for New York.

Here are 5 highlights from my trip:

1. Taking pictures out the window on a plane will always keep me entertained.

2. The Jane Hotel has the most awesome, train car style, Sherlock-Holmes-will-come-busting-in-any-moment rooms to stay in, and they only cost $135 per night. How much time do I spend in my hotel room on business trips? This is perfect.

3. I miss the view from my old desk.

4. Some people still wear watches that need to be wound when you change time zones.

5. My parents have black bears who regularly visit their house in New Jersey—and leave Sasquatch-looking prints on the driveway.

Herman Miller has a great new film series on their site called Why Design. Jory linked to one on Don Chadwick a few weeks ago.

I loved this one on Irving Harper, who creates amazing sculptures with paper.

via Trendland

Very smart iPhone watch idea by Lennart Ziburski.

The outer rim of the watch face is a scroll wheel and the rest is a touchscreen.

I love it.

via The Loop