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.

Adam Yauch of The Beastie Boys, dead at 47

via Technabob

MacNN: Liquidmetal inventor says Apple ‘years’ away from casings

Dr. Ataka Peker, one of the inventors of the new class of metallic alloys known commercially as Liquidmetal and the founder of the company, says he believes Apple would have to spend “three to five years”, and “$300 million to $500 million” to develop the alloys to the point where it could be used on a large scale, such as for an entire computing casing. He believes the company will continue to use Liquidmetal on a smaller scale until a “breakthrough product” comes along.

I wonder if Dr. Peker felt like Dr. Evil after he proclaimed Apple would have to spend, “Five hundred meellion dollars…..”
Apple is only sitting on over $100 billion in the bank now.
And that 3-5 year window for development? Who says they’re not already working on it?

From the PSFK Conference NYC, Clay Shirky shares what’s he learned about creativity by watching creatives (about 26 minutes long).
I love how he describes the program at ITP where he’s an associate professor:

It’s an interdisciplinary program. It’s about half engineers and techies who care about human factors. It’s about half artists and designers who aren’t afraid of machines.

If I was entering college right now, this would totally be where I’d be going.

It’s now over 5 years since the introduction of the original iPhone and this is what RIM’s response is?
Multitouch smartphone with on-screen keyboard. An email program that resembles something like those found in iOS and webOS and to round out the ‘sneak peek’ – the ability to stream video content from your phone to your TV. Like Apple TV.
My favorite Darwin quote comes to mind:
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
A 5-year response time is not being adaptable enough, RIM.

If I travel south from my house through Topanga Canyon for about 30 miuntes, this is where the road leads:

via my Instragram

Android Police gives us A Definitive History of Android Version Adoption (via Daring Fireball):

That’s right, it’s not your imagination, Ice Cream Sandwich adoption is going very, very slowly. You’ll notice update percentage gets progressively slower with each new version, but keep in mind the Android ecosystem is also getting progressively larger. Ice Cream Sandwich has to deal with many, many more models than √âclair did.

Updates are getting slower.
Eclair? Ice Cream Sandwich? burp Let’s not forget the other Android versions: Cupcake, Donut, Gingerbread, Honeycomb.
It’s obvious what’s going on here. Android is getting fat.
It’s time Android threw on some Richard Simmons Sweatin’ To The Oldies and burn some calories! Stop inhaling every new phone Samsung and HTC come out with!
Android, you can’t eat away your fragmentation, eating only makes the fragmentation worse.

via Open Culture

Technology Review on how Android device makers are ‘mutinying’ and forking the code to their liking:

Google’s Android device makers aren’t happy. They’re tired of making commodity devices that are merely vehicles for Google’s Android OS, each indistinguishable from the other because of Google’s rules about how Android can be implemented on them in order for them to qualify as “compatible.”

These makers have seen the success of devices with custom OSes built on forked versions of the still kind-of open-source Android operating system, primarily Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, and they’re itching to release their own.

Makes sense to me. Why would anyone want to be one of hundreds of different smartphones with the same OS?
The problem is, while device makers are solving the problem of differentiation in the marketplace by forking Android, they’re requiring developers to make the extra effort to customize their applications to run on their custom ‘flavor’ of Android.
This Alan Kay quote keeps making more and more sense each day:
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.