So after 3 years, I’ve canceled my Sirius Satellite Radio account. Despite my cancellation, I think Sirius offers a great service, just not one that syncs with my lifestyle.
First off, I’ve been back in NYC since 2006, and not driving nearly as much as I was down in Miami for a year. While I could get a docking unit for my home/office, I can also do a lot more things than I could in 2006.
To beat a dead horse some more, the iPhone is the device that has “changed everything” and made Sirius irrelevant to me. Not only can I still listen to my iTunes tracks in the car (as I could before with my iPod), I can also listen to music from last.fm and Pandora …for free. Yes, I can now download the Sirius iPhone app, but I still need a membership.
Sure I’m going to miss Howard Stern, but it’s just not worth $14/month anymore.

unibody MacBook Pro, 2008

Nokia Booklet 3G, 2009

I came across a post (what blog, I can’t remember) about a collaborative duo called Sing Statistics. Here is the cover of their new book, We Are the Friction:

The cover of their book immediately brought to mind one of my favorite contemporary designers, Nicolas Felton, who has a recognizable all-caps, stacked-type style to his work (work that is predominately focused on statistics and data visualizations).
This is his autobiographic Annual Report for 2007:

Without speaking with Sing Statistics, I have no way to determine if they’re aware of Felton’s work. My goal is also not to call out Sing as copycats (And Felton doesn’t own the copyright on thin-condensed-all-caps-stacked-type).
The point of this post is more to educate and acknowledge the continuum on which we all work – no matter what medium it is. Influence is inevitable and important to the growth of artists and designers.
I find this urge to educate people on influences and origins in music as well, especially to younger generations who are unaware of baselines, riffs, remixes and covers based on songs that came before their time. I’m particularly amazed at ‘hardcore’ hip hop fans who have no idea the amount of sampling there has been of James Brown and much of the 60’s Motown generation.

So Google has a browser called Chrome, and they’ve decided to call their new operating system Chrome as well.
Hmmm.
Gizmodo responsed to this today, ‘Android, Chrome OS Relationship Confusing Everyone, Including Google‘.
John Gruber responds more specifically to the wack-ass nomenclature:

A web browser is very different from an OS, even if the OS only runs the browser. Google themselves recently conducted a survey that suggests that most regular people do not understand at all what a “web browser” is. If regular people are confused about what a browser is, it’s a good bet they’re even more confused about what an “OS” is. Calling them both “Chrome” isn’t going to help clarify the matter.

This reminds me of Amazon’s recent ‘Kindle’ iPhone app.
Wait, I thought that white, e-ink device on my desk was a Kindle? Now, if I don’t have a Kindle, I can still have a Kindle (on my iPhone)?

Roger Ebert’s review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.

Seems I won’t be seeing this flick after all.
…although, my reaction to this review is the same as driving by a car accident.
I have to look, if only for a second.

Richard Ziade over at basement.org has a great post on content owners and their obsession to protect their content:

It wasn’t about getting stuff for free. The iPod/iTunes ecosystem is testament to the fact that people are willing to pay for a quality experience, even if there are fringe alternatives out there for free. The mistake the content owners made was that they believed their content had value in a vacuum. It doesn’t. Content is part of the experience.

NYTimes.com: The Case for Working With Your Hands
On the fruits of our labors:

Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of cause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience of individual agency can be elusive.

On focus:

Further, there is wide use of drugs to medicate boys, especially, against their natural tendency toward action, the better to “keep things on track.” I taught briefly in a public high school and would have loved to have set up a Ritalin fogger in my classroom. It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.

I’m 32 years old and I still have trouble sitting still at work.
And on taking responsibility and having some balls:

A manager has to make many decisions for which he is accountable. Unlike an entrepreneur with his own business, however, his decisions can be reversed at any time by someone higher up the food chain …So managers learn the art of provisional thinking and feeling, expressed in corporate doublespeak, and cultivate a lack of commitment to their own actions.

The Beasties are getting old, but they still got it.
From the Jimmy Fallon Show, May 25, 2009:

UPDATE – I switched out the broken YouTube link for a Hulu link. Their performance of Whatcha Want kicks in at around 19:30.

seat, originally uploaded by combustionchamber.

Thanks for introducing me to Metric, Jory.

Amazon releasing a Kindle application for the iPhone was a very smart move. Like a lot of the news I’m reading today, I’m happy to see Amazon make this move and not try to wall off other devices. While it’s not going to replace the Kindle 1.0 my wife bought me for Christmas, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to read e-books I bought from Amazon on my iPhone.

Now some of you are thinking right now, ‘But Mike – you don’t seem to have any problem with your beloved Apple and their gated community of iPhone applications? Why aren’t you demanding the same openness Amazon is showing with its Kindle app from Apple and its iPhone?”. Ah – but I’m a proponent of the content being open, not the platform. Amazon is selling media files for the Kindle (books, magazines), the same way Apple is selling media files in iTunes (music), and if you remember, Apple didn’t want DRM on their music, the record executives insisted on it because we’re all nasty little thieves. Google made the same move with Google Docs publishing out to standard (albeit Microsoft proprietary) formats like .doc and .ppt instead of inventing its own.

With each succeeding year, it becomes more and more clear why Amazon isn’t just a website that sells stuff, they’re clearly a company focused on innovation.