VentureBeat: Google acquires BumpTop: Will Android get a 3D facelift?:

What’s Google going to do with BumpTop? The search giant hasn’t said anything about the deal yet, either on the main Google blog or in response to VentureBeat’s email requesting comment. The most likely area seems to be its Android operating system for smartphones and (eventually) other devices, such as tablet computers. Some of these ideas and technologies might give the Android interface a leg up over Apple’s iPad and iPhone. Google is also developing the Chrome operating system for netbooks, but BumpTop seems less relevant there, since the Chrome OS is all about the web browser.

I reacted to BumpTop in ‘07 and ‘09 and now that Google has bought them, I’ll respond again.
First off, I still feel the same way now as I did in my last two posts on BumpTop. In short, I still feel they’ve taken the desktop metaphor too much in the direction of a real-life desktop as to render it useless. It suffers from not enough abstraction.
To err is human, and it’s the computer’s responsibility to reduce human err[or]s.
John Gruber made a great analogy:

Used to be that to drive a car, you, the driver, needed to operate a clutch pedal and gear shifter and manually change gears for the transmission as you accelerated and decelerated. Then came the automatic transmission. With an automatic, the transmission is entirely abstracted away. The clutch is gone. To go faster, you just press harder on the gas pedal.

and:

That’s where Apple is taking computing. A car with an automatic transmission still shifts gears; the driver just doesn’t need to know about it. A computer running iPhone OS still has a hierarchical file system; the user just never sees it.

In addition to a lack of abstraction, the desktop metaphor doesn’t have any relevancy in the mobile space. The desktop metaphor bridged the gap between the pre- and post-computers worlds when Xerox debuted their Star workstation in 1981. Apple would subsequently co-opt that idea and build on it with their operating system for the Lisa.
We still have folders, files and and trash icons in the mobile space but we’re entering a world where what you call the space where all these icons live matters less and less. The iPhone has “home screens” and the upcoming Windows Phone 7 and Palm webOS both use “tiles”.
Unless Google makes significant changes and simplications to BumpTop I see it’s implementation in Chrome OS and/or Android and a FAIL from the start.

Yeah. I have no idea what he’s saying.
I’m sticking to design.

Brian Chen for Wired GadgetLab, 26 Feb 2009, Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone:

What’s wrong with the iPhone, from a Japanese perspective? Almost everything: the high monthly data plans that go with it, its paucity of features, the low-quality camera, the unfashionable design and the fact that it’s not Japanese.

Bloomberg Businessweek, 23 April 2010:

Apple Inc.’s iPhone shipments to Japan more than doubled in the past year, capturing 72 percent of the country’s smartphone market, a research firm said.

Granted, some of the missing items from the 3G iPhone Chen mentioned in the Wired article were subsequently added to the 3GS — like MMS messaging, a better camera and video recording — but the Wired article was still way off-base.

The trouble with easy listening:

In other words, I considered listening to an album an activity in and of itself. It was not something I did while working on homework, let alone while checking e-mail or thumbing out text messages.

Jay Parkinson’s Awesomeness Manifesto:

The vast majority of companies — in my research, greater than 95% — can only create what I have termed thin value. Thick value is real, meaningful, and sustainable. It happens by making people authentically better off — not merely by adding more bells and whistles that your boss might like, but that cause customers to roll their eyes.

Heed to Design.

Edward Tufte on Windows Phone 7:

The WP7S interface has an extra sequence/layer added by big-button opening screens for the new ways of organizing stuff. Compared to the IPhone, most of the WP7S organizing screens have lower content resolution, which violates flatness and leads to hierarchical stacking and temporal sequencing of screens. In day-to-day use, maybe the panorama screens will solve the stacking/sequencing problem, or maybe they will just clutter up the flow of information. Of course Microsoft’s customers are already familiar with deep layerings and complex hierarchies.

I thought similar things when I watched a handful of demos of the new Windows mobile OS. It’s definitely different, un-iPhone, for lack of a better term, but not different in a good way.
It looks like a shell for an eventual mobile operating system, a working wireframe if you will.
On this note, Tufte nails it on the flatness and confusing ‘openness’:

The WP7S screens look as if they were designed for a slide presentation or for a video demo (to be read from a distance) and not for a handheld interface (read from 20 inches). For example, the headline type is too big, too spacious. One design lesson here is that most interface design work should be done at actual final scale and all internal demos should be on actual hardware rather than on pitch slides or big monitor screens. After all, users see the interface only at actual size, and so should interface designers, their managers, and so on up the management chain.

Financial bootstrapping is a term used to cover different methods for avoiding using the financial resources of external investors. Bootstrapping can be defined as “a collection of methods used to minimize the amount of outside debt and equity financing needed from banks and investors”[10]. The use of private credit card debt is the most known form of bootstrapping, but a wide variety of methods are available for entrepreneurs. While bootstrapping involves a risk for the founders, the absence of any other stakeholder gives the founders more freedom to develop the company. Many successful companies including Dell Computers were founded this way.

(via)

I was down in New Orleans, Louisiana for a bachelor party this past weekend. A few months ago when we were making plans, my friend Bryan researched ways we could help with Hurricane Katrina victims in the area. What he found was the St. Bernard Project.
From their about page:

The mission of the St. Bernard Project is to create housing opportunities so that Hurricane Katrina survivors can return to their homes and communities. The St. Bernard Project, a nonprofit, community-based organization carries out its mission through three primary programs: Rebuilding Program, Center for Wellness and Mental Health and Senior Housing Program.

This past Monday my friends Bryan, Frank, Andrew and I drove out to Violet, Lousiana, located in St Bernard Parish (New Orleans is divided into parishes like New York City is divided into boroughs) to help rebuild a house. The drive out to Violet revealed that there’s still a lot of grim, empty communities that have still not recovered from Katrina.
Thanks to the St Bernard Project, over 275 houses have been rebuilt with families back living in them. The goal for 2010 is to rebuild another 133 houses. The project is having a huge impact on the city, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
Here are some statistics (via):
• 1,000 families still displaced in St. Bernard
• 13,000 families still displaced in New Orleans
• 75% of homeowners did not receive sufficient funds to rebuild their home
I strongly encourage you to do what you can. You can find out how on their site.
One of the easiest ways is to make a $5 donation by texting “NOLA” to 50555. It will show up on your mobile bill. My friends and I all did this on the ride to the house we worked on.

via TechCrunch:

On its first day of availability on the App Store since it was – surprisingly, to many – approved by Apple, Opera Mini for iPhone (iTunes link) was downloaded one million times.

I have a question – Who gives a shit how many times it was downloaded?
I’m one of those million downloads, and I have to say, Opera Mini for iPhone sucks (less on this can be found in my economical tweet review).
Opera Mini for iPhone was a free download, so we’re not tracking sales. We’re tracking curious geeks like me who want to see if there could be viable alternatives to SafariMobile. So it’s like tracking hits to a website and hits are pointless too, in and of themselves.
Tracking hits and downloads means nothing without sales conversion stats.

Via Ars Electronista:

Nokia is developing a new tablet that would compete with the iPad, Rodman Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar claimed in a currently questionable note. He didn’t describe the form factor but said the Finnish phone maker was hoping to have a tablet on the market as early as the fall.

What? A tablet to compete with Apple? They don’t even have a product to compete with the iPhone.
Pay attention to the road Nokia, not the other drivers.

This is so, so, so important to understanding human behavior, especially how financial disasters happen (via 37Signals):

1. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.

2. You can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.

3. I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!

4. I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get.

from DesignAday:

Unless I’m way off my rocker, one of the benefits of purchasing the Adobe Creative Suite is that all of the applications work together. Can somebody then please explain why something as simple as color swatches can’t be shared between applications?

That only scratches the surface of what the Adobe Creative Suite doesn’t do across applications.

via MacNN:

Apple has won one of its USPTO patent claims for the iPhone, specifically covering the device’s iconic steel bezel. While appearing superficial, Apple claims that the bezel is actually essential to impact resistance, and innovative in part because it merges utility with aesthetics. The part is flush with an iPhone’s housing, inserted into a brace and held with a spring. It is also manufactured with cold worked steel, said to better accommodate design limits while reducing the need for machining.

I know people who would laugh at this and call it ridiculous and trivial.
But it’s not ridiculous. As Charles Eames said, “The details are not the details. They make the design.”