Here’s a nice little bit of news from October 2007 from Verizon Wireless CMO Mike Lanman regarding their LG Voyager:

“We think it’ll be the best phone … this year. It will kill the iPhone.”

Lanman gets a place right up there with Palm CEO Ed Colligan.
Ah schadenfreude, it goes down so smooth.

The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely
#1 – The Sound
I just listened through the new Raconteurs album, Consolers of the Lonely. Some of the tracks I immediately dig, but many of em still have to soak in.
Sometimes songs have to marinate in your ears for a while before they taste good.
#2 – The Aesthetic
All the projects Jack White is involved in have a distinct, strong visual aesthetic. When I think of the White Stripes, I immediately have associated colors in my head – red, black and white.
The same holds true for The Ranconteurs. Before I picked up the album, I saw their playbill – it was a black and white shot of the group sitting down in a field. It looked like a Civil War era photo – stiff, awkward poses, scratches and dust. Below is a similar shot from their website.
<img alt=photo: The Raconteurs” src=”/images/raconteurs_group_shot.jpg” width=”545″ height=”547″ />
#3 – The Website
While not staying consistent with the aesthetic of their album and playbills, their website is also unique and quirky. It harkens back to the pre-Windows days of computers that I remember vividly. It also brings to mind email during my college years – can anyone say PINE?
Surprisingly, the keyboard navigation for the site is very intuitive, but for some reason they don’t allow you to use your keyboard to navigate the Photos section, which is very annoying once I’m in ‘keyboard mode’ with both hands. You have to use your mouse to click the photos. Why can’t I just ‘arrow’ over to them? Argh! Other than that quip, the site is great.

You can also buy and download the album straight from the site. Sweet.

November 2001 – Microsoft launches the xBox, taking on Sony’s PS2 & Nintendo’s GameCube.
June 2003 – Microsoft launches Windows Mobile 2003.
November 2005 – Microsoft launches the xBox 360, taking on Sony’s PS3 and the Nintendo Wii.
September 2006 – Microsoft releases Zune, their portable MP3 player to take on the #1 ranked iPod from Apple.
April 2007 – Microsoft launched Silverlight, to take on #1 placed Adobe Flash.
September 2007 – Nintendo Wii outsells xBox 360 in less than a year.
February 2008 – Microsoft makes a bid to acquire Yahoo! to take on search and online advertising giant, Google.
April 2008 – Apple’s iPhone the top mobile platform, after only 9 months of existence, accounts for .23 percent of US web traffic, beating WIndows Mobile’s meager .03 percent.
So we have:
– desktop operating system
– games
– a Flash competitor (RIAs)
– mobile OS
– online search & advertising
Microsoft – can I just ask what the hell your strategy is anyway?
What is your vision?
…before you answer that, remember that vision and going after competitors are two different things.
Google’s vision, from the beginning, is to organize all the world’s information. Obviously this touching on a hell of a lot of different industries, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’ve stayed on course with their vision, taking on competition all the while.
Microsoft, on the other hand, just takes on competition and enters new markets after they realize they’ve made a mistake. Or they’ll enter a new market but do a half-assed job at it (Can anyone tell me what happened to “the Social“?)
If you don’t have vision, you lose your way and end up taking the wrong paths.

My wife and I are off to Honduras. This part of the internets will be exhaustless for the next week.

I had to pitch to a prospective client today for Schematic.
I stayed up until 2AM this past Sunday preparing my designs. Our CTO integrated my designs into our Keynote presentation and everything came together perfectly. All in all it was a great pitch and the prospective client responded great to our work.
Then as we were getting ready to leave in the lobby we saw ‘the other agency’ that was pitching right after us.
They looked like a bunch of scrubs.
Their clothes weren’t horrible but they weren’t great either. Then I looked down – their shoes were even worse.
Let’s get this straight people – if you’re a client-facing person at your company you should own a pair of $300 dress beautiful shoes.
If this sounds snobby, you can take it deep, because it’s true. You don’t need 5 pair or 10 pair, just one pair of top-of-the-line shoes. Also throw in a pair of $200 quality jeans. If you take care of them, they’ll last you a long time.
What? That’s expensive? So fucking what. Maybe don’t blow $100 a weekend on drinks for a month. Or maybe wait on buying that $400 PS3 you were planning on getting. I’ll repeat myself – if you are a client-facing person good clothes are essential.
Let’s put it another way – if you’re pitching to client – your clothing should be as amazing as whatever designs, Keynote presentations or After Effects prototypes you’re showing.
Image is key. Consistency is essential.

Palm chief: no new Treos until summer – Bummer, I was looking forward to some fresh 8-bit graphic ‘smart’ phones.
…pysche!

Digital A-List 2008: Next in Line – #2 …Go Schematic!
UPDATE: I just realized we were also Webpick of the Week at CommArts for 02.29.08.
full disclosure: I’m an art director at this kick-ass agency.

Full disclosure: I am an Apple shareholder, and have been using Apple computers for over 10 years. Microsoft can take it deep.

I’d like to squash all these false statements about how Apple ‘fanboys’ gloat over their precious iPhones.
I was out this weekend with some friends and friends-of-friends. They all had iPhones, and the interesting thing was – they were all PC users. Below is a shot I took with my iPhone of the other three.
I have to tell you, PC users seem to gloat just as much over their iPhones as Mac users do. So be sure you know who you’re talking about next time you want to hate on a Mac user, he just might be one of your own!
Stay vigilant.

I was at the flea market on 25th & 6th Ave last weekend, looking for graphic gems and I found a few. One item I found was Protection from Radioactive Fallout. It was published in 1959 and the gist of it is that if a nuclear bomb drops, you’re fucked no matter how way you slice it.
Here are the more interesting illustrations:

I came across this article in my Google Reader: DVD format battle attracts a new rival: HD VMD
I have to point out some things regarding the whole battle war feud competition between DVD DVD and Blu Ray …and now possibly HD VMD – this is going to confuse the shit of out consumers.
When manufacturers constantly update their hardware formats, they’re unintentionally causing buying anxiety in consumers. We’re at a point now where a lot of people have finally gotten around to buying a DVD player, and some have even gone as far as to start their own collection – whether this collection be purchased or ripped from Netflix DVD’s.
In 2007 two new formats emerged with more resolution muscle and capacity and we were told to scrap the DVD format, go with one of these new formats – although we weren’t sure yet what the adoption/endorsement from major studios was going to be yet on either format (now that we’re into March of 2008 it seems Blu Ray is the ‘winner’).
Then this morning I read about this new HD VMD format.
Enough is enough.
What happens in situations like these are what Barry Schwartz calls the Paradox of Choice. Basically, if people are presented too many options, or in this case, asked to change video formats too quickly, instead of picking one – they don’t pick any.
Contrast the problems of hardware upgrades to software upgrades. Let’s use my favorite new device – my iPhone.
The iPhone updates (and OS X updates in general) happen without the need to replace anything due to their nature (it’s called SOFTware for a reason, actually, it’s technically called firmware).
The whole process is practically seemless – just download the software update, install, and reset/reboot. No additional hardware, memory, plug-ins or connectors.
We can see the benefits of such software-based systems with a simple and very likely scenario.
Say Apple suddenly decides it needs to update your iPhone with a new version of Quicktime with dozens of new features and functionality and will sport a Super Extra Ultra High Definition resolution. If the iPhone relied on hardware upgrading to make this happen there would be 3 possible outcomes:
1. You upgrade your iPhone hardware and everything goes smoothly
2. Apple makes you buy a new iPhone to enjoy the new features
3. You upgrade your iPhone hardware and everything goes horribly wrong
4. You do nothing, and keep your iPhone as is
Of course, we don’t have to worry about any of these possibilities since all we need to do is connect our iPhone to iTunes, sync it and restart it.
Google understands the power of this with Google Docs and all their other online tools. Google can change their software at will without affecting anyone’s computer. I won’t even get into the benefits of not having to launch software locally from your hard drive.
Technology systems reliant on a fixed format lack agility.
Umair over at Bubblegeneration has some more great thoughts on Why HD-DVD And Blu-Ray Are (Strategically) Obsolete.

The cover story in Wired right now is Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.

But free is not quite as simple — or as stupid — as it sounds. Just because products are free doesn’t mean that someone, somewhere, isn’t making huge gobs of money. Google is the prime example of this. The monetary benefits of craigslist are enormous as well, but they’re distributed among its tens of thousands of users rather than funneled straight to Craig Newmark Inc. To follow the money, you have to shift from a basic view of a market as a matching of two parties — buyers and sellers — to a broader sense of an ecosystem with many parties, only some of which exchange cash.
The most common of the economies built around free is the three-party system. Here a third party pays to participate in a market created by a free exchange between the first two parties. Sound complicated? You’re probably experiencing it right now. It’s the basis of virtually all media.

You have to read the story to have that title make sense to you.
…and I think The Beauty Of 99¢ iPhone Apps (via) shares a lot of the same thinking.

So after a year of being an art director at Schematic, my Flash muscles have gotten out of shape. Before Schematic, I used to juggle many hats – HTML, design, Actionscripting and animation. Now I work with people who are dedicated to these specific tasks, so that I can focus on my task of designing an art directing.
WIth that said, I’m working on some freelance projects as well as a side project at work (kind of like my own ‘20 percent project‘) that requires I get back into Flash and start programming again. (Not because someone told me to, but because I want to. My father is an engineer so I know I have some of his geek genes coursing through me).
Back in the day I used to use Laco’s tween class for scripted motion in Flash. Then that evolved into Fuse Kit.
My friend Quigga has told me to drop Fuse and use TweenLite. Put simply – it’s lean and mean. Check out the speed test and you be the judge.
I also started using another Greenstock class for preloading assets, the PreloadAssetManager class.
Hello again Flash, here I come!

I Really Hope Microsoft Has More Than This – If Microsoft wants to even think about competing with Google* – they’re going to have to figure out a new business strategy.
I’ll be truly surprised and impressed if Microsoft does.
*Yes, I said Microsoft has to compete with Google, not Google has to compete with Microsoft, because Google has changed the rules of the game by offering a Sharepoint and Office alternative that is free AND online.
Microsoft has to play on Google’s turf and time is running out.
Game on!

Ferrari Enzo, originally uploaded by finlayedridge.

There’s a reason you’ll be hard-pressed to find a Ferrari with a nose cover or bra, as they’re commonly called.
As useful as a bra is to protect a car’s front end from oncoming debris, it also does something inversely damaging – It masks the beautiful craft and design of the car.
The same goes for all this crap people use to protect their iPhones.
Take it off people! Unless you’re going rock climbing, your iPhone doesn’t need all that protection. It’s not the delicate flower you think it is. It can handle everyday use. I know mine can.
Putting a bra on an iPhone is the equivalent of when I was a kid and my mom made me put on a friggin’ winter coat on top of my awesome Chewbacca costume.