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Beneath the Surface of Microsoft Surface

[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 19, 2012 by admin in Technology

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

It’s the interface, stupid. And what Microsoft is doing may be bigger than you think.

Last week, some words came out of my mouth that you don’t hear coming from my mouth too often. They were “I’m really excited about this new Microsoft product!” Strangely, I wasn’t referring to Microsoft’s new Surface tablet. I had no idea it was coming. I was actually referring to Windows 8, but the announcement of the new Microsoft hardware just validated the things I was saying to a friend about why Windows 8 had me worked up. The funny thing is, I’m not really that excited about Windows 8 itself. I’m no Microsoft Fanboy by a long shot. I’m still running XP, because when I use a computer I really prefer ignoring the OS so I can just get work done. And glassy swooping windows don’t help me get work done. I even turn that stuff off on my beloved MacBook. And I don’t feel like battling with Linux. No, what I’m excited about is the fact that Windows 8 and a viable Windows tablet (don’t forget, they’ve tried this before) will probably push a paradigm shift I’ve personally been waiting for for almost a decade. And I think a lot of tech industry writers are really missing a beat here on the significance of what Microsoft is doing, by zeroing in separately on the device or the OS as focal points, rather than looking at the whole shift that is occurring. It’s similar to how the industry got wowed by the iPad or Kindle, while failing to notice the genius of where the real change was taking place, which was in the control of content. No, I think there’s a bigger shift afoot thanks to Microsoft’s new direction. Read the rest of this entry »

Why Am I Writing eBooks When I Don’t Even Own A Kindle?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 16, 2011 by admin in Popular Media

Sunday, October 16th, 2011

The publishing world is going through a massive paradigm shift. Just in time to confuse the hell out of me.


This might have SOMETHING to do with it.

Me and eBooks go way back. Not quite as far back as the first time I used the wrong first-person pronoun on purpose, but at least back to about 1992, when I worked in one of the coolest bookstores ever: AfterWords, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a store that mostly sold remainders, quality reprints, and small press stuff that was hard to find. One day while pricing a huge stack of of the hardcover version of I’m Only One Man, Regis Philbin’s biography, I casually mentioned something about how I’d just read in Wired magazine about the still-only-imagined eBook, and what a cool idea I thought it was. It took me a moment to notice the sudden silence around me. I looked up to find myself being stabbed through with a dagger-like look in the five eyes of my co-workers (one had just injured their eye and was wearing an eye-patch). The look in their eyes made it clear that they were collectively pondering the idea of paper-cutting me to death. “What, what, WHAT?”, I said. But I knew that it was just the book lover in them all that was causing this reaction. It was like suddenly I was the fireman from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and I was there to burn all their books. As much as I agreed with them about the feel and smell of a comforting bound book, they really just didn’t seem to care about the number of trees left in the world, the idea that you could carry every book you’ve ever owned in a notebook-size device, or the idea that it would never wear out, and could be highlighted repeatedly without devaluing it. Well, we’ve come a long way since then. So far that not only is AfterWords long-since defunct, but even the corporate monsters that destroyed them are dying. This has not impacted my reading habits a lot, in spite of the fact that I don’t own a Kindle or an iPad. Although I have to say the Kindle Fire is very tempting, and who doesn’t want an iPad? Well, me, for the moment. But in any case, if I really want to read a particular book, I buy it or get it from the library. And far and away I do more short-form reading on the web. But this whole traditional book vs. eBook issue just became of critical importance to me. Why? Because I have a more or less finished book that I’m getting ready to peddle, and I just co-authored another book with a development partner. We’re developing a series of personal transformation products (we also maintain a sort of sandbox site called TheWellnessAddict.com) which will include a variety of books. So we submitted this first co-authored book to a publisher where my partner has been published before, and as we did so, Read the rest of this entry »

Star Trek Design Part I: The Good The Bad & The iPad

[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 30, 2011 by admin in Popular Media

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

A look at the “Hilton in space” aesthetic, how Star Trek DIDN’T predict the iPad, and a preview of how Star Trek perpetuates race and gender exploitation with hot green chicks and bullet bras.


Spock laments the state of Desktop
computing in the 23rd century.

I’ve confessed this before, but here it goes again. I’m secretly a bit of a Star Trek fan. However, there’s a good reason for this that I don’t always share, which is the little-known fact that at one time I was actually captain of a starship. Only, of course, if I was the first one to the jungle jim, or otherwise engineered the demotion of one of my fellow officers during recess in second grade, but a starship captain all the same. These days, as an aspiring adult, I occasionally still get a kick out of watching episodes from various Star Trek franchises, but mostly as a sort of historical review of production and story trends over the years. For me, the original series is the most resilient, primarily because – in part due to budget constraints but in part due to Gene Roddenberry’s unique vision – it was more like theatre than television. The fact that a man with funny eyebrows, sinister facial hair, and a dark complexion was an evil alien, or that a bank of blinking lights with no discernible function was a supercomputer, were perfect production elements, and perfect environments for the overwrought, scenery-chomping acting that delivered the usually high-concept stories that Roddenberry and his writers created. This simplicity of props and sets served the series well, especially when it came to devices. The fewer the details demonstrated the better, because then one would just accept that the device did what it did, without breaking the suspension of disbelief with critical analysis. A perfect example of this is the PADD devices, the various handheld gizmos used by characters over the years. In the original series, it was just a mysterious tablet-like device with a few blinking lights. No attempt was made to show what it really did, or what its display looked like. This was smart, because it’s a safe bet that they would have made it look like an Etch A Sketch. Which is where I think a lot of the later franchises began to fail in little ways. Characters with big rubbery heads just make you wonder what their big rubbery heads are made of, and props, sets, ansd costumes with decade-specific designs just make the show look like it’s from a specific decade. Which is something I’m going to explore over the course of a few articles, because one side effect of re-watching these old shows on today’s digital devices for me is that I obsessively create screen grabs of things that jump out at me, to document the thoughts I’m having. I’m going to start with my low-level irritation with the tendency for tech writers and sci-fi fans to suggest that the Star Trek franchise somehow “predicted” the iPad (that’s otherwise a really interesting article by the way). While I have tremendous admiration for the concept and design work of Michael Okuda, who, among other things, developed the look of the user interfaces (which fans call Okudagrams)seen in the later series, I recently learned that the main original designer – Matt Jefferies – shared my mild contempt for the PADD devices and later “updated” set designs. I’ve always had a hard time accepting that 300 years from now, we’ll still be carrying around little PDA’s when technology is otherwise so sufficiently developed as to enable us to bend space and disassemble and reassemble objects on an atomic level. It’s said that Jefferies didn’t approve of the inclusion of the original series’ “captain’s tablet”, fell asleep while watching the first movie, and referred to the later bridge design as a Hilton in space. Below are some screen grabs that demonstrate how – at least in my opinion – all the PADDs and other handheld devices predicted nothing, and in fact very much reflected the design aesthetic of the decade of the show in which they were utilized. I’ve also included a few screen grabs to preview some upcoming pieces that will touch on fashion, sexism, and general design. Read the rest of this entry »

Gorillaz New Release “The Fall”

[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 25, 2010 by admin in Music

Saturday, December 25th, 2010

Composed on the road with the iPad as a key instrument, the Gorillaz new release “The Fall” is their Christmas gift to you.

A few months ago we pondered the iPad as a musical instrument, but while we were sitting around on our butts pondering, apparently Gorillaz was busy making an album – while on tour no less – using the iPad as a key instrument. And for an added layer of coolness, they’re giving it to us all as a Christmas gift. Just go to thefall.gorillaz.com, provide an e-mail, and voila! You’re listening to the latest Gorillaz release. Recorded as a “musical tour diary” during last fall’s 32-day North American tour, the album doesn’t feel or sound quite like a full-blown Gorillaz release, but it really isn’t meant to. On their site Damon Albarn says “…I literally wrote everything on the day in each place and there’s a strange sort of sound of America and its musical traditions that comes through. It feels like a journey through America“. And it does indeed capture some ups and downs of the feelings of being on the road. I have to admit I’m a little partial to “Amarillo”, “Bobby in Phoenix”, and “Hillbilly Man”, which all suggest some sort of 21st century vibe loosely reminiscent of “Madman Across the Water” and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bookends”. Which is really a horribly inaccurate description in the end; this is Gorillaz, and it’s a quirky release. But good quirky. The song “Detroit” is for instance probably one of the happiest tunes you’ll ever hear called “Detroit”, which is a little atmosphere inversion the album repeats with the moody “Shy-Town”. But I’m not going to bore you with a tune-by-tune opinion of the whole release, it’s available right now and for free, for cryin’ out loud. So go unwrap your little Christmas present and decide for yourself. A little side note: The page that streams the tunes wouldn’t work in Firefox on my system, and crashed Chrome on the first try, but worked just fine on the second try. Don’t give up right away if you have any glitches; it may in fact just be a load problem on their server. Read the rest of this entry »

Losing Touch With User Expectations

[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 11, 2010 by admin in Technology

Monday, October 11th, 2010

Do you ever find yourself touching touchscreens that aren’t touch sensitive?

The other day, a friend handed me their Blackberry and asked me to call up Google Maps. After fussing with the device for a moment, I mentally cursed its lousy touch-sensitive interface, until I realized it wasn’t touch sensitive. I would’ve felt pretty stupid, but I see this kind of thing all the time, whether it’s someone trying to touch an LCD monitor to do something, or spastically backspacing on Google trying to get the right Instant Google/Google Autocomplete result instead of just typing what they’re looking for. I’ve already shared my thoughts on Google Instant, and the more I’m exposed to it, the more strongly I feel that Google shouldn’t impose this kind of “improvement” on me until they develop it to the point that they actually know what I’m thinking, which would eliminate the need for me altogether. In any case, I fear that because of smart phones, self-serve kiosks, and the iPad, we may briefly have to suffer these occasional human malfunctions. Personally, I’m prepared to wait; I’ve been quietly rolling my fingertips on my lifeless and uncaring work surfaces for years as I wait for the kind of tactile holographics that were featured in Iron Man 2 (video also below). This kind of interface may not be far away, but the best I’ve seen so far is a bit primitive; check out this clip from last year about touchable holographics being developed at Tokyo University. So what do we have available? Well, back in the world of two dimensions, there are really amazing tools for designers like Wacom’s Cintiq, and for education, there are tools like Hitachi’s StarBoard, and for business, the somewhat more limited Smart Podium, but these are all still pretty pricey. I think that as consumers, we may have to wait a bit for all of our devices to be more pervasively touch sensitive. One of the last products to be touted as consumer-oriented was Microsoft Surface, but the platform was made public way back in 2006, and I still don’t have any friends with touch-sensitive coffee tables. Perhaps because – as this hilarious video about Surface points out – why use a compact device like an iPhone to get maps and directions, when you can use a device the size of a small car? More video below. Read the rest of this entry »

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