The shift I’m talking about is toward an app-driven environment of touchable, draggable, and legible design interfaces, and the death of the web as we’ve known it. By the way, I also give the mouse five years to live, and predict that over the next year or two we will see a radical shift in visual design that will affect the look of everything you interact with, and even change what you DO. The web is already dead meat in a way, at least in terms of the now quaint idea of a “website” and the toxic world of SEO and trying to rank a site and cash in on the G-Hole. Even “social networking” is becoming an utterly arcane concept, as Facebook finally becomes a truly tiresome destination site for even the most-addicted, and all the idiots who spam their friends as if it’s a useful marketing method turn it into a ghost town of “Likes” and an endless stream of banal reposts. It’s starting to feel like tumblr, but a tumblr that denies you the ability to mark off your territory by customizing the interface, and with even MORE tools for mindlessly saying you “like” something.

Some personal disclosure might be useful here to help understand my seemingly skewed view on all of this. The first (and probably last) time I got really excited about a computer was when I was kid watching Star Trek. I’ve been waiting for a computer that you can talk to ever since, and long ago gave up hope. To me, Siri is just a gussied up version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and offers about as much “intelligence” as any existing chatbot on the web, including the one we have running right here on Dissociated Press. And the web in particular became annoying to me about six years ago, when Google finally achieved near-total dominance, and my grandmother started asking me to “SEO her site”. To me, much of the web is a tiresome and steaming heap of crap that’s either user-generated – like your mom’s neglected blog or flamewar-driven comment threads on Facebook or Huffington Post – or programatically generated, like content farms, scraper sites, and reposted content.

A big part of the reason I’m excited about Windows 8 and Microsoft’s new Surface tablet is that the abandonment of skeuomorphic design  in favor of something more like Microsoft’s Metro design language is probably the smartest change in personal computer interface design in ages, and is in fact probably critical to moving toward a truly useful tactile interface like that of a tablet. We are long overdue for a genuine rethink of the decades-old motif of folders, cute icons, desktops, mice, and mechanical-button keyboards. Frankly, I found most of these things annoying from the beginning.

I remember very well my reaction the first time I sat down at a personal computer with any intentions of actually trying to USE it; it was the late 90′s, and it was Windows 98. Yeah, I’m a late adopter sometimes. But what I remember was thinking “Wow. This whole thing with all these little imaginary folders and all this unused screen area is REALLY STUPID!” I also thought that all the attempts to make things look 3D and contoured was pretty wonky. I mean, to this day, I still encounter people who never figured out that the little “paintbrush” icon on the Windows Taskbar is actually a desk pad with a pencil on it, and that it takes you straight to the desktop. Which, by the way, is ANOTHER bizarre analogy; who the hell spreads folders out flat all over their desktop while they work? I learned to ignore all this crap like everyone else, but whenever I’ve paused to think about it, I’ve maintained that book spines on a shelf would have been a much better motif, both in terms of space used and easy visual recognition.

So to get back to the point about why I’m excited. It’s no secret that smartphones and niche tablet products like the iPad and the Kindle have been driving acceptance of the “app” as opposed to websites or familiar dedicated software applications. And the whole idea of touchscreens and dragging things with our fingers is no stunning innovation at this point either. In fact, forward-looking people like Seth Godin seem to have already abandoned catering to the desktop computer monitor in favor of smaller screens and a grid-like legible layout. Just look at how his website currently renders on a standard Windows widescreen desktop. He’s no dummy, and think this is no mistake. Also note the simple app-like navigation:

For several years, web developers have had to deal (if they were being smart and thorough) with the annoying task of designing two websites every time they work on a project, one for regular computers, and one for mobile. When it’s done right, the user doesn’t even realize that a different site is being served to them depending on which device they’re on. But all this interface stuff is likely to go through a radical transformation if an operating system as pervasive as Windows heads in this new direction, especially if they back up the change with a commitment to hardware that supports it, which they have.

And I have to admit that this commitment to the hardware is winning me over in spite of my lack of love otherwise for Microsoft. The “Surface” fixes two things that made me not buy an iPad when they came out. I said at the time that if Apple had simply added a thin “lid” that had a touch-sensitive keyboard that flipped out of the way and otherwise protected the screen, I would have been sold. That, and if they had allowed a little more flexibility in terms of what software might run on it. I waited for something more like this, and was about to be rewarded. I was literally on the verge of clicking the “Buy” button for an ASUS Transformer Prime and docking station the other day, but I think I’m going to sit tight. It may not be the Surface itself that I buy, but you can bet that the entire industry just got a jumpstart that will motivate a half-dozen hardware companies to create a competing device, if they haven’t already. And more importantly, if the massive 90% of the personal computing market that Microsoft still holds is suddenly made to switch to this new kind of interface, you can also bet that the death of cute graphical design elements is not far behind, which flies 100% in the face of the entire current Apple design aesthetic. And this all has the potential to lead us into an exciting new world. That of AOL in 1996:

Just kidding. I’m actually quite intrigued with the possibilities. I also can’t wait to add another image to the Steve Ballmer Weird Gesture at the Product Launch Gallery:

By the way, have you ever wondered why he makes all those weird paw-like gestures? Well, according to the website Kittydar, he’s a cat:

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, we seriously researched all the new self-publishing options available. It’s a mind-numbing world of options out there, but we did our research. Which was a good thing; we pretty quickly got a very positive rejection notice. The book really just didn’t suit the publisher’s catalog, which we sort of knew already. So we’ve narrowed it down to a few choices. The obvious go-to distributors are CreateSpace and Lulu, but you find pretty quickly that once you realize you not only don’t have to spend months waiting around for rejection letters, but don’t have to live on the paltry royalties of the world’s publishing giants either, you get GREEDY. Both CreateSpace and Lulu take a hefty percentage, and it’s a balancing act between their distribution reach vs what you give up in profits. Plus, a lot of retail stores simply don’t stock self-published books. So we pretty quickly realized that since we’re authors without a publisher, hell, why not become publishers, too? Which opens up options like Lightning Source. We haven’t made our final decision, but the question I asked at the top – Why Am I Writing eBooks? – has a pretty obvious answer once you start looking at ideas for marketing schemes. Although I was a big fan of the Free concept a couple of years ago, I think that model has seen its day. But CHEAP will always be popular, and attention spans are getting shorter daily. I mean, I’m amazed you’re still reading this. This all means – since we’re not creating massive runs of books by two unheard of authors – that we can repackage these books in as many ways as we like. And sell them as cheaply as 99 cents if we like. And if that sounds like a vanity-paved road to poverty, just check out these numbers shamelessly shared by author Joe Konrath of Chicago. The basic idea? He’s not the only author that has realized that the common breakdown is that if you sell less than 1,000 books at ten bucks, you’ll probably sell over 5,000 at two or three bucks. Plus, you’re getting more titles in more places and on more devices. Like that Kindle I don’t own. And this is becoming a huge market. Although Amazon won’t confirm that they’ve sold over 3 million Kindles, it was leaked that pre-orders for the Kindle Fire were coming in at a rate of exceeding 2,000 per hour. And Apple is quite happy to let us know that they’ve sold over 7 million iPads. That’s over 10 million customers needing content for their fun new device, and we think we have the perfect stuff. I mean, I can barely carry an idea for more than three sentences, let alone a 200 PAGE BOOK.  I’ll be following up with another piece soon, as we take the dive. If nothing else, maybe we’ll end up creating an insightful eBook about how to market eBooks. Stay tuned.

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.

One problem I have whenever I see an episode of Next Generation is that many of the handheld devices remind me of 80′s ATT cordless phones:

And I have to agree with original Star Trek designer Matt Jeffries’ observation that the later sets looked like a “Hilton in space“. I mean c’mon. James Kirk wouldn’t be caught DEAD in a PINK CAPTAIN’S CHAIR.

And the bleach-blonde perms, 80′s bodybuilder hairdos, and arcade game computer displays didn’t help things much:

Although I have to give the captain’s tablet a pass; it looks like a netbook for your DeLorean:

In general though, in spite of attractive design work, I feel the devices were more of a distraction than anything. First of all, what’s up with those 23rd century desktop computers that look like 1990′s laptops? And why so many additional devices? The last series, Enterprise, had a pretty decent iPad thing going on, but tablets were already reaching the real world market by this time. I think the oldest and newest PADD’s work best, simply by being ignorable props with no detail to ponder.

While in general, Spock lamented the state of technology centuries from now, he seemed perfectly happy with his portable TV/cassette combo from Sony.

To tell you the truth, I’d pay extra on my Verizon bill if they could provide me with a phone that looks like this:

And although many of the original sets could have almost been built with Lite Brites, they manage to look pretty cool almost fifty years later.

In our next piece: gender and race exploitation fueled by green chicks and bullet bras:

Phoner To Arizona

This is the only official video so far, which I think was a weird pick. It’s the first tune in the tracklist, but on the first listen I almost didn’t listen to the rest. Fortunately it’s not very indicative of the rest of the release.

Amarillo

This is someone’s fan video for one of the tunes that struck my fancy right off.

Microsoft Surface

One of the cool things about Tokyo University’s holographic interface idea is that it is genuinely tactile:

A quick montage of hologram VFX from Iron Man 2

It’s pretty remarkable to see tools like the Wacom in skilled hands:

If you can figure out what a Töken multitouch screen is, you can run Emulator and do this:

Here’s a quick tutorial for Seline HD, mentioned above

This “iPad Orchestra” video is kind of cool, but only hints at the real potential of Seline HD

This “iPad Band” video is a cleanly edited – if not immaculately performed – runthrough of various tools.

Why does Green Day hate the iPad? Maybe they’re just getting old and stodgy. Or maybe they really ARE punk at heart.

This demo of iHolophone is cool, if only because it’s running on a phone.

Is it dead yet? Is the Internet dead? Is Facebook dead? If you spend enough time on the web, this kind of question becomes incredibly tedious. See The Tragic Death of Practically Everything if you don’t know what I mean; it’s a tidy roundup of press about the death of everything from iPods to e-mail, including the death of both print and eBooks. Now that would be a tragedy. If that happened, what would we read, especially now that the iPad is killing the magazine (and 18 other things) as well? As a result of all this kind of linkbait content flooding the web, I actually find it refreshing when one of these deaths is more or less confirmed. Especially when it impacts me directly. It wasn’t too long ago that you could debate whether newspapers are dead, but I think the eulogy is being delivered as you read this. And now, at last, I think the real death of the printed book is imminent. Although as recently as September 2009 I was pondering the pros and cons of eBooks vs their dead tree counterparts, a few pieces of information finally tipped the scales for me recently, which was a relief, because I’m nearly finished with a book myself, and was struggling a bit with how to market it. The fact that there’s an iPad vs Kindle debate going on at all is a powerful statement that those who understand books and making money are committed to the future of the eBook. But what is probably informing my decision even more is the wealth of information about how much money you DON’T make in traditional publishing. My first glimpse into this was this article from last year in which the author of a top 20 NYT bestseller shares that she netted about 27 grand for her troubles. And most recently, influencer and media guru Seth Godin said that in spite of his significant success with traditional publishing, he’s giving it up for his future releases. Which has helped me solidify my plan to forgo the traditional publishing route (unless you can introduce me to Ellen or Oprah) and utilize a mix of guerrilla marketing and the web, with print on demand solutions to satisfy the paper-addicted. I often joke that with certain technologies like landline phones you need only wait for the over-fifty crowd to die and the technology will die with them, but books are much more emotional. What do you think? Will the book be joining its distant cousin the newspaper within say, a decade? And if your answer is a resolute “no”, are you over forty?

I’d say this technology has seen its day:

Amazon wants to rekindle their relationship with you. They’re really, really sorry they were charging you so much for just reading a book with them, so they want to offer you another chance at making things work. And this time they’re only charging you $139. That’s right, Amazon’s Kindle, which just last year was priced at $299, is now only $139. In spite of the press about how the Kindle’s sales accelerated last quarter, the fact is that the iPad made quick business of mopping the floor with the Kindle, and the only hope Amazon has is to do exactly what they’re doing, which is price-slashing. If you read that Business Week article, you might take note of the fact that while Amazon expects to sell over 3 million Kindles this year, Apple sold over 3 million iPads in just EIGHTY DAYS. We poked a lot of fun at the iPad this year, and even rounded up aspiring “iPad Killers”, but the fact is, if any of those devices really intend to do any killing, they’ll mostly be killing themselves by marketing themselves that way. In his seemingly unending genius, Steve Jobs made us think Apple was launching a new device, when what they really were doing was launching a platform and shifting a paradigm. Although I’m still anxiously awaiting a more full-featured iPad-like device from whoever builds a good one first, I’d buy an iPad hands-down over a Kindle for media consumption. But I don’t want to use an iPad or a Kindle, I want to be on them. As a media creator, this is possibly the most exciting new publishing channel since the web itself gained a wide reach, and I’m more excited than you could imagine about the possibilities; it’s the first time in a while that a platform with such broad potential reach is accessible to “the little guy”. As this Ad Age article about Virgin’s new iPad-only magazine “Maverick” points out, major publishers have their hands tied because they can’t charge less for an app than they do for the print version of their established magazines, so they have less incentive to get involved, because they’d potentially be damaging their own struggling profit model. Expect to see an explosion of new development much like iPhone apps, but with much richer content and easier distribution of content if you’re a media creator. And look for us there soon.

Just stick one of your iPads in the blender for daiquiris…

…and use the other as a tray to serve them:

And although you can’t use an iPad for feminine hygiene…

…it will change the world of fashion: