Now that tablet PCs are not just “coulds” but are “soons,” designers must start to really reinvent the way the rest of us will digest content. Non laptop touch interactive computers are coming soon, probably the first jaw dropper in late January. So what will this new world be like?
Berg, a design company in London, tasked themselves with creating a video that describes this new reading environment. How you will read content, scroll through content, orientation, spacing, interaction, etc. must all be well thought out to keep the reader immersed in the content while allowing the great new tools a tablet can offer to become exposed and, well, at your fingertips — ready to go.
Below is a video of Sports Illustreted demo’ing their newest SI release on the Apple MacBook Touch
And then another tablet video for the Courier from MicroSoft
Lately I have noticed that I get prompted to “undo typing” or cancel my text. I would hurriedly press cancel and after getting the message a few times I started to think something was becoming buggy with my phone or my fat fingers were accidentally pressing some wrong button. The I realized — wait there is no “undo” button/feature on the phone where the hell is it coming from? After some quick research, I found out there is an unpublished “undo” feature on the iPhone after SDK 3.0.
Ready for it…..and….
Activate Undo Text Feature:
After typing on the iPhone, shake the phone to undo what you have typed.
I have always loved Nietzsche’s writings, but not until I started this Blog did I truly recognize the complexity of his work; to convey philosophy through aphorisms. It is, for some reason, so easy to talk about an idea out loud with passion and to do it while another person is right there sitting with you provoking you to push the story forward. Maybe it is easier because you are able to wiggle through the holes in the statements you make or because you are less critical of yourself when you know your mistakes will be lost in time and not in black and white to later be scrutinized by a passerby — the cost is that any of your good substance will be lost in the shuffle.
I am struggling with becoming any level of what can be called a writer and my greatest hurdle is talking through a written medium. Not burdening myself with the need to explain every point that comes up that has some relevant story behind it or to be too verbose, to somehow incorporate my passions and stream of conscious into written form, to have an open dialog within the writing (maybe add a character to debate with) and to not be so critical of posting anything no matter how dumb it may feel.
This I suppose is the next chapter to my first Blog post “My First Blog & the Dreaded Blank Page” and hopefully this broadcast admittance to my fears, hurdles, and lack of skill will once again be an evolution in writing for me.
LG has come out with a new and improved calculator watch, the LG GD910. It’s kind of an iPhone for the wrist. Check out this phone and other cool phones on youtube below.
Scientest have combined the building blocks of life and have been able to over come some major hurdles in the effort to create life from scratch. By creating a container for the life to reside in, a way to reproduce, and a way to convert raw materials to energy man can indeed create life if only for a few hours at a time. Scientist have made a confident claim this week that they expect someone to create artificial life from scratch, albeit microscopic at best, within 3-10 years.
Very cool, I love simple changes in technology that make way for completly new ways of doing common tasks. Like this subtle change in keyboard interaction. This keyboard uses pressure to interpret keystorokes. This allows users to add more demension to your typing or game playing. For instance, if you are shouting in your text simply press each key harder…..Anywho, it’s pretty neat check out the video.
More on the program:
UIST (ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology) is the premier forum for innovations in the software and technology of human-computer interfaces. Sponsored by ACM’s special interest groups on computer-human interaction (SIGCHI) and computer graphics (SIGGRAPH), UIST brings together researchers and practitioners from diverse areas that include traditional graphical & web user interfaces, tangible & ubiquitous computing, virtual & augmented reality, multimedia, new input & output devices, and CSCW. The intimate size, the single track, and comfortable surroundings make this symposium an ideal opportunity to exchange research results and implementation experiences.
Being part of the industrial revolution must have been amazing. I use to wish I was around during a revolution of that size as I would have wanted to take risks and catch the business wave as early as I could. Like being around when Bill Gates started MicroSoft. How could people have thought it was a fad, or rejected such an practical, obvious, beneficial product? Computers and software changed the way life happens and a majority of the population were/are late adopters. These last few years have been the beginning of yet another great revolution in my eyes and I wasn’t going to pas it up. I cant believe how many thought/think the technologies of today are a fad, many of those nah sayers who argued in my and coworkers face and mocked the industries goals are forgotten (lucky for them) and from only 1 year ago! More and more are getting on the ride. Im glad I started giving it my all early on, no regrets.
We still have a long way to go. Those who said Facebook was a fad are now on FaceBook with the rest of their family and friends and use it fairly often. What’s more disturbing is how often I over hear people on FaceBook or in passing that scream how much Twitter is a useless fad……I guess we just need to give them a few years in which I suspect that they will be bashing yet another new technology, but will do it using Twitter.
Even the most basic and useful forums of social media get bashed to this day, often purely for cultural reasons in which technology in many peoples eyes equal sub par information and practicality. I don’t know how many times I’ve over heard intelligent people bashing any information found on Wikipedia. Although not perfect it’s easy to for get that Webster and Britannica were all originally missions of one man traveling the globe. One man one perspective asking strangers and alike what they knew to be knowledge of the earth and its inhabitants. Accuracy is subjective and in this case a multitude of subjective persons might be more powerful and “true” then a single man is the final say.
Let’s try harder to find use in things that catch on or connect us all, that increase our perspective across greater bounds whether it be 100% accurate or not. If we are brought together and information is shared more readily then we are only following a path set thousands of years before us first with smoke signals, then to written stone, bibles, printed news, telegraphs and phones, radio and TV, internet and social media. Let us allow ourselves to find the good, as we have so reluctant at each point of our past, in connecting with one another and decipher the positive gains in mediums that do just that.
iPhone Safari is purpoted to be trying to release HTML5’s newest spec that allows video tags. This means that we will soon be able to watch video inline easily not only on the web in general but on our pretty little phones.
Some of you may be saying, “I already can playvideo on my phone”. Which although true isnt really the whole picture. Have you noticed that when there is video you must play in in a seperate quicktime panel that pops out. Witht the inclusion of this new spec you will be ale to just press play from within the web page.
For developers this also menas that including images in a pahge will be as easy as using a simple <video> tag as appose to needing to use a plugin like quicktime or flash. As Isaac put it, we are one step closer to getting rid of flash.
Thom Yorke, one of my favorite creators of melodically interesting sounds has put out a new song called Harry Patch and debuted it a few days ago.
As usual the Radiohead guys are bypassing labels and selling the song through their website and all proceeds go towards a good cause.
As for background on the song, Harry Patch was the last living UK World War 1 Veteran, he was 111 years old. Radiohead released this single in order to make sure he is not forgotten. The song is a tribute to Harry, as well as a fundraiser for the Royal British Legion.
The Sun reported that the family was enamoured over the song, “Our family is very touched thatRadiohead has reached out to its followers and especially the younger generation through the single that echoes” and that Harry “.
Patch was buried on August 6th 2009 in Wells, Somerset, with a public service taking place in Wells Cathedral.
