later nerdz; it’s about techgnarlogy

It must be easy to rebrand snack food.

Found this on Alaska Airlines. You probably can’t make it out but the people tucking in this illustration have small Nike swooshes on their shoes.

Is the road to true digital immersion paved with incremental simulation?

this is interesting:

http://home.novint.com/products/novint_falcon.php

http://gear.ign.com/articles/833/833067p1.html

but still, nothing’s quite so direct:

NWS: http://www.ascensionsuspension.com/extreme/images/rotisserrie%20(1)_jpg.jpg

It is very frustrating for me to hear people say “Design for the user.”

In my mind I always am saying “No shit.”

But that doesn’t mean do what the user wants. I still believe in designing for yourself.

Designing for yourself has a bad rap. It does produce a lot of terrible art that passes as design, and it leaves a lot of users thinking “what the hell is this and how do I use it?” It is also seen by many designers as arrogant design. I believe there is a successful way to design for yourself though and that is through empathy. If you successfully take on the role of the user, then you are still designing for yourself. The difference is that you’re using your experiences as a filter (such as your design knowledge and your experience using many more objects than the user).

If we completely design for users, rely on user research as absolute truth, then we forget to make design decisions. We forget who is in control. User research is not to create personas or scenarios at face value, it is to create designer empathy which should inform all design work for ourselves as designers and for our clients.

The price is lowered but the increase in monthly fees equals more!

Sticking with Helio and waiting for a GPhone!

Also: Mobile.me is nothing new. BORING.

Alec Issigonis once said “a camel is a horse designed by committee” in an interview with Vogue Magazine. He coined the phrase “design by committee”.

This list of iPhone disappointments continues to be posted to forums. One such forum post grabbed front page on digg. Here are some key points. Click “read more” for a link to the full list.

1. Bluetooth is ONLY good for connecting a headset. That’s it.

2. There is no file browser on the device at all. Data must be organized (if at all) in the appropriate application.

3. The camera is a simple application that has ONE button: the shutter. Pictures come out okay on the device, but nothing too fancy on a monitor, especially if it was an attempt at a macro shot.

5. Web browser is slow, even over WLAN. Even the simple OneList web app that was created takes around 20 seconds to load over WLAN. You can not highlight, cut, copy, or paste and text from a website, and you can not save any images you find from a website either. The only nice thing about it is the tabbed browsing, which crashed on me when I went to Engadget and YouTube on two tabs. This is the only application that allows you to use the keyboard in landscape mode.

6. The keyboard sucks. It gets slightly better after the iPhone “learns” you, as the employees said, but even then, it’s not a device you can use with one hand comfortably, much less without looking.

10. The only form of customization outside of a lame default ringtone is the wallpaper, which you’ll only see when you need to unlock the device or when you get a phone call.

11. “Picture pinching” or using two fingers to zoom on any content is certainly fun to play with, but not practical whatsoever. This operation depends solely on using the device with two hands.

12. No document editor or native viewer. You can not store documents on the device to be viewed, they can only be viewed as attachments when they’re sent to your in an email.

13. Visual voicemail is laggy and reacts about the same way as pushing the fast forward and rewind buttons on traditional voicemail systems. The only advantage is for those that get that many voicemail messages a day that they need to sort them according to priority.

14. No games.
15. No voice dialing.
16. No speed dialing (which can be made up by the “quick list”, but getting to that quick list isn’t as fast as holding a single key on a real keypad).
17. No video.
18. No MMS.


read more | digg story

The Apple iPhone went on sale today in America and equal amounts of apple fanboys and for-profit ebay users are clamoring to nab one up. However, for the rest of us in the market for a “media phone” what options do we have? The US market for more advanced phones is extremely polarized; Phones are either billed as business or “just a regular phone”. Data plans for most providers are marketed mostly to professionals. You can now get a blackjack (icky business phone) for around $100 after contract. Not much in the middle exists focusing on a more human use of the phone.

Recently, however, Apple announced it’s iPhone which has been designed for more human, social uses. It’s key features include it’s media (iPod) uses and it’s internet connectivity. It does not include any instant messaging service. Very little of it’s marketing mentions business applications outright. The Helio Ocean, similarly, has it’s main featured aligned around media but with a slant towards social uses such as messaging, email, and surfing. The Helio Ocean also includes the ability to use AIM.

So how do these two phones stack up next to each other?

Price
The Apple iPhone’s cost is considerably larger than the Helio Ocean. So if you are not looking to drop over 500 dollars on a phone, the Helio Ocean may be for you. Network plan-wise, you get less with the Apple iPhone too. The cheapest iPhone plan is $59.99/Month and has 450 Weekday minutes compared to the $64.99/Month Helio Ocean’s least expensive plan which includes 500 Weekday minutes. The major difference is the Apple iPhones limited on SMS text messages. You only get 200 where the Helio Ocean plans all allow unlimited SMS.

Without the ability to chat on AIM, Apple iPhone users are going to use SMS. this may point towards the Apple iPhone being less of a social communications device and being more a mobile browser, since it has Wi-Fi which the Ocean lacks.

The Apple iPhone comes out costing more than the Helio Ocean, but there are a few other features you get with the iPhone that the Helio Ocean does not include. Plus there is a chance the iPhone price will drop dramatically in 6-12 months or as a new version is released.
Winner: Helio Ocean

Media
The iPhone is much more of a media playing device. The Helio Ocean ships with something like 512Mb of onboard memory. The Mini-SD card slot is upgradeable to around 2GiB. This just doesn’t compete with the iPhone. Plus the iPhone has a larger screen than the Helio Ocean. 2.4″ for the Ocean vs. 3.5″ for the iPhone. You just are going to have a much better experience with media on the iPhone.
Winner: iPhone

Surfing
As far as surfing is concerned, the Apple iPhone comes out on top. Helio Ocean also has GPS built in, which combines with Google Maps to make searching a snap. However, the browser is not as robust as Apple iPhones. So if you’re looking for a full-fledged browser in your phone for undirected browsing (surfing), the iPhone might be for you. I just don’t know when you’d be in a situation without a computer but with your phone where you would want to leisurely browse the internet. The Helio Ocean has more mobile-specific task-oriented surfing available.
Winner: iPhone by a hair

Network
Helio runs on Sprint’s EV-DO network. The iPhone does not use 3G, it uses EDGE. Apple says this speed issue is made up by the Wi-Fi which the Helio Ocean lacks, but wi-fi is just not pervasive enough to rely on. There are also reports of the EDGE network getting a major upgrade.
Winner: Helio Ocean for now

Size
The iPhone is 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches and 4.8 oz. while the Helio Ocean is 4.33 x 2.20 x .86 inches and 5.61 oz. The Helio Ocean is a little larger and heavier. However, some people would rather have something with more girth and weight than the iPhone. So if you’re looking for something that doesn’t feel like it’s going to break, you may want to checkout a Helio Ocean. However, for most of us, the smaller and lighter the better.
Winner: iPhone

GPS
This one is easy. The iPhone lacks GPS. Helio Ocean has built in GPS which is used by google maps which comes free with the service. Google maps on your phone, combined with GPS, makes it incredibly easy to quickly search for locations and businesses around you and know how to get there.
Winner: Helio Ocean

Bottom Line
The Helio Ocean is a viable alternative to the iPhone if you can cut out the media part of the iPhone and replace it with social functionality. The network also is a large difference but that could change soon as well (I hear it is happening now). The price difference is substantial right now and I don’t see it going away. The base price of an iPhone is going to stay high for a while and AT&T will probably never offer a plan like Helio’s.

Adobe will make Photoshop CS3 available for download on Friday. The release is said to be a “screamer” on the new Intel-based Macs. According to sources you’ll need a valid CS2 serial number to download.

read more | digg story

Google Finance has been on the receiving end of a usability stick today.

This is a funny flash animation showing the flags of the world with design client comments and how they would be modified after going through the design market.

You might only understand this if you work in the design industry.

Click here for Flags of the World

https://www.cmpevents.com/GD07/a.asp?option=C&V=11

Some topics of interest:

Making An Indie MMO (Daniel James, Three Rings)
Monday - 2.00pm - 2.30pm
The business and creative mind behind games such as Puzzle Pirates and Bang! Howdy discusses the practical logistics of handling heavily invested online game players as an independent developer, discussing elements such as when and how to update content, community management and keeping players interested, how to approach Beta tests, technical support, and much more - a key hands-on lecture for all those considering making an indie online game.

The Casual Cash Cow (Eric Zimmerman, Gamelab)
Tuesday - 2.00pm - 2.45pm
The Gamelab co-founder (Diner Dash) talks about how the indie aesthetic/mentality interacts with the casual market (and vice versa), in the best talk on casual games outside of the Casual Games Summit, answering key questions such as - it possible for an “indie” game to hit mass appeal on a casual portal? What can indies learn from casual development, and what opportunities are there for indies in the casual market?

Anyone who works in the design industry understands the title of this post. Photoshop SUCKS on an intel-based mac. It’s slow, there are lots of bugs, and it just makes you feel crippled. Well fret no more. According to this recent drop of information from an unnamed source, CS3 is due soon and with all the bells you expect. Here’s a short list. You can read the full article here.

• Coded for Universal
• New interface, like After Effects 7
• Filter Performance Upgrade
• Adjust Filters after applying them, like adustment layers
• Import and edit 3D Objects and Video (??)

Of course this is all from “sources”. The most important thing is that Photoshop CS3 is on schedule for a Q2 2007 release. Could this be the first copy of Photoshop that users actually deserve to have for free after using CS2 for so long? I think so.

In the article, the writer gets a first hand view of the OLPC OS by booting into it using VMWare. He finds an instant messenger, web browser, RSS feed reader, drawing/modeling application, and a text editor. It looks like there’s also a bittorrent client in there! Are we training tomorrows pirates? Where do I send money? Read the complete article here.

The OLPC, or One Laptop Per Child project is a collaboration of academics and professionals to create a laptop accessible to the most remote, poor places in the world. More about the OLPC:

Introducing the children’s laptop from One Laptop per Child—a potent learning tool created expressly for the world’s poorest children living in its most remote environments. The laptop was designed collaboratively by experts from both academia and industry, bringing to bear both extraordinary talent and many decades of collective field experience in every aspect of this non-profit humanitarian project. The result is a unique harmony of form and function; a flexible, ultra low-cost, power-efficient, responsive, and durable machine with which nations of the emerging world can leapfrog decades of development—immediately transforming the content and quality of their children’s learning.

read more | digg story

Razer, creator of the old boomerang gaming mouse from way back, has created a keyboard called the Tarantula. Apparently it has won a couple nice awards including a red dot for design. Now Razer is holding a contest for anyone to submit a video explaining how they would destroy their old keyboard for the chance to win one of five Razer Tarantulas. Click here to enter.
Click more for the full list of rules (more…)