Living with a video nano

When video first made an appearance on the ipod I could see how some might want to watch videos on them, but not me.
So when Steve jobs launched the video nano a few weeks ago, saying "It's amazing, we have packed in as many pixels as on a larger ipod, but into a smaller screen". I thought: So what, It's is still a small screen. I'm sure many people will love it, but still mainly for listening to music. And this was pretty much the attitude I had when I opened the box on my black, 8GB iPod nano.

It is very small, and feels like a skimming stone. It has enough weight to not feel like a toy, and to remind you of the solid materials it is made from. It exhudes quality. There is something very satisfying about the meeting of two very different materials where the glass and aluminium run flush to each other. Jonathan Ive and his team have once again made a device which feels right and natural, as if it has arrived at that shape effortlessly.

Turning it on
Turning it on you get a hint of how great the screen is. Everything has a sharpness and smoothness which is difficult to describe (but more of that later). I am not wholly converted to the new interface. Text is sharp and clear, and in the familiar iPod style of sliding menus. The screen is vertically split in two, which gives the sense of a desktop with a floating window. However I have never been a great fan of images slowly floating by - and that is what you see next to the menu window: a random image from your music, videos or podcasts.

The interface works well, though I have not had a chance to use coverflow (where you scroll through your album covers to make your selection). When I've tried it in the Apple store it has seemed a little sluggish, but here has just been an update posted for the ipod nano, so I am sure that will iron it out.

Now showing on the little screen
I was dying to try some video so I bought an episode of Lost and a couple of tv shows for my 3 year old, Luca. The iTunes store does not sell full lenth features for the UK yet, but I'm sure there will be changes and more TV content available before Christmas.

The first video I watched turned out to be a pop video by one of my favourite artists Kanye West. I was amazed! Steves comments about the amount of pixels was dead right - there is so much detail packed into that small space that it is a pleasure to watch. Milions of people happily watch fairly low resolution video on YouTube every day, because it is the content they are interested in and that is compensation enough. With this ipod the small size, great content and great resolution combine so you can watch video on a small screen without sacrifice. In fact colleagues and friends I have shown it too have been so impressed (and most of these are technology skeptics) that they asked the price and stared mulling over a pre-christmas purchase right away!

This little 2.5 inch screen is full of subtlety, minute detail, and the delivery of motion is smooth and has no blurring. It is great for animation, as well as for live action. It turns out the epidsode of Lost I bought was a pivotal episode which i missed when it was on Channel 4, where two characters discover a video tape which shows them that they are in a old psychological experiment - so I watched it with a critical eye and genuine viewer interest.

And there is one more thing... I am writing this review in Northern Ireland where we are visiting family. We flew, and have done a fair bit of driving since getting here. Luca has sat in his child seat in the back totally absorbed in watching Dora the Explorer or American Dragon - occasionally calling me to help get the earbuds (not really made for little ears) back in. The size and weight and limited controls are perfect for him, he can see it clearly and loves it. it's more convenient than a back seat DVD which are farly commonly seen now, and the battery life is excellent, so it can be used in various ways for days without a charge being required.

A few weeks before the new nano hit the market, there were photos leaked on the web - and screams of pain from some about the proportions, how it was badly designed etc. There is an old saying: seeing is believing, and I think that from every detail of materials, design decisions about space shape and size, and finally the screen and software this device proves that truism.

Drop shadow boxing

What is a designer with Retro-Modernist sensibilities to do at a time when much interface design leans towards rich, drop shadowed, 3D styling? Khoi Vinh posts a very interesting meditation on the subject.

it also brings to mind the abuse of photoshop by illustrators who start using it to scan their images. I have in mind a favorite of mine, who does woodcuts - but has taken to adding drop shadow to parts of his illustrations post scanning. Leave it!

On the issue of icons, I think I have had my head somewhat turned by the OSX icons, which work very well in turns of rapid recognition. But use of colour on rollover, so well done by Khoi is one clean and simmple device. Right now I have sections to get to press, so i will muse on it, add some more and perhaps comment directly. Keep up the good thoughts Khoi!

This nano is a tardis

A picture is worth a thousand words, and the camera never lies, but sometimes what you see on paper or the screen does not prepare you the real thing.
The new iPod nano has this effect. It is more beautiful than it looks in photos, the proportions make more sense, but the major thing is the screen. Until you turn it on and play video it all looks a bit tiddly, but the richness of the picture, on the high resolution screen is very very watchable . . I could easily imagine using it to catchup with tv progrmas, ofr watch a film on a long plane journey.
Like the Tardis in Doctor Who it is bigger inside than it appears to be from the outside

Steve Jobs and the London iPhone party

The iPhone was finally released into the wilds of London today. I went into the Regent Street store with Bobbie (also from the Guardian) to listen to Steve Jobs speak to a fairly small audience. His media handlers seemed a little tense, but to be fair, there was quite a crush of journalists wanting access to Steve. He was very relaxed, and unfazed by the various curveball questions about other European launches for the iPhone, and the revenue division between O2 and Apple "We're not going to discuss that today, but good question".

After Steve had announced price and talked a little about the iPhone, he handed over to the CEO of O2, Matthew Key (far left in the photo), who gave his own - Apple polished - keynote segment. That was unusual, most guests on Steves stage just talk. The coverage for EDGE at launch, at 30% of the UK, isn't great, but he also announced free access to 7500 hotspots, which helps the wireless coverage at least.

I hope and believe that the big change which iPhone will bring is to help grow the public, free wireless network, thus creating a new universe of web based mobile applications.
Steve Jobs mentioned that Apple.com will have a page showcasing the best web applications for the iphone, and apparently that will be on the site soon.

After the presentation we all got a chance to play with the phones. I love it. If anything, you can find your way into the apps so easily that the learning curve is about finding your way back out!
One small thing I noticed, and took the opportunity to suggest as a change (to Steve) is that currently there is a useful ".com" button on the keyboard for Safari. Why not have a drop-down menu on the key which offers others (eg .co.uk, .fr, .es etc) - perhaps localised for the most used in that market - with .com as the default. He thought about it a moment, then told me it was an interesting idea and he'd think about it. Thanks, maybe we'll see that as a wee update sometime. . .

Now on to work on some apps for the thing . . turning (news)paper based navigation aids into clickable buttons.

What a pleasant morning it has been, though I'd have preferred to have walked away with a phone in my hand!

Which window? (a day in Galicia)

Amongst other things today, we went to a supermarket in Ribeira. I saw it’s name on a billboard as we came in, so we turned off - apparently towards the town centre. We hit a traffic jam which cleared up pretty fast, then headed through a largely residential part of town. Then we saw a small sign which pointed the direction to the supremarket, and headed off. Within minutes we had left the town, and were heading into an area which was low rise, clearly on the outskirts . We turned back, and eventually found our wrong turn, turned down the steepest carpark entrance, and did our shopping. Luca found some Simpsons biscuits which we were happy to buy for him. We got our shopping done, meeting some very friendly and helpful sales assistants during the process and headed for home.
As we were deciding which way to go Luca set up a refrain of “can I have my simpsons biscuits” from the back seat. I told him to wait about three times, and when this didn’t make any differentce, I exasperation filled my throat and I said “if you don’t stop saying that I’ll throw them out the window”. He thought about htis a moment, then his reply shot back: “which window daddy?” We could only laugh . . .

The long tail of debt

Here's a thing, there was a time when the most debt in society was carried by large institutions, which were relatively stable. Nowadays society runs on debt, and there are many more consumer oriented companies - selling all sorts of devices and depending on income from subscriptions, regular payments, etc - more phones, ipods and other mps3 players, computers, tv, internet and phone subscriptions are bought every day, and at the same time many people are over-extended with mortgages and credit to greater and greater degrees . .

Doesn't this reduction in share values, (caused by anxiety over the level of debt among consumers) risk pulling the rug out from under consumers by limiting their ability to spend, therefore causing a sort of messy and rapid downward spiral as that blows back into the market as further uncertainty and share selling . . isn't the whole capitalist system much more unstable the more it relies on millions and millions of consumers to make many smallish payments . .which are bolstered by large (for the individual) debts?

Hmmm…

Client apps and cloud services

Yes, thats it . .

"the marriage of really great client apps with really great services from the cloud is a really powerful marriage . . ."

Steve Jobs at D5, and yes, I think this is a powerful combination. Applications which are great, in that the user can geddit quick, they work well, look great - and delivering fantastic services becuase they are backed by a database (like google map) kicks ass!

that with a mobile computing device . .a phone or other thing . .

there is a lot in this simple idea which is well worth exploring . .and combine that at the other end with XML input form users, and there is a very interesting evolving thing to be explored

See Steve Jobs and Bill Gates interviewed

Notes on the Weekly re-design

With Guardian Weekly settling in to it's third issue, the best cover image so far . . I thought it time to write something about it. Guardian Weekly . . an internationally oriented weekly newspaper, carrying articles from the Guardian, plus Le Monde the Washington Post and the (London) Observer. It's not so welll read in the UK (though I think it has a wider market here than it reaches) but has a growing readership elsewhere in the world.

With this redesign, it has changed from the old Guardian typography (Helvetica, Miller) to the new Guardian typefaces(Guardian Egyptian and Guardian Sans) which were created for the Beriner redesign. There is also a format change from tabloid, and mostly mono, to half Berliner. The copies in Europe are printed on the Guardians new (ish) Berliner presses and are full colour. The US and Australian editions are printed on older presses and therefore the readers in countries served by those presses have little colour, which is less accurate than the European copies. I hope full colour Berliner presses begin to appear in these parts of the world soon!

The design brings more photography to the newspaper, but keeps display sizes down. It makes use of elements introduced in the Guardian which combine photos and text in fixed size elements. The image part of these can be photo, small info-graphic or large numbers, which are then expanded upon in the caption/quote adjacent. They serve to extend the stories, help animate the page while taking up minimal space.

We have used variations in the grid to change pace throughout the paper - from the immediacy of 4 column news to wider measures on comment and features for a more leisurely read.

We believe this is the first half-berliner format UK newspaper . . . and it has so far (third edition this week) got a favourable reception.

Having been involved twice before in changes to the Tabloid/helvetica Guardian Weekly, I know the paper well . . and I'm sure this new iteration will surprise many readers . . i hope they come to love it - I'm fairly sure they will.

An extensive redesign allows any editorial team to re-evaluate how they put a paper together, and this is a good time to be refreshing newspapers the world over. I wish GW all the best, and hope they grow and extend the Guardian's liberal voice to a wider audience worldwide . .

This week also sees a major change (designed by our Creative director Mark Porter) to the front page of the Guardian website. This brings it closer to the look and feel of it's print counterpart, and is part of ongoing development.

The new Guardian Weekly

It has been a day of firsts for me, both coming together in East London . . After a crazy few hours participation in the final pages of the first edition of the redesigned half-Berliner format Guardian Weekly, I jumped in a taxi with Will, Jenny and Natalie for a slow dash to Stratford and the Guardian Press Centre.

So my first is the redesign I've worked on for ages finally coming to publication, and my second first is seeing the fantastic Guardian Print Centre. I have not seen many presses, that's for sure, but I did visit the previous Guardian press, but this place is great. We watched the presses running from inside this large room flanked by windows, which look out onto Great slabs of metal with paper rushing past and through them.

The physicality of the press is something to be seen. Printers stand in front of very high tech computer consoles, against which they'll hold the actual copy that has just been pulled form the press. The newspaper is positioned against an array of buttons, and the printer studies it to see if the inking is correct. If not he or she will press a button below the under-inked bit on the page, and because the button corresponds to that physical position in relation to the paper rushing through the press, it will affect the colour on the next copy pulled from the press . . .

Hmm, geek, me?

Anyway, it was exciting on all counts. Guardian Weekly looks and reads great. I am very pleased with the GW team for handling the new design so well, and more than satisfiedwith how it has turned out.

Lets hope some berliner presses get up and running in the US and Australia in the not to distant future, and the quality of printing and all-over colur can be seen around the world!

If the robot shoots, who's to blame?

"Imagine the miners strike with robots armed with water cannons, these things are coming, definitely."

Interesting piece on the BBC website, looking at the ethical issues around the use of robots. Apparently Samsung is working on a robot which will have 2 cameras and a machine gun . . reminiscent of Aliens . . but to patrol (and kill) people. It also brings to mind Robocop.

There was a great graphic in the Guardian today—in the wake of the revelation that the US is building a wall in Bagdhad to keep Sunni from Shia—showing the extent of walls and fences around the globe built to keep groups of people away from each other. There are loads of them, all around the world - and I guess that those Samsung robots are for patrolling the 248km fence between North and South Korea.

Is this because to resolve these various conflicts would be too much of a volte-face for any of these political systems? Or that too little has been done to resolve these issues for years - that colonial and imperial chickens are coming home to roost.

hmmm.

It seems that the TV series by Adam Curtis, The Trap: What happened to our dreams of freedom have made their way onto google . . just as well, the link I left earlier to info about the programs seems to have died. Watch it here!

Is change possible

Just had lunch with my brother and mother, during which she said that she was becoming quite depressed at her own growing scepticism about the possibility of real change (in the world).

I find this too. I think that this is a result of 2 main currents: Firstly, events which happen are so difficult to comprehend although you know they're real (like the "war on terror") and secondly, because the domininant idea at present is that capitalism will solve all - that the individiual can do nothing except for themselves - and this combination is so prevalent, even in places (the labour party for example) which had more collective ideas previously, that many people are just giving up on bigger social ideas . .

Its all a little unnerving.

Are free newspapers destined for the dustbin of history?

London is getting sick of the enormous amount of litter generated by the 2 newest free newspapers available every day on our streets, according to MediaGuardian. I don't travel by tube train myself, but have heard from friends how they find themselves wading through a dirty carpet of newprint . . ironic though, that in this time of anxiety over the future of paid for newspapers, due to migration of advertising money - and changing reader habits, that free papers should come unstuck by their very physicality . . .

Closed systems and polls

With so many people able to access a page, and stumble upon it with little less than a search which tangentially connects to that page, the possibility or likelihood of receiving a huge amount of unfiltered nonsense, from many alienated people around the world is very high.

This is the “democracy of the web” at work, and it is not democratic and neither is it useful. It is not democratic as a democratic process involves some level of responsibility and accountablitiy. With the comparative anonymity and the huge numbers of people who can be involved this is difficult if not impossible

This suggests that closed systems are attractive to those who would like to participate in discussion and debate without having to run through a lot of nonsense to do so. A small filter, by way of free registration - which gives access to an number of spaces segregated from the web in general makes sense. (Filtering also comes in the shape of minority interest sites, and moderation.)

Polls on site might be quite useful. The process of gathering the opinions of the passing traffic, which while not scientifically accurate might generate an interesting statistical flow itself. The user expreince is good - seeign my jprefernce in relation to my peers; and providing attractive visual stuff on the page. And it might be useful in terms of some (probably) interesting data snapshots of users interests and preferences.

Polss types: (to be added to) film reviews, positions on debates, factual info about self (do you smack your child, do you have a flat screen telly etc)

None of this is new . . it all happens now . .just some small attempts to get my head around how these actualites work, can be used . .other than just to increase "stickiness"

People and the tendency to bad organisation

If a car was made of living parts, and the engine started failing, some other part might decide it were time to build another engine - or find a workaround - and in time you might have 2 engines, each getting strange interference from the existence of the other but not understanding why.

I think that is what organisations are like, unless there is a conscious structure of communication, internal collaborative as well as hierarchical command . . . and even then . . .

Most companies have replication etc because of peoples desire to make things work better - for themselves and for the common purpose. Some are less socially interested, just self interested - but know they cannot succeed without achieving the collaborative goal. Others are more collaboration motivated, but sometimes will stand in the way of those more self interested in order to allow (they believe) the machine to run better - and slow the thing down as the self interested person was leading, apparently despite but actually because of their self interest.

Complexity and malleability: we are very similiar to each other, but the subtle differences in goals, and private internal dialogue and variety of ways of hearing and understanding the same message make for complexity . . but we are very malleable, and constatly adapt ourselves to the subtle variations

That is why it is possible for awful organisation or lack of any can survive for years . . as the organism that is the company of people finds its way through.

A car that is a car, ie dumb - - will stop working if something goes serioulsy wrong. it won’t attnet to mend itself. and because there is a trail within the physical transmission path, the problem can be located and fixed.

I think human organisation must be more difficult to unpick because it is not dumb .. . . and tries to find a different way.

The program The trap, whatever happened to our dreams of freedom was interesting in its look at past attempts by the state to make models, theories of human behavior - and in the that process successively machinising people. It also showed how this funneling of human potential into situations where we are confronted by each other via the market always works nett against social interest . . as people will alway try and look after themslelves - to the social expense if the are set an unachievable set of goals.

Out of print

My printer has just been requisitioned for another room. Disheartening. But the flip side is I can have a chat with M, I and B when I go and collect my print-outs. Budgets just emerge for some things in this world -while others have no chance at all. And printers are too darned expensive.