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!