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“Experience is not just physical”
May 6, 2013Om Malik flew with American Airlines, and almost immediately he wished it was a Virgin America flight. What he came away with from the experience is pretty cool (emphasis his): The comparison between the two flying experiences crystallized one thing for me: user experience is not pretty logos, lovely web design or rounded corners. A [...]
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Apr 29, 2013
I like this ad, all in all. Three things that got me: The S Beam duo from 0:10-0:16 and the “wheeee” at 0:26 The guy flying across the floor at 0:40 (amazingly accurate physics) The guy who reveals an Apple tattoo on his chest at 0:49 There are some mistakes, but most people won’t care [...]
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Apr 29, 2013
Marty Cooper, inventor of the very first cell phone 40 years ago in April of 1973, sat down for a short interview as a part of PBS Digital Studio’s INVENTORS series. I found this part to be particularly interesting: What’s important about any technology is that the technology is hopefully invisible, but at least transparent [...]
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Apr 19, 2013
In this Jim Handy motion picture from the 1930′s titled “Around The Corner,” an enthusiastic narrator and the Chevrolet Sales Team Band demonstrate how a clever combination of gears allows us to steer our cars left and right. Bring in the trumpets!
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Mar 24, 2013
Clever name, although it reminds me of cable, and I don’t like cable. Vimeo appears to be the “App Store for Entertainment” I discussed last year. Finally, video-makers have a distribution channel with enough clout and platform presence (even on Windows Phone) to sell their film to anyone anywhere. From their announcement post: We’re creators ourselves, [...]
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Mar 20, 2013
An interesting excerpt from Bruce Nussbaum’s “Creative Intelligence”. The core idea here is that play (you know, the silly thing that only kids are supposed to do) is a legitimate way of designing solutions provided that everyone trusts each other and all of the necessary rules are fair. When we play, we try things on [...]
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Mar 2, 2013
Brian Gillespie, for Co.Design: At the end of the day, designers create products and services to be used, if not create real and lasting differences in people’s lives. Understanding how design drives business success is not only helpful but also essential for the designer in order to be successful in creating the innovations he or [...]
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Feb 9, 2013
Wow. All of this stuff right here – this is why I love following tech. Joshua Topolsky’s final thought is so spot on, and judging by his smirk I think he knew it as soon as he said it: For the last few years there’s been a huge boom in types of devices and form [...]
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Feb 9, 2013
Ben Tollady, thinking about the (U)X-Factor: A person’s decision about whether a product has the X-Factor—that thing you can’t quite put your finger on—is entirely emotional. Designing this kind of delight and desirability into a product, site or system is therefore no mean feat. It is achievable, however, if we recognise the importance of first understanding the intended [...]
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Jan 28, 2013
As expected, the leaked iPad 5 shell looks very much like a larger iPad mini shell. Could be fake, but it doesn’t look like much of a stretch. The smaller bezel makes sense, particularly when you consider how much lighter and easier to hold it’ll be without that extra aluminum and glass. Check out this Macrumors post [...]
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Dec 31, 2012
Introduction Back in July I decided to buy my very first Android device – a 16GB Nexus 7 running stock Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Like many other iPhone and iPad-toting writers discussed at the time, the Nexus 7 looked like an appealing $200 gateway device that would let me explore the unfamiliar world of Android [...]
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“Surprisingly, touchscreen laptops don’t suck”
Nov 30, 2012I laughed when I read the headline, and I have to agree. Sean Hollister, The Verge: With Windows 8, touchscreens are more relevant than ever before. However, some pundits have long believed that a touchscreen simply doesn’t belong on a laptop. Sometimes, they quote Steve Jobs. “Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical.” That’s Jobs in [...]
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Nov 11, 2012
Dieter Bohn and The Verge crew visited Google to learn more about how Google Now works and what the future holds for their new predictive search engine. Great video too, as usual.
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Nov 11, 2012
Realmac’s Dan Counsell quoted in Ellis Hamburger’s review of the new Mac app Clear, which started out as a popular iPhone app: It’s been rewritten from the ground-up so it’s in no way a port, I really can’t stress that enough. The Mac version took around eight months to develop, which is over twice as [...]
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Nov 11, 2012
Fantastic piece by Tom Warren of The Verge with a really great video to boot. If you want to learn more about the future of Windows Phone, particularly what developers think about the exciting changes made in Windows Phone 8, read this piece or at least watch the 6-minute video. It’s seriously great. I completely agree with [...]
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Getting Comfortable with Touch
Nov 10, 2012A quick thought from Lukas Mathis on his site, ignore the code: For most people, scrolling on a touch device isn’t as easy and automatic as it is for us (and on a PC, it’s even worse). This may change. Today, many children are growing up with iPads. Maybe in 20 years, everybody will have such [...]
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Touchscreen Laptops: “More useful than you’d think”
Nov 5, 2012Sean Hollister of The Verge reviewing the HP Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 (!?!): To prepare for the Windows 8 onslaught, laptop manufacturers are trying all sorts of inventive touchscreen notebook designs. Some screens flip, some spin, some twist, and some can actually be detached from their keyboards so you can have a tablet for the road. [...]
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Free-to-play: Not a gold mine for everyone
Oct 31, 2012Neil Young and Bob Stevenson left Ngmoco: the mobile gaming company they co-founded back in the early days of the App Store. Remember Rolando? Jared Nelson, Touch Arcade: Starting in early 2010, ngmoco churned out one freemium title after the next, each typically very similar to each other just with different themes. Despite being scoffed at by [...]
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Oct 30, 2012
Notice the lack of a “sequences shortened” disclaimer. It’s pretty much this fast. Wow. Siri’s “checking on that…” and “checking my sources…” messages suddenly became less excusable.
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Typing Speed Test: iPhone vs iPad vs Keyboard
Oct 30, 2012I’m a sophomore college student, and I haven’t used a laptop in about a year and half. Crazy right? I haven’t written about this yet, but a few weeks before starting my freshman year of college I decided to replace my aging laptop (which only lasted 30 minutes on a full charge) not with a [...]
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Oct 29, 2012
Take a look at the final photo with everything neatly laid out. It’s incredible how little there seems to be in these machines, when there’s actually so much going on. Compare the final images of the Surface, iPad 3 and Nexus 7. It’s so weird looking at how slim the logic boards are (the green [...]
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Oct 29, 2012
Scott Forstall, the guy in charge of iOS, and John Browett, the guy who recently replaced Tim Cook as the VP of Retail (and reportedly wasn’t very well-liked), are leaving Apple. Craig Federighi, the guy in charge of OS X, is going to start leading both iOS and OS X and Jony Ive, Apple’s lead [...]
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Oct 29, 2012
Loren Brichter in an interview with Macstories’ Federico Viticci on his newly-launched (and very popular) word game, Letterpress: F: … I was reminded of Clear several times upon playing Letterpress. Mainly because you basically got rid of as much UI as possible. Was that a deliberate choice, or did it just come natural? LB: The style [...]
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Oct 22, 2012
Jason Fried recalling a bit of advice that Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) gave to him and his group: He said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to [...]
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Oct 21, 2012
I recently installed AutoDesk Inventor for a class I’m taking. This stuff is what appeared at the end of my Windows 8 Start Screen. In older versions of Windows these kinds of legacy programs dumped this random stuff into a folder hidden somewhere in the Start Menu, and few people really noticed or cared. In Windows 8 [...]