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Google I/O: Cognitive Science and Design
May 23, 2013Alex Faaborg gave a great presentation last week at Google I/O on a number of the “biological computations” that occur when people use software. I like the way he introduces the point of his talk at 0:37: So, you write great software, you make sure that your software executes well, or is interpreted well, on a silicon-based [...]
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May 23, 2013
Well, if the comments below this Windows 8 ad on YouTube and the posts written about it on The Verge, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac, Apple Insider and others are any indication, it seems that Microsoft just struck an old Mac vs PC nerve. Intentionally. Mac vs PC is over, and apparently Microsoft wants iOS vs Windows 8 to [...]
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Apr 29, 2013
I played Final Fantasy Tactics A2 for many, many hours on a Nintendo DS back in the day, and I think I paid $30 for it. It was well worth it. Now a spiritual sequel is coming to iOS, will likely be free to play, and I doubt I’ll play it for more than 15 [...]
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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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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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Comcast is going to own NBCUniversal
Mar 2, 2013This news is a bit old, but the cable & media industries have been on my (annoyed) mind recently. Brian Roberts, Comcast’s CEO (emphasis mine): Our decision to acquire GE’s ownership is driven by our sense of optimism for the future prospects of NBCUniversal and our desire to capture future value that we hope to [...]
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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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Mar 1, 2013
A very cool topic discussed in yet another great Off Book video. Much attention has been paid to 3D Printing lately, with new companies developing cheaper and more efficient consumer models that have wowed the tech community. They herald 3D Printing as a revolutionary and disruptive technology, but how will these printers truly affect our [...]
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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 3, 2013
I clearly remember trying this out on my iPhone 4 back in 2010. The graphics aren’t quite as amazing two years later, but just as it was for iOS, this is an important step for Android gaming in general. Here’s a video of the app’s performance on the entire Nexus family.
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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 12, 2012
This is incredibly weird. Two proclaimed CEOs-in-waiting fired (update: Sinofsky left on his own) from their respective companies. One the head of iOS (which has been a huge success) and one the head of Windows 7 (a big success compared to Vista) and 8 (which is Microsoft’s biggest bet yet). Wow, this is nuts. Update: [...]
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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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Nov 11, 2012
Sam Byford, The Verge: A California judge has ruled against Fox in its attempt to block an automatic commercial-skipping feature on Dish Network’s Hopper DVR. Fox, as well as CBS and NBC, sued Dish back in May over Auto Hop, which lets viewers watch recorded primetime shows without commercials after 1AM the following day. This is really important. [...]
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Nov 10, 2012
A cloud-based TV platform of some sort. Sounds interesting. There may be a reason why it’s been about 7 years since the Xbox 360 launched (way past the typical 4-5 year refresh time for gaming consoles). Big steps forward take time.
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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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Oct 30, 2012
Wellesley High School English teacher David McCullough’s 2012 Commencement Address. Great, and brutally honest. Two small pieces (6:43): In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality, we have of lately, Americans, to our [...]