Star Wars vs. Saul Bass

Well this is just lovely. I want to watch the rest of the 1957 Star Wars right now.

Worst-Case Scenario

 The use of possessive apostrophes in place names in Birmingham on road signs: 

Australia's reasoning for dropping the possessive apostrophe is very relevant, since they argued that with the emergency services using computer databases there was a need for nationwide consistency. It would be tragic if the ambulance couldn't find your street, if you forgot to include the possessive apostrophe when calling 999.

What kind of computer system wouldn't catch all possible variants of place names, whether you type the apostrophes or not? Ah, a Government-built one.. 

Dear Carriers

This is why we don't believe you when you say that you didn't really want to take the iPhone:

iPhone 3G Sales Spur AT&T Wireless Growth in Q4 2008 - Mac Rumors

Of the four 'pluses' that Fortune lists for AT&T, this is the most interesting I think:

About 40% of the iPhone activations this quarter were new AT&T customers, either buying their first cellphone or switching from another carrier.

Those first-time customers are the key to this game. The phone business has been all about churn, but most of those whose first experience is on an iPhone are simply not going to switch easily to something else. Content providers take note too: Once they've learned to expect the kind of things they get on an iPhone, they're not going to accept the kind of crap you dish out elsewhere.

Apple TV is growing

Funny this. I bought a new HD TV just after Christmas, and I popped into the Apple Store to check out the Apple TV specifications (it's likely that my new screen will eventually play host to more digital media than it does OTA stuff). Quite a few other people were doing the same. Richer Sounds informally told me they were blown away by the demand for bigger LCDs, and every other store I went into was boxing up display TVs for collection. The economy might slow this down, but if the last recession is anything to go by people will be saving money on expensive nights out and staying in with their home entertainment more.

AppleInsider on Apple TV:

Speaking in the company's financial results conference call, Cook said, "there was a tremendous tickup year over year [for Apple TV]. In fact unit sales were up over 3 times vs the year-ago quarter.  However let me be clear, we still consider this a hobby."

Toy trains 'Star Wars' fans to use The Force - USATODAY.com

Toy trains 'Star Wars' fans to use The Force - USATODAY.com

The Force Trainer (expected to be priced at $90 to $100) comes with a headset that uses brain waves to allow players to manipulate a sphere within a clear 10-inch-tall training tower, analogous to Yoda and Luke Skywalker's abilities in the Star Wars films.

Oh yes, I need this.

The Last Physical Movie Format

Daring Fireball: Macworld Expo 2009 Predictions:

"I’m not going to say that Blu-ray is dead because it isn’t. But if DVD isn’t the last mainstream physical medium for home movie distribution, Blu-ray will be. The future, obviously and inevitably, is in downloads. I’m already there, and you, dear DF reader, probably are too, but for the mass market, downloadable movies for the living room remain in the future."

Let's pray Gruber is right on this one. Blu-ray will get big because HD-DVD got the knife. If that hadn't happened then we'd be looking at another year of fighting over a shrinking pie. Even so, I'm hanging back with 1080p-upscaled DVD for the next half year at least. I've no desire to start buying new disks yet, and I'm still hoping I'll never have to do that ever again.

Too Late for Palm

Palm Pins Its Hopes on Nova - BusinessWeek:

"Rubinstein and others say the goal is to create products that bridge the gap between Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry devices, oriented to work and e-mail, and Apple's iPhone, oriented to fun. 'People's work and personal lives are melding,' Colligan says, adding that Palm is aiming for the 'fat middle of the market.'"

A worthy aim for sure, but in the meantime iPhone OS keeps moving towards that centre and there's not going to be any room left there. In hindsight the critical moment might have been when Palm refused to sell to Apple, and when Steve Jobs realised the future of the PDA would be in the evolution of a media player into a primary personal computing device.

Sony Ericsson get on Android

Good for Google I'm sure. Good for Sony Ericsson? Not so certain. Sony's history in terms of customising platforms and adding value is not so great, and they lose some of their differentiation. Bad for Microsoft? For sure.

Originally posted as a comment by sharl on mediabistro.com: MobileDevicesToday using Disqus.

I've Got a Bad Feeling About This

Awesome, terrifying story of how we got into this mess:

And short Eisman did—then he tried to get his mind around what he’d just done so he could do it better. He’d call over to a big firm and ask for a list of mortgage bonds from all over the country. The juiciest shorts—the bonds ultimately backed by the mortgages most likely to default—had several characteristics. They’d be in what Wall Street people were now calling the sand states: Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada. The loans would have been made by one of the more dubious mortgage lenders; Long Beach Financial, wholly owned by Washington Mutual, was a great example. Long Beach Financial was moving money out the door as fast as it could, few questions asked, in loans built to self-destruct. It specialized in asking home­owners with bad credit and no proof of income to put no money down and defer interest payments for as long as possible. In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $720,000.

The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com

Technorati Tags: finance, screwed, crash

Technology as Leveler

Ray Ozzie Wants to Push Microsoft Back Into Startup Mode :

One incident in particular introduced Ozzie to the magic that comes when people connect via computer. He had taken a part-time assignment helping a professor finish writing some courseware. The prof lived on the other side of town, so Ozzie collaborated with him remotely. Ozzie came to know and like his boss, save for one annoyance. "He was the worst typist ever," Ozzie says. "He was very eloquent on email, but on Term Talk it was just dit-dit-dit, sometimes an error, but agonizingly slow." At the end of the project, the man threw a party at his house, and Ozzie discovered the reason for the typing problem: The professor was a quadriplegic and had been entering text by holding a stick in his teeth and poking it at the keyboard. Ozzie was floored.

I remember an experience myself back in about '95 when someone I was swapping 2600 cart sources with on Usenet turned out to be similarly disadvantaged. One of Darian System's first consultancies for setting up a cybercafe was with a registered blind entrepreneur. Both personal wake-up calls to how technology could change things for the better, and key to understanding why I remain, at heart, an optimist when it comes to this business.

Breaking Radio Silence

I won't even attempt to go into the myriad reasons for my extended absence here. I'll simply say sorry and move on. More soon.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Marketing as Disease

I've had fights at work over this same thing: Viral Marketing is bullsh*t. Adoptive Marketing isn’t.

I hated the word “viral” the very first time I heard it in the mid 1990s, probably because it made Marketing sound like we were spreading a disease other people had no choice but to spread, too. At the time, the whole “viral marketing” thing got people excited because it used the Internet to cheaply spread crap like Burger King videos or Hotmail invitations. Dance monkeys, dance.

Technorati Tags: Advertising, branding, marketing, Web

Häxan (1922)

Last night's Birmingham Town Hall screening of Häxan was remarkable, not least for the Julian Cope lecture that preceded it:

But there is much more to "Häxan" than a mere collection of grotesque images and vignettes. Towards the end, in particular, the commentary becomes quite pointed. It is quite easy for anyone - film-maker, writer, commentator - to criticize and condemn the beliefs and practices of the Middle Ages or of any other long past era. But it is far more of a challenge to, as Christensen has done here, point out the sometimes devastating parallels to one's own era. It is always such a comforting fiction to believe that we are so much more enlightened than past generations have been, and yet it is rarely if ever true.

Häxan isn't easy-going for a modern audience, partly because familiarity with some of the imagery has reduced it to the level of the ridiculous, partly because it takes its time in developing scenes that wouldn't get screen time now. It's still amazing though, and demonstrates the sheer wonder about the medium that must have been commonplace in 1922. Here's a clip, though lacking the electronic live soundtrack we were treated to last night.

Technorati Tags: Birmingham UK, Events, Film, movies, performance, reviews, Sweden

Force Feeding

Over-jealous waiters annoy me almost as much as they do Christopher Hitchens:

The vile practice of butting in and pouring wine without being asked is the very height of the second kind of bad manners. Not only is it a breathtaking act of rudeness in itself, but it conveys a none-too-subtle and mercenary message: Hurry up and order another bottle.

Technorati Tags: culture, Food, Service, Restaurants

Going deeper on Digital Photography

I've been looking for proper information on this sort of thing, and I've found no better than Norman Koren's particle on Tonal quality and dynamic range in digital cameras:

If you choose to save images in RAW format, you should expose to capture maximum information: to maintain as much highlight and shadow detail as possible, even if the middle tones aren't what you want in the final print. You should strive to capture all highlights except for bright light sources and specular reflections. You should expose enough to capture detail in large shadow areas. I mostly agree with the Luminous-Landscape.com article, Expose (to the) Right, which recommends setting the exposure to the maximum value that doesn't burn out highlights. (This applies only to images saved in RAW format.) However I wouldn't go too far. A little margin doesn't hurt; there are plenty of levels in 12-bit A-to-D converters. In extreme situations, you may want to make two exposures and combine them.

Technorati Tags: digital, photography, technology

Best news of the week, in a week of horrible news

Steven Moffat gets the Doctor Who lead job:

Moffat said: "I applied before but I got knocked back 'cos the BBC wanted someone else. Also I was seven.
"Anyway, I'm glad the BBC has finally seen the light and it's a huge honour to be following Russell into the best - and the toughest - job in television.

Pretty much all the best episodes have had Moffat's name on them.

Technorati Tags: BBC, Television, writing

XP is Vista light

Thanks to DF for the heads up on this wonderful bit of Redmond doublethink:

Dell will take advantage of a licensing option in Vista Business and Vista Ultimate that lets PC makers provide XP under the Vista license, which Microsoft calls a "downgrade" license. (Enterprises with site licenses have these same rights with any version of Vista.) In essence, the user is buying a Vista license that it can apply to XP, and Microsoft can still claim a Vista sale.

In other news, war is peace, and we have always been at war with Eurasia.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Vista, Windows

Software, seen via the history of popular music

On First Installing Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 6 — Thought Palace:

If this is the “lite”, for-dummies, cheap-n-cheerful version of Photoshop, I can’t imagine how huge the real version must be. I mean, if MacPaint was “Rock Around The Clock”, and the first version of Photoshop was, say, “Please Please Me”, then this is Yes’s Tales From Topographic Oceans. If so, that makes Acorn and Pixelmator something like “The Clash” and “Pink Flag”, respectively; not really a threat to the hegemony yet, but if future versions can mature into “London Calling” and “154”, it’ll be time to kick out the jams.

Technorati Tags: broken, Adobe, Software, Usability

Microsoft to Yahoo: You will be mine.

Microsoft Sends Letter to Yahoo! Board of Directors: Microsoft Sends Letter to Yahoo! Board of Directors:

If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board.

Technorati Tags: Business, Microsoft, Yahoo!

You only notice great UI when it's not there

Good article on the iPhone from The Times:

However, the shocking surprise is the web browser. The iPhone’s browser allows you magically to expand and shrink the pages you’re looking at with that funky iPhone touch interface. This is a really big deal. You can do this on photos of course, but no one, except Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, really needs to zoom in on photo details that often, although it’s a fun gimmick to demo to mates. You need to do it on web pages all the time when you’re peering at a small screen, and it’s brilliantly effective.

Actually, it's become a big deal for me in viewing photos too. My seven-year-old is always zooming in and out on the iPod touch to get a better view of people in pictures. A friend was showing me some photos on her Nokia N95 a couple of weeks ago, and I automatically tried to stretch the photo to get a better view before remembering that not all photo viewers work like that. It's remarkable that after about 6 months of owning the iPod touch this gesture has become hard-wired into my brain, and testament to how natural it is in the first place.

Technorati Tags: Design, gadgets, iPhone, iPod touch, Nokia, phones, technology, UI