YouTube Coming to Apple TV

YouTube Coming to Apple TV:

Thousands of the most current and popular YouTube videos will be available on Apple TV at launch in mid-June, with YouTube adding thousands more each week until the full YouTube catalog is available this fall. With Apple TV’s stunning interface and simple Apple Remote, users can easily navigate through YouTube’s familiar video browsing categories or search for specific videos. YouTube members can also log-in to their YouTube accounts on Apple TV to view and save their favorite videos.

Now things get interesting. I know a few people who watch more YouTube than they do regular TV. Add in Google video, and a widget for reading RSS feeds and I'm sold.

Apple today also announced that it is offering a new Apple TV build-to-order option with a 160GB hard drive.

We're gonna need it.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple TV, Computing, Mac OS X, Media, puppy, RSS, technology, Television

YouTube Coming to Apple TV

YouTube Coming to Apple TV:

Thousands of the most current and popular YouTube videos will be available on Apple TV at launch in mid-June, with YouTube adding thousands more each week until the full YouTube catalog is available this fall. With Apple TV’s stunning interface and simple Apple Remote, users can easily navigate through YouTube’s familiar video browsing categories or search for specific videos. YouTube members can also log-in to their YouTube accounts on Apple TV to view and save their favorite videos.

Now things get interesting. I know a few people who watch more YouTube than they do regular TV. Add in Google video, and a widget for reading RSS feeds and I'm sold.

Apple today also announced that it is offering a new Apple TV build-to-order option with a 160GB hard drive.

We're gonna need it.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple TV, Computing, Mac OS X, Media, puppy, RSS, technology, Television

New Palm Foleo

Palm, Inc. - Products - Foleo:

With its 10-inch screen and full-size keyboard, the Palm Foleo mobile companion connects wirelessly with your smartphone to help you do more on the go. Unfold it, press a button, and it's on instantly—while just one touch brings your email to the big screen. Use your Foleo to view attachments, type longer emails, or to get a bigger look at web pages and photos you'd normally view on your smartphone. And with up to five hours of battery life packed into such a compact design, you'll do big things wherever you go.

Can you say niche? How long before I have a 5 hour MacBook with a 10-inch display? Palm need a runaway hit, and this isn't it.

Technorati Tags: Computing, gadgets, phones, Palm, technology

Apple to University Departments: We're disintermediating you next

Apple Announces iTunes U on the iTunes Store:

“iTunes U makes it easy for anyone to access amazing educational material from many of the country’s most respected colleges and universities,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “Education is a lifelong pursuit and we’re pleased to give everyone the ability to download lectures, speeches and other academic content for free.”

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple TV, Education, iPod, podcasting, Teaching

How important is Surface?

Microsoft Surface - Behind the Scenes with VIDEO - Touchscreen, Multi Touch Coffee Table - Ballmer - Jeff Han - PlayTable - Popular Mechanics:

Gattis took out a digital camera and placed it on the Surface. Instantly, digital pictures spilled out onto the tabletop. As Gattis touched and dragged each picture, it followed his fingers around the screen. Using two fingers, he pulled the corners of a photo and stretched it to a new size. Then, Gattis put a cellphone on the surface and dragged several photos to it — just like that, the pictures uploaded to the phone. It was like a magic trick. He was dragging and dropping virtual content to physical objects.

This is very important for sure, but most likely in a kind of Apple Lisa way. We've known this is the future of computing for some time, and it's great to see it demonstrated in something we can actually buy (Jeff Han's Multi-Touch system is too expensive for anything but research projects>. We know though where the first multi-touch screen that most regular folks get to use will be. Perhaps Apple are destined to be the Microsoft of the Integrated Software-Hardware Era, simplifying and popularising innovations that others can rightly claim to have brought to market first. UPDATE: Here's the official Microsoft Surface site.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Computing, Future, iPhone, Microsoft, technology, UI, virtuality, virtualworlds

Nokia N95 UI Madness

The Daily Grind: Reasons the iPhone is going to clean the N95's clock:

The hardcore gadget freak in me is quite entertained by the mental gymnastics involved. The Mac-using video producer/writer/blogger/getting stuff done guy in me is jaw-agape, knock-me-over-with-a-feather appalled that Nokia consider this shit shippable, let alone a flagship product.

11 clicks to redial? After just dumping my (relatively simple) 6280 for a SE K610i I can't say I'm surprised. But I'm still appalled.

Technorati Tags: gadgets, iPhone, phones, Product Design, puppy, technology, Telephony, UI, Usability

iTWire - Facing the full horror of Windows Vista

iTWire - Facing the full horror of Windows Vista:

We could go on -- about the stupid interface in Windows Explorer, the non-existent search functionality, the arbitrary changes to menu names, even the horrible font choices. But the bottom line is that if we had shares in Microsoft, we'd be demanding changes more extensive than those that came between XP and SP2 to give this dog of a product any chance in the marketplace. That said, we're not holding our breath.

I'm sure Vista will do just fine in the marketplace, if that's the right term for the lock-in that MS have on most PC makers, but this tale of Vista woes still makes for a good read. I'd laugh, if so many of my friends and colleagues weren't going to be forced to use this crap.

Technorati Tags: Computing, Microsoft, Vista, reviews, Windows

Technology Review: The Secret of Apple Design

Technology Review: The Secret of Apple Design (registration required):

Even in the early 1980s, Rolston says, "Jobs wanted to elevate Apple by using design." Jobs, he says, not only cared personally about design but saw that it could be a way to differentiate his company's products from the PCs of the day, which often looked little evolved from hobbyist boxes. Ken Campbell, a codesigner of the Apple Lisa, was quoted in Kunkel's AppleDesign as saying that Jobs wanted Apple to be what Olivetti was in the 1970s: "an undisputed leader in industrial design."

Technorati Tags: Apple, Computing, Design, Product Design, technology

Krop: Stephen Hawking's and Phillipe Stark's love child.

Krop: Stephen Hawking's and Phillipe Stark's love child.:

If you have an unhealthy level of digital knowledge. If you animate with code and you design excuisitely. If you to know your Laser Tag from your Tag Clouds and why both are friggin' cool. Welcome home.

Another example of the kind of job a new MMD subject route in Visual Communication would be preparing students for. You have to love the attitude.

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Technorati Tags: Design, Employment, Flash, Graphic Design

A Second Life Whodunit

A Second Life Whodunit:

The ABC boasted one of Second Life's most expansive commercially run islands, but that didn't stop an unidentified gang from laying waste to the digital plot of land.

Virtual vandalism is an interesting phenomenon, but it's completely unsurprising. Real people with real impulses lie behind online representations, and this just makes it even more clear that the divide isn't virtual/real but virtual/physical. It's even possible that a form of physicality is implied by acts like this, which means things are getting very interesting.

Technorati Tags: Communications, Education, Future, Hyperspace, Internet, cyberspace, puppy, second life, Teaching, virtuality, virtualworlds

AppleInsider | Closing the book on Apple's Mac mini

AppleInsider | Closing the book on Apple's Mac mini:

So is the Mac mini dead as this Appleinsider story says? I love the mini, but as time goes by and no update is forthcoming a major redesign starts to look less likely than a strategic rethink. I was hoping for a retooling of the mini as a home media machine (HDMI port instead of DVI, 802.11n, internal PSU), but as the Apple TV develops towards the inevitable revision it begins to make much more sense to focus on the cheaper home media platform. Though I can think of a good few scenarios in which the mini is an excellent fit, most people are probably getting upsold on the iMac. Switching to Mac? Don't just dump the tower, ditch your monitor, keyboard and the spaghetti and replace it all with an elegant all-in-one. Watch that proposition get even more compelling when the iMac gets updated for Leopard (at Apple Expo Paris in late September?) and the Apple TV gets a HDD boost (by December, I'd wager).

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The Future is Here

We all secretly know it, we're just waiting for theLED Umbrella to confirm it:

In the pre-apocalyptic future, the air will be so thick, it will be dark in the middle of the day. Coupled with the almost constant rain, you'll need to find a way to stay dry, and light your way to the noodle shop down the street.

I want to buy a thousand or so of these and give them away to people in Hong Kong. The resemblance between HK and Ridley Scott's vision would be perfect, except in HK the snakes are real.

Technorati Tags: Cities, Film, Future, Hong Kong, gadgets, technology

Free Steve

Fake Steve's Shop : CafePress.com:

Awesome free steve campaign material. See FSJ for the story.

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Technorati Tags: Apple, humour, Macintosh, puppy

iPhone will be 5 years on AT&T

iPhone will be 5 years on AT&T:

Pete Mortensen at Wired is peeved about the AT&T exclusive in the US. There's no news yet on what happens in Europe, so I'm still hopeful of an iPhone working on T-Mobile (who still have the least evil data plans). But Pete, you don't need an N95, really.

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Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, phones, Telephony

Experience Design job at Adaptive Path

Experience Design job at Adaptive Path:

This is the kind of job - increasingly common - that a renewed Multimedia Design route in Visual Communications could be preparing people for. It's not graphics, and it's not programming, it's both of those and something else besides.

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Technorati Tags: Design, Education, Employment, Teaching, Usability, Web

Paul Rand: Thoughts and despair on logo design

LifeClever shares the wisdom of a graphics genius in Paul Rand: Thoughts and despair on logo design. Of particular interest in these parts are Rand's thoughts on presentation. Enjoy.

Finally, Rand stresses the importance of presenting design work. You must tell a unique story that’s catered to your audience:

Canned presentations have the ring of emptiness. The meaningful presentation is custom designed—for a particular purpose, for a particular person. How to present a new idea is, perhaps, one of the designer’s most difficult tasks. This how is not only a design problem, it also pleads for something novel. Everything a designer does involves presentation of some kind—not only how to explain (present) a particular design to an interested listener (client, reader, spectator), but how the design may explain itself in the marketplace… A presentation is the musical accompaniment of design. A presentation that lacks an idea cannot hide behind glamourous photos, pizzazz, or ballyhoo. If it is full of gibberish, it may fall on deaf ears; if too laid back, it may land a prospect in the arms of Morpheus.

Technorati Tags: Creativity, Design, Graphic Design, Presentation

T-House Launch Event

Part of the Festival of Extreme Buildings, tomorrow afternoon is the launch event for the intriguing T-House:

T-house is a collaboration between Colin Pearce and Ranbir Lal. Part-architecture, part-sculpture, the design for T-house is a deconstruction of the built form - in this case the Japanese tea house and the English garden pavilion. T-house unfolds a series of environments through its intersecting planes, dynamically opening out like a giant piece of origami.

23 May 2007, 4-5.30pm, Albert Street, Birmingham B4 7LN

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Technorati Tags: Architecture, Art, Birmingham UK, Cities, Design

Northern Soul Images

John Barrett's Northern Soul Photographs:

John Barrett's excellent Northern Soul photographs are showing at Love Retro, 25 Frederick Street, Jewellery Quarter Birmingham on Friday June 15. From 6pm until 2am, with soul djs, dancing and drinks. Nothing online for the event yet, but check the link for photos from John's super book.

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Technorati Tags: Birmingham UK, Events, Music, photography, Exhibitions

Mark’s (we)Blog » Creating a Media Center Mac

Mark’s (we)Blog » Creating a Media Center Mac:

Turning a Mac Mini into a Windows Media Center PC. Oh the humanity!

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Technorati Tags: Apple, Computing, Macintosh, Microsoft, Windows

When did the mobile phone industry lose the plot?

This excellent article from The Register perfectly sums up how many of us feel about the mobile makers. Why did it take about 3 years for Sony Ericsson to replace the excellent T610 with a worthy successor (I love the K610i), and then why did it take 8 months for me to be able to get it on the network I'm already locked into (eventually I had to buy it pre-pay and install my own SIM, though I've had a T-Mobile contract for 8 years). The money quote:

Not everyone agrees the iPhone will be as successful as Jobs hopes, but Apple does seem to make the perfect bogeyman for the mobile phone industry. What could be more scary than an organisation capable of working in total secrecy, with a track record of creating highly desirable products, headed by a man who's beaten cancer and an SEC investigation and comes equipped with a Reality Distortion Field that would make Darth Vader jealous.

New Animation courses to run from September

Birmingham Institute of Art & Design (UCE Birmingham) got the go-ahead yesterday for two new BA awards in Animation and Animation for Games Design. The courses share a core curriculum and student experience, diverging in the second year for students to focus increasingly on their chosen areas and career paths. Theory and practice are integrated throughout the three years (this was highlighted as good practice by the validation panel, and pleases me no end since I wrote the modules concerned), and there's a good blend of industry-led and experimental approaches thoughout. We start at the end of September 2007, looking to recruit 15 students initially. Enquiries to Steven.Hunt@uce.ac.uk.

Welcome to Newsgland

So, Usergland updates infrequently and generally with long posts. This then is a parallel blog focused on shorter posts, links and news. I plan to optimise it for mobile browsers, and the rss feed. There'll be no long sidebars, multiple blog rolls, or flickr albums. Watch this space.