Monthly Archives

October 2012

The Ive mind

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Apple has recently let go of the former head of iOS and OS X, ending an era – and support for a particular kind of design, one with a reliance on skeuomorphic elements.  Now that the top proponent of the opposing mindset within Apple – chief hardware designer, Jonathan Ive, is at the helm, what might we expect?

[…] the logical guess, given his interest in streamlined, relentlessly consistent design, is that skeuomorphism — the kind-of-campy mimicking of real-world details like plush leather and shiny wood surfaces — may become a thing of the past.

The bottom line: Ive has always been one of the most important people at Apple, but with this reshuffling, he gets the opportunity to become the most important person at Apple. That makes this the most important thing that’s happened at the company in the post-Jobs era.

It’s an important move, and one that is sure to herald in an age of Apple’s software taking on the sparse elegance of its striking hardware.  Count me in.

(Time)

Hue by Philips – One Button Studio’s Soulmate?

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Across the state, there are many Media Commons locations that have existing studio spaces that are seeing less and less use as students take increasingly simple video gear – Sony Bloggie Touch or iOS devices – out into the field.  An idea that’s come up for re-energizing these rooms is conversion to One Button Studios.  A brilliant concept, as it maximizes existing campus room allocations and creates more usability in a familiar environment.

But imagining further out, I’m intrigued by the idea of providing graduated levels of functionality in the converted rooms.  One Button Studio could be level one: completely automated, preset and ready to roll.  Level three is also easy: bring in the traditional studio lights, backdrops, etc and use them in the space, even in conjunction with the OBS lighting bar.  But level two is where it gets interesting.  What if we deployed something like Philip’s new Hue lighting system in the space? What is Hue?  WiFi enabled, color shifting, iOS controlled bulbs that can do this:

philips hue demo film from Kevin Howes on Vimeo.

In my imagining, students could take out an iPod touch or iPad mini, record video and audio in the field, bring it back to the OBS and set up lighting wirelessly for more scenes, interviews, etc and then plunk down in a comfy chair in the Knowledge Commons at their campus to do touchscreen editing before sharing online.  And teaching studio use would be more fun than ever with an iPad mini as my primary tool, wirelessly switching between lighting presets and beaming iMovie training to the projector in the room.

The waiting game commences

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I used to buy a new computer every 6 months when I was a decade younger.  I’d package up and eBay the previous generation gear and roll the money into the latest and greatest from Apple twice a year.  But when I got my 13″ MacBook in October of 2008, I found that the cycle had played itself out.  2009, 2010 and even 2011 came and went and the designs were mostly the same – and my little notebook kept chugging right along without any real issues.

This last year of freelance projects and a need for occasional forays into Windows has become increasingly sluggish, though.  And then the advent of the Retina display on notebooks sealed the deal:  it was time to upgrade, both for my strained eyes and for my cooked lap, burned under a more and more taxed set of four year old components.

So I plunked down an ungodly sum of money and placed an order for the above 13″ MacBook Pro on launch day today.  I’ll be checking the tracking site and scouting the driveway for FedEx trucks nonstop from here until up to 5 business days from now.  In some ways, perhaps nothing has changed in the last ten years…

 

Shopping, now with less buying anything

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QR Code Groceries

While it seems somewhat silly in the form of a grocery store with no products, just photos of items and QR codes, the Tesco example in this article from Ubergizmo does make a lot of sense:

Yihaodian has already done something similar on a smaller scale by sticking up posters in subway and bus stations, while in South Korea, Tesco has launched something similar where customers can shop for groceries at the subway while waiting for their trains.

Finding Fall

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Otherwise known as me making new footage for use in classrooms this academic year…