How to make iPhone buttons
LaunchPad Blog: Replicating iPhone Buttons the ‘-webkit’ way: “Well, I started digging around Safari’s ‘-webkit’ innards, and was able to to use the -webkit-border-image to accomplish exactly what I wanted.”
« June 24, 2007 - June 30, 2007 | Main | July 8, 2007 - July 14, 2007 »
July 7, 2007
iTunes 7.3 UI changes
ThinkMac Blog: “iTunes 7.3 has a number of subtle user interface enhancements that aid usability and in some cases improve the cosmetics.”
Hackint0sh: iPhone serial hacked, "full interactive shell".
Hackint0sh: iPhone serial hacked, "full interactive shell". This appears to be a bootloader shell, not an OS X shell.
L'Equipe becomes "The Team" for London start
The French sports daily L'Equipe commemmorated the Tour's visit to London with a Saturday edition that featured two front pages -- one in English.
With Marion Bartoli in the women's Wimbledon final and Richard Gasquet facing off with Roger Federer later today, the eyes of the French sports world are in London today, and both covers featured the headline “God Save le Tour!”
Only the cover was in English, although interestingly, the paper's web page is surveying its readers today on whether they speak English, with 73 percent so far answering, “Oui.”
VeloNews has posted a photo of the two covers (scroll down to “Latest photos”).
Hello New York Times/Sun readers and other “hip shushers”
The fashion section of the New York Times has an article titled A Hipper Crowd of Shushers which, despite the title is less annoying than the usual “librarians, they’re not as lame as you think!” articles that we see about the profession. I’m quoted in it, there’s a great picture of Peter Welsch DJing, a quote from Sarah Mercure and a bunch of other fun pictures and quips. The New York Sun has its own article on a very similar topic.
Jessamyn West, 38, an editor of “Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out” a book that promotes social responsibility in librarianship, and the librarian behind the Web site librarian.net (its tagline is “putting the rarin’ back in librarian since 1999?) agreed that many new librarians are attracted to what they call the “Library 2.0? phenomenon. “It’s become a techie profession,” she said. In a typical day, Ms. West might send instant and e-mail messages to patrons, many of who do their research online rather than in the library. She might also check Twitter, MySpace and other social networking sites, post to her various blogs and keep current through MetaFilter and RSS feeds. Some librarians also create Wikis or podcasts.jessamyn, l2, library2.0, me, newyorktimes, nyt
Prologue underway
Mikel Astarloza has the best early time with a 9:23.88.
Stuart O'Grady overcooked a left-hander and crashed into some barriers with a little more than 1 kilometer to ride after setting the best time at 5 kilometers.
One thing to watch are the riders' handlebars: VeloNews this morning has a story about some “clarifications” to UCI rules that have caused some riders to switch their aero bars. At the Dauphiné Libéré, officials seemed to be focused on whether the rider had more than 2 points of contact with the bars, but now they're more concerned with the angle of the extensions, which they want essentially parallel to the ground. Some riders were experimenting with variations on the more steeply angled position (the “Praying Landis”) that Floyd Landis used last year.
Dave Zabriskie sets out in the Stars and Stripes. By the way, he's got “These colors don't run” printed on the inside of each sleeve. You can see it in this photo (look at the large version, on his left arm). Zabriskie is fastest at the time check. Coming to the finish now, and Zabriskie sprints to the line at 9:22.98. I don't think that will last.
Right behind Zabriskie is Caisse d'Epargne's Vladimir Karpets, and the former white jersey is very strong: 9:16.77 takes over the lead.
Robbie McEwen looks like he's out for a club ride, and comes in at 9:59.15.
Discovery Channel is wearing jerseys with big green stripes across the arms and back, as part of Discovery Channel Goes Green. The team will plant trees in Mendocino to offset the team cars' carbon emissions, and an additional 30 trees for each stage win or leader's jersey a Disco rider wears.
Prologue preview: Let's race!
It's time to kick it off -- the Grand Depart comes to London! It's a fairly straight, very fast 7.9-kilometer (4.9-mile) course starting at Horse Guard's Parade in Whitehall, passing the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, then Buckingham Palace and the Royal Parks. Here's an interactive map of the race course, which also offers a flythrough of the route. PezCyclingNews rode the route during a normal day and offer photos of the course.
Riders will scream through the London tour that many of us have enjoyed during a 90-minute ride on a double-decker bus in under 10 minutes. Favorites for the day include 2 Britons, Brad Wiggins of Cofidis and David Millar of Saunier Duval (who may have overtrained for the occasion), as well as Fabian Cancellara of CSC, who smoked the opening stage at the Tour de Suisse in June. Among the Americans, Dave Zabriskie has a chance, but the short course and his early start time work against him. George Hincapie was 2nd at the prologue last year, and Levi Leipheimer already has 3 time-trial wins under his belt, although none came in Europe.
CyclingNews offers a look at some of the bikes riders will race today and a photo gallery.
I've posted a full list of start times over at TdFwiki.com, which is a new site I'm working on, that hopes to provide a somewhat more structured way of surfing information about the Tour. It's a wiki, which means you're welcome to add content. My hope is to have each rider's daily results on a rider page, as well as full results for each stage on a stage page, and daily standings for each competition. There's a core group of volunteers working on the site, including Nancy Toby from TdF Lanterne Rouge, and we welcome more help -- feel free to sign up and start hacking!
I've also set up an account at Twitter you can use to track race and site updates in real-time.
Also:
Cycling.TV's Rebecca Charlton offers a video preview of the prologue course (Windows Media)
PodiumCafe.com | Le Tour '07: London Prologue Live!! -- an open discussion thread on the day's stage
Live VeloNews ticker starts at 11 a.m. Eastern.
The CyclingNews live ticker is also available in a mobile version at http://live.cyclingnews.com/wap/.
July 6, 2007
Wheels for Your Wall
A couple of years ago at ICFF, I met the guys from Flavor Paper. In the middle of a Javits center bursting with enough brilliant design to keep a junky like me enthralled for weeks, Flavor Paper’s booth stood out—as did the slightly disheveled guys with an unmistakable passion for wallpaper.
The New Orleans-based maker of boutique wallpaper had a thrillingly over the top booth swathed in a crazy quilt of their eye-popping patterns. Periodically I check their site to find a wild new pattern for my notional dream house and so stumbled across the following titled “Flower Pedal.”
Designed by Dan Funderburgh and perfect for your home bicycle workshop.
RoughlyDrafted on no Flash
RoughlyDrafted: The iPhone Threat to Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Real, BREW, Symbian: “The version of Safari running on Apple’s iPhone shows the web without Flash, Windows Media, Real Player, or Java applets. It’s not just a case of few plugins gone missing. Here’s why Apple chose to cut proprietary content from the web, and what it means for Adobe, Sun, Microsoft, Real, and other mobile makers.”
How many of your team’s ideas are in the iPhone?
With the launch of the iPhone I’ve been hearing many grumblings from interaction designers who’ve worked for various, well known consumer electronics companies. We can all see in the iPhone aspects of our concepts from years past that were brushed aside or died prematurely. Our concepts are suffocating under the pile of NDA verbiage, never to see the light of day. What sets our mere concepts apart from this final product however, is a company with leadership who has the fortitude to take the risk, find the budget, and push the technology for the single cause of designing compelling user experiences. Apple got it right.
For my own concepts, the valuable lessons I’ve learned are that I could have done a better job navigating internal politics as well as communicating the advantages of the concepts. In some cases, I was unable to translate my passion and conviction about experience design into reasons to build the products. The accelerometer (portrait to landscape) my team wanted to include in one of our designs was killed simply because it cost $20 per unit. Playing with the iPhone, one can see that’s $20 well spent.
In the end, everyone I’ve spoke with are tremendously thankful for the iPhone’s release - this product launch has single-handedly raised the bar of what’s possible. Since the rumors of an iPhone began last year, there was a shift that happened within many consumer electronics companies. My hope is that this is only the beginning of change in the roll of interaction design within consumer electronics.
This is the opportunity for all the UX Managers, Directors, VPs, CCOs, and CXOs to push for more. For some it will be a new seat at the C-level, for others it will be to move the UX team into a visible location on the org chart - out from under Engineering, Marketing, Research or QA, and for others it will be creating an interaction design team from scratch.
If your company still needs convincing of the value experience design brings to your product and you’re in need of more funding for staff, training, etc., I encourage you to create a case study of the iPhone and pitch it to your CEO. With the rumored 1 million iPhones sold in less than a week, now is the time get what you need.
Speculation as to why iPhone doesn’t include Flash
We all know that the iPhone doesn’t include Flash. Various theories have been aired.
I have a theory that I haven’t heard yet: Flash wasn’t included because it crashes so much.
I have some evidence for this. My app—which uses WebKit and, thus, supports Flash—includes a crash reporter: when it crashes, you can send the crash log to me just by clicking a button. People do so, so I see the crashes.
And you know what I see a lot of? Stuff like this:
Thread 0 Crashed:
0 ...romedia.Flash Player.plugin 0x094e8ddc native_ShockwaveFlash_TCallFrame + 344728
Thread 0 Crashed:
0 ...romedia.Flash Player.plugin 0x19367572 MMgc::GCAlloc::ClearMarks() + 370
Since Apple collects crash logs too, they know how often Flash crashes.
Given that the first impression of the iPhone is so important, I can easily imagine a conversation like this:
A: “We have to include Flash so it’s not the watered-down web.”
B: “We can’t, since Flash crashes all the time, and people will think the iPhone is crashy.”
A: “But can we get away with not including Flash?”
B: “If we do a special YouTube app that uses QuickTime instead.”
A: “That’s officer thinking, lieutenant. Let’s call Google.”
Hello, Ollie!
We would like to extend a big, warm welcome to the newest and littlest serious eater, Ollie Kottke. Congrats, Meg and Jason!
Welcome Ollie Kottke
Introducing Ollie Peter Kottke! Our son was born on July 3rd, all 7 lbs, 2 oz. and 20 inches of him. As you can see from the photo, we've both been resting a lot ever since. Things will be slow around here for a while as I settle in with my newest favorite fella. I can't tell you how cute he is, especially when he starts to cry and his bottom lip quivers and he makes this "whuh whuh whuh" sound. All of the sudden, nothing in the whole world seems as exciting as watching Ollie as he sleeps. Restaurants? Farmers markets? Food? Blogs? The web? The entire outside world? Nope, not as wonderful as our new little boy.
comments are open
? Ollie Kottke
Dear internet, I'd like you to meet Ollie Kottke.
Some vital statistics: He was born on July 3 just before 1pm, weighed about 7 lbs., 2 oz., loves to eat (and then sleep), is O.K. (ha!), dislikes sponge baths, unfortunately doesn't have any descenders in his name, both mom and baby are home and doing fine, Ollie is not a particularly popular name right now (and is not short for Oliver), and I've never been quite so content as when he fell asleep on my chest yesterday and we snoozed together on the couch for an hour or so. A little slice of heaven.
Also, I'm going to be taking about two months of paternity leave from working on kottke.org. I'll probably post a few things here and there when I can, but it won't be a priority by any means. I hope you all have a good rest of the summer and that you'll find the site again when I start back up in the fall.
Jennifer Lopez Says "I'm Not Pregnant ... Yet!"
Looking gorgeous, as usual, on the cover of the new Glamour, Jennifer Lopez discusses her upcoming tour with hubby, Marc Anthony, a very insightful conversation she had with Victoria Beckham, and the everyday rumors that she's with child. Us Weekly previewed these noteworthy excerpts:
On making her marriage work:
"We made all these promises to each other in the beginning of the marriage, because both of us have difficult careers to manage with a partner. We don't have 9-to-5 jobs; our day could be 24 hours long if we let it. So you have to carve out your time and make your agreements: 'We are going to travel with each other. If I'm working, you're not going to work. If we both have to work, we're going to make sure we keep that to a minimum.'"On the constant question of kids: "Every other week [tabloids] say I'm pregnant, and I keep telling them, 'I'm not yet'...Marc and I just saw the film Children of Men. The message of the movie was if we don't have children, there's no hope for the future...maybe that's what the pregnancy rumors are about...Maybe it's not that deep. Maybe it's more about seeing two people together and wanting to know if it's real. A lot of the time, having a baby solidifies that."On her surprising chat with Victoria Beckham:
"[Beckham] said, 'People would never guess you're insecure. Are you? Because I know I am.' It was like she had to hear it from me. And I said, 'Yeah, of course I am.' She said, 'But you seem so confident.' And I said, 'Because I am confident! It doesn't mean I don't have my moments. But you have to remember the value of your individuality- that you have something special and different to offer that nobody else can.' She said, 'Oh, I love hearing this. What you're saying is so great!' It was really sweet."On what she would tell her younger self, if she could go back in time ten years:
"The truth is, everything that's happened was supposed to happen. That doesn't mean I don't look back and think, God, I wish I hadn't had to go through some of those things. But then I think, you know what? It didn't finish me- and I look at where I am now! So I would tell [25-year-old J. Lo], 'Always follow your heart. Sometimes it's gonna hurt, but you're going to be fine.' And I am: I'm in the best place I've ever been."
Mail Gossip Bug
Here’s my favorite Mail bug...
Say I get an email, and I do a reply-all. The to and cc list look like this (only less fuzzy):
So I’m like—cool, I can talk about the Nicks, since they’re not getting this email. I start typing, gossip gossip gossip, blah blah blah.
Then I send it, and the Nicks get the email, and then the whirring blades disperse the waste into the atmosphere...
In real life I’m not some big email-gossip, so this hasn’t actually happened. To me.
Here’s the thing—in this fictional situation, I didn’t check the cc list. If I had clicked in it, then typed down arrow a few times, I would have seen the rest of the cc list, and I would have known the Nicks were on the list.
But there’s nothing to indicate that there are more people on the cc list. The scroll thumb doesn’t actually appear—in fact, the absence of the thumb indicates that the entire list is visible.
But it’s not.
'Transformers': More than Meets the Eye?
Like many in the nation this week, I took advantage of the gloomy fourth of July weather and headed into the dry confines of the local cineplex to take in "Transformers." My expectations were mixed: Many renderings of favorite cartoons on the big screen have been less than stellar ("He-Man," "The Flintstones"), but coming from Michael "Armageddon" Bay and Steven Spielberg, I figured it couldn't be totally bad.
I was, in fact, pleasantly surprised. At 2 hours and 20 minutes, the film is way, way too long; but, Bay certainly knows how to direct action-adventure/sci-fi, and there was plenty of humor and celebrity cameos to go around.
Based on the mid-80's cartoon series, which was based on the toy line from Hasbro, the film enhances the backstory of these "robots in disguise." Having battled until their home world of Cybertron was destroyed, the Autobots (The good guys) and the Decepticons (The Bad Guys) are on a race to find "The All Spark," the mysterious energy source cube from which all Transformer--sentient mechanical beings--life evolved. Of course, the All Spark has found its way to earth and humans are now involved, including an assuming geek named Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf).
a Masi Clone Project
Enjoy the Speedplay gallery that “chronicles the start-to-finish construction process of my modern replica of the 1961 Masi Special.”
More email
The state of email at Ronge: “I am still actively working on MailCore/Kiwi, and my drive is only stronger...”
makkintosshu: Regarding ‘Mail Pro’
MailKit
MacUser: Dear Apple, we want MailKit.
Free advice about a pro email client
Michael McCracken: Free advice about a pro email client: “Make sure you’ve tried text-only clients like mutt and pine. Lots of your target audience refuses to give those up—figure out why. Don’t just try free alternatives—peek in on big-business.”
Rumor: New version of iLife due before Leopard?
Rumors are swirling once again, claiming that the next version of iLife has reached Golden Master. But when will Apple actually release it to consumers? We don't think it'll happen until next year.
iPhone Dev Wiki crew releases iPhoneInterface tool
they've figured out a way to start arbitrary services and move files around
Sweet Tea time
I agree with Southerners about iced tea served in the North. Now, i don't consider myself a Southerner even though everyone north of Maryland considers Virginia "the South." I also surely didn't grow up drinking sweetened iced tea, save for Lipton iced tea mix! But the Southerners are right to say that "iced tea" should be homemade and pre-sweetened. Most restaurants in the Northeast offer unsweetened, tannic iced tea that needs 14 packets of sugar to sweeten, half of which doesn't even fully dissolve.
I love sweet tea. It's so refreshing and delicious. I've been making a version adapted from here online. It's very simple although i changed it for 3 main reasons:
1) My iced tea is never cloudy so i don't find the baking soda necessary. It's always a beautiful clear deep brown so i don't know how it could cloud. Some people say baking soda takes out the "bitterness" in tea. I don't get this either since my cheapy Lipton bags haven't brewed up bitter, even with such a long steep time!
2) 2 cups of sugar for 2 quarts of liquid, even the 1.5 cups minimum the author listed was TOO SWEET. I love sugar. I can handle sweet - ask anyone who knows me how much candy and dessert i can chow down - but the amount of sugar listed was so sweet, i couldn't even taste the tea! I first made it with 1.5 cups, which was drinkable but barely. The next batch was 1 cup = totally good! For the third batch however, 1/2 cup of sugar was just right for me. It's still sweet but the tea taste shines through more clearly. For special occasions i'll use 3/4 cup, but for regular batches i think 1/2 cup is good.
3) Sweet tea = good use for crazy mint garden bounty.
be's Philadelphia Sweet Tea6 black tea bags (i used Lipton*)
1/2 cup white sugar
8 cups water
a 2 cup glass measuring cup (helpful)
fresh mint sprigs and a little extra sugar (optional)
Boil 2 cups of water. Pour the water over the tea bags in the glass measuring cup. Let steep for 15 minutes. Lift out the tea bags (don't squeeze them) and compost/discard. Pour the strong tea into a 2 quart pitcher. Add the sugar and stir to dissolve. Add 6 cups of cold water and stir. Refrigerate until cold and serve. For sweet mint tea, i like to crush a few mint sprigs with a little sugar in the bottom of each glass and pour the cold tea over it.
* I don't use my good black tea for this because it's not necessary. With a cold beverage, all the aroma of good tea is dulled, plus think of all the sugar you're adding! I hear that Luzianne brand tea bags are the way to go, so i'll be sure to make a batch once i get somewhere that actually stocks it! Lastly, i don't want to deal with "cold brew" and "family size" bag complications. Who doesn't have some regular black tea bags laying around?
Quote of the Morning: Denise Richards
, "I am truly not one to give advice. I'm divorced and I stole my best friend's husband."– the surprisingly amusing Denise Richards, at the Ratatouille premiere, when asked by Extra if she had any post-jail advice for Paris Hilton
Floating Pool Update: Tilted Barge, Pool Closed For Now
The Floating Pool opened at Brooklyn Bridge Park yesterday to visitors (a "decent sized" crowd showed up) . However, there are some lingering issues, thanks to yesterday's rainy weather. Reader Drew went to visit the pool today and wrote to us:
Unfortunately, after being open only one day to the public, it was closed. The director, a very nice woman, explained that the rain from yesterday flooded some of the ballast tanks and tilted the entire barge. So basically one end of the pool had 2 feet of water, and the other end was overflowing. They did let some of the public on the barge to check it out and take some pictures, but the pool is closed all day while engineers attempt to fix the problem. We'll see if this gets resolved by tomorrow.He also included this photograph - you can see the tilt if you look at the level of the pool in the photograph. If they can put a man on the moon, then we're sure engineers can fix the problem. The NY Times has video of the pool. And here's our post on the pool
July 5, 2007
Introducing Templatemaker
Adrian Holovaty's new freshness for deriving templates from a collection of examples. Hello scraping.
thither design camp!
A few days ago, I posted a question about "design camps", specifically, why don't they exist? The model I had in mind was the technology geek unconference scene, most visibly implemented as Bar Camp, and most famously as O'Reilly's Foo Camp. There's also a host of tech conferences with BOF (birds of a feather) sessions and other self-organizing nerdery going on.
My loaded question got me a few mails that mentioned events such as last year's DCamp, which even has "design" in the name (sort of):
Unlike traditional conferences, there is no program created by conference organizers. What happens at DCamp depends on you. Come share your work and ideas. Tell us about some interesting UX method, explain how design fits into agile development and open source, share your design dilemma, or tell us about your new and interesting design.In the end, the event was heavily HCI-focused, as might be expected from a BayCHI-sponsored event.
Mark Rickerby pointed out that New Zealand is home to a few emerging "time limited design contests", focused on competition rather than conferencing. 48Hours is about filmmaking, while Full Code Press is a "geek olympics": Web teams take each other on to build a complete website for a non-profit organisation in 24 hours. No excuses, no extensions, no budget overruns. These events remind me strongly of the late-90's sport of photoshop tennis, and are quite close to the problem-solving aspects of design.
One big difference that I can see already is a focus on two different ends of the process: technology events are about inputs, design events are about outputs. In general, it's possible to abstract a creative solution or sweet trick out a technological problem, and have that be the focus of a talk or session. For example, at the most recent FOO Camp I participated in a session on API authentication, specifically the derivation of a new standard process for authenticating to 3rd parties for web applications. There were people from Flickr, Google, Verisign, Dopplr, and Twitter there, and it was possible to have a meaningful conversation about the problem domain without everybody having to expose their secret sauce. Inputs. As Kevin Cheng put it, it's "fun to talk with a mixed group of both engineers and designers to get energized about building stuff."
In contrast, the competitive design events above are output-driven. Participants are expected to use the event to make a thing, with the conversational parts expected at the end. Make something, then talk about it. Mike Kuniavsky's event Sketching in Hardware (see also '07) had a lot of this element, especially the afternoon wrap-up design-off that had teams converting found electronic junk into working prototypes (my team made a record/playback telegraph machine out of a lamp and a stepper motor, and I still managed to get a bit of Flash involved). Timo Arnall imagines more of these events, with "a room full of markers, spray cans, nice paper and lego... access to a laser cutter, RP machine, etc..."
The prime example of a successful design event in my mind is Andrew Otwell's Design Engaged, held once in 2004 and again in 2005. We attended the second one, and it was really something special: fairly ad-hoc, small group (~30 people), and an incredible amount of energetic participation. I think it's important that the attendees for these two events were mostly hand-picked, with DIY social events far beyond the usual eat+drink planned for attendees; you'd be hard-pressed to beat a walking tour of Berlin/Charlottenburg hosted by Erik Spiekermann. The best way I can think of to sum up the talks at DE is that every single one was delivered by a designer of some variety riffing on what they thought was personally interesting to them. Adam talked about peak oil, Jack showed comic books and alloys with low eutectic melting points, Liz described her research work in hospitals, and Malcolm threw out some ideas on the differences between access and mobility, to name a few of my favorite sessions. It was a difficult event to sum up, and takes on a special significance in retrospect because it was such a fragile, unlikely co-occurence. It was also probably one of the few TAZ's I've participated in:
The Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) describes the socio-political tactic of creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control. ... A new territory of the moment is created that is on the boundary line of established regions. Any attempt at permanence, that goes beyond the moment, deteriorates to a structured system that inevitably stifles individual creativity. It is this chance at creativity that is real empowerment.Jay Feinberg gets at this as well, in his description of geek camp events as:
...enthusiast clubs, e.g., computer clubs of the 1970s or BBS clubs of the 1980s. The clubby aspect is, IMO, expressed through an implicit or explicit hierarchy among "members." People are invited and anyone can participate, but, ultimately, there are core members and even a hierarchy of leaders who define the culture of who is really "in" and who is really "out." And, the activities at camp are, on one level, very much about being part of the club - doing things that prove one's value as a member or move one up the hierarchy of important people in the club.I liked this description enough to go scurrying for an article that Nat pointed out a long time ago, Jo Freeman's Tyranny of Structurelessness. Freeman is a feminist scholar most active in the 1960s and 70s, and her essay describes the power dynamics of supposedly-unstructured movements:
Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a "structureless" group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents, predispositions, and backgrounds, makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate structurelessness - and that is not the nature of a human group....
Once the movement no longer clings tenaciously to the ideology of "structurelessness," it is free to develop those forms of organization best suited to its healthy functioning. This does not mean that we should go to the other extreme and blindly imitate the traditional forms of organization. But neither should we blindly reject them all.Jay points out that the designers often come together out of existing, established structures (there's a rough taxonomy of job titles and professional organizations such as AIGA, if I understand what he's getting at), and don't need to do quite so much jockeying for "geek cred".
Oddly, I've begun to form a mental model of how the conference/camp ecology operates by analogy to a previous scene I was a member of, San Francisco's mid/late 90s rave underground (just think "dj is to party as speaker is to conference") There was a constant push-pull dynamic between the promoters of permitted (in the legal sense), for-profit parties, and the collectives responsible for a dizzying array of remote, hidden, and otherwise illegal events. Questions of credibility and legitimacy were a core focus, and it was always important to stay just on the bleeding edge of acceptability and risk. The trigger for this association was a talk on unconference planning given by Jo Walsh and Rufus Pollock at E-Tech 2006, effectively an hour's worth of advice on scouting, securing, and using out-of-the-way venues for ad-hoc technology events. Same damn thing as a party, with no ear-bleeding bass.
What made it all work was the same fragility that Design Engaged featured: "any attempt at permanence, that goes beyond the moment, deteriorates to a structured system that inevitably stifles individual creativity." Look to Burning Man for a long-running example of permanence stifling spontaneity. How does an event go from inspiring, utter fucking chaos to the flaccid, gormless prose of today's annual desert art social? I'm sure that being forced to worry about BLM permits and power-tripping DPW wonks cuts the tolerance level for rave camp and the drive-by shooting range.
Many of the designers I've met over the years share joy in short-lived coincidence and unlikely collisions, and I think this is a reason that the "camp" meme hasn't found a home among designers as it has among techies. Foo camp, Bar camp, Etech, and other technology events are fundamentally about repetition: geeks need a refuge to congregate in, and this refuge can be constructed and duplicated in a fairly reliable manner. Tech events focus on inputs to the creative process, tools and techniques that want to be tried and implemented. Design events focus on outputs, results of a creative process whose constituent parts are fly together at the last moment in unpredictable ways. Boris says design is "dictatorial"; how can you have a session about the last-minute flash of inspiration, except to share war stories?
(Thank you Jay Feinberg, Timo Arnall, Peter Merholz, Boris Anthony, Hillary Hartley, Mark Rickerby, Tom Carden, and Andrew Otwell for your replies)
taste visualization in Ratatouille
a series of concepts of how taste has been visualized & animated in an abstract way in Pixar's recent movie Ratatouille. the resulting dynamic visualizations of tastes designed by animator Michel Gagné include cheese, strawberry, mushrooms & their combinations, which also acted as inspiration for the final music score.[link: gagneint.com]
Will a laptop power connector kill you if you put the end in your mouth? It was a very mild shock, like licking a 9-volt battery. Just a tingle. - jjg From the metafilter podcast.
Will a laptop power connector kill you if you put the end in
Will a laptop power connector kill you if you put the end in your mouth?
It was a very mild shock, like licking a 9-volt battery. Just a tingle. - jjg
Telekinesis: An Awesome iPhone App from the Creator of Quicksilver
Quick Post
This app is ridiculous. It turns your iPhone into a remote control for your Mac. You can create apps and there are a few included (e.g. controlling iTunes, iSight image capture). Gonna try it out when I get home tonight. [via John Zeratsky]
cloverfield
The Cloverfield trailer is still up at Dailymotion, but was pulled by YouTube. Slashfilm has a good roundup of the latest about the JJ Abrams project. (Every report I heard from TED this year was that Abrams had one of the best talks (keywords: magic, mystery, storytelling, an unopened box); I'm hoping it goes up on ted.com soon.)
Big pile o beans, waiting at San Tung [Flickr]
Stewart posted a photo:
Contesting the Congestion Plan
Unlike the green tshirt-clad folks in this NYTimes photo, NEWSgrist does not support the Mayor's NYC congestion plan, mainly because he seems not to care about those of us who live in the city who AREN'T BILLIONAIRES. There are both supporters and critics of the plan in the comments section of the NYTimes City Room piece; here are a few of the objections I thought worth re-posting (favorite bits in bold):
- 6.
July 5th, 2007 3:53 pmI have a small business and use a minivan for pick ups and deliveries in and out of manhattan. I already avoid using the car as parking is difficult and expensive, so if the pick up is small enough, I use public transportation. Still, it is necessary to drive if the load is big enough. This fee would simply hurt my business. If they want to pay for this tunnel, which would be a real solution to midtown congestion, they should finance it the way anyone else would, you know, with a loan, a sponsor…a financier. This fee is anti-small business, the backbone of our local economy.
— Posted by jm
- 13.
July 5th, 2007 4:04 pm
When he proposes taxing every cab and limo fare which make up the bulk of the traffic congestion and pollution in mid-town I will support it.
Without trying to reduce cab and limo riding in congestion area where there is plenty of mass transit options instead of taxing NYC residents who live in neighborhoods where commute could be 1 and 1/2 each way if used mass transit, the plan smacks of elitism and unfairness.
Of course we all want less pollution and less congestion and better mass transit. But the plan, although with worthy objective, will only further strain rush-hour mass transit and divert truck traffic to the residential neighborhoods where asthma rates are highest.— Posted by Pete
- 16.
July 5th, 2007 4:09 pmMayor’s plan is anything but practical. In a city where it is a rare luxury if public transportation is ever on time - either for arrival or departure - his first focuse should be to implement a system that compels people to commute willingly. Using the formula that MTA has for raising the fare, coupled with the fact that New Yorkers pay one of the highest taxes in the country, his plan will make people suffer both financially and medically