Moore had already predicted the rate of growth of the technology industry, but as it’s a theory we simply nod and say “yeah, that’s probably right”. So above you can see a spec chart of an iMac from 10 years ago with the new iPhone from this year. Since these tools (being computers and other things like the smartphones and tablets) are our main productivity machines nowadays it’s nice to see that we can do more and more with the power that they provide.
Source: gizmodo
As soon as the iPad came out I wrote an article here that explained why I think the web should change a little bit for an oncoming wave of touch based tablet devices. Apple haters of course thought otherwise, but now we can see more and more tablets coming into the market so we need to prepare ourselves for a little different approach. Web should be more “book-like” because sites like that will be more fun for both the tablet and computer users. That means it needs to have streamlined information in such a way, that we’re not blown away by the amount of content to perceive and grasp on the first glance, yet we know that a lot of content is there and is quickly and easily accessible.
RIM has announced it’s own tablet just yesterday, there’s a SAMSUNG galaxy Tablet out already, and there’s the iPad. These three are sort of the first of the much bigger wave since every PC manufacturer is currently working on a touch based tablet. That combined with a large decline in laptop sales, might be the first sign of what laptops did to standard PC’s a couple of years back. And we need to be ready!
Today google has a birthday. It’s 12 years old to be precise. So we wish many more years to the “Oh-not-so-evil” corporation that has revolutionized search among other things and we try to remember what was before google. In case you don’t remember check out the shots below for a brief history lesson. If you do remember these it’s gonna be a trip to nostalgia-land along with snes consoles and websites with sprite-flame-gifs. Back then we even had “back arrows” on the site for navigation even though browsers had a “back” button. Oh those were the days! ;)
HotBot and Altavista ruled unquestionably in the times of the NetScape browser (now dead) and the very first iterations of Internet Explorer.
But isn’t this a little bit too far? I mean advertising a phone that you’ll use less than your current phone? Who are they trying to catch with that idea? Besides their current competition (iphone and android phones) are also very easy to use and have streamlined interfaces that allow people to just “glance” at the phone quickly instead of the old-time “stop-and-stare”. They might be a couple of years late to the party, just like with Windows. Oh and the interface of the main screen is pretty U-GLY… It gets a bit better when you’re in the phone functions but still somewhat “modern for the sake of being cool”. And we all know how it ends when someone tries to be cool so hard…
Well some people decided to find out and the results landed them some awards. See for yourself below:
Dictaphone Parcel from Lauri Warsta on Vimeo.
Animated short film, Royal College of Art, London, 2009
Dictaphone Parcel is an animation based on a sound recorded with a dictaphone travelling secretly inside a parcel. As the hidden recorder travels through the global mail system, from London to Helsinki, it captures the unexpected. We hear a mixture of abstract sounds, various types of transport and even discussions between the mail workers. The animation visualizes this journey by creating an imaginary documentary.Dictaphone Parcel was awarded the Passion Pictures Prize in London, in February 2010.
See their website at http://www.cargocollective.com/lauriwarsta
We’ve seen it a couple of times already. Facebook made some changes and groups started popping up that were hoping to get the new design back. Some even issued threats that they’ll stop using the service if it’s not reverted tom the beloved original.
That clearly defines how people hate a change. Why blame them? It’s confusing when you come back to a familiar site to see it changed. As with music – you like what you already know- if you’ve used a site for a long time and see it many, many times you get used to the design of it as well. And it doesn’t really matter if the design was good or bad. It was “home sweet home” and people don’t like others redecorating their home. Now do they?
The whole subject came up because just recently some statistic were revealed about the popular site Digg. They had a steady 40mil uu daily and they drastically redesign the site. The result? a 26% decline in a few weeks in the US. That’s a lot of users.
So what’s the solution if you don’t want to stay behind with your design but you don’t want your viewers to go away? The simplest solution would be to keep changing small stuff constantly so people don’t have the time to get used. And if you keep the changes small the evolution will be easier to grasp than a revolution.
Examples? Think Google.
If you own a mac you’ve probably already spent a lot of cash on it. So digging deep in your pockets you might not find another hundreds of dollars for photoshop and illustrator right off the bat. But fear not as there are alternatives that are getting closer to the moment in which they can become substitutes. Sure they lack a lot of functions of the big brothers, but for most tasks they do just fine and are both around 60 dollars. So you can get a whole package for a little over a hundred. Which wouldn’t get you even the cardboard box for photoshop CS5.
Limited functionality is being worked on constantly so if something’s missing that you need in these apps it’ll probably come up pretty soon in the next version anyway. Of course if you need Adobe you’ll have to go with adobe. But it’s good to know that there are alternatives, maybe not for all tasks but still alternatives.
For raster graphics you have the beautifully designed Pixelmator and for vectors there’s Vector Designer . Both cheap but pretty capable. Abduzeedo promotes pixelmator and have quite a lot of tutorials for it, but there’s also a “Learn” section on their website that you can check out to see for yourself if the app is good enough for you.
Well it also works on iPhones and iPods, but on the iPad it truly shows it’s potential. Now imagine that as a VJ app with a couple more elements and mixing techniques and you get yourself something truly remarkable. It’s also pretty cool for making backgrounds / website elements that are a little bit random. And it’s 100% free! Screens below:
This is not actually about apple mobile devices at all. Sure they didn’t have any multitasking for a long time and now they have a pretty limited one (so it won’t drain battery). No, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about multi-tasking on a computer. And as a broad term to multi-task can be quite a few things like writing an essay while listening to some mp3′s or stuff like that.
The main problem here is whether we really need to multitask to get the job done. What comes to mind here is an example of doing a presentation or some paper and switching to a web browser to find data and references. But this is actually a limited multi-tasking since you switch from one app to the other to transfer information between them.
What else comes to mind? Well when designing it’s often necessary to be on sites like istockphoto or sxc to search for design elements. And listening to music helps sometimes too.
The main thing wrong with multitasking is social networking. Being either facebook or chats / IM’s that can take a lot of the attention away from the job that needs to be done. It can take a lot of time when a friend sends some funny link or someone engages in an important conversation. And thus productivity suffers. This of course is pretty obvious, but without the ability to multitask (like on an iPad a while ago) it’d be impossible to do anything BUT the job. And sure we can turn off the IM’s and facebook, but we usually don’t. Why? Because we can have them running in the background, so we do it.
Not many people have enough self control to really focus on one task anymore. We work on our computers with the tv on in the same room. Or work and talk on skype. Or work and switch to chat.
Sure the modern age has enforced people to do more with their time and do everything quickly, but there needs to be a limit or our productivity will suffer greatly.
So probably the best idea is to have partial multi-tasking (that won’t happen) or have a lot of self control if you don’t want to spend too many extra hours on a project.
What do you think? Do you “multi-task like crazy” ? Or do you somehow moderate yourself ?
Here’s how technology can influence creativity. Those guys used an iPad and some clever ideas to lightpaint really cool 3d letters. Look for yourself in the video below. Now that’s creativity!
Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.