There was recently a big deal made of the whole OLPC program, which produced a sub $100 laptop to help children (aswell as adults actually, should have thought about that Negroponte! Oh wait, the keyboard is too small and rubbery for adults to use…) learn and play and so on and so forth and do what ever they want to do with computers. Yes, this is probably a good idea, I’m not going into the ethics at all behind it, but in general, education (if these laptops help promote such a thing) is good. As Sir Francis Bacon once said, ‘Knowledge is power.’
Category archives: Randomness
Merry Christmas + Happy New Year
Just a brief festive message to wish everyone seasons greetings, and a happy new year!
Enjoy!
More on Shure!
One of my last posts ended with me saying, ‘More on that another time…’
This time, I thought I should actually write more!
To start off, Shure are a brilliant company, I have nothing against them, and they make brilliant products. Not only in the microphone side of things – SM57 and SM58, two classic mics, but also with headphones.
Apropos Engadget among others…
Apropos Engadget’s story on a new iPod dock
(http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/201633238/) entitled “Jibe Audio’s Sound Machine iPhone dock — designed by Apple alumni.”
The article states that this company’s new iPod dock is, and I quote, “Designed in part by Robert Brunner who led Apple’s design team from 1989-1996, an era which birthed the Newton and the first Powerbooks.” Whilst this is true (I’m not contesting this fact), I don’t see the need to boast that this is by the same Apple alumni from ’89 to ’96 as this wasn’t particularly the best era of Apple products.
An incoherent UI is not going to get you anywhere… (Part 1)
The basis of a UI should enable a user (specified by the ‘U’ in UI) to interact with a computer or similar device in a fashion which enables the user to control and assess the state of the system. This, these days on most computers and media players etc., is done through an interface (the ‘I’ part in UI). While it doesn’t have to be easy and coherent for a human to understand, having it understandable and useful is generally an advantage. What I mean is going out of your way to make it more difficult and less understandable to use is not generally a good thing!
Christmas is Coming!
Just to put everyone who sees this in a festive mood, I’ve included a picture my advent calendar. Isn’t it just so gratuitously childish!
I’m thinking up some interesting posts on UI and some also on ID (industrial design), I’m finding the design of these things pretty thrilling at the moment!
Woo hoo and everything!
Finally deciding to write a post from my iPhone will probably yield interesting if not terrible consequences, but as the general consensus goes, it’s probably best just to get on with typing and let the iPhone spell checker dude inside the phone work his magic! It isn’t always the that the ‘man inside’ knows right as some of the spelling suggestions are pretty dire, though with a slight comical element!