the things we think but do not say

This post comes in the very recent wake of my new iPod touch. It prompted me to pay more attention to my current media consumption methods and it brought light to the question of how to integrate such a unique device into my life.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my life is pretty full and it seems that since we cut out TV from our lives, my consumption of media has become… ’strategic’ for want of a better word. I have to plan for it. Since losing TV, I’m no longer passively just absorbing TV and letting it wash over me like a fog. For better or for worse I now have to seek it out and be very specific about what I watch, how I watch it and when I watch it. For the most part, this post is about visual media (TV shows, movies, video podcasts) and less about music.

So if I take casual TV enjoyment off the table for a second, how, you might ask, do you keep up with water cooler conversations? Well, I don’t. Or rather, I do a very bad job of it and I’m constantly going, “Who yo talking about?”. Quite honestly, the one thing I miss the most is TV commercials. And then that was only 1 in 10.

“But what about the news? How do you know what’s happening with Brittney’s custody case?” Well, to keep up with these hot news stories I usually just read the New York Times website and since setting it to my default home page on my browser, I’m about a hundred times more current with my affairs than I was even before I lost TV.

You see, now that I know that I’m missing out on TV (and all the secondary benefits) I’m now more conscious of getting what I need from it. Maybe there’s something inherent in reading news that’s written with a sense of perspective or had a moment of reflection that I like (NY Times) that’s never appealed to me when I watch reporting of something that’s happening as it happens. I just think the commentary is better.

And one unexpected outcome is the recent realisation that the mobile NY Times is really good. It’s the same content formatted into a single column for viewing on crappy smart phones. While I appreciate the effort it took to make the ‘real internet’ on my iPod touch, the ‘mobile internet’ works pretty well too. I might start to read the mobile Times on my Touch now. It just loads faster.

So, News is taken care of. Done.

What about TV shows? “How do you know what’s happening on Grey’s Anatomy?”

For this, I had an one word answer, Netflix. But after all our best intentions, Sara and I haven’t sat down to watch a DVD in weeks. Our current queue is sitting still and it’s no one’s fault, but getting both of us to sit down and chill out to watch a TV show is harder that it sounds.

I know that once our class is finished we’ll have more than a few minutes free, but it’ll quickly get filled up with things to do for our new house. But you see… this is where my iPod touch comes in handy.

I finally found a great, reliable method* to rip the DVDs from Netflix which makes it now perfectly possible for me to watch a movie/TV show/documentary or podcast in the two 30 mins commutes I make each day. It also means that I can turn around a DVD in a day since I can rip the DVD that night and watch it at my leisure. It’s like taking a laxative for our Netflix queue.

A very new tool that I’ve came across recently was the “Watch Instantly” service from Netflix. It’s amazing. Seriously cool and very addictive. I watched a marathon, back to back, almost full 48hrs of NBC’s Heroes Season 1 using this streaming service and I’m now hooked. Using IE (not Firefox) it streams DVD quality streaming content(using fancy Active X controls) to your laptop within 20 seconds. Not bad just as long as you can find the content you want, since the selection is a fraction of what you can find in their physical DVD library.

So as far as I’m concerned, that takes care of TV and movies. Which leaves me with music.

Well, I’m a self proclaimed music whore and I’m the kind of person where I consume music constantly and voraciously. (Does anyone voraciously do anything other than ‘read’?) I think I listen to about 3-5 new albums a week which for years just meant walking into Reckless records (in Chicago) and walking out with a stack of CDs. Now, I have to admit that my physical consumption of CDs has fallen over the years to a near drizzle when it was a down pour. But I’m listening to as much if not more as I ever did. And with every good or great album I listen to, I’m tell everyone I can to get the word out.

In this age of multiplicity in tastes and channels for the distribution, keeping abreast of your passions is harder than ever. You’d think it’d be easier, for me, the sense of ‘oooh man, I’m missed this gem of a band” is ever present in my mind. Between two friends who are way more on top of the scene than me (shout outs to Craig and Lucas!), Bleep.com, russian mp3 sites, Soulseek, Epitonic.com, myspace, Pitchfork, BBC 1Xtra and the iTunes music store (not for buying just browsing thanks), I can barely keep up.

For instance, I only just heard, “Some loud thunder” by ‘Clap your hands and say yeah’ for the first time today. For some indierockanistas (I just made that up), this is probably unthinkable to have slept on such seminal work… but then maybe ‘they’ think it’s all so derivative anyway…

I’m getting off topic here, um…

The point is that I’m still consuming music and I still love it. My last three iPods plus the new Touch have all supported my addiction and I’m sure that it’s not going to get any easier. Even before I carried an iPod, I used to rock a CD player that played mp3s (a full 650 megs worth!) I don’t expect that I’ll stop buying, recommending, and listening to new music any time soon.

On a side note, when I settle into my new house, I’m going finally plan, strategise, and roll out my long lived dream of a home music server. It’ll involve a fully working PC, with nothing else on it but iTunes, Firefox and a shit load of music. I think that somewhere in there, my Touch will act as a wi-fi remote control too. But more on that in the coming months.

So, in conclusion, while my Touch hasn’t completely changed the game in how I go about my media consumption, it certainly supports and extends what I do with it, how I do it and when I do it. Which I think is that name(s) of the game these days.

Give me control and I will consume it.

*Handbrake is a fantastic piece of open source, multiplatform software that makes this whole process super easy. It takes the DVD and makes Quicktime files where every works, with none of the issue of the usual issues, like, no audio or audio which skips. The best part is that the software has tons of handy presets, like iPod and iPhone. Neato.

NEW UPDATE:

The first real, full review of the iPod touch by PC Magazine is here. Still looks pretty solid. I wants it.

Oh thank God. I might not have to buy the iPhone anymore. The iPod Touch has every feature I’d want from the iPhone without the phone part!
WiFi web browsing, Google maps, NYTimes, Coverflow, multi touch photos…

iPod Touch FTW!

UPDATE!

Holy crap they’ve just leveled the pricing for the iPhone and the new iPod Touch. Argh! And the most shocking news was the price cut for the iPhone - $200 off. What a slap in the face for anyone that just bought one just yesterday.

UPDATE!

An open letter to early adopters of the iPhone have been written by Steve Jobs. The one letters asks that they be forgiving to Apple for screwing them over. A $100 free gift certificate to Apple stores has been offered as some form of compensation, but obviously, this mainly benefits Apple more than anyone. Hmmm.

Some more thoughts on the iPod touch:

For me, the iPod touch has pretty much everything I’d want from an iPhone without the need for a new cellphone bill. So as much as one converged device would be pretty sweet, paying about $1200 a year to AT&T is something I’m glad to do without. I’ve been very fortunate you see and recently joined the corporate cell phone plan through work.

I’m probably going to be rocking my Samsung Blackjack for the next 18 months, so in the mean time, the iPod touch awaits. For me, three major barriers exist for my iPhone adoption:

1. Microsoft Exchange Server support with full ‘Direct Push’ email is lacking for the iPhone. This could be fixed in the next few months.
2. I’d have to get a new account and phone no. with AT&T with the iPhone and then get that migrated over to the corporate plan. Probably doable.
3. I already have a freaking phone! And it’s being paid for! I want to throw my money at Apple, not AT&T. This one is hard to swallow. AT&T can go bite me as I’ve never had so many dropped calls until I moved to their networks.

One aspect to the iPod that makes me so personally excited for its release is its WiFi capability. For me, this could mean that from the comfort of my couch, I could read the NY Times, check in on my Flickr page, reply to my GMail and type into my blog. Most of what I use my laptop for at home is casual browsing. I don’t have a fully functional PC at home any more, so this little fella might just be all I need.

But earlier today it hit me! A killer app that I might actually kill someone for (at least gratuitously injure).

Can someone please write a application that lets me control iTunes remotely from the iPod touch. And I don’t mean, can I play my mp3s from my iPod. No. I mean, can I control the library of mp3s that’s sitting in my house, attached to a dumb PC, from my iPod touch? Please?

This would an incredibly compelling way to utilise the WiFi hooks and its massive touch screen! Most home owners have a stationary computer. Often it is hooked up to the main stereo system in your home. Currently, there’s been very few options to control your music library and have it play through your main stereo.

Apple released the AirPort Express which has AirTunes, which lets you use your laptop to control your music collection remotely as it sends the audio signal wirelessly to the stero. But a laptop is hardly that convenient to carry around your house. For a lot of people, your laptop is your only computer and then you’re back to square one again: controlling what’s playing by returning to the physical heart of the collection. I want to have something that lets me see my collection, control it, but not necessarily be standing right next to it.

Using an Apple remote to control your iTunes is simple and cheap solution, but your control is very limited to play, pause, next track. The only other solution that exists that I know of is the Sonos. This is the solution that I’d love to have but can’t afford. For $1000 (including the $400 remote) it gives the user the ability to see, control and direct what’s being played from your computer. And yes, its a luxury to have a colour screen just for your music remote control, but it’s bound to be a great experience. Your computer can now just sit still, chill out and pump mp3s to a stereo.

With the iPod touch, I might finally be able to have something as cool, as visual and as powerful as that Sonos without paying $1000 for this one experience. It means changing your perception of the iPod from being your entire music collection, to simply being a window into your library. A sexy, 3.5″ touchable window.

Another UPDATE!

So, this’ll be my last post about the proposal I promise*.

A week ago, a reporter from CBS Chicago News contacted Britton at the gallery. He asked if he could speak to me and Britton being the stand up guy that he is took the call and didn’t pass on my info straight away.

I spoke to the reporter later that day, and being the media whore that I am, I immediately agreed to an interview the following Tuesday. We arranged to meet back at the gallery. It was my first visit back to the space after the event.

Well, I’d love to tell you that it was a gritty, tough piece of Pulitzer Prize winning journalism. And I’d love to tell you that it wasn’t a classic, fluffy, heartwarming, Human Interest piece. But I can’t.

That being said, my favourite part the video is when he brings up one of the ‘viewing frames’ while his voice over talking. It was a sequence he shot while we were standing together, ‘just being ourselves’. Painfully embarrassing to film, as we had to just stand there, basically cuddling and laughing at nothing in particular, while the camera rolled.

The direct link to the video is here. Watch out for the closing line from Vince. Priceless.

*If I get on David Letterman, all bets are off.

A quick update on the proposal btw. The original post has now gotten over 450 comments and the video on YouTube has now been watched over 325,000 times. Holy crap. It’s still amazing to me the enormously positive response.

After a few days of riding a huge internet wave, the flood of comments, links and hits are starting to calm down around here.

This tiny insignificant, gnat of a blog went from picking up accidental traffic from random Google image searches (not even real text searches!) to at one point, getting 18,000 hits in one hour. That was more hits than this blog has had in its entire lifetime.

Even though I mentioned this in my last post, I would like to take another opportunity to thank everyone for their support. Sara and I are still in shock over how much heartfelt goodwill this video has generated. We’re honored to have read so many lovely warm wishes.

Some of my favourite comments I read so far:

“You had me at laser cut foam core”
“the feel-good YouTube video of the summer”
“Just an all around feel good video. You watch this video - you’re gonna feel good!” as spoken in a strong southern drawl, by JohhnyTV.

++++
I’d like to acknowledge a few people whose support was critical in all of this:

Annette Ferrara, my friend the writer and art historian who dug the idea from the start. She was instrumental in helping me find a gallery to host the event.

Britton Bertran (from 40000), for being such a supportive gallery owner and idea patron. Throughout the build and during our initial talks, he was able to give really helpful constructive design critique that made the installation so much more stronger. I think that any artist would do well to have Britton in their corner.

Eli Robb, for his performance on the night of the opening. He brought the artiste, Serge Gandaora to life. The black cut-off t-shirt was a nice touch.

To all my friends that were so good for playing along with the ruse. In particular, I’d like to thank Emily (who also took the photo above). Also to her husband, Craig for his fantastic photos of the night that I used for the video. Also to Erin and Chad for their photos.

And to John Grimley and Matt in the studio for helping me understand how to use the bench drill and for letting me borrow the tools from the IDEO workshop.
++++
And now some answers to the growing list of FAQ:

The soundtrack is by the Icelandic band, Sigur Ros. The song is called Sæglópur from their album, Takk. Please don’t sue me Sigur Ros! I love your song and think of all the people that now do too.

Everyone at the gallery that night was in on the plan. But I think there were a few people who walked in off the street, thinking it was a real opening. Thanks, random people, for making the event look more “real.”

“My Early Muir Owl” is an anagram of “Will you marry me.”
“Serge Gandaora” is an anagram of “george and sara”.

The white ‘art’ on the walls were the original 3′ x 2′ foam core sheets that I used to cut out the letter forms.

I only got one paper cut during the entire build.

The installation took about 24 hours in total. 4-6 hours each day over four days.

How the installation was made:
Each base was cut from a few bits of spare MDF with a circular saw bit on a bench drill.
The tall rods were made from 8′ length of aluminium screen door frames cut to length. Each stroke of the letter forms was a made from stacks of identical cutouts or folded together from a flattened ‘net’.

The full ‘artist statement’ written by Eli/Serge can be found here.

Sara said yes!

++++

In the end of all this, we’re just glad we can share our happiness.

Ugh.

Whenever I think I’m free of it’s grasp, I realise that it has still got a hold on me.

Why oh why must I be haunted by you?

Why must you be so damn attractive?

Why must you be such a compelling experience?

Ugh.

I thought the other day, wouldn’t it be cool to show someone your latest photos on this thing? It sure would dumbass. That’s what Stevie J wants you to think! But wouldn’t it be cool to just keep up on just those few blogs and sites you read each day without booting up your laptop? Yup. But wouldn’t it be cool to be able to only carry one device that had a camera, mp3 and phone in it? ARGH!

Damn you iPhone. Your day of reckoning will come…

Starting in the Fall, my girlfriend, partner and general ‘best-thing-ever’, will be teaching a class together at the School of the Art Institute. It has the fancy title of “Innovation Workshop” and it’s a seven week continuing studies class, mixing degree seeking and non-degree seeking students.

Funnily enough, at this point there’s no one registered for it, but hopefully in the next few weeks there’s been hundreds of people clamoring for pearls of wisdom. I’m waiting patiently for the right moment to shout, “Come on people, this class isn’t going to teach itself you know!”

I work as a designer at IDEO, which is leader in the field of design and innovation and when I was approached by the head of the school of continuing studies for the SAIC it quickly became clear that I would need some help. And this is where my partner in crime comes in. Class, meet your co-lecturer, Sara Cantor.

Now Sara works as a Researcher and Retail Planner at RTC, a retail design and strategy company. Also, with her Masters in Design Planning at the Institute of Design, she is not only uniquely positioned to talk about innovation strategy, but she still maintains many of the principles from her graduate degree.

What I’m excited about with this class is the opportunity for Sara and I to work together in a completely new way (teaching as opposed to running a business together). I’m looking forward to seeing how our fields of expertise, namely design and research, will play together to create a fair and open discussion about innovation. And lastly, I’m really excited to see how our students will be.

Our hopes are to open the students’ minds to an understanding that innovation and design are powerful forces and they are shaping the world around them everyday.

I’m over the iPhone. For real.

For the weeks and months leading up to the release I was getting more and more convinced that my life would be pointless without the Jesus-phone in my hands.

Between the hype, the growing excitement, the slow leak of information and the tremendously in depth interaction videos released just days before it’s launch, the iPhone broke new ground all over the place.

I could blame the fact that I’m a designer or blame that fact that I have Golem-level desires for ‘precious’ objects, but I wanted this phone more than any other object in recent memory. It was getting unbearable to be without one in my possession.

But the weirdest thing happened. I got a chance to finally play with one the day after the launch, and I found myself realising a few things.

1. It’s amazing.
2. I don’t need it.
3. It’s amazing.

And then I took a breath and found myself totally over it. Honestly, I think that because I’d read and seen everything about it for so long the final meeting strangely held no more surprises for me. Somehow I’d over cooked my own enthusiasm for the damn thing.

I tried flicking my finger through iTunes album art, flicking my way through contacts, pinching and prising my way through photographs and Google maps. I even tried typing. They were all as amazing as I expected.

And while my argument for wanting it so bad, ‘it’s the most seamless integration of devices ever’, I realised that I just couldn’t get excited enough to replace all my current, separate devices. I have a phone. I have a music player, I even have crappy access to email through my phone too! Clearly with the iPhone the subtle, restrained industrial design makes it a pleasure to hold, but it’s really in the interaction design that makes this device come to life in your hands. But for me, $600 is a lot for me to pay to improve the ‘experience’.

While there has been a lot of research white papers and experimental prototypes shown of multi touch technology, more notable by Jeff Han from NYU, it was Apple who were the first to show how it could be really used and where the benefits were immediately obvious.

Let it be said, this is a totally landmark device here. It makes all other products that come anywhere near this category look so… pre-iPhone.

So while I happily recognise it’s immense awesomeness, for me I feel freed from its grasp. I’m over the iPhone. At least for the next few months…

ps.

Posing for me here is a friend’s iPhone. He was kind enough to let me take these closeups of this beautiful object. The full gallery is here. Enjoy!

I’ve been quite the lucky bastard of late. I’ve gotten myself a whole slew of goodies in my possession recently.

I’ve had my new Samsung Blackjack phone for the last two months now and I’d like to let you all know that it’s pretty damn good. At least until the iPhone comes out and then it’ll be a total piece of crap. But for the next few months at least, it’s pretty sweet.

This will be my third smartphone in 18 months and I’m rather embarrassed at the rapidity of electronics renewal. Let me explain.

My first was a HTC/Cingular 2125 candy bar phone. It was great and a huge upgrade from my dumb, Samsung flip when I was on the ghetto fabulous Sprint PCS network. The 2125 was good and functional until tragedy struck in the form of a rain storm. I’m not kidding. A torrential downpour came down one night and I was dropping something off at a mate’s house. I left my car, went to put away my phone, and I think it just slipped out of my pocket. I didn’t even know I’d lost the phone until I got home!

The candy bar smart phone was replaced, at some considerable expense to me with a lovely new HTC/Cingular 3125, aka, the Star Trek phone. A super slim, very usable flip phone. It was a very excellent telephone device first, smart phone second. Oh to have a flip again! And I was perfectly happy, one handedly T9 texting my way through Chicago.

But it seems that nothing every sits still for very long. You see, my work over the last couple of years have created more and more of an urgent need for me to be available to my clients. And while I don’t have Meg Whitman calling me directly, I did have clients relying on me to respond to calls, emails and text messages as quickly as they were being sent. And all of this on my poor little smart flip phone?

Well no more. IDEO was kind enough to step in and provide me with a business account and a new phone, hence the introduction of my shiny new phone (actually it’s mostly soft touch so it’s very matte). I was thankfully also able to keep my current number, yeah! I expect it’ll have to go on my business cards now.

So, here I am. I am the proud new owner of a smart phone and alos shamefully responsible for massive amounts of consumer consumption. I think that when I was being transfered over to the business account I could just not upgraded to a new phone. But when faced with the chance to own something new… I fell for it.

And it looks as though I was not the only one. if there was any doubt in my mind as to how crazy delicious the Blackjack is right now, I have two data points.

One: I saw at least twenty shiny/matte Blackjacks dotted around the San Francisco office the other week. There are so many of them knocking around, people are dangling huge, gaudy, Asian cell phone charms to tell them apart.

Two: I was eating a rushed, rather sad, lonely dinner at El Pollo Loco in Logan Square the other night and the greasy fingered lard ass next to me was thumb scrolling his way through a game of Texas Hold ‘Em on his Blackjack. Probably while being on high speed EDGE network too.

One last tip, if you do succumb to getting the Blackjack (in the last few months before the iPhone drops it like it’s hot), then I’d recommend using the supplied larger battery back. Not only does the phone get through two days of normal use the phone, but it’s a lot more comfortable in your hand. The fascination with thin electronics can lead to soreness in the palm.

Oh and if there’s anyone out there that would like a gently used, perfectly capable, Windows Flip Smartphone, then let me know. Mines just sitting in a box.

The space where my old SIM card used to be is now vacant.

Broadcast live on C-Span this weekend, Stephen Colbert managed to pull off a massive coup giving the closing speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. He managed to insult the entire audience full of White House Press Correspondents who simply don’t know where to look or when to laugh. And best of all, he gives the President a total roasting, when he’s not even sitting less than ten feet away. I don’t understand why the WHCA didn’t expect that he might pull such a stunt. He manages to take shots at the Bush Administration, at the Associatied Press, at national media in general and of course George W. himself. Stephen Colbert’s balls must be massive indeed.

It seems that this video has had a huge impact on them internets, generating hits like “The Chronic-What!-Cles of Narnia”, but interestingly general media is apparently in two camps about his speech (that is, if they covered it at all). One camp, like I did, found his jokes the most cutting when the silence in the room was deafening. Some saw these moments as evidence of a comedian bombing. I guess Tucker Carlson will never quite got the joke after his reaming from Colbert’s mentor, Jon Stewart.

Catch Stephen Colbert’s performance here on YouTube in three pieces before it get’s pulled. Alternatively there’s a edited version here on Google video. And finally a transcript of the entire speech can be found here.

Sorry for all the links but it’s an exciting story.

Flickr is one of the reasons I think that the internet is getting past it’s awkward teenage years. From the internet’s infancy when all pages read, ‘Welcome to My Home Page’ with a repeating graphic of cat paws, or ‘The significance of crystaline deposits in Northumbria’, the internet has come a long way. Now a days, you can’t gesturally browse your mouse without bumping into some NSFW* material. But things are really starting to shape up here as the back end technology is starting to talk to each other. And as the writing is getting funnier.

30 Boxes, Wordpress, , Google maps (double true!), Bleep, Audioscrobbler, Google Mail, Engadget, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Skype, Lifehacker, ARS Technica, Product Dose, Gapersblock, Craiglist, Anonymous Lawyer, DP Review, Maddox, The Framley Examiner, Myspace, Hub, are just a few of the things that makes the wonder what used to do before I had easy access to the internet?

While I know that it’s not a big deal to anyone else, but today I broke through 10,000 views on my Flickr page and I think that’s great. Thanks to everyone that’s gone to view my photos.

What are the reasons, sites or people that make the internet significant to you?

*(Not Safe For Work)