blackrimglasses

Apple integrating iSights into laptops? - Interesting business proposition and it goes toward the ubiquity of Wi-Fi and the ease of use with iChat. However, more important I think is what Apple’s plans are with cell carriers with UTMS and EVDO. 3G cellular networks, a Powerbook and an iSight is an interesting proposition, as we’re getting toward pervasive connectivity coupled with multimedia telepresence.

Nokie 6630 becomes a “Music” phone - Music phone is the new black I guess. But the thing about music phones and convergence of devices in general is that it also causes the unintentional convergence of two business models that do not get along very well. It is the same thing hindering the ROKR from Motorola. The software only allows 100 songs no matter what the capacity of memory. Why? Because that memory is now serving two different companies with two different business models. Apple and Cingular. One is songs, one is ringtones. A ringtone is equivalent to a 10 dollar song. I do not see this ending well.

Tivo stops direct sales - Supposedly the underlying reason is their distribution hub going out of business. However, I suspect other underlying things. I think that Tivo is dying. Well, myself and many others. I’m a huge Tivo fan. I had a Series 1 for 5 years, and loved it like a child. But now, for 10 bucks a month I have a non-obsolete DVR with HD and dual tuners. Shitty interface, but hell. I’m sad for Tivo, but you know, the first to market isn’t necessarily the last man standing.

OnLife - This is a program for the Mac that visualizes your activity in a variety of applications throughout the day. It can be considered visualizing your consumption, exchange and production of information in various forms from aural (iTunes) to visual (webpages) and text (e-mail). The sad thing is, Windows had this long ago, with the Journal in Outlook 2000. Very sad, as that means I missed something from my Windows days. But fuck that, I have it back!

2 Billion Mobile Phones in Use - Also, that means 2 billiion computers with Internet connections in people’s pockets. Now, add API accessible GPS to that, and 3G cell and my dream from 1998 has come true.

design

Print high res from a webpage - Interesting use of CSS to bring print quality to the web through the use of alternative style sheets. It’s an awesome concept that I wish people like Google, etc would start using for anything that needs to be printed. As much as I love my PDA phone, it’s still quite dangerous to try to read it while getting lost.

web 2.0 software

Film Loop - King of like RSS for photo feeds, as an ambient visual stream of information. I await it working to see exactly how the stream is chosen, and if its a 1->1 or 1->many distribution model.

art

Speech Bubbles An awesome experiment with phenomenological experience and the desire of people to find information where otherwise things are blank. It provokes questioning as to the need to anthropomorphize as well as why the nascent desire to transgress boundaries is only tapped upon the provokation through existing and typical signifiers (speech bubbles).

that’s it for today. please tell me in comments if you like this. these are basically my daily New Media updates I send out everyday at work.