Music + Technology + Random Nonsense from the Music Industry, by Ethan Kaplan

Amy and I are in the process of closing on a new house. That means that the journey of home renovation and automation I undertook on our townhouse will start again, but on a larger scale. I learned a lot of lessons from when we bought our townhouse and I automated it, and will be applying some of those lessons from teh setup and “living with” the technology to the new place.

A few key differences:

The new home is a newer construction single story ranch style house. Our current home is mid ’60’s vintage and four stories.

Infrastructure in the new place is updated (power, etc).

So, as I start planning, here are some thoughts:

• IPads - In our current house, I put a 15″ Planar touch screen on the wall. That unit was $399.00 dollars retail, and I got ours for $349.00. This was hooked to a Mac Mini hidden in the wall. With the iPad, I can have a floating touch panel around the house that could do more than the 15″ and yet costs not much more.
• Power, temperature, etc - I want to MRTG up our house, meaning track analytics on things like temperature in the attic space, outside, power consumption, bandwidth in/out. If anyone knows of a good method of doing this for power and temp through IP, let me know.
• Wireless - I’m debating whether to run antennas into a central duct that goes through the house, or use Power over Ethernet to put the whole access point in the duct? The house is rather long (ranch style), so I need 2-3 non-relayed Wireless N access points for good, even coverage.
• Thermostat and Sprinklers - I’m going to use Insteon capable thermostat and sprinkler controllers. It will be pretty cool.
• Security System - The house has a security system. I’m going to try to figure out if its possible to tap into it (like the window open sensors, etc) to the Mac.
• Cameras - Any input on how to do IP cameras in an inconspicuous manner, without having to do insane cable routing? Are there any cameras that can tap into 110v?
• Sonos - its a good bet we’ll be using a lot of Sonos product to audio up the place.
• Phone System - I’m looking to use a hosted PBX with IP phones. Possibly from OneCall.com. Any input on good phones for this?

Stay tuned. Lots planned!

These are some loose thoughts on the first day with the iPad

1. It presents the possibility of a future with devices that live with you instead of around you. It is a far more visceral experience to use this device than a laptop.
2. This will not replace my laptop. My 17″ Macbook Pro is an extension of my desktop. It is a machine for work and engineering. This is a machine for lIving with.
3. It is telling that the OS is version 3.2 even though 3.5 would have made more sense. It seems Apple is saying through a version number that thee software is in a state of potentia. The sdk points to a lot of half done features, like shared file access.
4. Last night I left the device with my parents. They read a story from iBook to my son, surfed the web and played games. They will be getting a 3G one, and I have a feeling maybe two. It took em about a minute to figure the device out.
5. As an engineer of media products, this is an exciting thing indeed. Newspapers however should think more about modeless innovation and less about atomic device specific innovation. One device does not beget a reinvention of a dying model.

I made a 1:1 scale cardboard iPad to start thinking about ways we can use it for artists and music in general. Some of the findings from playing with it on this scale are that interactivity on the device is really going to come down to what you do with one or both thumb regions in every orientation.

I traced my thumb boundaries in both orientations here and it will be interesting to see what developers do with these primary interactive regions, especially with gaming. I can imagine main controls on the left or right thumb, with contextual controls for your other hand and directional through accelerometer.

A lot of possibilities for sure.

Fastest, perfect, revolutionizes, complete, powerful, comprehensive, affordable, funnest, smallest, thinnest advanced.
[From Apple - Public Relations - Products]

We all have a lot of big ideas. Big ideas that could be transformative. I have a lot of big ideas that I view as being transformative to my industry.

What the challenge is is communicating those big ideas in a way that is indeed transformative.

Our mode of conveyance is variable: text, images, powerpoints, video. The struggle for information transmission is documented and known, parodied and lauded, and more often than not, for the innovators, difficult.

I struggle with it constantly. To explain something that took me a year to make in six words is near impossible. You want to shout about all the features, the capabilities, the subtleties and the geek qualities.

Take a look at the page Apple has on their media info site however, where they show product info for all their products. Take a look then at the single sentence product descriptions.

iMac – “The all-in-one for everyone.”

Logic Express – “Advanced music creation. Affordable price.”

Mac OSX – “The world’s most advanced OS”

Apple Keyboard – “The new ultra-thin aluminum Apple Keyboard”

iPod touch – “The funnest iPod ever”

I have no doubt a ton of thought went into those descriptions, but it’s telling that Apple actually put the thought in in the first place. Try to find a page like this on Dell, Microsoft, or Sony. You can’t.

I think the key difference is that Apple built products that could be summarized in one sentence.

Compare a Dell U2711 (I have two, I love them) with a Cinema Display:

“Experience remarkable color accuracy, precision and performance with the Dell UltraSharp^TM U2711 27”W Monitor with PremierColor technology.”

vs.

“Big ideas need a big canvas”

Of those, which conveys desire for purchase?

I think the lesson here is that as we engineers and geeks build things, build not toward the feature list but toward the one sentence description.

The vision of clarity and purpose through the economy of language.