The Talented Mr. Bleecker
Brilliant ideas excerpted from lunch with
Julian yesterday:
American/Japanese crossover restaurantsAmerican food served like sushi. Tiny little burgers, pizzas and apple pies.
Sushi served 'american' style: big, and eaten with two hands. Imagine a 10oz Toro patty on rice buns.
Improving searchThe Google search algorithm should really take into account birth order and your bench press. (i kind of get annoyed when my little brother occasionally pops to the top of a '
Kruzeniski' query)
Apple Tax
A couple weeks ago I posted a
photo on Flickr of my less than modest iPod collection, which prompted a question from my French
Canadian colleague
Raphael:
I didn’t want to know, but that’s usually a good sign that I probably should. So, here goes:
I started buying music from iTunes in late 2005, and since then have spent $820.38. I started buying TV shows about a year ago and have since dropped $205.74 on 5 series season passes, a set of 15 Daily Show episodes, and other odd shows here and there. That brings my iTunes total to $1,026.12.
Now, devices. I bought my first iPod in the summer of 2003 (when I was interning at Microsoft – hey, the
Zune wasn’t out yet!). Otherwise, the rest of the following were bought in the last 24 months. I’ve listed them in order of purchase.
15GB 3rd Gen iPod = $400
Power PC iMac = $1200
512MB 1st Gen iShuffle = $99
1GB 2nd Gen iShuffle = $99 (it was a gift, so it doesn’t count)
8GB 2nd Gen iPod Nano = $250
Apple TV = $300
8GB iPhone = $600 (paid for by my company, so again, doesn’t count)
And while it’s obviously not a device, but since I don’t really buy much Apple software, let’s throw OSX Leopard on the devices/product list.
OSX Leopard = $140 - $100 = $40 (I used my $100 iPhone rebate!)
That brings my devices total to $2,289. Add my iTunes bills and my grand Apple expenses total comes to $3,315.13
Now, if we divide that by the 3 years that I’ve been a customer, I on average send Apple $92.08 every month. This might seem like a lot, but my Apple “investment” really started growing when I cut off my Adelphia (now TimeWarner) cable TV. My cable bill, including $45 for internet, started off just shy of $100 a month but steadily increased to around $130 before I killed it. If I add my monthly Apple charge of $92.08 to my internet bill, I spend $137.08 monthly for my entire web & media content and players system.
A more fair comparison would really be to contrast
just my iTunes TV content bills ($165.75 / 24 months = $8.57 per month!) to my old cable TV costs, but the players infrastructure I’ve bought to host the content isn’t insignificant. Even so, at worst, being an "early adopter" costs me extra $7.08 a month.
The Petrol Pump Problem
The "petrol pump problem" emerged from a conversation with
Jones a while back, and stems from a stupid error I found myself making at some gas stations.
Compare the pump above to the pump interface below, found at other stations:
The difference is small but significant. The first has large labels with smaller buttons above to select the petrol grade. The second example has large labels that
are the buttons. The problem I was experiencing with the first example is not a positioning and/or manipulation problem familiar to common industrial
ergonomics. By ergonomic measure the buttons are appropriately positioned on the pump. For the most part, they fit to me. The problem is that the label and button are separate. I want to them to be the same; I keep trying to press the label. The problem is one more familiar to software usability, and reminds me of the shift that has occurred on the web where the label is now usually the target. It's been a while since I've seen "for this, click here". "this" is generally the link itself. Indirect to direct manipulation.
The proliferation of
touch in to
personal devices and
public interfaces is pushing that model out to the physical world. Perhaps its a sign that I spend too much time on the internet, but this is a shift I feel I've internalized and suspect others are as well: There are no more buttons, we expect everything to be its own button.
Labels: ergonomics, touch interfaces, usability
Do mobile phones dream of networked sheep?
I'm not a morning person, and in that gradual stage between sleep and awake my mind messes with me. Monday morning I was particularly unexcited to wake up, so I reached over to the passenger side pillow and mashed the keys of my phone to see what time it was. The display of my phone took an unusual amount of time to wake up...in fact, it just didn't. The display lit up soft black, the keys backlit, but the UI graphics wouldn't appear. I found myself whispering to my phone "come on, it's time to get up", but it just lied there. Like me, not quite sleeping, not quite awake. I gave up, and we both went back to sleep.
That morning, when I got in to work, my colleague
just happened to slip me this passage from
Design Noir:
"When objects dream...
Electronics are not only 'smart', they 'dream' - in the sense that they leak radiation into the space and objects surrounding them, including our bodies. Despite the images of control and efficiency conveyed through a beige visual language of intelligibility and smartness, electronic objects, it might be imagined, are irrational - or at least they allow their thoughts to wander. Thinking of them in dreaminess rather than smartness opens them up to more interesting interpretations."
Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects, Dunne & Raby, p.8
I think the universe is messing with me too.
Labels: design, electronics, mobile phones
