Back in January I had a good look at the iPhone and Jefferson Han’s work on multi-touch interfaces (here and here). And for those of you looking to gain some kind of contextualization on this fascinating and highly topical area of interface design I’ve recently come across Bill Buxton’s historical overview.
I casually mention these only by way of introduction to Microsoft’s (ahem) “new paradigm in computing”, the Surface computer. Here’s one of Microsoft’s own promotional videos:
For something a little more illuminating, and that briefly includes schematics showing the innards of the Surface:
And for the inner geek, here’s a full 18-minute test-drive of the thing:
Yes, it’s pretty impressive (although the thought of that bog-standard PC running Windows Vista hiding inside is a bit off-putting). Some thoughts:
It’s not clear how the security issues will work. I mean, have you ever transferred data from one device to another without generating security prompts? As these will be public devices it seems inconceivable that security will not be a huge issue, and yet not once do we see anyone even inputting a PIN number in any of the videos. As if!
Will all manufactured objects become ‘tagged’ in the near future to allow interfacing with surface computers?
If so, will there develop a universal tagging language that will be understood by all “surface-compatible” products?
Can we predict a new job description: Surface Designer?
I do think there is a certain inevitability about this type of product.
The ability of the Surface to act as a ‘docking station’ for mobile devices calls to mind one of McLuhan’s Laws of Media: if you push a technology to an extreme it flips over into it’s opposite. In other words, as mobile devices have gotten smaller and yet more powerful, the tendency for miniaturization flips over into single large device that many of them can simultaneously attach to like a Mother Ship.
Doesn’t the Microsoft Surface remind you of those black glass-topped gaming tables you used to find in pubs? Space Invaders, anyone?
Of course there are those who quite rightly question Microsoft’s presumptuous and overblown claims for their product: British multi-touch interface designer Andrew Fentem has a reasonable and well-argued critique of both Microsoft and Jefferson Han here. Fentem’s own Spaceman Technologies website is well worth checking out by multi-touch aficionados.
Finally, irresistibly, if only to puncture the corporate pomposity of Microsoft:
A few days ago I was asked by the South Wales Evening Post to record an interview with Lord Sebastian Coe. I met up with Post reporter Shaun Greaney at the Liberty Stadium and was ushered into a rather soulless reception room where the interviews were to take place. After giving speech elsewhere in the building he emerged (with small entourage) for interviews, and fortunately we were first up. I just set the equipment up and lounged on the sofa, from which vantage point I took a couple of photos with my N70:
From left to right we have Coe’s PA (I think), Lord Coe himself, Shaun Greaney with his back to the camera, and Neath Port Talbot council leader Derek Vaughan. On the table you can see the Audio Technica 4050 used for the recording, with a nice yellow mic lead snaking down to the Marantz PMD 660 sitting on the chair. The recording quality was fine, only slightly spoilt by the hum from the air-conditioning. Here’s the recording as it appeared on the podcast:
The podcast has disappeared from the Evening Post site now, but you can read Shaun Greaney’s reports here and here. Subjects talked about include business opportunities offered by the forthcoming 2012 Olympics for businesses in Wales, participation in sport, his feelings about his involvement in the 2012 Olympic bid, his ties with Swansea, and of course the already infamous £400,000 logo:
What nuggets of wisdom can I pass on from this little experience? Well:
Always check and double-check your equipment before you go.
Be nice to people. Know your place in the scheme of things.
You never know what you’ll be up against, so be prepared to be flexible and adaptable.
Get there on time.
Keep record levels on the conservative side. You’ll lose a bit of quality, but you need to ensure you don’t get any overloading (which in this context is just plain fatal).
When submitting your work, provide as many formats as possible.
Yes, I really enjoyed it. The beauty of this kind of work is that it’s live: there’s no room for mistakes and no going back. You need to be alert and thinking on your feet…
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YouTube
I note with interest that YouTube have launched a series of regional sites, including a UK service. Apparently there are nine regional sites now, with more to follow. According to YouTube co-founder Steve Chen the aim of local sites was to offer tailored services for each country (full story here).
We want to create features unique to certain countries, so if mobile phones are particularly popular we would introduce more mobile features.
OK. Certainly having own-language sites makes sense. However, my guess is that:
This is going to make copyright negotiations a lot easier for them. Most copyright agreements are territory-specific, and of course the Internet has completely undermined that principle. Re-territorializing content is going to make content management a lot more straightforward: this is clearly becoming a big issue for them as lawyered-up media production companies sniff around Google’s vast cash mountain…
Presumably this also represents some kind of network reconfiguration designed to take the strain off the main site. Anyone who’s tried to upload a video recently will have noticed how slow this has become: it used to take 10 minutes or so for a video to become live, but recently that time has shot up to around 12 hours. The thumbnail from my POGO video took about three days to appear!
The Wild Wild West of the electric frontier just got some more fences.
I haven’t done that much commercial design work for print - just a couple of small magazine adverts - so this unusual job allowed me to get a bit of practice in without a paying customer peering over my shoulder:
A friend of mine has a) an apiary and b) a shop. Ergo, he makes and sells his own honey. He gave me a dozen or so jars from this year’s crop, a couple of sheets of Avery J8161 labels, and asked me to design a ‘Chloe brand’ label. This is it:
It’s not brilliant, but there we are. Typography is definitely not my forte, for one thing, and I probably should have concentrated more on Chloe’s face. I don’t think I’ve done enough to establish what the ‘Chloe brand’ means or represents, either. Still, it does look good on the jar, and the colour scheme is effective: it would certainly stand out on the shelf.
