iPad is starting to work for the creatives

Posted on March 3, 2011 by IdeaMonster

A while back I considered the iPad to be nice timekilling tool, but not really a device to create content. Well maybe if you’re a writer and have a keyboard dock you can use it for work. But most other kinds of creative activities were out of the question since the apps were baby-apps, not too powerful and not too serious. That changed a while ago when apple released iMovie for iphone. Sure it’s not Final Cut, but it’s a start – you can be on a bus and edit a video you shot before. This opened up a lot of new possibilities, but it looked like that was about it. Photoshop for iOS is a big disappointment, because of it’s lack of serious tools and layers, and those painting apps, well , they’re for painters not designers.
Sure there’s iFontMaker which is pretty useful and can be considered productive. But yesterday garageband came into the spotlight, because frankly, this is an app in which you can actually do something. Just like iMovie. It’s not a time killer, because if you’re into music making it’s the first big app that doesn’t just let you play with some sounds but also records them and let’s you arrange them. This is big. Sure I can’t imagine a real photoshop or illustrator for mobile devices just yet, but who knows. It’d have to be stylus operated though and that doesn’t sit well with capacitive touch displays. And making a company logo with just your fingers is only good if it’s a logo for fingerpaint selling firm.
But finally we can do some music and that’s great. I can’t wait to see ableton and other bigger players make an approach at this. The new iPad is as capable as the computers from a while back if not better. So the only thing stopping the expansion is the user interface. It has to be redesigned and it has to be done good enough to allow some serious work. Exciting times!

Picasso vs Mac Finder icon – “great artists steal from great artists” ?

Posted on January 9, 2011 by IdeaMonster

The Picasso’ painting “Two characters” looked a little similar to me, when I saw it in a photobook recently, so I searched the web and noticed that some other sites also picked that up. It seems like the finder icon is strongly “inspired” by the painting. Sure it couldn’t be exact (aside from the obvious reasons) because it’s a bit too sad and depressing. But still, can u see it?

Apple + News Corp. = The Daily?

Posted on November 22, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Apple is pushing forward the magazine revolution by cooperating with news corp. and they want to create a tablet-only newspaper. This is revolutionary and exciting for a couple of reasons. One – right now the tablet papers are “versions” of a regular paper. This one will be completely 1’s and 0’s so less trees will die in the process. Good.

There seems to be a lot of discussion about it recently, but mostly content-wise or about their future plans – i.e. more electronic only but high quality content publications. And yet everyone seems to be missing one point – since we already kinda know how a tablet magazine should look and work in terms of visuals and interface, is it the time for an “apple style revolution” again? Will they invent a tablet newspaper interface of their own, or will they simply base it on the best ones out there (Flipboard). ?

We’ll probably see sometime mid-december. And if the interface will be new it might be a start for A LOT of change coming soon to the tablet publishing industry. Well unless it’s actually any good…

Creative Windows ad – mac vs pc all over again

Posted on November 11, 2010 by IdeaMonster

The Mac vs PC war has been fought ruthlessly all over the interwebs for at least a decade now, both on the advertising and on social front. And as with any controversial subject there are fans of both sides. But Microsoft didn’t really make creative ads before, and now it’s trying to show that PC’s are not “square” and “office and games” only and can be used to make really nice, creative things. Good! Because in the end the machine is just the means to achieving a goal that comes up in the mind of it’s creator. And the mind is not yet branded with any logo. See the cool video below :

Creative destruction

Posted on November 10, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Here’s a cool idea – let’s buy those overpriced apple products and then destroy them for the sake of art. If it won’t catch on we’ll be a couple thousand dollars behind budget, but if it does we might actually sell the prints and get the money for even more gadgets to destroy. Some we can even spare and use perhaps? Naaah. Michael Tompert is an artist that specializes in destroying apple products and photographing the results. He uses sledgehammers, blowtorches and other tools not necessarily associated with electronics-care. And for some odd reason that twisted, colorful metal looks really, really good. But kids don’t do it at home! More pictures after the break.

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The web is moving away from Flash

Posted on October 27, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Many people were skeptical at first about the Flash VS html5 war, but it seems like HTML5 has already won, as after 6 months from apple’s decision to ban flash, HTML5 has now over half of the online video. Which leads to a simple conclusion, that in a year we won’t be seeing flash all that often. Maybe it’s start to learn some new tools?

iPad brief review

Posted on September 13, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Since everything has already been said about how it’s beautiful, but no flash. How it has a long lasting battery, but doesn’t have a USB port. How it’s fast and portable but the operating system is a bit stripped.
Blah blah blah.

Since everybody knows all the tech specs already (and if not you can just look it up) I’m gonna focus on my impressions on using the device. Because in the end who cares if it does that or doesn’t do that if you hate every second spent with it. Allright then, let’s start from the basic.

It’s just a giant iPhone

No. This is like saying a soccer ball is just a bigger tennis ball, when both have different purposes and are used quite differently. What iPad is – is the revolution that the web was waiting for – not in the content and not in the delivery methods (that’s why flash doesn’t matter here) but in the form factor that’s easier and better for the web. It was the first big hit in the tablets but now, as I said before we’ll see a whole bunch of other ones, cheaper and more accessible. And in that respect it doesn’t matter if they run iOS, android or some crippled version of windows. Or linux. What matters is the way to interact with the internet is finally changing for the second time since internet was born. (this first one was text commands, then came the graphically intense websites and online videos).

So do I like it? Yes. In fact it’s become used more for everyday tasks than my laptop. I can carry it around me all the time since it’s pretty small and light, so I take my things with me everywhere. As simple as that, holding the internet in your hands is the way to go for the internet itself. And it doesn’t matter if you choose an apple device for that or something else. It has started and we’re sure even Nokia will make a similar device soon.

mobile creativity

Posted on June 15, 2010 by IdeaMonster

The new iphone is out and aside from the fact whether you like it or not it does bring one thing that is truly revolutionary. And it’s not the hires screen.

Think about it – having a 720p camera in your pocket and imovie to edit it on the go will break apple’s own division of mobile products being only for consuming media while computers being the tools to create.

This changes everything because the best camera is the one you have with you, and using free time (like on a bus) to edit it will result of more creative things done “in the moment”.

And higher quality plus having your tools with you all the time is the path towards better digital media and perhaps youtube 3.0

Exciting times since now all other phone makers will make a video editing app and the trend will spread.

Also expect more virals ;)

David and Goliath

Posted on May 26, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Today something a little bit creepy had happened. For the first time (probably ever) Apple’s Market Cap exceeded the one of Microsoft. Yeah, I know. We’ve been always under the impression that the Microsoft empire will forever be there as the most powerful and evil monopoly. As they say in cheesy movies – with great power comes great responsibility. And since Apple right now has the upper hand, we’ll probably see a lot more “influencing the world” on their part. Remember apple fans being mad that people were choosing Windows platform and PC’s? Well right now they’re forced to choose HTML5 over flash for instance. And there’s a new iAd (html5 of course) going to be released soon. So is apple going to be evil?

Or maybe in the modern world, where google, apple and microsoft each try to stand by google’s “don’t be evil”, no big corporation can actually be the good guys or they’ll loose the fight? As I always said, I use apple products and I like them, both the operating system and the devices. But I don’t want MSFT to fall, just like I don’t want to see Google fall. There needs to be competition! There need to be windows7 tablet devices. And Android tablet devices! And if both of those run flash, we’ll just wait and see who comes out of that little fight alive. Because being first doesn’t always guarantee success.

I personally hope that we’ll be able to still creative memorable and innovative advertisements instead of being stuck with all that “interactive html5 toy story bullshit” that we’ve seen a few months ago.

Current design in the past?

Posted on May 11, 2010 by IdeaMonster

How would apple’ website look if it was designed right now but they had the products of the past? Well a guy named “newtonpoetry” made nice mockups of the apple site circa early 80’s. It’s really fun to watch. Enjoy!
apple1
apple2

Exciting changes ahead for the web and publishing alike

Posted on April 29, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Say what?

Palm had just been bought by HP. What does that mean? Actually a lot. Right now we have to major players in the tablet area – apple and google with their android based tablets. Palm has experience with mobile devices and a great mobile OS – HP has money and marketing. This means that the era of the tablet has officially started. And this will be the next step in computing, web and print.

Changes coming

That basically means that in the precise moment of market saturation with these devices there will be a point in which some publication will receive more “hits” through slate devices than through normal print. Then we will know it has started. And if it starts it will also change the web into a more “handy” interface with bigger elements and touch / swipe enabled controls.

So maybe it’s time to get ahead of the curve and try to create new experiences that are “tablet-ready”? You think it’ll be a marker like “HD ready” was some years back?

Apple – Adobe war has ended in a retreat

Posted on April 25, 2010 by IdeaMonster

Adobe announced a few days ago that they’ll discontinue supporting the iphone OS in flash and other products. Sure that was a battle they couldn’t win but in a way it’s pretty sad we’ll be limited to a closed platform. But maybe it’s good for the quality control, since a flash app is pretty easy to make so there would be millions of new “fart apps” and we have plenty of those already right?

So while it’s sad that adobe skips the iphone, I think it might be for the best here. Let’s just hope they won’t get mad and stop making the Creative Suite for the mac, because now that’d suck ;)

Apple vs Adobe part II

Posted on April 15, 2010 by IdeaMonster

flashvshtml5

After a serious analysis of the capabilities of HTML5 I can say the following : Flash video is FAR better than it’s HTML5 version. Really.
It’s smoother, has better quality and runs faster. And people were complaining about flash being a resource hog. Well not entirely true.
As for other things – advertisements in HTML5 are a better option, just like simple animations on the web. It’s a standard that generally will take over eventually. But what Steve Jobs was saying is that it will replace Flash entirely. And that won’t be the case – if you want proof go watch some videos on youtube and vimeo in html5 format and then watch them again in flash. The difference is actually visible even with the images themselves. HTML5 is nowhere near being good. And since youtube hasn’t implemented it yet fully means it’s not ready yet. Because they have enough money to do it if the technology allows it.

So what’s next?

We’ll see a division or if you like a “hole” between the two platforms, growing bigger and bigger over time. And since apple is the only company not accepting flash it’ll end up having them shut off from the “decent video streaming”. The rest can be done in HTML5 and it probably will be in time. Even Adobe has some tools to make HTML5 sites that will be released in CS5. It’s all for us to wait and see, but my prediction is that both the technologies will stay with us for much longer, unless the HTML5 video will be improved, because currently it just sucks.

Useful Mac OS X tricks

Posted on March 13, 2010 by IdeaMonster

The funny thing is that it’s usually all in the OS documentation. But who reads this stuff? Why do they even make “instructions” if nobody reads them ? ;) Well we don’t read them and sometimes we find out about some stuff either by accident or in some web article (this is what you’re doing right now, ha!). First of all let’s take the dock. The dock (in my case it’s a custom Onyx dock but it works just as your regular “shelf” in Leopard…) you have a bunch of icons and a couple of stacks probably like your Documents, your Downloads, some people (like me) also have their applications in a stack for easy access. The trick is :

dock

Press Command, hold it and click on anything on the dock

That takes you to a finder window with the file selected. You can easily find where exactly is that app, that file dragged to the dock, or any element in stacks because if you open a stack and Command + click on an item in it it will open a finder window with that item highlited. Pretty cool huh ?

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the really, really last iPad spoof

Posted on February 6, 2010 by IdeaMonster

The one before was supposed to be the last one, but we couldn’t help it ;)