Ex-Nokia employees posted the first video of what appears to be a completely revamped Meego mobile OS. It looks a little bit like a mix of Android and Windows Phone, taking good elements from both. I think the fact that it will run Android apps (emulated) out of the box may help the system gain a userbase. Exciting.
Video:
As predicted there are a few nice tablets out there with the recent announcments of Motorola Xoom and HP TouchPad joining the already successful iPad. These look and work well and will surely add to the revolution. So is it time to start rebuilding our user experiences on the web yet? Well we can start by using more and more HTML5 / jQuery options. And maybe take a different approach to content. Exciting times to be in the center of the new computing revolution. And I hope to see many great web designs for tablets soon.
Remember all the sci-fi movies in which people are talking to holographic clerks and whatnot? Well it slowly starts today, which basically means that if someone has a cool idea for a movie, sooner or later it will make it to mass production. Sure they’re pretty flat today, not really 3d, and they won’t tell you that you’re their only hope, but still it’s a change towards more machines in our daily lives. And what if they rebel ? :)
Take a look at the video above and you’ll see that Microsoft’s Kinect is the best thing that came out in 2010. Sure I love the iPad, but still this is far more revolutionary and due to easy hacking people use it for more than punching virtual characters in the face with their own hands.
In fact there are more and more examples on how it can bring the futuristic interfaces from some movies and tv shows to reality. And it’s gonna happen sooner than later. This is kinect controlling a 3d projection.
Moore had already predicted the rate of growth of the technology industry, but as it’s a theory we simply nod and say “yeah, that’s probably right”. So above you can see a spec chart of an iMac from 10 years ago with the new iPhone from this year. Since these tools (being computers and other things like the smartphones and tablets) are our main productivity machines nowadays it’s nice to see that we can do more and more with the power that they provide.
Source: gizmodo
This is actually more of a “thinking” subject than plain facts, but it’s pretty interesting and has been in my head for quite some time now. Let’s think about an evil example first. Do you think that macromedia making flash (well, making, buying whatever ;)) thought for a moment that it’ll cause a mass of screen blocking, full blown ads all over the internet? But on the other hand they didn’t probably think about how complicated and amazing the flash games can be, and that youtube made online video possible thanks to that technology. So basically it’s nothing new – a technology is a tool, a path that we can use and misuse (which is way more fun) to make something out of it that wasn’t originally intended.
So where else can we find an example of that? Well one thing are the LOMO cameras. Those cheap, old, film-based russian cameras became an instant hit for trendy hipsters, emo kids, and artistic souls. Taking blurry snapshots of a moving arm, a shoe, a fruit bowl. Then posting it everywhere. It all became a sort of artistic revolution, because the camera’s faults made up for the originality of the outcome. And that’s what matters.
And since we’re talking pictures – there’s the iPhone. Sure 90% of the phones in the market now have better cameras. That’s beside the point. iPhone has a bad, cheap camera but it has one advantage. Apps! People made hundreds of photography apps, both “new camera” apps and photo retouch, editing, effects, filters etc. So you can have an iPhone Lomo, an iPhone HDR (well sort of) and plenty of amazing looking pictures (and if not amazing then at least creative). Because the built in camera “thinks for you” while taking a shot. But with some clever apps and an open mind you can do exactly what you want to, when you want to. And since you have the camera with you because most of us carry our phones with us all the time, you can take a photo anytime, anywhere.
Iphoneograpy is the term for the iPhone app’s photograpy and it’s represented by sites such as :
Iphoneography.com
And also our friends from hype4.com have made a photoblog with their iphone pictures (some unaltered) at
CreativeBuzz.org
Be sure to check those out!