Went to see the… disk-driving of this, last friday. Good stuff.
[The] Premier of Taiwan was ordering an investigation into Apple’s Slide-to-Unlock” patent. I thought there was more to this story because getting the Premier of Taiwan to investigate a patent and making it so public in such a short time after the patent was granted, stunk. We later found out that Google’s Eric Schmidt was coming to Taiwan and was working with the government on a new project. Ahh, the stench has a name and it’s Google; in particular, Eric Schmidt. Schmidt made it clear that it was war on Apple’s products and they promised Android OEMs that they could use any of Google’s patents to wage war against Apple in court. #
So Google Reader was redesigned and its social features moved to Google+. I’ve been an avid user of Reader since their last redesign years back (also tried the first version, which was in a word: ’poop). I’ve made wide use of the sharing and commenting features every single day, so naturally this hits close to home. Now I’m not adverse to change; except when it’s executed with someone’s head up their own poophole. Let’s count the ways, shall we?
- All the people I was following I’m no longer following.
- All the people that were following me are no longer following me.
- All of my shares, are gone. Poof. Sure, you can export them as JSON… Yay… That’s… so helpful.
- No keyboard shortcuts for sharing. It used to be shift-S to share, shift-D to share with note. Now you have to click the (diminutive) +1 icon. Why? Because Google is dogfooding itself, and the +1 service doesn’t have an API that would let them write keyboard shortcuts, because… well… it doesn’t have API’s period. See also the platform manifesto.
- +1’ing an item doesn’t share it to your stream, you have to comment on it to do that.
- Sharing an item from a feed, in which the item’s link is not to the item itself, will share the item linked, not the feed item. Example: if you +1 one of John Gruber’s linked items, you won’t be sharing his commentary, which in turn means that your own comments won’t make a lick of sense. Nobody thought to test this? Are you kidding me?
- Instead of a stream of normal feeds and curated feeds (Reader), I now have a stream of feeds (Reader) and a stream of absolutely everything, think games, shares, tweets, check-ins, posts, cats, dogs… (Google+). Which means that the more people use Google+, the more noise will enter my stream. Gone is the clarity and purity of ‘one tool for one job’.
- Add to that, the Google+ stream is like the Twitter stream; you’re not really meant to digest everything in it. Which is opposite of how I consume my feed list and other people’s feed shares. I absolutely want to consume everything. It’s important to me! I used to have an unread count of unread shares and comments on those shares, in Reader for this exact purpose. No more.
Now I get progressive. I do. I’ll gladly tell people to sit down and shut up if they’re just being reactionary to change. But this isn’t just a matter of things being different, yet the same; it’s a matter of ill considered change for the worse, without thinking about what a tool is used for and what details makes it really good at that job.
An ex product manager of Google Reader doesn’t think the changeover was as smooth as perhaps it should have been.
Not to start that whole thing again, but where Apple has had a knack for bringing progressive products to the consumer market, Microsoft has always had a knack for creating videos about the kinds of products it would like to be able to bring to market… but never does.
The latest is the Productivity Future Vision from the Office division, which like all their videos, looks great (and probably would interact horrible in a real-world scenario):
I suspect these videos are made not only by outside agencies (if you know different, let me know), but entirely by graphic designers who dream about interaction design, but never had to realize their ideas in the real world.
It’s a bit like having a great print-only designer design a website; it looks great, until it has to actually live inside a browser.
Dreams are for sleeping; it’s time to wake up.
Excitement at the office today, as we put to sea the public beta of our new platform, Squarespace 6. We’ve poured all of our care and attention into it, and if you build websites, or publish online, we think you’ll like it a lot.
On a personal note, I couldn’t be at a better place, at a better time.
[During the production of The Empire Strikes Back] The art department experienced an awful setback, when Stage 3 at Elstreet Studios burned to the ground. “Stanley Kubrick had built a hotel for The Shining, and they kept on covering it with salt, which was melting, so the studio was a real mess,” says [Empire Strikes Back Production Designer, Norman] Reynolds. “And it was cold and it was just dreary, really dreary. And then the hotel set caught fire and the stage burned to the ground. It was a tough time, actually.”“The still photographer on The Shining, Murray Close, took a wonderful picture of Stanley standing in front of the smoldering remains, and he had a wonderful smile on his face.” says Boone. “I saw a print of that, but Murray was forbidden to have that picture published.”
From Star Wars: The Blueprints, page 94. Murray Close was 19 at the time, and worked with Kubrick for three years on The Shining, a period he talks about in this interview.
Norman Reynolds recalls that [legendary production designer, John] Barry was dumbfounded one day while working with Stanley Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange. They were on an apartment set and, although the fridge would remain closed throughout the scene, Kubrick insisted that Barry fill it with food props that the character would’ve stocked. “They had a bit of a falling out as a result of that,” Reynolds says. [p101]
Stanley Kubrick attended the funeral of the John Barry, the the production designer on Star Wars, who had died suddenly:
“That really was a really big shock to see Stanley [Kubrick],” says Tomkins. “The only time Stanley came out of his shell. I mean, you never would get Stanley going to anybody’s memorial service, but he did come to John’s. So I was quite impressed by that, that he must have like the guy very much.” [p95]
Here’s Gary Kurtz, producer of Star Wars in a 1979 article from The Atlantic:
“The title Star Wars was an insurance policy. The studio didn’t see it that way; they thought science fiction was a very bad genre, that women didn’t like it, although they did no market research on that until after the film was finished. But we calculated that there are something like $8 million worth of science fiction freaks in the USA, and they will go to see absolutely anything with a title like Star Wars.”
And…
Initial research from 20th Century Fox using the title and a brief synopsis came back with the results that only males under 25 were interested in seeing the film. Fox then deliberately marketed the film with a view to attracting older and female cinemagoers by pushing images of humans (including Princess Leia) centerstage and referring to the film in more mythic tones, rather than science fiction. IMDB
I read this today, in Andrew Stanton’s profile in the October 17th, 2011 edition of The New Yorker, in relation to the upcoming John Carter movie:
[Disney] also nervously lopped “of Mars” off the film’s title, to lower the barrier between women filmgoers – who are famously averse to sci-fi – and Taylor Kitch’s smoldering aura.
It’s… John Carter of Mars. It’s a stable of science fiction, quite literally the father of space opera, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and, ironically in this context, Star Wars.
Renaming it is in itself ridiculous; after all, every single remake coming to your local cineplex are there because you’re already familiar the name, making it easier to sell. Beyond that, to name it John Carter puts it in amongst movies like Joe Black, Jane Eyre, and Billy Elliot…
And let’s be honest here, the Barsoom series is one long male power fantasy. John Carter is strong, sexy, clever, as good with the flesh as with the steel. Unbearably so in the books, as it were.
Now, to be fair, John Carter is considerably more expensive than Star Wars was in its time, but considering the continuing popularity of Star Wars as a franchise – despite Lucas’s best attempts to alienate his original fanbase – not to mention the success of games like Half-Life, Halo, and Gears of War and TV series like Lost and Battlestar Galactica, movies like Inception or really any of the innumerable superhero movies, including such garbage as the recent Transformers movies… that by now Hollywood would trust the general public to succumb to either marketing, or simply, an idea, a solid, good movie even?
We were in a restaurant when I got the news on my iPhone. Unable to digest the finality, we simply toasted his legacy. The couple next to us promptly raised their glasses to ours, “To Steve”.
To you, Steve. Thank you for everything.
I love Shatner, I really do. And Kirk is a great character. But aside from being a rambling mess of an argument, I wonder if he ever watched Forbidden Planet?
I don’t have anything good to say about the yet-another-round-of-unnecessary-updates Lucas has decided to go with for the new Star Wars blu-ray set; in fact I think Michael Kaminski said it best:
It’s not the quality of work, it’s the quality of ideas. You have Jar Jar being farted on in TPM and its rendered in state-of-the-art theatrical quality CG, but it’s still Jar Jar being farted on. #
At least Lucas’s old buddy Spielberg is a little more cued into his audience:
ET Blu-Ray: It’s coming. Spielberg said he wanted to poll the audience. He asked us if there was anybody in the crowd that would be disappointed if the 2002 Special Edition was not included on the Blu, if it was only the original 1982 version. He was greeted with a roaring “No!” from the crowd and said, “Well, that settles it then.” So, he strongly implied the ET Blu-Ray will be the original theatrical cut only and not even include the gun-less, penis breath-less CGI’d ET version.
On the ET SE: Spielberg said he let the immense criticism from parent groups after the theatrical release of ET get to him, which is what prompted the guns being taken out and the removal of the penis-breath line. He admitted that was a mistake and that he realized after the fact that changing the movie was “robbing the people of their memories of the movie.” He had a very hard time with that and said he confirmed what he told me in our interview that you won’t see any more digital tinkering in future releases of his films.
And at least ET was always available, even on DVD, in its original theatrical release, as pristine as the Special Edition, which can’t be said for the abysmal Star Wars theatrical release on DVD, which was quite frankly an insult.
Samsung is prohibited from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany. Minutes ago a Dusseldorf judge upheld the temporary ban, rejecting Samsung’s attempts to overturn it. In making the ruling, judge Johanna Brueckner-Hofmann said that to an informed consumer, the Galaxy Tab looks like Apple’s protected design. She added that, “The court is of the opinion that Apple’s minimalistic design isn’t the only technical solution to make a tablet computer, other designs are possible.” #
I’d like to think that, and you’ll excuse me if you’ve heard this before, that today’s ruling is an affirmation that the Galaxy range of products is not innovative and distinctive.
A great victory for true innovation.
But if Lucas doesn’t respect the need for preservation when it comes to his own saga, a new hope is emerging in the form of dedicated and talented fans who have taken it upon themselves to become de facto caretakers of the Star Wars legacy. #
Here are two ads for similar products. One of them is lying, can you tell which it is?
You think imitation leather is the biggest problem facing interface design today? Think again.
It doesn’t even make sense to break down what’s wrong with it, because it’s basically everything[1], and reveals a baffling lack of insight into how users interact with their computers.
But at least the post gives us some interesting telemetry data from the Explorer. Data that is theoretically as applicable to any file-based OS – say OS X – as it is to Windows.
Now we don’t get much data about the data[2], but it’s still extremely interesting, and what’s so striking to me, is that Cut, Copy and Paste are in fact some of the most used commands, and they’re not even available in the Finder on OS X. It always seemed weird, but for all I knew, most people never cut and pasted files. It seems they do.
Of course the Finder couldn’t merge folders until Lion, so perhaps it’s simply a matter of it not getting enough attention at Apple, or perhaps there is a genuine reason behind this decision. I don’t know.
Another thing that strikes me, is the Refresh command. Yes kids, there was once when we would have to manually refresh the Explorer to see changes to our file system. And as you can see, it is still in wide use.
No major surprises there, but it’s always nice to know what the market looks like today in terms of resolution.
Anyway.
What the hell is going on at Microsoft? How did this clusterfuck come out of the same team that did this?:
Updated: Cut, copy and paste are indeed available through keyboard shortcuts in the Finder; I must have tested wrong when I wrote this post. Thank you Karl for pointing out my error.
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Microsoft has had a history of letting Office set the direction of their interface design, which tells you everything you need to know about why the interface is getting more and more complicated. I think Paris Lemon said it best. ↩
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“This data is pretty solid and given the hundreds of millions of data points, it gives us a very clear picture of average usage across the population as a whole” is all it says, though it seems likely from later comments that it’s exclusive to Windows 7, though it doesn’t say how many users, what the demographical breakdown is or over how much time the data was collected. ↩
Samsung cited the viewscreen used in a scene in Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey as prior art in the lawsuit filed against them by Apple over the likeness of the Galaxy Tab vs. the iPad, claiming that:
In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. The clip can be downloaded (sic) online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8pQVDyaLo. As with the design claimed by the D’889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table’s surface), and a thin form factor. (Source)
Setting aside the fact that there can’t be any question in the minds of rationally thinking people, that the Galaxy Tabs treads in the footsteps of the iPad, albeit drunkenly and without much conviction, there’s the small issue that despite Samsung’s claims, the iPad shares almost no properties with the viewscreens in 2001.
- It is about twice the size of the iPad.
- It’s edges are flush with the screen, except at the bottom.
- It has ten physical push-buttons, numbered 1 through 10 at the bottom.
- There is no interaction with the device, aside from Bowman turning it on to view a video signal.
Samsung’s claim misleads by using the term ‘personal tablet computers’, when in fact there is nothing to indicate them as such. The claim also links to a YouTube video which specifically uses the words “Apple iPad” in its title.
There’s only one problem; the viewscreen in 2001 are not computers, they are, flat, battery-powered TVs. They look and and operate exactly how you would extrapolate a TV if you were looking to make a film taking place some 30 years in the future. Smaller and portable. And vertical, for the same reasons that hallways in science fiction films are never simply square. And they display no interactive properties beyond that, nor do they share such crucial properties with the iPad as its grapping bezel, or compact size. Not to mention the ability to function as something other than a TV.
It is no more prior art to the design of the iPad, than a TV set is prior art to the design of the Mac.
Read also: Joen and I follow up.
Update: Justice is served in Germany.
He also noted that one day, we’ll see a completely convincing, all CG-created human character carry an entire movie… but that day is probably still many years off. “It’ll happen eventually, but it’s just very, very difficult.” He added an interesting follow-up to that, revealing that a lot of big-name Hollywood actors had themselves digitally-scanned about ten years ago, thinking that by doing so, they could continue appearing in films looking young even as they aged… but that nothing has really come of it yet because the technology just isn’t there yet. Fascinating. #
It had been a strange, even surreal festival marked by ecstatic visions and doomsday fantasies and nearly hijacked when the Danish director Lars von Trier, in competition with “Melancholia,” announced at the press conference for his movie — perhaps jokingly and certainly stupidly — that he was a Nazi. # (emphasis mine).
In recent years I’ve come to despise journalists with a passion. To talk about Von Trier’s half-hearted attempt at humor earlier at Cannes, and describe it as being ‘perhaps’ a joke, “but we can’t know for sure, he might be a nazi! In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the burden of proof that he’s not, is on him!”, is such utter sensationalist bullshit that it’ll clear a room in five seconds flat. There was never any question that Von Trier had simply wandered blind into a bad joke with no exit, and anyone with half a brain found his exclusion from the festival to be a laughable reactionist move.
Von Trier is a provocateur, this is what he does.
A more reasonable piece of commentary might have been:
[…] announced at the press conference for his movie, in a failed attempt at his trademark provocative humor, that he was a Nazi.
If you’re writing for one of the untold number of amateur movie blogs out there, I’d still scoff my nose and consider unsubscribing if I came across as stupid a remark as the one in this quote — because I’m a snobbish asshole like that — but when you’re writing the New York Times’ story on the grand prize for Cannes, I’d expect you to plant your innuendos more cautiously, please.
You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.
— Joseph Campbell (via)
I’d be remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to point to a few cool things I’ve been tangentially involved with in the past few months.
First up is The king of Apple talk radio on CNN’s Fortune Tech blog, which highlights episode 11 of The Talk Show (featured also in yesterday’s clip show), in which one of the subjects is my Chewie entry. Yes, I’ll take credit anywhere I can, especially if I can piggyback off of Dan’s amazing work, which accompanies me on my walks almost every day.
Secondly is Jamie’s last entry in his astounding filmumentary series on the making of Star Wars, Star Wars Begins, the result of several years of work, digging up and integrating rare interviews and behind the scenes footage from the making of Star Wars with the film itself. It’s the final installment in his trilogy, following up on Building Empire and Returning to Jedi, both in their own right well worth their time. I’m credited on it for a bit of feedback and some pocket cash I threw after him when he almost lost the entire thing to one of those “it’ll never happen to me”-harddrive crashes (because what is the internet, if not a place for obsessives to come together?).
Finally, I wrote a bit back and forth with Kirby, after his Everything is a Remix and my Chewie entry back in September. After we cheered to each others success and drank human blood to our fortune from the skulls of baby animals (don’t you judge me!), I showed him a video of my further work on the influences of Star Wars, something I’ve been working on intermittently over the last year or so, and he in turn drew inspiration from it, and focussed on Star Wars in his great second video essay, Everything is a Remix Part 2 (also be sure to check out the Kill Bill video). That was back in September, when I still thought I’d have my own project done in a matter of weeks. Months later, it’s turning out to be somewhat more… exhaustive.
The good news, is that I think I know how Lucas came upon the idea of turning Darth Vader into Luke’s dad…
Nerd out.