Kim Bach . OrgArticles and bookmarks related to design
Hands-on with the Sony Mylo – Engadget
Engadget has gotten their hands on a Sony mylo, and it looks quite cool.
But this feature is probably more annoying than useful…
Kirk to Enterprise, I’ve lost my rave light. Can you please beam down a Mylo? The purple-blue Wi-Fi light pulses when you’re connected to a hotspot.
However: KEWL! Where can I get one?
Microsoft’s Zune aims to be social butterfly | CNET News.com
CNET (and the rest of the web), is filled with details about Microsofts Zune soon to be released portable digital media player.
The information has been made available due to a FCC filing.
Some of the details are interesting. Here’s a quote from the CNET article.
Zune owners can act as their own DJ, sending streaming music content to up to four other devices, according to documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission . With the device’s wireless networking abilities turned on, people can send and receive photos, as well as “promotional copies of songs, albums and playlists,” according to the filing, made public Thursday.
I think this is a killer feature, and it sounds exactly like some of the ideas I’ve had previously.
But will people actually use it? Bluetooth hasn’t emerged as a social technology, in my experience very few people actually enable Bluetooth except for use with wireless headsets.
I envision that I can surf the local wireless “radios”, listening in to what people in the near proximity is listening to, without their knowledge.
Unfortunately I think that Zune will come with major security features, making it impossible to surf the airwaves freely.
I hope that the specifications for this wireless technology will be open, so that it can find it’s way into other consumer products, I’d love to be able to hook my player up to a stereo without the need for cables.
I actually expected Apple to be first to market with something like this, but when they join in, I definitely expect that they will come up with a solution, that is easier to use than anything Microsoft can come up with. Something that is as simple to use as shared music in iTunes is what I want, actually that’s exactly what I want!
BusinessWeek Online: A Quantum Leap for Cell Phones
BusinessWeek Online is reporting on new ideas in cell-phone design.
The cell-phone business is ready for some change, and it’s been a while since we had any real innovation in the field of cell-phone design. For instance my new Nokia 6070 is just a rip-off on the Sony Ericsson T and K designs, being labelled as a “timeless design” by Nokia.
The design concept shown in the picture (linked from BusinessWeek Online) is by Pilotfish and Synaptics, and it uses a gesture driven UI, eliminating the need for buttons (hmm…”able to recognise body-parts”). For more design concepts, BWO has a slide show.
To me it seems that nothing really innovating in cell-phone design has happened, since Nokia made the antenna “go poooff”.
I remember at CeBIT 2000, in the euphoria of the golden age of cell-phones and .com optimism, where Ericsson were show-casing some futuristic design concepts. I especially remember a cell phone concept, that had a folding keypad, it looked sort of like a two eliptical hinged dog-tags, that you could slide apart, that I’d buy. The only other thing I REALLY noticed at the Ericsson booth was a Japanesse guy taking LOTS of pictures.
Just about then the .com bubble burst, and the business went into serious consolidation mode, cranking out one boring design after another.
But now change is coming, cell-phones and gadgets will become fashion items, Vertu – Nokia’s luxury division, for instance, is reporting problems meeting demand for their “bling-bling” luxury phones.
Last year I also had some ideas for designs for portable digital media players, e.g. embedding them into earings, I’d also like to see a transparent design, looking much like the “iPod shuffle sports casing” (picture linked from apple.com).
I actually did an experiment, having a flash-memory chip encased into glass. Unfortunately it proved too heavy to use as an ear-ring, and the heat “fried” the electronics, but it could make a nice pendant, and I think it looked cool.
Cell-phone makers: you’re welcome to steal my ideas, “If you build it I’ll come”: (Skype-Hype and my dream device).
Photo: Sony’s Mylo | CNET News.com
Sony will begin selling a cool new gadget called the Mylo (“my life online”) in September 2006 according to CNET News.com.
The Mylo is a compact Wi-Fi enabled (802.11b) communications device with Instant Messenging (Yahoo! and Google), Web Browser, Media Player and Skype clients build right in.
You can slide the screen, to reveal a keyboard, that, thank’s to the PSP like formfactor, is quite big.
Nice concept, but I agree with the comment made on the CNET review site, that Sony should just add these features to the PSP, or at least price this gadget much lower than the suggested $350.
I really, really like the form factor of the Mylo, personally I think that the PSP is too big, but as a cell phone/PDA replacement, the Mylo is ahead of it’s time.
I find it likely that I’ll continue to carry at least three digital devices for quite some time, I’d consider replacing my cell phone with a compact combined Wi-Fi/GSM phone like the one Accton and Skype we’re talking about last year.
But for music nothing on the market beats my iPod nano, and for photography no cell phone can compete with my Canon iXUS i5.
:: macnyt :: danmark :: Sig goddag til Melinda
Melinda er en smækker CoreSolo sag, med et godt hjerte (Mac OS X).
Catwalken er den boks der nu bliver delegeret til kælderen, size does matter!
LG LW25EXPRESSDUAL – LG Global Site
Wow, this new notebook from LG looks like the perfect notebook to run Linux.
And the specs:
12.1″ Widescreen Ultra Slim Entertainer
Dual Power Ultra Portable
Powered by Intel® Centrino® Duo Mobile Technology
– Intel® Coreâ„¢ Duo Processor
– Microsoft® Windows® XP Home
– Cinematic 3D Sound from Latest Audio Technology
– Faster 667MHz DDR2 Memory (on select models)
Since Apple seems to have decided that I don’t need a 12″ version of their Intel notebooks, and that Mac OS X will be exclusive to the Mac, maybe it’s time to do the ultimate switch, e.g. to Linux, the system we’ll all be using in the future.
I’m really tempted by this. It looks as cool as the Sony Vaio, especially the blue model, and at $2.995, it’s much more affordable.
Looks like a potential Vaio and MacBook killer? Linux: “the last OS you’ll ever wear”
Lego opens up Mindstorms NXT firmware | CNET News.com
For another confirmation that LEGO is doing the right thing, they’re planning to release the Mindstorms NXT software, including the firmware and the developer kits, as open source.
I’m particullary interested in the Bluetooth development kit.
Thumbs up to LEGO, I really believe that you’re on the way to realising your mission statement (according to Wired Magazine 14.02: Geeks in Toyland) “doing for robotics what iPod did for music”.
As it will be known to longtime readers (do I have any?), I usually comment on Apple’s new product releases. This time however, I’ve decided to base my first entry regarding the new MacBook consumer laptop from Apple, on hands-on-experience.
Friday I swung by the humac/Magasin store, and pressed my nose to the window for a glimpse of the MacBook (WhiteBook), it looked really cool, so I decided to pay the store a visit saturday.
I just visited the newly reopened Vejle Kunstmuseum (Vejle Museum of Art), and it was a very nice experience. The museum has been modernised and has had a new wing added. The new wing has been designed by the Utzon architects, and the way the entrance has been wedged between the old building and the new wing with an open spacious and very light colonnade is very successful, it extends the perspective towards infinity, now I’m dreaming of a “historic Vejle axis” flanked by trees on both sides, that would extend towards the beautiful Ådal. Unfortunately that isn’t going to happen, because the view soon will be blocked, I hope only partially, by a new housing complex.
Notable items from the collection includes one of the largest compilations of Rembrant sketches and a large collage style painting with faces of famous, and not so famous, Danes, you can really spend a lot of time just looking at this picture trying to identify the people.
More surprisingly, the museum is making good use of new technology by providing the visitors with the possibility to take a guided tour using a type of portable digital player, that resembles an iPod shuffle. The device is called PICKUP and it is produced by the Swedish Company dataton. The PICKUP device is extremely rugged, I suspect that it’s quite expensive.
This is how it works. Some of the exhibited items has a small infrared receiver “eye”, called a hotspot or transponder, located next to them, if you point the player towards one of the electronic eyes, and press play, it will load a spoken interview where the item is being discussed. Very clever indeed, I didn’t discover the devices until I was about to exit the museum, since admission currently, and for the remainder of 2006, is free, so I went back and revisited the exhibits walking away from the item being discussed, listing to the discussion “in transit”. I expect this to become a mainstream feature in museums, and as music players evolve I expect that the information will be streamed over Bluetooth to your iPod.
Being a geek I’ve spend too much time discussing the technology, the museum is it self worthwhile paying a visit, the number of artworks owned by the museum is limited, but the selection and quality of the art is quite high. Recommended, if you’re going to LEGOLAND consider making a pit-stop at the Vejle Kunstmuseum, as I mentioned admission is free for the duration of 2006, so you can’t use that you can’t afford it as an excuse.
Highly recommended. And great to be able to tag a museum review with technology, I think that it’s deserved. Now why didn’t I come up with this idea (well actually I did – last year – remember that I’m from the future ;-))
Related links
Vejle Kunstmuseum
dataton
dataton PICKUP fact sheet (1.6 MB PDF)
Not exactly news, but since I love LEGOs, in my opinion, it’s the greatest toy ever conceived, I was impressed to see an army of LEGO men on the cover of Wired 14.02.
The reason for the invasion of LEGO men, was that LEGO announced the next generation of their robotic construction kit, LEGO Mindstorms, NXT, at the CES in Las Vegas January 2006.
Below is a quote from the Wired article:
Lego built a global empire out of little plastic blocks, then conquered the wired world with a robot kit called Mindstorms. So when the time came for an upgrade, they turned to their obsessed fans – and rewrote the rules of the innovation game.
Last year LEGO was in big trouble, they sold off the LEGOLAND theme-parks, and were considering moving the HQ to China. This really enraged me.