Mostly This:

iSophie & Holga, Moshi Frubes go all hipster

Thu, 23 May 2013 06:42:38 +0100

iSophie & Holga, Moshi Frubes go all hipster

Techitment

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:00:22 +0100

It’s looking to be quite a week for tech announcements. Last night Nokia teased a new camera focused lumia, with a htc one style metal enclosure. That’s announced tomorrow. The following day is google I/O which never disappoints, I’m mainly looking forward to glass launch details, though i suspect it may be some months off. And maybe a curve ball for ‘hobby’ google TV.

But basically there’s no end to the great leaps we are getting year on year and,month by month.

Stuff is brilliant.

3D printing has one issue - colour, now thats been partially...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:14:10 +0100

3D printing has one issue - colour, now thats been partially solved by this 3d PAPER Printer.

http://www.mcortechnologies.com/3d-printers/iris/

I’m constantly impressed by the way 3d printing has moved on in the last few years, it’s all still a little ‘hobby quality’ but BOY its going to be an exciting field.

richlondonpr: Skinhead wearing Brutus Trimfit, shot taken from...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:32:25 +0100

richlondonpr:

Skinhead wearing Brutus Trimfit, shot taken from the SS11 campaign, produced by Rich London.

Theres a new Dr Martens / Brutus Shirt collaboration coming...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 10:48:25 +0000

Theres a new Dr Martens / Brutus Shirt collaboration coming March 29th. This time its a yellow and oxblood gingham, complete with pocket hanky. And its been sneakily on display on the Dr Martens site under accessories / braces.

HTC one launched just ahead of the Samsung S4, beating it in...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:31:21 +0000

HTC one launched just ahead of the Samsung S4, beating it in many areas, alongside the consumer launch they have a developer edition. No sim or bootloader load.

Good on HTC - its more of an issue in the US where getting stock devices is close to impossible.

Flagship or Midrange - which is best. I normally go for the top...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:19:00 +0000

Flagship or Midrange - which is best. I normally go for the top spec, but sometimes it is not that simple. With the Latest Lumia’s from Nokia the top end 920 is easily matched by it’s (slightly) lower end brother the 820. Which both pull away from the 7xx,6xx,5xx ranges.

Internally they have the same processing grunt, so whats the difference?

920 camera is higher spec with stella low light perfomance and has Optical Image Stabilisation for video.

820 camera is still a very good 8mp With Carl Zeiss lens.

920 wins - JUST on low light and OIS, but the firmware still needs updating to get the most out of that camera unit - in real terms I found little difference between the results.

Screen - 920 has 720p HD screen 4.5 inches, 820 has an 800x480 4.3 inch screen

Winner? - no one, yes the 920 is theoretically better but in real terms its makes no difference, day to day. Yes if you stick your face in the screen you can see the difference, but that’s not how people use devices. The 820 is arguably the optimum size.

Other difference are where the 820 starts to pull away as the one most people will choose.

920, fixed unibody, no sd card, no removable battery, wireless charging.

820 - changeable shells (with wireless and rugged options), swappable battery, Micro SD card slot.

So with the 820 you can change the cover as often as you want - want it in cyan, matte finish with wireless charging - no problem, want orange rugged - no problem.

Need to take 64gb of movies on holiday - no problem

Need a spare battery (battery life on both is excellent BTW and both last over a day on heavy use) no problem.

Add to that size and weight, the 820 is kinda just perfect in both aspects (YMMV), I don’t find the 920 too big or too heavy, but if I had to pick one up to take out with me - I’d probably take the 820.

Wow - I just shocked myself.

That said, on the previous generation of Lumia’s I also preferred the simply beautiful 800 over the (slightly) higher spec 900.

Over all the 820 wins out as a pretty much perfect size and more flexible device at a lower cost - Win, Win. Win.

That said It’s a 920 in my pocket, and I do love that camera. But I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone over the 820. For most people the 820 is simply a wiser buy.

The 920 is my personal device, I had the 820 on loan from Nokia Connects trial device program.

AR is great - once it become seamless and human.

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:07:30 +0000

Currently every single execution (bar one currently unknown quantity “google glass”) of AR is universally terrible. It is the classic case of ‘money shot’ marketing product development. Basically it looks impressive in a promo video, but the reality is that its not solving any problems, and is clunky and mechanical to use.

Viewing the world through a 4 inch screen is instinctively unhuman. I can’t think of a single time (other than the one time post install demo) where I’ve seen anyone actually use an AR app to guide them. The process of waving your arm around and rotating yourself is wrong because its mechanical not natural. It’s not the way we behave, it’s reminiscent of a ‘seeing’ robot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC0hG0_rXs8

Scanning the world around it methodically. aside from the awkward nature of the movement, we’re able process far more things as a whole rather than limit ourselves to a blinkered window view on the world.

I tried to find a photo online of someone using AR in the real world, but could only find promo shots and mock ups, which is fairly telling in itself.

This blinkered view became apparent to me as a key limiter when someone recently got a sphero, a wonderfully ‘magical’ remote control ball. A ball you can control, change direction, stop. Balls don’t behave like that (just imaging if the tech got into sport) its incredible.

It’s wonderful and has lots of potential for play, BUT its been crippled by AR, so instead of joyfully controlling the ball in the world you view it though a tiny window with an overlaid ‘character’. Its completely unnecessary, plus its asynchronous - only the player gets that view, everyone else in the room is excluded from spectating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC0hG0_rXs8
jump to 1:48 for the AR bit.

See how much fun it is without the AR? the AR ruins it - luckily that’s not the USP or they would be doomed. Basically AR is like going to a football match and only watching the in stadium screen.

Humans use gestures - just watch two people speaking. And gesture control will be another great thing, but at the moment its on zx81 levels of sophistication with the kinect, thats because doing it well and in a consumer facing way is REALLY hard. Current AR and Gesture control systems are basically useless, but will lead to great things.

When AR will work is when its seamless, google glass (recording / privacy issues aside) is the first implementation that may actually begin to work - It’s probably up with the Atari ST. Because you don’t need to change your behaviour, as it’s contextual (all that google now stuff suddenly make lots of sense).

You don’t need to act in a way that no regular human would, you just look a bit of a dork :)

The good thing about all these bad developments is they are just bumps on the roadmap as we move forward. So all hail those in R&D with their currently flaky products because they are doing, making and striding forward. And boy its going to be exciting when it starts to make sense.

Outside Kemistry Gallery, part of the Jean Jullien exhibition

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:56:52 +0000

Outside Kemistry Gallery, part of the Jean Jullien exhibition

A phone for £3.96! madness.

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:53:57 +0000

A phone for £3.96! madness.

Now that’s a TALL bike.

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:53:23 +0000

Now that’s a TALL bike.

Wouldn’t it be nice if digital content...

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:37:00 +0000

Wouldn’t it be nice if digital content ‘aged’

My Mum is visiting this weekend, and she brought a couple of my old books. There are more so hopefully my ‘Warlock of Firetop Mountain’ is still there.

This got me thinking, as My 9 year old son is reading my 80’s copy of ‘The Hobbit’ at the moment - Digital books / content need to ‘age’ - both from use and just time owned. An old well thumbed book is beautiful in its deterioration.

Much as Jon Ive’s stated apple products were (at the time) designed to get a ‘patina’ of use.

The question is how to do this with digital items to allow them to be rediscovered the equilivant of routing though boxes on the loft. Of course with digital you can instantly ‘snap them back’ to as as new state.

Skeuomorphism?, maybe but in a good and subtle way. Ideally in a new inherently digital metaphor - artifacts? colour? texture? It’s a rich seam to plunder.

Alpha Labs “Always On Telephone Club” Progress, so...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:38:39 +0000

Alpha Labs “Always On Telephone Club” Progress, so in typical late fashion I know have some time to work on my ‘Node Gardening’ App. The main bits missing was a more ‘natural’ feel, I’ve been working on making the connections between plants Bezier curves, and will add some leaves onto them, as well as some distinction between sun and rain intensity.

The other big missing bit was the animation of your plants, they just change size at the moment, they need to both grow and flourish :)

There were some other fantastic entries on display at modern jago and there is a write up on alphalabs.cc - The best thing is it’s kickstarted my app work on WP8 and over the Xmas break I’m armed to get some game projects up and running.

The ingredients of a perfect twitter storm:...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:32:30 +0000

The ingredients of a perfect twitter storm: Instagram.

It’s been brewing, the minute facebook bought instagr.am, the hipsters got twitchy. It just needed a little push and a lot of retweeting to reach it’s uninformed but critical mass.

I think people welcome the freedom from the creative tyranny of instagram. Its long since lost being ‘fun’ and now phone cameras take decent pictures, the need to filter them to hell and back is less needed.

But a mass return to flickr? which is a paid for ad free service (if you have more than 200 photos) owned by plucky indie ‘yahoo’, while moaning about instagr.am trying to make a buck - would you pay for a better T&C’s?

So my take on the alphalabs always on telephone club finally...

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:16:09 +0000

So my take on the alphalabs always on telephone club finally made it onto a device :) a little late, but the main thing for me was to get something running - the concept of slow motion gaming is one of interest. A game you play for months, requiring only a little of your attention.

Now to get a proper game up and out the door.

The weather outside is frightful. But new Dr Martens 1641 Made...

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:14:35 +0000

The weather outside is frightful. But new Dr Martens 1641 Made In England Shoes mean I don’t care :) bring it on.

HTC has a pretty fantastic range of phones out, android and...

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:11:26 +0000

HTC has a pretty fantastic range of phones out, android and windows phone. I have the one X - but its just been bumped by a big brother the one X+ - which was missing from this display. HTC seem to consistently engineer really nice handsets. and the current range shows it off well, they just feel so much nicer than the samsungs.

Also the 8X is possibly the most beautifully tactile phone on the market as the moment, in its silky matt blue slimline shell, It’s running windows phone 8 which I’m a big fan of. So android or WP8 theres plenty of choice these days.

Alphalabs Always On Telephone Club Challenge: Last month we...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:20:00 +0000

Alphalabs Always On Telephone Club Challenge:

Last month we were challenged to to take on some code and take it somewhere new.

I thought aroundn the core ‘Always on’ idea, with each node being a window on someones world, maybe it would show a photo taken at a set time each day? Then I moved on to the concept of an anonymous social network - so each node would publish snipits of a persons publically shared data - a map tile form a checkin, a word from a twitter update, a prodominant colour from a photo uploaded to facebook. While this is a project I’d love to pursue, it felt a little much for the time I have free to spend on this.

I also toyed with an activity monitor, as its always on it can be a pedometer and track movement via gps - the more you move, every time you take one of your 5 a day, when you log an exersise etc the more elaborate and ornate your node gets - no activity and you become an indistinct blob. but again this felt a bit ambitious for the time available.

The code was a node garden, so I took the concept literally and added some gameplay. Your node becomes a unique and special flower. You start small and grow, you need to keep linked to the sun, the rain and others of your species to maintain your growth and health.

Always Start With Paper

The game is simple and not overly dynamic - so change is slow, matching the theme of always on - its there but not requiring attention.

So far the basics are coming together - and i have an upcoming weekend to make it happen. Wish me luck :)

More 3D printing pioneers, after makies lovely dolls comes retro...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:52:38 +0000

More 3D printing pioneers, after makies lovely dolls comes retro robots you can make via www.myrobotnation.com - They have an incredible amount of detail and colouring of every part - including patterns.

The results are a little fuzzy if you put in too much detail, and the large size are a hefty $169, but you can try it out from $17.99 - what’s not to love. And give it a year or so and this tech is going to get even sweeter.

Watch out hasbro/mattel

Nokia X Deadmau5 round two: Last year Nokia launched the Lumia...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:38:26 +0000

Nokia X Deadmau5 round two: Last year Nokia launched the Lumia range with a Deadmau5 concert on the southbank with a projection onto the mammoth Millbank Tower. This year they took over a whole street for a 360 concert experience, it was pretty special, with deadmau5 initially playing from the rooftop and then moving down into the crowd.

All the buildings pulsated with projections and light installations as giant mirror balls were manoeuvred on trucks! It lasted about 25 minutes and was broadcast live, there will be a recording available here.

#switch