Objectified

Gary Hustwit directed Helvetica a pretty good documentary about the history of the classic font. Graphic designers and font dorks were out in mass to see it. Now Hustwit is working on a documentary all about objects we use everyday, our relationship with them, and the people who design them. The trailer below looks great and features Jonathan Ive, who is the lead designer at Apple. Ive is the brains behind the iPod and the iPhone.

I am not a designer but have always appreciated industrial design. It is funny how good can go unnoticed because things work like they should but bad design can make simple objects and tasks difficult. (get ready to jump on my iPhone worship train) The mobile phone market was exactly this, most if not all mobile phones were really difficult to use and the functionality was either severely crippled or nonexistent but the iPhone was the first real mobile phone that took design seriously and made it easy to do simple tasks.

I can't wait until this movie comes out. I guess I will be one of those design dorks filling up the theater.

The Best Place in NYC

Several years ago I became obsessed with the Highline, an elevated train track on the west side of Manhattan that use to service the meatpacking district but has not been in use since 1980. There are a lot of reasons why it is one of my favorite places in NYC. I have been up there, trespassing as it is private property, several times and have taken a lot of photos. My most recent venture was in early August and I was able to get some good pictures of the construction transforming it from an abandoned railroad tracks to a fantastic park. Below is a video of how the park will be constructed.

Here are a bunch of other videos that go into detail about the history and the evolution of the Highline. Also here is a slideshow of the final design.

This post start when I saw this post on the highline blog offering a great aerial photo as desktop wallpaper. Generally, I hate wallpaper, of the wall variety and of the screen variety but this one is great and is up on my computer. I may take another venture up on the Highline next weekend and take some more pictures showing the progress of the construction. There is one thing I hope the designers do not remove and that is all the great graffiti that has built up over the years. The wall below is right below 23rd street.

Here is a large view. This photo was about 15-20 photos stitched together using a free photo stitching software so please ignore the stupid watermarks.

Copy & Paste and Qik

I decided to Jailbreak my iPhone again. I originally did this pre app store launch in order to get some really interesting 3rd party apps on my iPhone. When the app store was launched I didn't feel the need to have my phone Jailbroken as I was pretty happy with all that was/is available via the app store. But there are 2 apps that I have been reading about that made me want to jailbreak again. 

The first was "Clippy" an app that adds copy and paste functionality to the ".?123" menu on the virtual keyboard. So far the couple of times I used it, it works pretty good. The only annoying thing is that it obscures the area where you are typing slightly but this is a minor annoyance. The second app is the Qik app which allows you to broadcast a live video stream. Below is the quick test video I did yesterday (excuse my messy apartment):

Qik also allows you to send out a message via twitter that you are broadcasting live and so your Twitter followers can go to Qik and see what you are doing. This is a pretty cool feature that would get more people engaged. During my test it didn't seem that my audio was working but as you can see/hear in the video above it seems to be OK. The second test video was at my computer shooting my live feed giving the window within window etc. effect.

Friday I am going to go to the Queens Museum to check out an exhibit on a full model of NYC and I will broadcast via Qik. If you care to check it out I guess the best way to know when it will be live would be to subscribe to my twitter feed.

Friends We Like

Friends We Like is a site that showcases interesting/creative people (see site for info for upcoming show). There most recent video featured Ellis G. who does amazing chalk shadow outlines of objects around the city (the site also features a video with Ellis G.). I first saw his stuff on the Lower East Side in February of 2006 and more recently I saw some of his work in a gallery (I can't remember which one, was gallery hoping with a friend). Below are the pic I took with my shitty Nokia 8801.

Pretty Cool Projection Technology

For the most part Out Of Home Advertising is pretty bland but the technology below could actually make it interesting and worthy of people stopping and looking on with interest. Easy Web is the company that has created this technology. They use 3D mapping technology to get the shape of the building and then are able to do some pretty amazing/creative thing:

Found via PSFK

Awesome Vacation to Japan

Japan from Eric Testroete on Vimeo.

Via Ed Cotton

Palm Pre

I am and have been a huge fan of the iPhone and how it has changed the game in the mobile world. Well 2 years later (which is about the development time for a device so it looks like the devices we are seeing are directly influenced by the iPhone) we are finally starting to see other devices that are starting to rival the ease of use and functionality of the iPhone. When Google launched the Android platform upon first site I knew that a simple, flexible, and elegant mobile platform and every device not named iPhone should utilize. 

Now Palm has finally launched a device and a platform that will give the iPhone and Android a run for its proverbial money. Most of what I have seen (see 4 videos below for demos) has been pretty impressive. There are things that the Palm Pre does that the iPhone will definitely need to do better. The biggest is how the Pre can integrate different applications allowing the user to simply just use the device rather than worry about which app they are using. The best example is whether you are IMing or Texting or MMSing you use the same interface so if you and it stays all as one conversation if the person you are talking to jumps from IM to Text. It also integrates all your contact info one spot so you can easily jump from e-mail to IM if you see the person you are e-mailing is online via IM.

I know a lot of people will also love that the Pre has a full physical QWERTY keyboard but as for me and my fat thumbs that is almost a non starter. I can't stand physical keyboards. I love the iPhone virtual keyboard and the software because I don't have to be super accurate with every keystroke and the software corrections is fantastic. Also since I can't spell to save my life it works great for me.

Ultimately, the more competition in the smartphone category we have that are at this level will be great for consumers. The iPhone opened the door and changed the game and showed consumers that mobile phones don't have to be tedious to use. I just hope the iPhone will start to integrate some of these features into the next firmware update because some of this stuff just makes sense.

Part 1 goes through the hardware of the device in detail:

Palm Pre demo, part 1 from Dean Takahashi on Vimeo.

Part 2 goes through some of the User Interface:

Palm Pre demo, part 2 from Dean Takahashi on Vimeo.

Part 3 goes through some of the applications and the flexibility of the platform:

Palm Pre demo, part 3 from Dean Takahashi on Vimeo.

Part 4 shows how the platform integrates applications:

Palm Pre demo, part 4 from Dean Takahashi on Vimeo.