Okay. Maybe these photos are a statement about consumerism. I get it. Could still be a bit wasteful.
I feel a bit awful for liking them so much.
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iStop
Nov 17, ’10
1:00 AM
Apple refurbished the North/Clybourn stop of the red line in Chicago and it looks much nicer than it did before. It also opens up to a plaza at which an Apple store sits on the other side. Convenient, that!
I haven’t been to the stop yet but imagine that it’s lovely. A win/win for the citizens of Chicago and Apple or corporate co-opting of the public? I don’t know. It makes me uncomfortable. Would it feel even creepier if the corporation involved was one that people loved to hate, like Walmart or McDonald’s? Oh wait, some people do love to hate Apple.
Every day people are voting for Apple (and Microsoft and whatever else) with their dollars. It would be easy to just wish that they’d cast their some of their votes for public services but that’s asking a lot. Too much. Libraries need to first be worth voting for and then demonstrate that they’re worth voting for. The real rub is that it would be easier for us to do this if we had more money in the first place, right?
Right. But we also know that there are plenty of things we can do to endear our libraries to the communities they serve.
A Vending Library Is No Library
Apr 21, ’10
5:42 AM
“If we allow library service to be trivialized to the point where it can be performed out of a vending machine, perhaps it won’t be Apple that finally kills the library, it will be librarians.”
I couldn’t agree more. Great statement from James R. Lund at LJ.
i redesigned itunes and it looks better
Apr 13, ’09
9:37 PM
Apple has a bunch of really talented software designers and UX people on staff. This being the case, I’m not really sure how the iPhone screen in iTunes got to be so jumbled looking. The text is justified in one strange place (orange line) while there are so many other opportunities to clean up the layout (pink lines).
I know this is a very small thing, but why not fix something so easy? Here’s what 5 minutes in Photoshop netted.
This isn’t going to solve the world’s problems, but it looks at least a little nicer, right?
Thank you for looking at my self-indulgent exercise.
microsoft’s version of the future
Mar 3, ’09
5:41 PM
Since yesterday I sort of intimated that Microsoft is envisioning a future that Apple was envisioning in 1987 I think I’ll be fair and post this video that is making the rounds today. Evidently, in the future, everything is an interface. Nice.
microsoft’s version of the future
Mar 3, ’09
5:41 PM
Since yesterday I sort of intimated that Microsoft is envisioning a future that Apple was envisioning in 1987 I think I’ll be fair and post this video that is making the rounds today. Evidently, in the future, everything is an interface. Nice.
laura & your vision
Mar 2, ’09
8:41 AM
Microsoft Mapping Course to a Jetsons-Style Future lists some not really that futuristic sounding things that are on the very near horizon. I was interested in the bit about Laura, the virtual personal assistant because she sounds similar to Apple’s 1987 (!) Knowledge Navigator.
The article isn’t clear if there’s an actual working prototype of Laura, but if there was it probably would have been mentioned. So does this mean that Microsoft is spending time envisioning what Apple was thinking about in 1987? It is really neat to see how Apple realized part of this vision. A video camera and iChat are built into all of Apple’s laptops and iMacs.
So, what’s the 20 year vision for your organization and what are you doing today to get there?
laura & your vision
Mar 2, ’09
8:41 AM
Microsoft Mapping Course to a Jetsons-Style Future lists some not really that futuristic sounding things that are on the very near horizon. I was interested in the bit about Laura, the virtual personal assistant because she sounds similar to Apple’s 1987 (!) Knowledge Navigator.
The article isn’t clear if there’s an actual working prototype of Laura, but if there was it probably would have been mentioned. So does this mean that Microsoft is spending time envisioning what Apple was thinking about in 1987? It is really neat to see how Apple realized part of this vision. A video camera and iChat are built into all of Apple’s laptops and iMacs.
So, what’s the 20 year vision for your organization and what are you doing today to get there?
walking paper scraps
Nov 19, ’08
6:00 AM
→ Don’t talk to strangers — scan them instead.
2D codes + fabric + mobiles phones = people wearing hyperlinks to their social networking profiles. Next up is RFID chips broadcasting your profile wherever you go. It could make for serendipitous connections!
→ Why Apple is great at interfaces when others are not
Short answer: Because they take fun and pleasure into account.
→ Rule of Thumb – Giving a Speech
When giving a public science lecture to a general audience, there will always be one weirdo who asks questions that have nothing to do with your lecture. There will also be one smart-aleck who asks questions to show how smart he is. The faster you silence both of them, the happier your audience will be.
→ Obama’s Victory Speech Does Well on BitTorrent
Within 24 hours of president-elect Barack Obama delivering his victory speech to the hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Chicago, another hundred thousand gathered in a BitTorrent swarm, to download a copy of the historic event.
→ Type Tester
A handy CSS tool. 1. Choose values for different elements and see them displayed. 2. Three columns let you compare. 3. Snag the CSS.
new ipods change content delivery
Sep 5, ’07
6:57 PM
Sarah scooped me and posted about the new iPod touch, redesigned iPod nanos. See her post Apple news on iPods and iPhones: prices down, features sweet for some details.
What she didn’t mention though, is that along with the iPod touch’s wifi capability, the iTunes Music Store got wifi capability too. ITMS junkies no longer have to slog over to their computers to buy music. Apple also will be delivering content through Starbucks. The new iPods will provide the details of the song that you’re listening to in Starbucks and of course make it easy for you to buy it. This Starbucks feature is cute, maybe clever, but isn’t as significant as the general concept of wireless delivery of purchased content to iPods.
If this move ushers in the age of anywhere on-demand download of music (which seems eventually inevitable) it will widen the gap between the soon to be normal way of doing things and the library way of delivering content. And will our users feel like crossing this big gap to visit us?
