If there are actually return readers to this blog, they will probably see that a lot of the stuff on here is focused towards technology and where it may be going. Most of it is pretty top-level stuff.
The hard part about all this tech is that they work really well in a vacuum and sometimes they work really well with items from the same maker and the same time, but we all usually don’t have the opportunity to buy the whole product line at once. This puts us in a bit of a pickle as it certainly doesn’t make it easy to get all the benefit out of everything we buy. Most times, the manufacturers aren’t on our sides so there’s really not a lot of help out there. Thankfully due to the ingeniousness of the third-party manufacturers and relatively open standards, there are a lot of helper items that go a long way to connect the dots.
In light of that, I’ve decided to put together another sort of blog that will talk to more of the “dirty hands” portion of the march of technology. Sure, there’s a lot of places out there talking about the next new thing in mobile devices, laptops and such. I’m not going to throw out more of the same. Instead, I’m going to focus on looking at all the items and techniques that link together our devices and really enhances our total experience with them.
I think I’m going to focus on the more standardized methods of connection, like USB, HDMI, Bluetooth and Wifi. There seems to be a lot of green shoots in the adapter industry around these methods and there looks to be a lot of trick stuff that promises interesting results. Of course there may be a bit more esoteric posts as well. Perhaps in the future, there may also be some posts about software interactivity, but I’m not sure. To make things easier, I’m also going to post where I got these things from and focus on getting everything from Amazon – as there’s nothing worse than reading about something and then not being able to find it.
The new blog is EclecticTechConnector.com and I think the name really goes a long way at describing what it’s all about. That focus is on all the little connectors and helper devices that makes it easy for all our toys to work together or just work better. I’m going to sort of document my journey through all these helper devices and share what I’ve learned along the way. Hopefully, it will help all you out there as well.
Oh, and if you have some ideas on what to try next, go ahead and email me, or leave them in the comments!
Tactility Means Something
In today’s world of product design there seems to be a lot of emphasis placed on homogenizing the shapes of things. Obviously this looks rather nice and makes for a pretty good looking ‘system’ of things that sit on the shelf well. Then along comes a project like this to remind us that we need to consider other aspects besides congruent shapes when thinking of functionality.
I am not sure if this was the main reasoning behind Vanessa’s shapes ( yes, I did not really read the article), but my takeaway from the images is that the set of in-congruent shapes would certainly have a benefit for a user in recalling what is on each of the drives.
Today, we have a lot of data. Although the cloud is coming, we still carry and store a lot of it on devices that are physical to us. Many times this data can’t be held on just one chunk of media for a variety of reasons. Just like days of old with floppy disks, it becomes hard to recall what exactly is held on each drive. Having a drive with a distinctive shape goes a long way to circumvent the issue.
Designers usually try and attack this sort of thing with a visual design or some sort of handy color-coding. But these devices are usually quite tactile in use and the project here seems to go a long way to treat this aspect. Seeing this implementation makes me think that in this day and age we haven’t really utilized the capabilities touch gives us in a conscious way. Being able to quickly reach for a media drive and understand generally what their content is without taking eyes off of other things is really a benefit that makes this project quite strong.
For many reasons (which I am sure I will revisit here) I think that designers get into the bad habit of forcing things into systems even though the functionality is obviously sacrificed for style. It would be nice to see a movement where we look at projects like this to truly address function before shoehorning things awkwardly into shapes that merely look good. Oh, and also to consider more deeply tactility as a legitimate form of communication and utility.
Does the tablet-Entertainment-mobile arms race force Amazon to acquire RIM? Does it also force it to buy Nintendo? These are very serious questions and while there’s been swirling rumors for the phone aspect of it, the notion of why not both is something to look at.
Why would Amazon feel the need to buy? The answer comes from how you perceive their competition to look like. Obviously, Amazon doesn’t sell phones or electronics, well they do but that’s not their real business. Their real business is the business of providing a market for commerce and from that vantage point things look different. Who competes with them in this market? Google, Apple and Microsoft.
Buying into phones, and even more so into home entertainment, is nearly a must. Amazon has put considerable investment into the online delivery of media, and not just books. They are one of the largest players in mp3 sales and they even have their own app store. With Apple and Microsoft closing the loop on media delivery and the devices to use it on, it must be scary for Amazon. What position would they be in if they end up being an app on someone else’s system? Things don’t even look that safe from the Android world, what with Google having Play, expanding YouTube and dabbling in music sales.
Much like Microsoft, the win for Amazon is not selling a phone, it’s guaranteeing the capability to solely sell content through it’s own devices as well as the opportunity to sit at the big table for at least another 5 more years on customer experience lock-in.
The purchase of RIM is tantalizing for a number of reasons. Firstly, they get a large (but crumbling) user base. Mature (perhaps too mature) technology, supply chain and branding to build on are all features that make this a great move for Amazon. These details alone makes it an easy decision over building from scratch. RIM is also looking to get its groove back and what better than to have the full capability of Amazon’s vast media offerings coursing through it’s circuits?
The phone makes sense, sure, but why Nintendo? The answer is pretty close to the same. The Wii gets them on the TV. TV is a vast market that hasn’t been executed properly…yet. Streaming Movies right from the Amazon store to your TV guarantees longevity. The customer base for the Wii is also more similar to the Amazon cloud than Sony’s Playstation, as well.
The ultimate play to maintain relevancy in this competition is to get on the TV—which means in the living room—and get mobile. Obviously, there are some other plays that would get them close to this scenario – and probably cheaper at that. First is to look at another handset maker. It would be hard to steal Nokia away from Microsoft, but HTC would be a nice buy. They’ve had some good successes and have got a nice presence on carriers and in stores, but not having the capability to close compatibility to just Amazon’s system might be less than palatable and that holds for the rest of it’s Android kin.
It gets a little more interesting with the TV play. There’s an army of set top boxes that would be ripe for purchase, TiVo has been ailing for a while, and Roku would look good as well. All Amazon needs is a device that plugs into the TV that can stream media and be capable of running apps. Even more useful is established consumer buy-in and sell-through. I am unconvinced that any of these boxes’ cheapness would offset the brand power the Wii has. Then again, with games pushing mobile, that support might be crumbling as well.
Whatever the choice is, grabbing both device platforms would put Amazon nearly on the same turf as Microsoft or Apple and bests Google because the power is in the synergy of the components. This is the same awesomeness that Apple enjoys with the iTunes-iPad-iPhone and soon to be Apple TV as well as Microsoft will enjoy with their Windows 8 phone, tablet and Xbox triumvirate.
All of a sudden, that Amazon Cloud-thing could make a lot of sense, huh?
Microsoft launching their own tablet is big news. Lots of people talk about how this is a bad idea. The weirdness of a software company toying with selling hardware leads folks to usually bring up Zune as a rationale for why. The thought here that most are missing is that it doesn’t matter is Microsoft sells any Microsoft-branded tablets, but it does matter that Microsoft got to launch the first Windows 8 tablet.
Being first is very important. By taking the time to launch their product on the exact right hardware to show off all the features allows Microsoft to set the appropriate bar for where OEMs will need to start to make sure that Win8 becomes a viable tablet product at the onset, rather than playing a continuous game of catch-up like Android is having to do. Since the level has been set, it leaves OEMs no choice but to launch their Windows 8 tablets at the same bar or exceed it just to play in the market.
Thinking of Android tablets is a very good example. When Android tablets were first introduced, they were underpowered, over-priced and lacked a lot of the critical features that made the ipad great. A mess of short-sighted, noncompetitive products flooded the stores, and then glutted Woot. Second attempts at creating something competitive (aside from Samsung) have basically fallen flat. It is plainly obvious that most tablet OEMs have not understood where to be in terms of technology to be competitive. Microsoft could not take the chance for the same lackadaisical product work to happen with the launch of their tablet operating system. Vendors now can’t take the cheap route. They’ll have to create at least competitively spec’d products with the Surface.
The move is very sly and one that shows Microsoft learns from others’ mistakes. Coming out with the best possible spec machine forces OEMs to start competitively rather than to have the occasion to start at perhaps a less than optimum level—which is what had essentially doomed Vista (not to mention all of the Android tablets) when it was sold on under-powered machines to the masses, causing the OS to be sluggish, amongst other things.
Further, by putting out their ideal specs to the market before the OEMs , they’ll also get to set the price schedule for Win8 tablets. If pricing is done well, the Win8 tablets can price itself to be more than competitive with the ipad. For instance, if MS places the price of the Intel tablet within $100 dollars of the iPad, it will force the iPad to battle against something far more powerful (Intel-based full-version Windows), while the ARM tablet would have to price in lower, outside of competing against a more powerful and entrenched iPad. A pricing format like this would force Apple into competing with essentially a desktop-powered tablet and diving into a commodity market or watch its market share recede into the 5% niche it was in before the iPod. Not to mention, this creates the beginnings of the tiered pricing scenario seen in laptops and an entry point to essentially commodity tablet market that has gone nearly untouched.
Let’s not forget, Microsoft’s profitability is not based on one single product no matter how well this tablet sells and it may not make any difference if it never comes to market. Microsoft may even see it a shrewd move to sell it at a loss. A classic example of this is Amazon’s Kindle and even more indicative is Microsoft’s own Xbox platform. The hardware is sold for essentially a loss and it doesn’t matter as the profits come from the sales of the software. For the tablet, this may hold true as well. Proving that Win8 is a viable tablet operating system that can compete on an even footing with Apple’s is insurance in Microsoft’s viability for the future. Owning the tablet space with Win8 ensures Microsoft’s dominance in the OS world, and especially in enterprise, as a win for Win8 is a win for continuance of all of the other platforms MS has like Office, Outlook and so on. So watch out for the future, Microsoft is on the move and they may know exactly what they’re doing!
From what the bloggers and the critics seem to be saying, this year has a good chance for being the year Microsoft makes good in the mobile arena. The launch of the new Nokia Lumina phone, featuring Windows 8 complete with the vaunted Metro interface, is getting a lot of good press. Even if the launch goes well, while that will be great news for Microsoft, it might be scary news for a lot of others, because the next thing MS is going to do will be to seemlessly connect Windows mobile devices with their Xbox platform.
See, the next war in consumer electronics is not about one product, like phones, media devices or readers, it’s all about platform and lock-in. Apple had a nice bit of lock-in with iTunes and iPods. If people wanted to buy from the great selection on iTunes, they almost had to do so only with an Apple product. Today, the scenery has changed and the lock-in platform has gotten larger. There are mow three peices to the platform lock-in puzzle: online delivery of media, mobile devices and home entertainment. Right now there are a few players who own perhaps 1.5 of the three pieces. The first to get all three will be the winner, of course. Perhaps if you can get two and just a taste of the third, that might just be good enough, too.
Right now, microsoft has the home entertainment portion locked down. The Xbox platform is manuvering itself as the first and last bit of electronics one needs for the living room. It streams movies and TV via Hulu and Netflix, browses the web and I hear it even plays video games. While Microsoft has toyed with media players and media delivery, the partnership with Nokia my prove to be where the real key to the second peice will come from. Creating a seemless link and interoperabilty between them will be an irresistable sell point for a lot of people. Strong enough to ditch the iPhone? You bet.
If this happens, where does it leave Apple? In the next year, things will get a bit more difficult for them, to be sure. The notion of owning music is waning in comparison to renting everything you ever wanted and more from services like Spotify, has diminish the hold iTunes had not to mention other services muscling in on the video aspects. iPhone, while still being the superior device, will continue to see its share eaten away by the diasporia of Android devices nipping at its technological heels and more importantly, undercutting it’s pricing. Finally, Apple’s home enterainment play, Mac TV, still seems to be a product looking for a market.
The upside for Apple is that they’re sitting on an abusrd amount of cash. They could easily buy themselves out of it. But what to buy?
My speculation is that the play would be into the games market. The companies competing within are most ripe for a takeover, compared to other pieces of the puzzle. The choices then would be either Nintendo or Sony. While Nintendo with their Wii platform would be a good play, I think they’d get a lot more from Sony. I would bet that Mr. Cook is far more shrewd of a businessman than an ‘innovator’ and could easily see that there are actually two prizes won with the purchase of Sony. There’s the obvious: Playstation.
The less obvious is the huge inroads into the television market. Apple has been toying and teasing that market for an awefully long time. With the experience and the equity Sony can bring to the table, they could leverage themselves into home entertainment quite easily and locking-in the Apple experience in three areas. Would this mean the Sony brand would go away? I’m not sure, but it should be interesting to watch.
It’s always amazing to me that there are certain companies who change brand marks faster than governors get voted out of office. I have absolutely no idea why this happens. A perfect case in point is JCPenney.
While writing another post about pricing, I inadvertantly stumbled across the new logo for the store. I wasn’t aware there was a new logo. There is and this is the new logo:
The really sad part about all of this is that as soon as you go to another website you’ll forget this logo and when someone says JCPenney, you’ll remember this logo:
The reason for this effect is that there is so much brand cache in the old logo that it overshadows the new one. In this regard, the company’s best interest is then to keep the old logo, especially in the light of new strategy that aims to take the store back to the times when the old logo meant something.
Considering the design of the new logo on it’s own, two things jump out at me. The first is it’s amazing ability to inspire absolutely no subconcious corporate allegory. The old logo on it’s own has no story but it had a lifetime to make it up. What does a little blue box packed into a big red box mean, really?
When they teach you how to design logos, the first thing they say is that the logo has to mean something. The meaning could be easy to see or just instill a vague emotion. The smallest things can do a lot. To do this, the designer thinks about a lot of things, like how the company would like to be positioned, what the company is known for, what it ultimately would like to stand for as well as a number of environmental and competitive factors.
Ideally, the designer takes these thoughts and works within the constraints of the competitve market to create a mark that unequivically represents the company and brand. The next step is to create a series of rules and procedures to make sure the brand is operated in the proper manner without compromizing it’s goals.
The branding is then installed and the merits of not adding to or diluting the work is given. Generally, this is done to explain that a brand’s worth is enhansed by it’s longevity of continuance. The longer the mark is in place and unharmed, the greater the value becomes, all other things remaining equal – just like the old JCPenney logo.
The other thing that strikes me is the one thing the logo does make me think of: a big box store from the `80s. I don’t know what benefits that gets JCPenney, aside from getting people excited we might find a Chess King next door.
The interesting thing is while corporate branding seems to have bought into the logo, at the store level, they plainly have not. I am not sure if it’s a workers revolt or just a glacieral and amazingly terrible ‘soft roll-out’ – which could be the subject of another blog post, all by itself. This gives me hope that the new governance may come to their senses, ditch the new logo (and hire me as a brand consultant, as well:) and get back to the one that makes us remember why we like to go to JCPenney .
It seems the world is on a dubstep kick after Skrillex hit the scene. Curiously, digging into the genre you find that he’s basically the only one who sounds like that – or maybe it’s that I don’t know where the Secret Awesome is. I admit it. I am old and the art degree only goes so far.
To my surprise, I found this release by Airborne Drumz. I really wouldn’t call it true dubstep, though. That’s not a bad thing, and from the great pile of stuff in that genre, it’s probably a good thing. What is it then? I think it’s something that sits somewhere in the middle of a triangle between Skrillex, Deadmau5 and perhaps rougher Kid 606. Essentially, you have the sounds of dubstep (without the over-done ‘wubwubwub’), the driving beat of good house and the edge of Hardcore. This is perhaps best executed in track two, Andromeda.
Moving to Dertoit Wastelands, perhaps you get a feeling that Airborne Drumz are well-influenced by Daft Punk. It’s a very nice track that also recalls the first Justice album, as if it were a bonus track or it could really be that connecting sound between Skrillex and Justice. The next few tracks give you the same sort of feeling and it’s good stuff. The nice thing these tracks do (besides sound good) is take you down from Andromeda so you can get amped up again towards the end.
At the end is Back to Saturn. Starting off slow, it builds to some really gritty distorted samples. It’s tough to get that right balance of song construction and the manic, deconstruction that we all wish dubstep to be. A big plus is that the release still uses a driving, easily found beat no matter if it’s on some of the calmer tracks or the big hitting ones. Airborne Drumz has also found what seems to be almost the perfect tempo to build these tracks, unlike most who run at what I figure is about 10-15bpm too slow for utility.
If you’re a fan of such things, and I can’t see who wouldn’t. You need to have this album. Especially when you’ve listened to the above mentioned artists and you need a new fix.
