Catering to the LCD

In a New York Times article dated December 26 entitled Hollywood Moves Away From Middlebrow Brooks Barnes writes about the "new" tendency in Hollywood to try and come up with more "original" material or hire directors with "quirkier sensibilities" as a result of the effect online social networks have had on the way movies are being marketed. It's funny how every few years one reads a line like "we can't settle for good - we have to be great" when it comes to moviemaking. It's as if as soon as one generation of "suits" learns that simple lesson, it is supplanted by another one that still needs to understand that constantly and consistently catering to the lowest common denominator results in a quick buck for a short while but does not a long terms strategy make. And so once again the suits are surprised that while "Sex and the City 2" flops, an original concept like "Inception" pays off. In the long run quality is the name of the game. That is a simple enough lesson to internalize and stick to. To quote Bob Marley (who adapted it from either Abraham Lincoln or PT Barnum): "you can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time".

Tech-Year In Review

As we approach the end of the year it is appropriate to do a quick review of the best and worst tech that appeared in the market. But it's always best to leave such things to professionals. Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal considers the iPad to have been THE product of 2010. Here are his views on the best and worst of 2010. (Give the ad at the beginning of the video a few seconds to run first).

Hugh's Shower

Meanwhile on the water conservation front we have had some exciting new developments, but we'll get to those at a later date. For now I wanted to share with everyone this exciting new video we produced. 

Hugh has clearly misunderstood what Gabi meant when he said everyone should "shower shorter". And will Miss de Point make another appearance ? Watch the video to find out.

My Blackberry Is Not Working

Harry Enfield and Ronnie Corbett "take the piss" out of Apple, Orange, RIM and a few others. VERY original and VERY funny. No need for me to elaborate. Just watch and enjoy.

email is for old people

Earlier this week I was trying to solve a technical problem in our shared office space at GabiH2O. It involved solving an outgoing mail port related problem, the details of which enter nerd territory that will have your collective eyes glaze over and are therefore not worth relating here. In trying to solve this problem I checked with some of the other techies of the other companies on our floor only to find out to my consternation that either none of them had ever heard of such a problem, or else they simply didn't care, and all for one simple reason: NONE of them use an email client on their PCs or Macs. They all use Gmail.

Now I admit that I am a veteran of "email", a real old-timer. In the late 80's I was a frequent contributor on the Compuserve and Genie services and I used MCImail to send out work related telexes from my home. I was also an early adopter of something called America Online back in '89 when it was a Mac only system previously known as AppleLink Personal Edition purchased from Apple and before it became AOL. In '93 I added my email address to my business cards and very often the people I did business with used to ask what that cryptic line on the card actually meant.

All of this is meant to illustrate to what extent I consider email an intrinsic part of my daily work and private life. When the first email-only Blackberries came out, it was as if someone had designed that tool just for me. In 2001 I got my hands on one of the early models and I have never looked back since. But it appears that while I continued using email and insisted on setting up email client software on every new computer I regularly upgraded to, the world around me continued to evolve, and not necessarily in the direction I was heading.

When I ask kids today whether they use email, 9 times out of 10 they'll answer: "Yeah, for school". Kids communicate via Facebook, sms, bbm, whatsapp or other forms of instant messaging. The idea to carefully compose an email message and then wait hours for a response sounds ridiculous to them. If they can't get an immediate response, that form of electronic communication makes no sense to them. And so email gets relegated to "formal" communication: school or work related. On the one hand communication becomes more effective and direct in that manner. On the other hand however it loses any depth and the concept of "spelling" becomes something old folk worry about.

The other aspect of the change I described above, the use of online email resources rather than downloading messages to one's computer, are all part of this move to cloud computing. Gmail is no longer just about email alone (see yesterday's New York Times for a piece entitled E-Mail Gets an Instant Makeover) and these forms of instant communication are getting built into what were once "traditional" tools.

The conclusion is that I will have to start opening myself up to change. I have no doubt that email will continue to be an effective tool for business communication, but the idea that I can store on my computer every bit of text I type or receive from anyone is ridiculous. It makes as much sense to save all that stuff as it does to record every bit of conversation i have with people as I go through my day, every "Hello" and "How are you on this lovely morning". So adapt I will.

...and not a minute too soon

Back in May I reported on the expected Fall arrival of a cool product called the Clamcase. Like often happens with these sort of things, the product's introduction got delayed. In fact, in the meantime, the video that I had embedded in that long ago post has also been removed due to some copyright infringement. Instead a new one was posted which I am including here. It now appears this product will start shipping in January...just in time for the expected announcement of the iPad 2. Still, given how many iPads were sold to date, owners of the original iPad might be interested in sprucing up their tablets using what still appears to be a compelling product.

Coca Cola No. 1

I can't even count the number of times I have flown out of Zaventem Airport in Brussels over the past few years. And every time I pass the same vending machines without giving them much thought. But then on my last visit it just hit me. I stopped and took a good hard look at the drink dispensing machine. Now, like most people who grew up in Belgium, I have become desensitized to the image of a little boy doing his "number one" business in public. The reason is very simple: one of Belgium's national symbols is the famous "Manneken Pis", a small bronze fountain sculpture of a little boy urinating going back to the 17th Century. Nobody really seems to know exactly who this little boy was, but a great many stories are bandied about, most of them revolving around ancient battles that took place anywhere between the turn of the first millennium and the 15th Century. 

It appears that some marketing executive in Belgium one day came up with the great idea of using this symbol on a drinks vending machine. It would also appear that after writing his memo and presenting his idea to some committee or other at Coca-Cola Belgium, a decision was made to go ahead with this idea. And now, pretty much all over the country you are most likely visiting if it is Tuesday, you can find the kind of machines depicted in this picture, dispensing what would appear to be, according to the caption at the bottom of the machine, a very particular taste of Belgium. Bottoms up.

Bird Addiction

I admit. I came late to this one. Simply because I am not big on computer games. This is something I have always wanted to get into, and yet very rarely would it happen. I would see people around me spend weeks on end with MYST or some shoot'm up engine, and though I would try to develop the right kind of enthusiasm for it, somehow it wound't stick. Over the years there were probably 3 or 4 games that I would stay with until I reached some level of proficiency, but overall it just wasn't my thing.

And then I installed Angry Birds HD on the iPad. The rest is a blur. It used to be that I would get very productive with work late at night. These days late at night is usually accompanied by the sound of birds crashing through wood or glass and pigs puffing away. 

Angry Birds is one of these phenomena whose success was probably a bigger surprise to the people who spawned it than to the public at large. I doubt the small Finnish company that came out with the game ever expected that they would sell 50 million copies of the game across pretty much every mobile platform available by the time the game marked its first birthday. And all this with a project that cost them $100,000 to develop. It just goes to show that sometimes less is more and that a well executed simple idea can often trump multimillion dollar sophistication without making too many waves.

The game has also managed to cross over into popular culture, with Angry Bird Halloween costumes, TV skits, and now Angry Bird cakes.

Of course Hollywood is never far behind when a story meets with such success. The people at Rovio have been very clever about that as well. First of all they have the in-game trailer which hints at potentially something more. 

And finally, lest anyone have any doubt about it, they produced this cinematic trailer which seems to intimate that the Angry Birds would one day grace the screens of our neighbourhood multiplex.

This too shall pass one day. But until then I will continue to feed this addiction with total abandon. Better let the birds be angry than me.

Nano Time

Kickstarter is this amazingly innovative funding platform for creative projects. Simple people like you and I the world over can pledge money to any particular project they are interested in. No money changes hands until the project's funding goal has been reached but the project creators maintain ownership over their work no matter what.

One of these Kickstarter projects has lately made more noise than usual, bringing the Kickstart funding system to more people's attention. I am somewhat of a watch freak. I am also quite the tech nerd. So when these two worlds meet and they are fueled by something as cool as the Kickstarter project, my antennae perk up. 

The idea came from design firm Minimal Inc. who are famous for, among other things, the design of the XBOX360. After hearing Steve Jobs mention that the new iPod nano would make a cool wristwatch, they decided to come up with something unique. Others had also been inspired by those few words (see picture), but the guys at Minimal took it one step further. 

They decided to use the Kickstarter platform to raise the $15,000 they would need to get their nano watch off the ground. They came up with two models: TikTok and LunaTik. For a $25 pledge the participant would essentially be pre-ordering a TikTok watch kit (no nano included). For a $50 pledge they would get the LunaTik watch kit once it was produced. The actual retail cost of these items will be $34.95 and $69.95 respectively once they are made available to the public at large so getting in early as a Kickstarter participant saves early adopters some "dosh".

They produced a little video to explain the concept better and sat back to see how the Kickstarter participants would react. Little did they know that they would become the single most successful Kickstarter project ever. As of this writing they have raised $699,247 and chances are funds will continue to come in until the project gets funded precisely at 11:02 PM EST on my birthday, December 16.

If you are into small, thin, almost fragile timepieces, don't bother watching the video. You won't like what you see. If however you don't mind wearing something a little bigger than average on your wrist, and on top of that the marriage of form and function gets your adrenaline pumping, you might really enjoy what these little gems look like. If you're not sure what you think of this, don't worry: time will tell. Literally.