1. Passion, creativity and making your own choices: A chat with Paulo Zoom

    MELO: Everything’s going OK?

    PAULO: Yes it is.

    MELO: What have you been up to? How’s it going?

    PAULO: I tend to be ambitious, so it could be better. But I don’t complain. I’ve been doing what comes up. I decided that I wanted to leave behind everything I did in the past few years, which was basically web programming in Ruby and Ruby on Rails, because I fell out of love with it.

    MELO: How did that happen?

    PAULO: Because of several reasons. First, I’ve been doing that for about three years. Even before having a job.

    And second, because web programming stopped being that interesting to me, for the simple fact it was no longer new, the work I did was like riding a bike.

    But that wasn’t all.

    Another reason was I wanted to do stuff that people could play with, and design and develop interfaces. I realized that the majority of people didn’t want to know if, for example, Facebook uses caching or AJAX or whatever, but everybody notices if something is hard to do or if there’s a new functionality. Maybe it’s not fair that the programming that’s behind it all doesn’t have so much relevance, but that won’t change.

    So, I want to do stuff that you can interact with, be it designing or developing interfaces, for the web or on an iPhone or iPad.

    MELO: So it was going from the technological implementation to the design of the experience that motivated going freelance?

    PAULO: I always had this desire to do my own stuff, to choose the work I want to do. But I couldn’t, until I started to get a lot of proposals that made me stop and think: “Wait. I could live out of this.”

    Then I found myself in this new freedom, and I decided I wanted to work hard in choosing the path I liked the most, which was experience design and the design of products and applications.

    This was what led me into this adventure by myself, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do.

    MELO: Is your work on Listary an example of this change of focus and vision? Do you want to talk about your experience on the development of the app and working with Portmanteau?

    PAULO: Yes, it is. With Listary, I saw the opportunity to join with people I like spending time and working with, in order to create something that represented our vision of how software should be.

    I’m not saying that in terms of just implementing or designing. I’m talking about deciding “This will be like this because it’s how we like to use, and that’s how we think a good app should be”. It’s a scenario of deciding on the whole, there are no sacred cows and all the work and decisions are debatable. Then, each one goes and works on what he/she likes the most. That’s how we do it at Portmanteau.

    Ideally, we want to make applications that we use. Because in that way we don’t have to use them to try them out, we want to use them, because we need them.

    I would very much do only this, but it’s difficult right now.

    But the idea of Portmanteau is that we like to work together, so anyone can work in what he/she knows and likes best, as one can, and since we enjoy working together and developing apps we want for us, work becomes a dedication. Because it’s our thing.

    MELO: Do you see Portmanteau as something that can evolve into a thing like a start-up or would you prefer to maintain yourselves in this more loose dynamic?

    PAULO: Of course. Personally, I don’t really like the term start-up or company. Because nowadays it appears that the only objective is to “create a company”. I don’t like that. I want to make stuff, create it and put it in the hands of people. A company is a lot of the times the legal mechanism we need to do that. But it’s a means and not an end. At least to me. My end is to do stuff.

    But getting back to your question, I would really like to live off this. But I don’t think it should be an obligation, but a pleasure. I very much want to make Listary and other apps at full-time. But if in a year from now I would feel like stopping for a few months and do something else, I want to be able to do it.

    At the bottom of it all, I want to do what I enjoy, what I like, and be payed for it. Isn’t that what we all want? I’m just activity looking for it.

    MELO: You’ve said that working as a freelancer is changing you. That it’s been strange, but rewarding and liberating. In what way do you feel that being responsible for yourself is changing you? What are you learning with all of this?

    PAULO: So much. It’s changing me because now I control everything I want to do and learn. 

    In most cases, when working for another in a normal work schedule, you don’t get to do many fundamental decisions. But now, if I can, I can decide: “Do I want to spend the whole afternoon learning how to code for iPhone? Or do I want to read that book on Information Architecture?” Every day is a day to decide in what I want to invest in. In what I want to become.

    Said like this, it may seem that I spend all the time reading and never working. That’s just an example. So many things have never been an option before and now they are. What do I want to do today? When do I feel like working and where? I learn so much about myself: When do I function better, when is it more comfortable to me…

    And since there are so many decisions, so much uncertainty, I could be making HTML/CSS for a site and think “Is it worth it to spend another hour on this and do it in another way?”, “Is this work worth it?”. Since there isn’t that certainty that “Independently of it all, I’ll get my salary every month”, spending an afternoon improving or remaking something has much more impact. Maybe, you know, that thing could end up not being worth it. So I may do it well, maybe not in a such perfect way, but then I get two hours to learn something new. Or do something else.

    I’ve never thought I would be 24 years old and get to decide so much. But it’s rewarding, because I can choose a path and succeed and grab opportunities that I’d have to reject otherwise. And even if stuff goes wrong, even if I end up banging my head against the wall, at least I went one way and did things.

    Well, I’ve got nothing against a more so-called normal job, and one thing doesn’t imply the other, but the truth is that a lot of people don’t worry with “What do I want to be?”. But if they stop and think about it, being able to own their job is a marvelous thing.

    Right now I’m talking to you and there’s a lot that I’m not remembering, and I’m sure that in a few months my concerns will be different, and that’s fantastic, because my concerns can be different.

    MELO: But I bet it couldn’t be an easy decision, give up that stable monthly salary with the uncertainty of being paid, especially with our countries’ (Portugal) situation right now. Did you went for any moment of uncertainty in regards to your decision?

    PAULO: Not yet, fortunately, but I think I will. Maybe not financially, but in terms of working alone. Working with other people allows me to learn and discuss what I do and most of what I’ve learned in recent years was just like that. Being at college, together with a bunch of people in a room, talking about everything. But if at anytime I have any difficulty, I can go back [to having a “normal” job], even not wanting to.

    Nothing points to that happening, but I’m taking precautions, because not knowing what I’m going to be doing in three months is kind of scary as well. “What if I end up without projects to do?” is a good question, but that’s for future Paulo. And what this Paulo can do, in the present, is to be minimally prepared.

    MELO: You’ve said a really interesting thing, that few people think about “What do I want do be?”. This is a problem that is dear to me and have written that I believe it’s kinda cruel to ask to a 15 year-old to pick his career. Are you, in any way, rediscovering yourself as a creative person?

    PAULO: I think so. The other day I read something Merlin Mann wrote, that was “Never abandon your core competency”. And I though: “What if, if we don’t do that, we won’t discover something we would be better at? Or at least just as good? Or even not as good, but we would be happier doing it?”

    I’ve discovered a lot of different things that give me pleasure, sometimes in a fortuitous way. For example: around a year ago I didn’t do any copywriting. I didn’t even thought that was relevant. Now, I think it’s perfectly normal to spend more that 15 minutes talking with people if a button in Listary should be called “Done” or “Save”.

    Professionally or personally, I’ve discovered things that I never knew existed or were relevant. And, after all, there’s so much there. So much opportunity to appreciate and do good or bad things. And now I always think if I like to do what I’m doing, and if I want to keep doing that.

    For me, what’s difficult is not falling in love with something. It’s to try something new, yes, but at a certain time to be able to stop and think: “Do I want to do this? Do I think I could do this better?” I tend to believe that if I try hard and invest myself, I could do a variety of things well. But now I have more self-control and more ability to “let go”. Yet, I still have that desire to know about more stuff. And I still deeply believe that people can do several things well if they want to and put an effort on it.

    Now that you talked about it, you’re right and it’s totally cruel to ask a 15 years old kid what he “Wants to be”. I’ve never looked at that in light of what I am now, and it somewhat makes me laugh. Because it’s ridiculous to be completely certain. I always wanted to make websites. I learned HTML when I was 14, and I still do it, and like it. And still, I have doubts about what I want to be.

    MELO: Joseph Campbell said “Follow your bliss”, maybe finding it is the bliss itself. The journey is the destiny and all that.

    This is getting too philosophical!

    PAULO: Yes, it is! *laughs*

    But maybe, you have an idea if you’ll ever reach a point and say: “OK, this is what I wanna do. Always.” ? I don’t think so. And, sincerely, I hope not.

    The other day I read a magnificent post by Frank Chimero where he said:

    “I used to draw pictures and there are many that wish I would still draw pictures. Maybe I will. Probably. But, I have a new job. It is to make these words. There are those that say that by not making these pictures, I am devaluing myself, that I am some how running away from the thing that made them like my work in the first place. They’re right in saying that I’ve abandoned making images for a little bit, but I am not running away: I am running towards.”

    Running Towards

    I profoundly relate to that. I have friends that tell me: “Instead of programming, which was what you’re good at, you’re making little drawings”. And I smile inside. It’s that Shark theory that Frank also talks about. Smart guy that Frank.

    MELO: Do you have any plans or it’s just what shows up?

    PAULO: I have some. I’m gonna keep working with Portmanteau, on Listary, and in what we feel like. I’ll keep making websites, because they pay me for it.

    And recently I was asked by Tiago Pedras, of ESAD, to be part of the teaching staff on the Post-Graduation in Webdesign that’s starting there.

    So, I’m very excited. There’s a mix of new, old and undefined stuff.

    And that’s good.

    MELO: Yes it is. Thank you Paulo!

    PAULO: Thank you Melo. Talking about these things was immensely better than I thought.

    Paulo “Zoom” Pereira is a Freelancer and 1/4th of Portmanteau, developers of Listary, an iPhone app that makes it extremely simple to make and sync lists.

  2. The renaissance of the pure form video games

    http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/

    These are great times to be an indie game developer.

    Angry Birds is probably the most played game of 2010 and every-other person is now a gamer, thanks to the proliferation of casual game devices such as the iOS and Android’s.

    These platforms, with their low-risk barrier to software development, allow independent game developers to experiment, to try things that a big software house wouldn’t, in fear of losing millions in investments.

    And we, gamers, are receiving the benefits of such experimentation: from art-like games that emphasis experience and emotion to the merge of gaming with other media creations, like music or visual design (like the game Auditorium). This rich diversity leads to innovation in game design.

    Some of this new wave of games challenge the traditional structure of story and others challenge the concept of gaming itself (see Today I Die), while asks the question: Why do we play video games and what makes video games a distinct medium?

    An interesting result of this low-barrier to game development is the proliferation and increase of popularity on what is called “retro-games”, made in the fashion of “8-bit”, “16-bit” or “32-bit” games popular over 15 years ago, during the first to fourth generation of video game consoles.

    It is possible, and highly likely, that this is in part due to a nostalgia factor: most of the game developers, and players, of these games grew up playing on their SNES, Genesis or similar gaming console and the “bit-era” games brings back fond memories.

    But I believe that this is also a response to the general trend of a gaming culture that started in the 90s: a pursuit of graphical realism and traditional story narrative in detriment of what makes a video game an unique medium and art form.

    This reminds me of what happened in the Comic Book industry a few years ago, when it started to rebrand itself Graphic Novels or Sequential Art (apologies to Will Eisner). The truth is that not all Comic Books are Graphic Novels but every Graphic Novel is a Comic Book.

    This need to disguise themselves as a “superior medium”, like literature, disappeared when the medium became as powerful, or more, that those it looked up to. It is a maturation process that has happened with every new form of media: to battle the shadow of it’s ancestry.

    Nowadays most movies are adaptations of comic books and video games outsell movie DVDs. These are industries that are mature enough to come out of the “media” closet.

    And as such, video games are starting to abandon the need to boast “life-like graphics or “novel-like stories” and begin to think about what makes them an unique form of entertainment. And this begins with a return to its roots.

    The simplicity of the 8 or 16-bit era in game design made them the most identifiable, be it in sound or graphics. If we take a look at the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World the video game references are easily identifiable because they are all inspired by video games made in this era (Super Mario, Mega Man, etc). In music we have the genre “chiptune” that mimics the sound chips of video game consoles made from the early 80s until the mid 90s. 8 Bit Weapon and Anamanaguchi are good examples of this genre.

    In terms of gameplay, this return to roots is represented in a simplicity of mechanics and controls, where the user has a very limited selection of actions (move left and right, jump and, maybe, shoot), and the narrative is divided in different levels that need to be restarted if the player loses. The Platform genre is the ideal representation of this, but other genres like “space shooters”, racing or maze games can also be evocative of this “retro”, distinct video game feel.

    Another characteristic of these new-old video games is its difficulty. In an effort to increase video game popularity, video games’ difficult level was increasingly lowered until a video game was much less of a challenge and more of a passive activity with a few decisions along the way. (In Final Fantasy, for instance, and particularly in the latter titles, most of the interactivity between player and video game was reduce to navigate the player-character between point A to point B in order to start a new CGI cutscene. The few battles in between, other than the “boss battles” were hardly challenging and are there mostly for XP. The game experience is more akin to watching a movie or reading a book, with a linear narrative and fixed ending).

    Part of the experience of playing one of these “video-game video games” is to achieve the satisfaction of finishing a particularly difficult level. The game Super Meat Boy, that perfectly exemplifies this trend, was in fact critically acclaim for its difficulty levels, winning the IGN’s Best of 2010 “Most Challenging Game” award. The game rewards dedication, attention and reflexes. It’s an active engagement between player and game that’s completely unique to the art form.

    I believe that this trend of “bit-era” games will eventually pass or be replaced with something else, but what will remain will be one step closer to a definition of what makes for a pure video game as the representation of the medium. With the industry reaching it’s adulthood, it will learn what its true identity is and if it’s more Pac-Man and Super Mario or Crysis 2 and Final Fantasy XIII1.

    1. Curiously, the music played in Final Fantasy when you win a battle (called Victory Fanfare) has remained more or less unchanged through most titles of the series, keeping the same 8-bit sound used in the first one. ↩

  3. Scratching an itch with Listary

    The great thing about iOS devices, that one unicorn tear-like ingredient that makes iPhone and iPad users devotees and, yes, fanboys, are the apps.

    What made me love the Mac universe is this culture of indie software development, where dedicated people make cool software that they themselves needed and wanted. Software like SuperDuper, Quicksilver, Dragthing, VoodooPad, Caffeine and so on. This culture stuck and defined the Mac, especially when in the other side there where thousands of applications that we, macintosh users, couldn’t use. Yes, there where loads of Windows apps out there, but the Mac ones felt special.

    This kind of culture is now visible in iOS development. Android continues to boom as a software platform, but the iOS apps feel special and different, in a way. Stuff like Simplenote, Instapaper, Reeder, Due, Pastebot, these are apps that live in my iPhone and feel like where made by a person, not a corporation, and that exist solely to “scratch an itch”’.

    In that exact same way, there’s a new iOS app made by a couple of friends that feels like that. It’s called Listary and it scratches a whole lot of itches.

    Listary is, in essence, a list manager that syncs with Simplenote. Just that. A simple premise that offers so much.

    I use lists in Simplenote a lot. Mostly wishlists: stuff to buy, movies to watch, books to read, albums to listen to. But managing that in Simplenote is a pain since there’s no easy way to check something done.

    This is where Listary comes in: I load my wishlists on it and, if I’m in a mood to watch a movie, I quickly check my list to pick one and after watching I just check it off and it get’s automatically synced with Simplenote.

    It’s easy, it gets out of your way.

    I’ve been experimenting with ongoing grocery lists on it as well and it works pretty great: I add the stuff I want to buy in Notational Velocity, which gets synced with Simplenote which in turn gets synced with Listary. When shopping, I just check everything off and it get’s marked done everywhere else.

    The app is also full of nice touches, especially for a 1.0: I love the “Show Completed Items” option after you check an item off, and it’s incredibly easy to add a bunch of items in a row in the “Add Items” dialogue.

    There are a couple of minor things that bug me: the icon, while not blue, feels a little off, a little too complex in contrast to the simple and straightforward interface of the app, and adding stuff from Simplenote is hard if you (like me) don’t use tags. However I know that the developers are aware of this and will continue to work on it.

    All in all a cool app and another great example of indie developers doing cool software because they had an itch that needed scratching. How can you not love that?

  4. “Como é que acham melhor?”

    Há um video que está a fazer as rondas desde a meia-noite de ontem. Um video em que vemos José Socrates, Primeiro-Ministro de Portugal, a preparar-se para declarar que o país vai precisar, e já pediu, ajuda externa.

    Mas a entrada do FMI é irrelevante. As consequências futuras disso são irrelevantes. O que interessa é que apanhamos o Primeiro-Ministro preocupado com o ângulo da câmara que o vai filmar, mais interessado nas aparências do que na gravidade da mensagem.

    É mais um exemplo de tudo que há de errado neste Primeiro-Ministro: a vaidade, a arrogância, a preocupação não com o estado da Nação, mas na forma como os outros o vêem. É um palhaço, é um corrupto, é um maricas que, sozinho, conseguiu levar Portugal à miséria. Há que rir na cara do idiota: Não fica bem nem de uma forma nem de outra, pá! Fica bem é contigo na rua!

    Pois.

    Sabem o que é que eu vi?

    Eu vi um homem. Não vi um monstro, não vi o mal personificado nem o vil destruidor das economias nacionais, mas vi um homem, como eu, a preparar-se para falar para milhões. Vi alguma humildade mas, acima de tudo, humanidade.

    É fácil projectar naquela figura, que tanto aparece orgulhosa nas nossas televisões, todas as nossas frustrações em relação ao estado da política nacional, e ver este a escorregar numa casca de banana é a punchline da piada contínua que tem sido contada diariamente neste país, por todos nós. É a piñata perfeita, pois tanto se orgulha na sua arrogância, e é tão fácil esquecer que é apenas um homem e, como todos, tem de apertar os atacadores de manhã.

    Mas aquela frase: “Como é que acham melhor?”, dita sem saber que estava a ser visto, sem a máscara pública posta.

    Aqui conseguimos vislumbrar a sua humanidade. “Como é que acham?”. O assumir da ignorância, o confiar na sabedoria dos outros. Não é o sabichão que vemos ou pensamos ver, mas é mais um que anda por aqui, que tenta esconder a insegurança com aparente confiança e, sim, arrogância. E nós? Que imagem tentamos passar aos outros? Que imagem é que achamos que os outros têm realmente de nós? E será que também não estamos todos preocupados como é que “fica melhor?”

  5. “Shut the fuck up Zuckerberg”

    A friend told me on IM a couple of days ago that he somewhat felt that Steve Jobs inviting Mark Zuckerberg to his house for dinner and discussing Ping integration on Facebook was really sad: Here was a guy who revolutionized the personal computer era having to bend over backwards for a 25 years old kid.

    But I don’t see it like that at all. For me, that night played-out in a completely different way:

    FADE IN.

    INTERIOR - STEVE JOBS’S HOUSE - NIGHT, DINNER TIME.

    Wide shot shows both Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg sitting on comfortable, early 20th century modernist chairs.

    Steve gets up and serves tea for Mark.

    STEVE

    You’re gonna love this tea, Mark. It’s picked specially for me from a mountain in Tibet by 10 years old Buddhist monks as part of their services for the temple. It was on that mountain where I smoked opium for the first time. It was a wonderful experience. Have you ever smoked opium, Mark?

    MARK

    Humm… no. I… humm. I have smoked weed.

    STEVE

    Weed is nice, when you’re a teenager. I’ll be sure to get you some opium, you’ll like it.

    MARK

    There’s… there’s no need.

    STEVE

    I insist. Have you seen the iPad 2? I have one right here, we’ll be commercializing it by January. It’s really great. 30% thinner and lighter AND with longer battery. And a front-facing camera for Facetime, of course.

    (Steve gets the iPad 2 from a desk at a corner and gives it to Mark)

    MARK

    It’s lovely. I love my iPad, you know?

    STEVE

    Of course you do. Keep that one, please. The next time you’re here I just have to show you Jony Ive’s plans for the iCar. They’re just absolutely wonderful: completely electrical, of course, unibody design, multitouch surfaces and total integration with our future iPhones.

    MARK

    I would love to see it!

    STEVE (smiling warmly)

    Yes, yes. I can kill you, you know that.

    MARK

    …What?

    STEVE

    Kill you. You and your family. Everybody who you love. And nobody would know.

    MARK

    I’m sorry, I… I’m not following.

    STEVE

    Shut the fuck up Zuckerberg. You know who I am. I invented the personal computer. I revolutionized the music industry and I’m doing it again for the TV and movie industry. I can obliterate your existence.

    You keep having fun with that little Facebook of yours. Playing with your farm or whatever-the-fuck you do in it. Make lots of money off it, but know your place. Don’t go swimming on the big-boys pool or you might just drown.

    MARK

    Steve, I don’t know what you’re…

    STEVE

    I told you to shut the fuck up. You have no idea, do you? The whole Microsoft vs Apple thing? All bullshit. Bill and I have it all figured out. We know how to play the game. Same with Schmidt. We’re in all of this together. And every little cunt out there keeps barking “Mac vs Windows” or “iPhone vs Android”, and we just keep getting richer off them.

    You see: we’re beyond Silicon Valley. We’re beyond billionaires. We’re bigger than Obama, bigger than Exxon. We own them.

    (Steve stands up and get’s behind Zuckerberg’s chair, hands in his shoulders)

    STEVE

    I’ve been to the meetings, Mark. The ones with the really important people in it. The really secret ones. You think you’ve been to elite parties? You don’t have a clue. I’ve been to places that would make the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut look tame by comparison. I’ve seen things that would change you.

    (Steve sits back on his chair and picks up his tea)

    STEVE

    So go along your merry way. Think about making Ping work with Facebook. Or don’t, we don’t really care. But you play nice. Play nice and good things might come your way. But just remember what I’ve told you. And don’t try to fuck me, Mark. Don’t.

    (Mark get’s up, picks up his jacket and leaves. Steve takes a sip from his tea.)

    FADE OUT.

  6. The end of the Folder and the way of the Sync

    At the time of this writing, Mac OS 10.7 is due to be previewed, for the first time, by Apple.

    I won’t go much into predictions of what might or might-not be on it. For the first time in a while I have almost no clue about what new features this new OS might bring (other than that Mail and iCal will probably be much more MobileMe and iPad like, but this is not an original idea whatsoever).

    It is, non-the-less, a very highly anticipated announcement, mostly by Apple nerds.

    For starters, those of us that adopted Apple computers before the advent of iOS devices have been feeling somewhat neglected on the Mac side of Apples’ business. The last OS was just a polished version of what is now a three years old piece of software (Leopard). 

    Three years for a completely new OS might not seem as much, but these last three years have been game-changing both for Apple and for Operating Systems in general, mainly due to one pesky little device that keeps creeping up: the iPhone.

    Or rather: the iPhone OS (now called iOS).

    With the advent of iOS a movement that was having it’s baby-steps leaped into full-blown teenagery, complete with it’s first peachy mustache: the replacement of a files-and-folders-driven Operating System to an App driven one.

    On the Mac, and even before the iOS, the apps were gradually taking over: you didn’t opened MP3 files, you opened iTunes. JPEGs were nowhere to be seen, hidden inside an Aperture or iPhoto library. Just like it was with emails and Address Book contacts.

    But you still had the Finder. You still had a Downloads folder, and a Documents folder.

    On the iPhone you don’t. Nor in the iPad. And amazingly, most of us don’t miss it.

    Sure, we have to change the way we think a little. No longer can we press a download link willy-nilly. 

    But for day to day use this limitation doesn’t even come up. We find a link to a video, we press or it to watch it. We come across a picture we want to save, we can copy it to our Photo library, if we wish. To install applications there is no need to download a ZIP file or a DMG, we go to the App Store and look for the app we want.

    This does complicate the way we load up content into the devices, thought, and it’s been a source of discontent mostly regarding the iPad and the iWork apps (especially if you want to work in one document both on the iPad and on a Mac), but times are indeed a-changing and my guess is that really really soon there’s going to be a good solution for that.

    You see, I no longer have to worry about my text files. I don’t because I have Simplenote on my iPhone, and I have Notational Velocity on my Mac. And they sync. They sync wonderfully! I write stuff down in one place and it shows up in another, even if I have both apps open at the same time. I have no idea where those files are, but I don’t need to, because I interact with them through the different apps interface.

    This sort of sync system works not only for text files (although it is were it’s most prevalent), but it’s also starting to creep up on different kinds of media, like with the new AutoCad iPhone and iPad app, which allows syncing with their own server, which in turn can be accessed through the upcoming AutoCad for Mac.

    Instapaper is also a great example of syncing done right. I no longer have a “Read and Review” folder on my Mac. I just send everything up to Instapaper where I know I’ll be able to read it anywhere I’ll like (I just wished it supported PDFs).

    So most of our apps have taken over our files and we don’t even realize it, but the interesting thing is that many iPhone and iPad apps are the only way we can consume certain kinds of media.

    Like Books.

    When Apple introduced iBooks (initially for the iPad and later on for the iPhone and iPod Touch) the app itself was nothing new, nothing particularly innovating. We already had the Kindle and Classics apps for the iPhone. 

    The really interesting part of it was that this was the first Apple app for the iOS devices (that is not device-specific, like the Phone or Messages) that doesn’t have a Mac counterpart.

    Because for the iPod app we have iTunes, for Safari we have Safari.app, for Mail we have Mail.app and for Calendar we have iCal. The same with iMovie, Pages and Keynote.

    But Books are stored in iTunes. And if they’re ePubs and not PDFs you can’t even open them on iTunes.

    And, although iWork for iPad apps now support MobileMe iDisk, the whole process is far from simple since it doesn’t save into iDisk by default nor the Mac counterparts read from iDisk by default. And they couldn’t because iDisk is part of the MobileMe package, which is a paid service and not widespread through Apple users.

    So if I was a betting man I would guess that a new OS would greatly simplify this process. Would create more and better bridges between what we have in our pockets and what sits in our desk. And would make it so you didn’t have to worry about files and where they where located. You just had to worry about actually using them in whatever way you wanted to.

    And, I don’t know, maybe a certain Data Center might have something to do with all of this?

  7. The Identity problem

    What does it mean to have a voice?

    At design school, a recurring project was the creation of an Identity: we had to capture what defined us and translate it into designish: fonts, illustrations, photos, etc. It was a recurring yearly project, and every time I struggled with it.

    How could I define myself as a distinct, clear thing when I didn’t knew who or what I was, exactly? This was especially true at a place where I was beginning to discover myself at a vocational level. I barely knew if I actually enjoyed making this design stuff and here I had to translate my persona into a graphic thing.

    Nowadays, it hasn’t become easier. My degree says I’m a Communication Designer, which is a good thing to be since it means fuck-all. Communication Design is a term created when the schools figured out that Graphic Designer was starting to become too antiquated and Designer was just too broad of a term, so, voilà: Communication Designer. I design Communication, apparently. 

    Fine.

    But what am I, as a creative person? Am I a guy who makes a couple of illustrations, designs some posters on my free time and make graphic interfaces at my day job? Is that it? Oh, and sometimes I make shitty websites. Where is my own voice in this? Where do I come in as a creator? How would my Identity look like if I had to re-do those same projects today, as a professional (read: paid) designer.

    Vocation, identity, voice. These are hard questions to ask ourselves: Is the title we put on our business cards what truly define us? And is the thing we though we wanted to be at the time we applied to a school the thing we want to do as a profession? How do we know that what we are paid to do at the moment is what will make us a happy human being? How do we know that we wouldn’t be happier, like Petter Gibbons from Office Space, doing construction work with our next-door neighbor? 

    It’s a fucked up thing to do to a kid, if you think about it: ask him, at the age of 15, what he wants to do for a living. I chose Arts. I don’t regret it, but I do wonder, maybe there’s a whole part of the Arts thing that I haven’t tried and, who knows, maybe I would be happier doing it. How do you know?

  8. Why I hate the phone and SMS and think every communication medium should be like Twitter

    (Is that an overly descriptive title?)

    Once there was this old vietnamese guy at a place where we pretended to fight with wooden swords who tried to teach us how to properly mediate (1). One of the golden rules was to try and be free from interruptions. Not totally free, don’t wear earplugs or noise-canceling headphones playing ambient hippy music, but free enough so you can actually engage in what you’re trying to do and, for that old vietnamese gentleman, that meant turning off cellphones.

    He said that, yes, it was natural to be afraid to turn off our cellphones, to be scared for the possibility that someone, somewhere, might have an accident and need our help at that time.

    So maybe you don’t meditate when you’re waiting for your kid to come home from school, or when your girlfriend went hiking. You do it at a time when you can be, to a certain degree, relaxed that a life-or-death emergency is a very unlikely scenario to occur.

    He also explained what having a cellphone with us, at all times, really meant: It meant that you’re giving anyone (and that means anyone) who has your number, the ability to call you and speak directly to your ear everyday, at every time. It’s like bestowing to all of your contacts the voice of god, that comes from the heavens to address you.

    Look at your contacts. Do you want to give that power to everybody in there?

    Sure, you don’t need to pick it up. But they still have the power to interrupt you, at all times and at all places. This system seems terrible wrong to me.

    And then there’s SMS. It’s less obtrusive, sure. But do you know what bugs me with SMS? Most (all?) of those who use it expect an immediate response. That’s because they know that you can’t miss it if you look at your phone at all. It dominates the screen on every cellphone out there. That’s like getting email and having it fill the computer screen when you get it.

    And they also know that you’ve received the SMS because they get a fancy report saying that you did. Isn’t that nice?

    And that takes me to email. Email is nice, email is cool. Most people who send it don’t usually wait for a response in minutes.

    Unless you work.

    When you work, and especially at a company, you are expected to respond to your email. Not all of them, but the really important ones. The problem is that you don’t know which are the important ones until you check, which you must do quite regularly so you won’t get in trouble. (2)

    So, that leads me to Twitter.

    Why do I love Twitter? Because it doesn’t have any expectations attached. You tweet stuff that you want to share but you don’t really expect a reply. If you want to directly communicate with someone you can add an @ or a DM to the tweet but even then you don’t get mad if you don’t get a response minutes later because you don’t expect the other person to be on twitter 24/7, checking and responding to messages. You can be confident that you’ll probably get a response from a friend if you DM them fairly soon, but you don’t fret over it, nor do you send more DMs urging them to answer.

    It’s a polite way to communicate. It’s a respectful one as well, one that is considerate for the other persons time and attention.

    P.S.: The other day I got a phone call from an automatic machine asking me to dial from 1 to 9 my level of satisfaction from the phone support I got from that same company the day before. I wish I had a phone call to ask me for my level of satisfaction for that call, but there’s no digit for “blinding rage”.

    1. Yes, I know how that sounds. And apparently conspicuous amounts of sitting is involved. ↩

    2. Go check out Merlin Mann’s stuff about this subject.  ↩

  9. It does multitasking, it supports Flash,

    It has not one but two USB ports.

    It has a front-facing camera, it has a physical keyboard,

    You can print with it, you can install whatever you want.


    It does all that and more, but since January 27th my Mac feels simply boring.