Retro Technology, Difference Engines and Steam Punk

With CES happening and all the announcements about new technology, let's take a moment to think about the first computer geek ever, Charles Babbage. He drew up all kinds of blueprints which described high-tech machines but he never got the real cool stuff built. But a modern computer geek, Nathan Myhrvold, put up some of his Microsoft millions to fund a project to build Babbage's Difference Engine, a 5-ton, crank-driven counting machine...the world's first computer.

NPR also did a great story about this modern-day manifestation of Babbage (currently on display at the Computer History Museum). Rumor has it that one of the two Difference Engines are heading up to the Seattle area after a stay at the museum, to find a permanent home in a private residence. Also, there is some great video at the NPR site, too.

Charles Babbage, the original steam punk.

Tablets, Thin Clients and Web Pads

I've been waiting for an electronic "book" since I was a kid. Next year there will be many choices and I am more than ready. I love to read, watch video and listen to music and one of these devices is going to get it right, allowing users to do all this in a thin comfortable package. Below are the devices that I know about, but I am sure there are other secret projects happening as we speak.

The video above is the first peek at the Time, Inc. secret "Manhattan Project" which is actually a digital tablet magazine. It looks very promising. See another video demo here.

Of course there is the Amazon Kindle which is really cool, but it's black and white and has no multimedia capabilities. The Barnes & Noble Nook seems OK and has a small capacitive touch screen, but doesn't feel to me like a cohesive unit.

Microsoft's secret tablet: Courier. It's not a tablet, it's a "booklet".

Google has two operating systems (which will one day merge I'm sure) and companies are developing devices for these platforms. Take a look at some of these Android tablets. Also, The New York Times has a recent review of the eDGe by enTourage Systems: "Devices to Take Textbooks Beyond Text". T-Mobile has also announced a tablet which will run on Android.

There are tons of hints about an Apple iPad, but for now it remains a rumor. I know it will happen...but when?


Michael Arrington and TechCrunch have been working on the CrunchPad and it is very promising. However, there was some business upheaval this week so the future of the project is uncertain.

The Litl Computer by John Chuang of Aquent is an interesting approach with no OS. It is somewhere between a notebook and a tablet. It's "easel mode" is intended to make reading and browsing easier.

Will one of these devices become the break-away leader? Will they all grab part of the market? Or is there something else being developed out there in a garage that will soon blow our minds? Whatever happens, I'm ready to create content for it...that's when the real fun begins.

Idioms, Credos, Sayings and Maxims: Part 3

Back by popular demand! These are sayings I've heard people saying. Don't miss the first two installments of this column (one, two).

"Go to war with the army you have, not the army you want." Make the best of what you've got.

"Hire people smarter than yourself and stay out of their way." A good general rule of management.

"Don't try to boil the ocean." Taking on so much that it becomes impossible.

"If you're getting kicked in the ass, at least it means you are still out in front." Watch your windshield and your rear view mirror.

"A good leader takes none of the credit and all of the blame." Someone's got to do it.

"Make the hidden visible." Visual reminders in the workspace allow unseen data and ideas to be revealed. Whiteboards, scorecards, updated wall-hanging dashboards.

"Answer the questions you want to answer, not the one that was asked." Like a seasoned politician.

"It’s not a party till someone looses an eye." Don't I know it.

"Tell them what you are about to tell them, then tell them and then tell them what you just told them." This is public speaking 101.

And what's with the elephant references? "The elephant in the room." or "The tale of the blind men and the elephant." or "Tripping the elephant."

"Metaphor is the lazy man’s insight."

"Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" Because you plan to eat the cow.

"Find a crack and make it a crevice." Locate dissatisfaction and exploit it. Find fissures and squeeze in. Find the chink and cause the armor to crumble.

"Never let a good crisis go to waste." In chaos there is always opportunity.

"It doesn’t matter if you are the best, as long as you are better than average." When competing, just be better than those around you...not better than the whole world.

"A fish doesn’t know he’s wet." Are you so surrounded by your environment that you can't see what you are wrapped up in?

"Ready... Fire.. Aim!"

"Hit your mark and bark." Sometimes being part of a team means you're like an actor; enter on cue and run the lines. And while you're at it, "Don't bore us. Get to the chorus."

"Don't Spray & Pray." When conducting promotional campaigns or business development, don't take a scatter-shot approach and just hope for the best.

"Work smarter not harder."

"You can't dig the trench till you build the shovel." First things first.

"It is so much more impressive when someone discovers your good qualities without your assistance."

"That light at the end of the tunnel could be the train." Or not.

"You can eat well or you can sleep well, not both."

Transportation metaphors abound. "Don't try to build a plane as you're flying it." or "Don't try to build the train tracks as the train is moving."

"A fool with a plan can beat a genius with no plan." -T. Boone Pickens' dad

Related Stories
Idioms, Credos, Sayings and Maxims: Part 1
Idioms, Credos, Sayings and Maxims: Part 2
Three Letter Acronyms and Digital Definitions

Human-Computer Interfaces, MultiTouch and the Death of the Mouse

Check out this human-computer interface concept from Clayton Miller (10/GUI). Will we forever be using a mouse to click windows? Probably not. So...then what's next?

"The mouse and the windowed desktop are perhaps the two greatest innovations in the history of human-computer interaction. But like all innovations, they are best seen as part of a continuum rather than a terminus.

The mouse and the window led us out of the confines of the keyboard and the text prompt to the world of graphical and spatial possibility we enjoy today. But there's no reason to stop there."

My Night at TEDx Seattle

I recently had the pleasure of attending the first TED.com event in Seattle. It was a fun and engaging night in the Georgetown Ballroom. See all the TEDx Puget Sound 2009 Videos.

Above is a video of climber Ed Viesturs, one of the speakers for the evening. Notice in the video when he talks about marketing himself to pay for his climbing expeditions...there is a brief reference to MountainZone (my old company). We did projects with Ed and his team when we were pulling the zone together.

Check out the Flickr Photoset of pictures...you can see me lurking in the background eating all the orderves.

"TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize."

How the Web Ate the Economy and Why it’s Great for Everyone

Media theorist and social critic Douglas Rushkoff has a new book out called “Life, Inc.” Check out this great talk from the 2009 Web 2.0 conference which touches on a lot of the themes from his book.

"In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from a convenient legal fiction to the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that they’re no longer even aware of it."

Family Ukulele Travel Odyssey in O'ahu

I recently took advantage of a generous company perk. Aquent owns a spacious 3-bedroom house on O'ahu. Me and another employee brought our families and a fun time was had by all. Behold more home movies below.

O'ahu 2009 Part One


O'ahu 2009 Part Two

Creative Learning and Inspiration

I've been doing some online training via Lynda.com, a great digital resource for learning creative software tools. I'm focusing on Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator which are tools that I've worked with for many years. However, watching online videos of top-notch professionals is teaching me tons of new tricks. In addition, Lynda has a library of inspirational videos. I definitely recommend checking out these mini-documentaries of creative professionals. It is really inspiring to see the stories of artists, photographers, musicians and designers who've been successful in the creative industry. Note: I have a subscription to this site, but there is a ton of content available to non-members. I especially enjoyed looking "into the life and home studio of one of the entertainment industry's most sought-after motion graphics designers, Rick Morris." Also, don't forget to "take a ride in the Big Spaceship with this intimate look at the inner workings of one of the web's most innovative firms."

Family RoadTrip 2009

I hereby subject my readers to home movies. Behold! Actual video footage of our madcap adventures. See the Seattlites drive to Idaho and Montana. Thrill to the footage of bears! Rock to the sounds of Evil Little Men with special guest stars The Beatles. Chico Hot Springs. Yellowstone, Bozeman. Missoula. Coeur d'Alene. Big Sky. And much more...

The Lost Art of Sketching

I've been working with computers, lo these last 20 years. I've always gravitated toward the crowd that liked pencils with their digital tools. I've been an advocate of the low-fidelity prototype since the early days. As an Internet industry worker, I recommend drawing in a journal/sketchbook at least a few times a week. Lately I've forced myself to do it every day. The results are extremely beneficial to me...I work out problems conceptually before I implement them in my professional life. Plus, it's just therapeutic to draw a dragon, skull or robot at least once a day.




Please see some of my recent sketchbook doodles by clicking on the thumbnails above. I've removed most of the text and words, but I wanted to collect these pen & pencil sketches in a digital way. I also posted them to my Flickr page. If you have a Flickr account, you can see the super hi-res versions of these.

It seems sketching is enduring a bit of a resurgence. Sketching comes back into fashion. I love it. Below are some examples of these concepts.

For ages, people in power have used simple pens and pencils to work out complex problems. Check out the great book called Presidential Doodles: Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles, and Scrawls from the Oval Office from the creators of Cabinet Magazine. See a great excerpt and samples in The Atlantic.

The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam is a fun, prescriptive book which helps you "solve any problem with a picture".

Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design by Bill Buxton is a must-read. Earlier this spring I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Buxton speak in Las Vegas at the Microsoft MIX conference. Check out my post from that event for more links concerning lo-fi prototyping and design sketching.

Learn about mind mapping, graphic facilitation and sketchnoting in the great post, "The Joy of Sketch: explorations in hand-crafted visuals" by Kate Rutter of Adaptive Path.

LISTEN: Hear the NPR story "Bored? Try Doodling To Keep The Brain On Task" by Alix Spiegel. There are also some of President Obama's doodles on the website.

Next year, don't forget National Doodle Day.

See these helpful tips and tutorials: Drawing Tips - Top 10 Mistakes Beginners Make.

Augmented Reality Applications Connect Data to Your World

When we watch TV news programs and see the text crawl at the bottom of the screen, or an image inset over the shoulder of the newscaster, we are experiencing augmented reality. The logo is not really floating in the air next to the host in the studio, of course. The weather map is not really hovering there next to the weatherperson. The virtual layer of information and graphics is overlayed via computer.

Phones and other mobile devices are now making this technology available to the average citizen. Check out the links and videos below to learn more about this emerging trend. Then start imagining what the world will look like when this technology is embeded in your eye glasses...or in your retina.

DigitalBeat just posted a great roundup of Augmented Reality applications.

The first simulated-AR app for the iPhone is Pocket Universe. Hold your iPhone up to the night sky and see a graphical overlay showing you the names of stars and constellations.

Engadget article: Video: Hands-on with SPRXmobile's Layar augmented reality browser for Android

Layar (see video above) is a free application on your mobile phone which shows what is around you by displaying real time digital information on top of reality through the camera of your mobile phone. Layar is available for the T-Mobile G1, HTC Magic and other Android phones in Android Market for the Netherlands. Other countries will be added later. Planned roll-out dates for other countries are not known yet.

Wikitude.org WIKITUDE World Browser presents the user with data about their surroundings, nearby landmarks, and other points of interest by overlaying information on the real-time camera view of a smart-phone. Available for download through your G1 & G2 phones in the Android Market Place. Coming soon to an iPhone near you!

The Augmented Environments Lab (AEL) is a research group at the Georgia Institute of Technology focused on putting media in the world around people, using a range of techniques from see-through head-worn displays, video-mixed camera phones, spatialized sound, and video projectors. They are interested in exploring the potential of interactive computing environments to directly augment a user’s senses with computer generated material.

The New York Times Prototype section recently published a great article by Leslie Berlin called "Kicking Reality Up a Notch"

DigitalBeat: Augmented reality startups petition Apple for live video interface

Games currently in development are going to blow some minds. Sony PSP owners can now get their hands on Invvizimals. Hold the unit's camera up to your world and it will reveal hidden creatures hiding under your bed. See the video below.

Smartphone Market Heats Up

From NPR.org, "The newest iPhone goes on sale Friday. For many, so-called smartphones like iPhones and BlackBerries are more than gadgets, they are a necessity. And as demand for the products has grown, so has competition. It's now an epic business battle." Listen to the story.

This piece was produced in Seattle for national broadcast today. The mobile device market (hardware and software) is on fire. Seattle seems poised for the next great media revolution...massive computing power in everyone's pocket.

Fun Family Video

My daughter Skylar and friends decided to take her 10th birthday party on the road to Bainbridge Island. Beach fun, touring the shops and eating the food. I attended as chauffeur and videographer. Above are the results.

My Favorite Design Blogs

Many online resources exist for today's designers. Check out my list below for sites that review tools, showcase products, provide tutorials and link creative people to other creative people. Even if you are not a designer, these sites are just plain fun to look at.

Web Designer Wall: A wall of design ideas, web trends, and tutorials.

Creative Nerds: Tutorials, news, inspiration and freebies.

Smashing Magazine: Hacks, tips, freebies, tutorials, fonts and more.

Uselog: The product usability weblog.

WeFunction: Web design company that posts links to free themes, inspiring before and afters and tutorials.

Design Reviver: Providing web designers with valuable information such as tutorials, free downloads, sources of inspiration, and articles covering a wide range of web design related topics.

Fuel Your Creativity: Articles, links and samples for designer block.

Boxes and Arrows: Devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design; including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture and the design of business.

Core 77: Articles, discussion forums, extensive event calendar, portfolio hosting, job listings, a database of design firms, schools, vendors and services.

Design with Intent: Design for sustainable behavior. How do people use products, systems and environments? How can designers influence interaction?

Doors of Perception: Starting new conversations on design and innovation.

Photoshop Star: Free Photoshop tutorials.

Outlaw Design Blog: Free resources, product reviews, tutorials and a guide to passive income.

Vandelay Design: Provides helpful and informative posts that meet the needs of web designers or online entrepreneurs.

Noupe: News for designers and web-developers on all subjects of design, ranging from; CSS, Ajax, Javascript, web design, graphics, typography, advertising & more.

Devlounge: Design, web apps, interviews and code.

Just Creative Design: Designer Jacob Cass posts articles about graphic design, logo design, web design, advertising, branding, typography, and icons.

Jhames: Seattle designer James Elliott shares insights about techniques and about the design industry.

Spoon Graphics: Tutorials, techniques, links and inspiration.

Six Revisions: Practical, useful information for the modern, standards-compliant web designer and web developer.

Emily Chang: Award-winning web and interaction designer, technology strategist and entrepreneur.

Web Designer Help: Tutorials, interviews, competitions.

Elite by Design: A design community dedicated to providing helpful and insightful articles in the fields of web design, web development, and Photoshop.

My Experiments with Self-Publishing

I've just launched an experiment in self-publishing. I've used the service Lulu.com to create an online store for my picture books. It's called ClayBot.com and it takes advantage of on-demand technologies, only printing a physical book when someone orders from the store. No inventory. No overhead.

I chose Lulu after researching a bunch of services that are available. So far I like it, but I am definitely going to experiment with some other sites. Some similar services include: Blurb, iUniverse, Xlibris, Trafford, Gorham, Amazon's Booksurge, Amazon's CreateSpace, CafePress, Scribd, and AuthorHouse.

Online Video Mega List UPDATE1

Below are recent additions to my Online Video MegaList. This list is intended as an overview of video websites that are significant to digital content creators and digital content consumers. Learn where to upload your clips, where to find online video entertainment, where to find progressive multimedia, how to monetize your content and more. See the full list which is organized into categories such as Infrastructure, Upload Sites, Entertainment, Tools, and more.

• PLYmedia: Development, design, manufacturing and deployment of an interactive, multi-dimensional web video platform.
• jetvision: Jetvision provides immediate access to all your content in a single web video player that’s customized to match your existing website.
• VideoClix.tv: VideoClix’s original clickable video authoring software segmented, tracked, tagged and categorized objects within videos.
• VUVOX: VUVOX is an easy to use production and instant sharing service that allows you to mix, create and blend your personal media – video, photos and music into rich personal expressions.
• LANDLINE TV: A comedy video site that is "comically relevant...for about a week or so."
• Syndicaster: Syndicaster is adding several online distribution options for local TV stations, including the ability to publish video clips to YouTube, AOL (via Brightcove), Yahoo and other sites. Syndicaster is an online editing and video-clip management service that allows TV stations to broadcast any news clip and repurpose it for the Web by publishing it to their own Websites or through its sister service ClipSyndicate (both Syndicaster and ClipSyndicate are divisions of Critical Media).
• VidPay: A white label platform for sponsored video campaigns, helping video advertisers reach their intended audience.
• ActiveVideo: ActiveVideo Networks brings the full Web-media experience to TV, using well-established Internet and On-demand infrastructure. With 24 issued patents, ActiveVideo provides a mature, stable platform with infinite programming possibilities.
• Intruders tv : The leading provider of valuable insights through their unique approach to capturing Innovators on video.
• Kyte: Kyte is an end-to-end, online and mobile platform for the production, distribution and monetization of video content.
• ffwd: This video recommendation engine has just released its API to developers.
• Sling Media: Cool digital settop boxes that stream cable from your house to your computer. They will soon release an iPhone app that gives instant access to Cable TV and Tivo while roaming.
• Another settop box is Roku who will soon have a new product to Stream Netflix and Amazon video on demand.
• The Fancast Store: Online video store with a respectable selection of modern films.
• STRIKE.TV: Born out of the writers strike, designed to challenge members of the Writers Guild to create original programs for the Internet. The ad revenue profits go to the Writers Guild Foundation Industry Support Fund.
• Dailymotion: Video upload, sharing and categories.
• Heavy: Early-comer online video company focused on creating entertainment experiences for various demographics.
• Mixpo: An online video advertising technology company based in Seattle.
• mywaves: The largest free mobile video destination for consumers, attracting over 5 million unique visitors monthly to its free mobile video service.
• VideoSurf: A site for users to search, discover and watch online videos.
• Ooyala: Manage, monetize, syndicate and analyze your online video. Founded by two seasoned Google veterans.

See the full Online Video Mega List.

PBS Launches New Video Portal

PBS has just launched their new video portal. They've learned from sites like Hulu and are offering tons of free content in streaming, full-screen HD format. It seems they are not allowing bloggers to embed video, but they do have a bunch of social media features that allow users to post to FaceBook, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.

Check it out for full length videos of FrontLine, Julia Child, NOVA, Nature, The NewsHour, American Masters and more. And no ads!

The 100 Most Iconic Internet Videos

If there is one thing the internets are good for, it is stupid video clips. URLesque.com has recently posted the 100 Most Iconic Internet Videos list. You may agree or disagree with their choices, but you will certainly waste a great deal of time examining their rankings.

Notable videos on the list include: The Landlord, Lonelygirl15, Guys Backflip Into Jeans, Miss Teen South Carolina, Dramatic Chipmunk, Exploding Whale, Don't Tase Me Bro, The Evolution of Dance, Diet Coke and Mentos Eruption, Charlie Bit My Finger, OK Go Treadmill Video, Lazy Sunday, Where the Hell Is Matt?, David After Dentist, Leave Britney Alone, Christian The Lion, and of course, The Star Wars Kid.

Digital Paper, eBooks and Multimedia Storytelling

Although I still subscribe to two newspapers and I love to read magazines and books, I am nonetheless excited about all the new eBook readers and digital paper technologies becoming available. With so many newspapers in trouble, many writers and readers are going digital.

The Kindle has really sparked a firestorm of recent interest, but there are a ton of other fascinating projects going on. Soon I hope to be digesting blogs, watching video, and reading articles and novels on a paper-thin, flexible color screen with tiny hi-def speakers. Bring it on!

Check out the links below for info on eBook technology, digital paper and what all this is doing to storytelling.

Watch Richard Archuleta, CEO of Plastic Logic demonstrate the world's first electronic reader aimed specifically for business users:
(Also see some other video from Plastic Logic.)

Both Plastic Logic and Kindle were recently mentioned on NPR's Marketplace (April 13, 2009): "New e-readers get a big push. E-readers allow users to read books digitally, but sales of the hand-held devices have grown slowly. That may be changing as Amazon and Sony, along with some well-funded start-ups, push a new generation of e-readers. Mitchell Hartman reports." (Listen to the MP3)

Kindle is Cool, But Color Ebook May Save Civilization
Is the digital savior of the sagging magazine industry finally in sight?

Flexible Displays Closer to Reality, Thanks to U.S. ArmyImagine a screen so thin, light and flexible that it can be rolled up and carried in your pocket, while consuming almost zero power. Phillips electronics is also working on a similar epaper technology.

The folks at TechCrunch are working on a great potential product that will be "a very thin and light touch screen computer, sans physical keyboard, that has no hard drive and boots directly to a browser to surf the web." Ladies and gentlemen, The CrunchPad.

Check out the review of the eSlick eBook reader that was announced before the Kindle2.

Samsung ready to roll out Papyrus touchscreen ebook reader Will the touchscreen make this a Kindle killer?

Readers and writers are also starting to develop technologies and communities to adapt and support this new way of publishing (or is it broadcasting?).

Wattpad is called "The World's Most Popular eBook Sharing Community." Self-publishing is also flourishing in this new world at places like WEbook. A company called Vook.tv is in private beta, but promises to be a site to promote and distribute a multimedia hybrid of books and videos.

Is This the Future of the Digital Book? Read about Vook and many other companies in this great NYT article.

The New Storytelling: Multimedia Children's Publishing Kids' publishing houses lead the way in developing multimedia platforms.

Fujitsu shows off colour e-book display. It's new, it's Japanese and it is almost ready for prime time.

Intruders TV Relaunches

Intruders TV has re-vamped their site and posted a bunch of new video interviews with musicians, tech wizards, filmmakers and cleantech pioneers. They are a truely global operation, posting in multiple languages. Some great interviews are available...check 'em out.

They describe themselves as follows: "Intruders tv is the leading provider of valuable insights through their unique approach to capturing Innovators on camera. Interviews are conducted by well known, experienced and international industry editors, hand picked by Intruders tv to convey credibility and respectability both with the innovators being interviewed and the audience watching the interview."



"The mastermind behind Java, James Gosling created the programming language that brought the Internet to life and can be found in everything from smartcards to cell phones. In the interview above, James talks about Java, embedded systems, the iPhone and sensors in the middle of the Pacific!"