Giving you childish spirit away
July 18th, 2011 • Audiovisuals • No comments
I came across this nice Greek video for organization Earth at Vimeo.
Very nice use of interface design applied to a video piece as well as awesome color correction+art direction.
Simple concept, good production values with little more than a toy an great camera angles. An example that you can do much with little!
RIM – Short for: Real Inconceivable Mismanaged – Mess
July 14th, 2011 • Technology • No comments
Let’s start with one question that I have done to friends in the last year:
Is BlackBerry maker Research In Motion doomed?
My short answer is Yes, they’re.
The writing has been on the wall for over 12 months – I had this conversation early this year with a business associate of mine that works in the marketing department of a third party RIM Enterprise server solution.
I feel that the same thing that happen to Sony, as the giant of electronics, is happening to RIM in the mobile sector.
Innovation
Such an important and revolutionary word. Blackberry advances have been few and non-radical when you compare them to its biggest competitors: Iphone and Android. Still, the enterprise world relies in its outstanding security platform for emails and communication,. but that’s about it. All their new development feel old and “being there, done that” kind of thing.
When most people defend their blackberries functionality and reliability I can’t help to remember all those business users that were stuck to the Lotus mail application at the beginning of the century. Most of them got stuck to Lotus because it was bundled with their corporation IT solution – Novell, IBM, etc. It was a terrible, or at least mediocre email client with no rich media or html functionality.
I remember developing emails blast campaigns and hating how bad Lotus Notes and Mail rendered even the most simple graphic.
Image
Once you’re product isn’t cool anymore, It’s time to start to think again about your entire communication strategy. Technology products thrive by its coolness and their absolute obsession by all early adopters. Without this, it’s just very hard to get people excited about how a new gadget or device would change their lives for ever. Apple’s communication tries to do it every time. Sometimes better, sometimes simply bad or not as effective as they think.
Blackberries latest media campaign was weak, if not bad in many levels.
I’m really not sure how the client could have given the green light for this campaign, but the media buying was quite impressive last year. Against all client’s advertising rules, not once we see the product or its functionality. How can someone get excited about a product if a character is not really excited about the product – Sometimes having real people is worst than having no people at all!
I’m not alone in my claims. Sadly I have never owned a Blackberry myself, but my commentary is purely an observation and perception of RIM’s products and lack, or lost, of leadership. There are again some news about a new product line with BlackBerry 7 OS coming out in a few months, although there it seems not to be a major update on the new OS.
To make matters worse, there’s a claim that the half a million PlayBooks units sold by RIM were not at full margins. – Perhaps at a very deep discounts without making real gains or profits for RIM.
Is it too little too late? Time will tell…
Blender Power
July 13th, 2011 • Audiovisuals • No comments
While looking at a training video from Lynda.com I came across this inspiring and original animation short film called: Spaceman. I liked the idea and the music, I have to confess that some of the lighting and composition is not perfect but never the less a good and concise idea well develop in 2 min.
Check it out
Spaceman from James Isbell on Vimeo.
Fonts, Typefaces and design goodies
July 7th, 2011 • interactive • No comments
“Grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil Queen and Jack.“
I have been using the Google Fonts Gallery and application quite often during the last couple of months. It’s great that you not only can include great fonts into your CSS, but you can also download them into your system and design your content and layout with any of the typefaces you’re going to render your website with.
Today I got the news by RSS of the new Google Fonts application. You might call it 2.0 [By the way, I just hate 2.0 unjustified claims of about anything - 2.0 Icecream, 2.0 Icecubes, 2.0 Marketing hype ]
Anyway, if you’re an interactive designer like me or a graphic designer, visual artist or if you work with any type of graphic visuals or media, check out all their new fonts and new - re designed optimized and improved interface. The address is: http://www.google.com/webfonts/v2
Dropping Final Cut Pro X
July 6th, 2011 • Technology • No comments
It’s very unfortunate that Apple decided to drop years of development and investment by alienating to all their Pro community with news of Final Cut Pro.
Final Cut Pro and the Apple video family are one of the best things that happen to the video community in the last couple of years. Apple did what they do best, they standardize how a professional video application should work and behave. They did the same for DVD Studio Pro, they evaporated the complexity, and sometimes impossibility, for serious professional development in their platform.
We all should be grateful for their effort and development, they had helped speed up products and development by its competitors and level the playing field for an huge array of video users and video enthusiast.
It’s sad to see that trashed deliveredly by the launch of their new application Final Cut Pro X. Having no legacy support, no matter how advanced and perfect your application is, is absolutely unacceptable. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to enrage your customer base by, not only launching something that goes completely against their wishes, but also shows Apple lack of feedback from their own customers.
It’s no secret that some people are jumping ships before they are forced to abandon ship at all cost. I own Adobe Production suite CS 5 and I’m happy with its performance and legacy support.
I can only see this as a delivered attempt by Apple to scrap the Pro market all together in favor of their mobile and tablet division. After all, that’s the section of the company that increase exponentially company’s earnings and visibility from an obscure PC manufacture before the arrival of Jobs in 1996.
I’m not sure Apple is doing the right move. Alienating to the same developers that create content for their mobile and portable platform. Maybe made with a Mac slogan isn’t cool anymore.
Dancing in the Clouds
May 30th, 2011 • interactive, Technology • No comments
The Colossus datacenter at the 1970 SCI-Fi Movie Colossus: The Forbin Project
It wasn’t that long ago when we were sold on the promised land of computing power – actually I should say the computing sky. Everybody is talking about the incredible power the “Cloud” or should we call it the “Remote Data Center” can provide you with. Let’s not forget that those little fluffy cybernetic center are in fact utilizing far more resources than you would think.
First of all, keeping a datacenter cool 24 HS isn’t an easy task.
Second you would think that the big powers at large would plan their infrastructure in the most secure and remote places -I still miss WORP @ NORAD – As long as there’s plenty of electricity to tap on.
I remember a few years ago, my close friend Bill mention how Cloud computing was a silly and boring idea – This is the same Billy that made his fortune writing, or lets just say marketing, the most used and well known commercial OS in this solar system. But then again, I grew up watching french documentaries about the majestic power of the Minitel. The same that helped ignorant french teenagers to do homework in their networked tutoring service – Back home we walked with our ignorance to the tutor’s house. But not much has changed, or has it ?
I’m not sure I want all my information accessible online all the time, from everywhere. At the end of the day, having that possibility might trigger excesses like working non-stop in avoidable task as well as being close even when diligently try to be far. I still remember when people stayed home waiting for a call. Now it follows you, it chases you down, no matter where you are.
So I’m saying, take charge. Don’t be another available icon on someone’s desktop. Brake free and use the technology for your gains and not viceversa.
