I’ve been keeping tabs on a couple of conversations. One, as indicated by the above video, is a discussion on the Core77 design forum (Link) centered around the association of a “design superstar”, Karim Rashid, with what is, in my opinion, an arguably defective product. The other is the disgust being vented on Treehugger (Link) and Inhabitat (Link) over a BusinessWeek “advertorial” by (Design) Continuum’s CEO, Gianfranco Zaccai, that uses P&G’s Swiffer as an example of a “green” product. From “innovation and design” hype to “we do Green, too” showboating. Here we go again.

All I have to say is that someone should get the Industrial Design profession some gauze, bandages and a pair of crutches for all the feet getting shot.

Nice interview with John Maeda over on Wired (Link). I particularly liked this exchange because he’s saying the same thing I’ve been saying elsewhere:

Maeda: Yeah, I think the process is simple: Just put Steve Jobs in charge of your company. Seriously. Look at all the consumer electronics companies. They want to make an iPod, but they don’t know how. That’s because people who make objects function on the object-based model. Like if I’m at Sony or some big company, when I make something big and heavy and I sell a lot of them, people get psyched. Because the manager says, Oh wow, that’s big and heavy and you sold lots of them. That’s great. But if you’re making software, even if you ship a million of it, no one really cares because they really can’t see it. That is, unless the management recognizes the value of the intangibles.
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I wanted to make sure to call attention to an entry on the O’Reilly blog having to do with providing computing services to rural communities. The post, “SMS Servers Replacing PCs in India” (Link), reminded me a little of some previous efforts to create network computers in the mid-90’s. From the entry:

The SMS servers are being used to power an MSR project designed to test replacing PCs with SMS servers in the village of Warana (map). Mobile phones are used by farmers to access their data. In their system mobile phones become the client and SMS is used to communicate with the server.
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The above video is from the forthcoming videogame “Ship Simulator 2007”. It looks to me more like an excellent opportunity to throw some yacht designs into a beautiful simulation. And if developer VSTEP provides an SDK, I’ll probably do just that once the game is released.
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Sony has been getting its head handed to them the last year or so. From rootkits to management shake-ups, it seems every story with “Sony” in the title is bad news. They desperately need something good to happen, especially with PlayStation 3’s unimpressive sales figures. Fortunately, the latest news out of Sony isn’t bad. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound especially good either. From a C|Net article (Link) discussing Sony’s announcement to provide a 3D avatar-based “Home” world for PS3 owners: Continue reading →