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Augmented reality as a concept has been round for ages now but there is a surge of interest in it every now and again. Most recently I think that smart-phones with reasonable processing power (read: iPhones, Android) have allowed applications to use augmented reality in a way that is actually useful. This video by Keiichi Matsuda paints a vision of the future. A vision that I, as someone who uses Adblock and skips through every single tv ad, personally finds a little nightmarish:

Keiichi Matsuda via BldgBlog

The recently unveiled iPad is a metaphor for how Apple has turned away from those who create, to those who consume. Not only is the focus now on consuming at the expense of creating, but the way in which one consumes is very limiting. Here is why:

Apple have always been different. Despite some solid hardware and software design over the past few years, the biggest advantage Apple has is that it’s not Microsoft Windows. Partially because of this, Apple has been the faux-official computer manufacturer for creative folk. Musicians need an OS that doesn’t get in the way of their creativity. Visual artists knew they could install Photoshop on Windows, but on a Mac it felt like it belonged there. Designers not only loved the way the machines looked, but also the way they handled their creations without fuss (or BSOD). Writers and bloggers loved their (usually) good keyboards and subtle UI. For their efforts, Apple have been rewarded with loyal fans amongst those who create.

Image by HappyToast @ b3ta

For some people the internet is a one way thing. You sit back and it washes over you. Videos of cats falling off chairs, news articles, online radio, pornography… whatever. For many people, however, the web is a two way conversation. Whether it’s through IM, writing blogs, commenting on Reddit or even uploading shot film to Youtube, the web isn’t there to just be stared at. The people who demand this contributory attitude are often the creative folk I mentioned before. An on-screen keyboard isn’t the best way to go about all this. Neither is a 9″ screen, but that’s fair enough. We’re all pretty much in agreement that Apple didn’t make this device for creating monstrous Photoshop artworks or hours long Reason jams. No, they made it for the consumption of already created works. So why, Apple, limit so unnecessarily the ways in which we can consume such works?

The answer of course is control and money. You have to get everything through iTunes which means Apple cash-in, big time. What is puzzling is why creative types so readily favor such a creatively-limiting device. It’s understandable in a way: Apple rescued us all from a Windows hell. But don’t they understand that Apples “everything has to flow through us, it’s for your own sake, citizen” attitude stunts creativity? How can a design community be approving of Apple products when their applications are removed from the store, and their time wasted. Not only is this app-store only, no-multitasking world so bad for innovation, but Apple have the gaul to pretend that they’re doing something new. In yesterdays keynote we were told that all these cheap, 1.6GHz netbooks were too slow to be useful. That’s not true. Again, if you want to to some major Illustrator work then it’s probably not the best choice, but we’ve already decided that these machines are for consumption, which i think many netbooks (be they Linux or Windows7) excel at. I know hardware isn’t the only thing that effects performance, but I’m not entirely sure how the 1GHz iPad processor is going to be that much faster.

As a web developer I have to accept that the Apple app-store approach is bad for the web. When one creates an application for the web, be it using the latest HTML5 techniques or Flash, one can be sure that everyone can use it. As crap as Flash is for online video, it excels in some areas (like casual gaming). But that would mean that Apple loose out to free online alternatives to many (if not most) apps in their store. Apple is creating an elite version of the web, for only those who pay them directly, and because of this the iPhone and the iPad must be seen as poisonous to the internet, just as iTunes is poison to the music industry.

Some other ‘features’ of note include: The design looks like it’s a parody from the Onion. I need someone to explain how if a base model costs £388 and the same model with 16GB more memory costs £122 more, then where the hell do they buy their memory? Did they seriously call it an ‘iPad’? Finally, whatever I say, Hitler always has a much better grip on these things.

ReadItLater for Firefox

ReadItLater transformed the way I waste time online. I’ll rephrase that: it let me be more productive with my unproductively. Let me explain: Unfortunately I live in the real world (with a real job/boss) and this means that if I spot a 1hr long video on BoingBoing (about creative commons banana mash-ups being beaten by the police, or whatever) during my lunch, then I can’t sit there watching it all afternoon. Nor do I want to be mucking about e-mailing home urls to myself. What I really needed was a icon in Firefox I can click, that will save a page for later when I get home… or when I have more time to spend on such frivolities. That little icon was provided by ReadItLater. All it does it synchronize a bunch of ‘I’ll get round to this later’ links which you can save choose to visit later, when you have time. This plug-in has expanded onto the iPhone and a dozen other platforms. You can even view your list online, which I find handy when I have a moment to waste alone with just my S60 Nokia for company.

It’s simple, but very handy and the author has just released version 2.0 which brings some visual refinements that mean it’s all very polished. I love the new icons. Find out more at ReadItLater.

…and for those wanting to cancel their cable/sky packages. Here’s why:
I’ve been a member of the Boxee Alpha test for a while now and it showed a huge amount of potential. Boxee is, at its most simple, a media player that draws content from the net (Division3, iPlayer, Blip.tv etc.) and from your local network (ripped DVDs, your music library, downloaded tv shows). This content is then presented in a wonderful ‘made for big screen’ (read: your tv, not your 15″ laptop monitor) easily navigable interface. A rather gorgeous interface too, I might add. Well, certainly in the Alpha, I’m a little unsettled by the new beta interface but it is well ahead of the rigidness of the AppleTV and the ugly mess of any recent Microsoft efforts. Boxee is based on XBMC, a brilliant Open-source media player with a similar, but not as ambitious, desire to take over your tv.  Boxee adds web-content to XBMC’s marvelous local network media management. I’ve been running XBMC on a hand-me-down 1st-gen XBox (thanks Ed!) for a couple of years now and it kicks the ass of Windows Media Centre and the like. It just works. No codec bullshit, no delay, no fiddling.

The Boxee box

This alpha potential has been realized in the form of the newly announced beta and the Boxee Box. Although Boxee is quite intuitive to use, it can be a total bugger to setup, as was XBMC before it. Your options are hack your Apple TV or build a Linux machine and dive into a bundle of .debs and Pulse audio problems. Oh, and good luck on 64-bit Ubuntu, it’s a bloody nightmare! The Boxee Box removes all these headaches and essentially makes Boxee suitable for non-geeks. It’s built by DLink, who in my experience seem to churn out reasonable rooters/modems, and we’re promised it’ll cost a quite reasonable $200. This investment will open up a world of couch-accessible online content. There is a growing amount of independent media available online and bringing it from tiny laptop screens and onto that new 37″ monster you have in your living room could be the shot in the arm that many indie shows need.

I was going to blog about how stupid the case design was. “Don’t they understand that people are still going to have audio equipment/a DVD recorder/etc under their TV?”, I prepared myself to rant, “don’t they realize that such a bizarre shape will make it impossible to stack and fit under televisions?”. But as further details have emerged, it seems that the Box is so small that none of this should be a concern and as the remote control is RF then you could even hide it behind your flat-screen if you want.

This thing is seriously small

The closest thing we’ve seen to this has been the Apple TV, which like Boxee could view web content. But being Apple, you were tied into the Apple iTunes marketplace, and thinking. No thanks, Jobs, no DRM crap for me. The Boxee Box’s design, cost and potential have lead to a very desirable little product and it is a testament to the Open-source projects that have gone before it. Put me down for one.

(More details on the Boxee blog)

There were already plenty of reasons to get an Android device. Now there is another reason. A big reason. There has been an official announcement regarding the release of Google Maps Navigation. This provides turn by turn navigation, traffic data and voice commands, basically all the stuff you’d expect of a high-end in-car GPS system. It irradiates the major downside of using Google Maps previously on mobile devices: it caches map data of the route you’re going to take. The big advantages are: It’s free. It utilities Street View, which is potentially very helpful and a service that no one else can realistically provide. Using Google Maps means it knows what ‘Maps knows. That is; everything. Local businesses, attractions and landmarks should all be easier to locate. It also has voice commands, which is something Google has done very well before and likewise, I think their UI is usually on pretty good form.

It’s only going to be available in the US initially, but the same goes for many of these big ‘Map-based projects.

This is one in the eye for Apple and friends, whose app store is currently full of £40+ turn-by-turn navigation apps. It’s bad news for GPS system makers as well, who rely on their proprietary software to shift their hardware. If you are particularly cruel, you can watch the stock of Garmin and Tom Tom fall on Google Finance or head to Engadget for further (typically excitable) coverage and videos.

We probably all have them, maybe in that piece of plastic we wave at the ticket machine as we get on the bus or tube. RFID is becoming more pervasive. This video shows how Berg London managed to let us see the previously invisible fields and what shape they take.

Immaterials: the ghost in the field from timo on Vimeo.

The ghost in the field (via warrenellis.com)

Ever felt the need to watch Hollyoaks whilst shooting 14yr olds on Xbox Live? Me neither. But it didn’t stop this horrific creation that we named Megatron, in tribute to the new series of Peep Show:

Megatron in action

Does it look stupid? Yes. Is it pointless? Yes. But no more ridiculous than one of Intel’s latest little projects, the four-screen laptop. Obviously Intel have 1-upped us here, but we were on a much more conservative budget. You win ‘Ridiculous use of screens 09′ this year Intel and to think I didn’t expect you to beat the sheer pointlessness of the Optimus Keyboard. Tshk!

I use a 3rd party MSN client. In the old days, I used Trillian, then MirandaIM and now Pidgin for the PC/Linux and Adium for the Mac. Both those clients give me the ability to use many different networks (ICQ, Facebook IM, Google Talk) at the same time using just one client. Plus I don’t have to tolerate the horrible adverts and pathetically large memory footprint of the official MSN client.

Today, presumably because they hate us, MS decided to change the protocol of their instant messaging network without telling anyone. This left many who use non-crappy clients without the ability to talk to their (usually less tech-savy) MSN friends. The reasons for MS doing this are unknown, but probably something to do with MS’s unwillingness to give any sort of control to OpenSource projects and those who believe that the MS products are inferior to the close-source alternatives.

Still, I have been given a fix for Pidgin at least (thanks Ed!). The plug-in based architecture of Pidgin allows a different MSN integration in the form of msn-pecan which, at the time of writing, allows previous service to be resumed. I think both Aidum and Pidgin teams are working on fixes for their clients. Now begins the work of getting my friends to use a rather more reliable IM network!

edit 12 Jan 9.10am: Due to the good people at Adium, it was a screw-up rather than an attempt to screw users. Everything is now back to usual it seems.

I watched the Macworld Live stream last year. I just like seeing a load of shiny stuff I can’t afford, basically. So I tuned in this year to catch some shock news, which turned out to be a fiction created by those pranksters from the place which we dare not speak.

4chan Vs MacRumours

Someone tried to do something on the internet without involving 4chan. WHEN WILL WE LEARN?

We’ve all heard how Apple try and make it sound like they actually give a damn about the environment, and we listen. Then we feel slightly less bad about replacing our iPhone after a few months of use. There is plenty of reading regarding shipping material waste and Apple, but it’s still nice to see them in action, like when this box turned up at work this week:

True, we bought it from Amazon so I think they’re probably to blame as well, but don’t big companies work together on shipment policies? Amazon would be in trouble if they started shipping out iPods in egg-boxes, so why not if they do dumb things like shipping tiny items in massive boxes? I won’t even get into how it’s stupid that we even needed a new monitor adaptor in the first place. It seems to be Apple-specific and unlike the video connections to any other non-fruit-based computer I’ve seen.

My collegue was so narked that he wrote a good old rant about it on our agency website.

Videolan media player has been a life-saver for digital video viewers. I’ve used it for a year or so now and since then I no longer had to one have to muck about with stupid ‘Kazzaa’ codec packs and other crappy codecs and players. Instead, all I had to do was download a reasonably sized media player and it would open any format I could throw at it. It was a blessing and it’s on my Windows desktop, my Ubuntu Laptop and my workplace Mac. It’s never let me down, it’s fast and it ‘just works’ ™.

So now I’m obviously quite sad having downloaded the latest new version (0.9.2) which has had substantial changes. There is a new, ‘shinier’ (read: more messy) interface, bug fixes, support for even more codecs and oh yeah, now when I skip forward through video too fast it crashes. The old VLC never crashed. Never. I recommended it to everyone who just needed a video open now, but I don’t think I can do so anymore. Fingers crossed they fix it, but for now I’ll be downgrading and I think it’s another case of shine-over stability.

First things first, I think Apple make some great stuff. Work recently put a 24″ iMac on my desk and it’s great to work with. Sure it’s not exactly crash-proof (although this is more Adobe’s fault) and the keyboard is awful, but the Apple/OS X experience is pretty good, especially with that lovely vibrant screen. I was recently in the market for a new laptop and was going to buy a 13″ Macbook. In the end a friend of mine stepped in and let me have his old 13″ Sony Vaio for much less, so I bought that instead. I think maybe in his wisdom he was trying to save me.

This trailer for an upcoming film about Mac users called ‘Macheads‘ is terrifying. I’m a pretty huge geek who uses a range of Windows, Linux and OS X machines, but the thought of getting quite as attached to a computer as any of these people makes me glad that I only use a Mac during office hours. As someone with a keen interest in design, I can sympathize a little with someone who collects old Macintosh boxes, but lines like “I have never knowing slept with a windows user” are just disturbing.

At least in the old days (before the iMac) all the hardcore Mac users had beards so were recognizable. Now they have started shaving. God help us all. I still want to see the film though.

See the trailer in question here (found via Gizmodo)

Here in the UK, the iPhone arrives in approximately ten tears time. When we finally get it, the crippling restrictions that will be put on it in terms of bandwidth and connectivity by the traditionally stingy mobile phone providers will render it almost useless. It’s smooth, rounded, shiny and you could probably loose it if you sat on one too quickly, but all that is irrelevant if the absence of network support renders it useless. Could someone please tell the BBC this? Listening to the radio this afternoon, it seems that not only are they determined to advertise a product (someone should take a flick through these documents, perhaps?) but they are advertising one that isn’t even available to people in this country! It’s worth pointing out that other equipment is available that does what the iPhone does (well, almost). I think that perhaps the (alleged) generous 20% discount that Apple gives British journos may have something to do with the constant repetition of Apple-propaganda which is very, very boring. We expect this crap in some places, but on the BBC?

Maybe they just feel guilty for what they’ve done to Apple elsewhere? In short: Don’t believe the hype, Auntie Beeb. np: It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

There have been rumours about this floating around for a while but it just happened! As soon as Jobs ended today’s WWDC keynote (yes I did follow it live, yes I do need to get out more) a beta release of version 3 was made available, for Windows as well as OS X. I’ve tried it and to be honest, I don’t particularly like it. The interface is too clunky. However; that’s pretty irrelevant. As a developer this is great news. I can test my sites double quick to make sure they work in Safari. It even uses Mac-like font smoothing. The prospect of more developers being able to test their work thoroughly has got to be great news for Mac users. Way to go Apple.

The other good news is that OSX will support ZFS (presumably this will lead to better interaction with linux machines) and they finally got rid of that horrible brushed metal effect. It always reminded me of my primary school serving counters at lunchtime. Ugh. I used to shudder as cheap cutlery slid across the surface. Regardless, I’m thinking of doing that unspeakable, bighting the bullet and buying a Macbook so although I feel a little dirty, all this Mac progression is all good. I just got to make sure I don’t turn into one of those Mac rumour-mill fan-boy types.