Individual visits to Apple Stores in Geneva and Covent Garden, London as documented on jehudasaar.com
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Once again an innovative use of the iOS platform, this time for medical purposes: iHealth allows you to check your blood pressure with either your iPhone or iPad. The video says it all. Impressive if it is really as simple to use as what is shown here.
Sorry Trekkies, this post is NOT about your favourite subject. For Star Trek fans the words "Prime Directive" have a very definite and precise meaning. The term refers to a Starfleet guiding principle banning interference with pre-warp societies. No, this post is about my very own "Prime Directive", one I have come to appreciate more over the past few days.
I go back to the very beginning of my professional life. Back in 1987 one of my first bosses, bitten by the Mac bug the same way I had been a little earlier, made me come out to his house in New Jersey on a Sunday to set up an Excel spreadsheet on his Mac. We essentially created a basic inventory system for our business, entirely from scratch (templates were not very hot in those days or else we were simply unaware of their existence). His Mac (I can't remember whether it was a MacPlus or SE) was seated on top of a surge suppressor that also had power switches to control individual sockets.
It took us a few hours to set up this gem of a spreadsheet. At the end of a long day, satisfied that we had just created the coolest thing since sliced bread, I dramatically pushed back the keyboard away from me in order to lift my hand up in the air and declare that we were truly a couple of genius software developers. The keyboard touched the main power switch on the surge suppressor, and the computer shut down. Of course, genius that I was, I had not even once saved the file we had been working on so diligently all day.
Hence the Jehuda Saar Prime Directive: ALWAYS SAVE YOUR WORK. ALL THE TIME !!!
I have been screaming that mantra from every roof. I have been pestering anyone I have ever come across sitting at a computer doing work for as long as I can remember. My kids have been hearing this since the day their little fingers every touched their very first keyboard. And yet, over the span of two days last week, I was guilty not once, not twice, but three times of violating this most sacred of principles myself. I had been working on a few music files in Garageband for an upcoming presentation. There were a few hours worth of voice recordings in the can, and suddenly while moving some music portions around, Garageband decided to say "bye bye". The last time I had saved the file had been a couple of hours earlier. Needless to say all that work had been for nought. What is inexcusable though is that, knowing Garageband was running into some problem, I then repeated this mistake twice more.
Leaving aside for a moment the "why" of this occurrence in Garageband (I am working on the solution), the key is that the Jehuda Saar Prime Directive is there for a reason and that this guiding principle cannot be violated in any way...EVER. SAVE you work, ALWAYS save your work. Whatever key combination is used to achieve this action on your particular flavour of computer or OS, use it. If recent developments in iOS, and some of the hints we have had of future MacOS releases are any indication, automatic saving of files will most likely become the norm in future software releases, and maybe this learned habit of constantly saving files is something that our children will have to worry much less about one day. It is possible they won't even understand what this post was about since saving will no longer be a feature they will have to think about. But for now, put on those Mr Spock ears and set your phasers to "stun" cause its time to SAVE !!!
(From jehudasaar.com)
It is remarkable how far computer technology has gone when it comes to movies and TV shows. You don't have to be a fan of the HBO show Boardwalk Empire to appreciate this little video. A bunch of people sitting around a computer and some blue/green screens spread around a set, and the job is done. Set design as we traditionally know it, the kind that still wins Oscars every year, may be going the way of the Dodo. Not to mention make-up, as you'll see in this clip.
Boardwalk Empire VFX Breakdowns of Season 1 from Brainstorm Digital on Vimeo.
Here is one that is both cool and cute. In trying to prove to family and friends that the iPhone and the iPad were more than toys, Ellen Hinton combined these "toys" with a midi interface, some apps and iMovie and performed a mashup of Train's "Hey Soul Sister" and Yael Naim's "New Soul". The result is here for all to enjoy.
In a New York Times article dated December 26 entitled Hollywood Moves Away From Middlebrow Brooks Barnes writes about the "new" tendency in Hollywood to try and come up with more "original" material or hire directors with "quirkier sensibilities" as a result of the effect online social networks have had on the way movies are being marketed. It's funny how every few years one reads a line like "we can't settle for good - we have to be great" when it comes to moviemaking. It's as if as soon as one generation of "suits" learns that simple lesson, it is supplanted by another one that still needs to understand that constantly and consistently catering to the lowest common denominator results in a quick buck for a short while but does not a long terms strategy make. And so once again the suits are surprised that while "Sex and the City 2" flops, an original concept like "Inception" pays off. In the long run quality is the name of the game. That is a simple enough lesson to internalize and stick to. To quote Bob Marley (who adapted it from either Abraham Lincoln or PT Barnum): "you can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time".
As we approach the end of the year it is appropriate to do a quick review of the best and worst tech that appeared in the market. But it's always best to leave such things to professionals. Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal considers the iPad to have been THE product of 2010. Here are his views on the best and worst of 2010. (Give the ad at the beginning of the video a few seconds to run first).
Meanwhile on the water conservation front we have had some exciting new developments, but we'll get to those at a later date. For now I wanted to share with everyone this exciting new video we produced.
Hugh has clearly misunderstood what Gabi meant when he said everyone should "shower shorter". And will Miss de Point make another appearance ? Watch the video to find out.
Harry Enfield and Ronnie Corbett "take the piss" out of Apple, Orange, RIM and a few others. VERY original and VERY funny. No need for me to elaborate. Just watch and enjoy.
Earlier this week I was trying to solve a technical problem in our shared office space at GabiH2O. It involved solving an outgoing mail port related problem, the details of which enter nerd territory that will have your collective eyes glaze over and are therefore not worth relating here. In trying to solve this problem I checked with some of the other techies of the other companies on our floor only to find out to my consternation that either none of them had ever heard of such a problem, or else they simply didn't care, and all for one simple reason: NONE of them use an email client on their PCs or Macs. They all use Gmail.
Now I admit that I am a veteran of "email", a real old-timer. In the late 80's I was a frequent contributor on the Compuserve and Genie services and I used MCImail to send out work related telexes from my home. I was also an early adopter of something called America Online back in '89 when it was a Mac only system previously known as AppleLink Personal Edition purchased from Apple and before it became AOL. In '93 I added my email address to my business cards and very often the people I did business with used to ask what that cryptic line on the card actually meant.
All of this is meant to illustrate to what extent I consider email an intrinsic part of my daily work and private life. When the first email-only Blackberries came out, it was as if someone had designed that tool just for me. In 2001 I got my hands on one of the early models and I have never looked back since. But it appears that while I continued using email and insisted on setting up email client software on every new computer I regularly upgraded to, the world around me continued to evolve, and not necessarily in the direction I was heading.
When I ask kids today whether they use email, 9 times out of 10 they'll answer: "Yeah, for school". Kids communicate via Facebook, sms, bbm, whatsapp or other forms of instant messaging. The idea to carefully compose an email message and then wait hours for a response sounds ridiculous to them. If they can't get an immediate response, that form of electronic communication makes no sense to them. And so email gets relegated to "formal" communication: school or work related. On the one hand communication becomes more effective and direct in that manner. On the other hand however it loses any depth and the concept of "spelling" becomes something old folk worry about.
The other aspect of the change I described above, the use of online email resources rather than downloading messages to one's computer, are all part of this move to cloud computing. Gmail is no longer just about email alone (see yesterday's New York Times for a piece entitled E-Mail Gets an Instant Makeover) and these forms of instant communication are getting built into what were once "traditional" tools.
The conclusion is that I will have to start opening myself up to change. I have no doubt that email will continue to be an effective tool for business communication, but the idea that I can store on my computer every bit of text I type or receive from anyone is ridiculous. It makes as much sense to save all that stuff as it does to record every bit of conversation i have with people as I go through my day, every "Hello" and "How are you on this lovely morning". So adapt I will.
Back in May I reported on the expected Fall arrival of a cool product called the Clamcase. Like often happens with these sort of things, the product's introduction got delayed. In fact, in the meantime, the video that I had embedded in that long ago post has also been removed due to some copyright infringement. Instead a new one was posted which I am including here. It now appears this product will start shipping in January...just in time for the expected announcement of the iPad 2. Still, given how many iPads were sold to date, owners of the original iPad might be interested in sprucing up their tablets using what still appears to be a compelling product.
I can't even count the number of times I have flown out of Zaventem Airport in Brussels over the past few years. And every time I pass the same vending machines without giving them much thought. But then on my last visit it just hit me. I stopped and took a good hard look at the drink dispensing machine. Now, like most people who grew up in Belgium, I have become desensitized to the image of a little boy doing his "number one" business in public. The reason is very simple: one of Belgium's national symbols is the famous "Manneken Pis", a small bronze fountain sculpture of a little boy urinating going back to the 17th Century. Nobody really seems to know exactly who this little boy was, but a great many stories are bandied about, most of them revolving around ancient battles that took place anywhere between the turn of the first millennium and the 15th Century.
It appears that some marketing executive in Belgium one day came up with the great idea of using this symbol on a drinks vending machine. It would also appear that after writing his memo and presenting his idea to some committee or other at Coca-Cola Belgium, a decision was made to go ahead with this idea. And now, pretty much all over the country you are most likely visiting if it is Tuesday, you can find the kind of machines depicted in this picture, dispensing what would appear to be, according to the caption at the bottom of the machine, a very particular taste of Belgium. Bottoms up.
I admit. I came late to this one. Simply because I am not big on computer games. This is something I have always wanted to get into, and yet very rarely would it happen. I would see people around me spend weeks on end with MYST or some shoot'm up engine, and though I would try to develop the right kind of enthusiasm for it, somehow it wound't stick. Over the years there were probably 3 or 4 games that I would stay with until I reached some level of proficiency, but overall it just wasn't my thing.
And then I installed Angry Birds HD on the iPad. The rest is a blur. It used to be that I would get very productive with work late at night. These days late at night is usually accompanied by the sound of birds crashing through wood or glass and pigs puffing away.
Angry Birds is one of these phenomena whose success was probably a bigger surprise to the people who spawned it than to the public at large. I doubt the small Finnish company that came out with the game ever expected that they would sell 50 million copies of the game across pretty much every mobile platform available by the time the game marked its first birthday. And all this with a project that cost them $100,000 to develop. It just goes to show that sometimes less is more and that a well executed simple idea can often trump multimillion dollar sophistication without making too many waves.
The game has also managed to cross over into popular culture, with Angry Bird Halloween costumes, TV skits, and now Angry Bird cakes.
Of course Hollywood is never far behind when a story meets with such success. The people at Rovio have been very clever about that as well. First of all they have the in-game trailer which hints at potentially something more.
And finally, lest anyone have any doubt about it, they produced this cinematic trailer which seems to intimate that the Angry Birds would one day grace the screens of our neighbourhood multiplex.
This too shall pass one day. But until then I will continue to feed this addiction with total abandon. Better let the birds be angry than me.
Kickstarter is this amazingly innovative funding platform for creative projects. Simple people like you and I the world over can pledge money to any particular project they are interested in. No money changes hands until the project's funding goal has been reached but the project creators maintain ownership over their work no matter what.
One of these Kickstarter projects has lately made more noise than usual, bringing the Kickstart funding system to more people's attention. I am somewhat of a watch freak. I am also quite the tech nerd. So when these two worlds meet and they are fueled by something as cool as the Kickstarter project, my antennae perk up.
The idea came from design firm Minimal Inc. who are famous for, among other things, the design of the XBOX360. After hearing Steve Jobs mention that the new iPod nano would make a cool wristwatch, they decided to come up with something unique. Others had also been inspired by those few words (see picture), but the guys at Minimal took it one step further.
They decided to use the Kickstarter platform to raise the $15,000 they would need to get their nano watch off the ground. They came up with two models: TikTok and LunaTik. For a $25 pledge the participant would essentially be pre-ordering a TikTok watch kit (no nano included). For a $50 pledge they would get the LunaTik watch kit once it was produced. The actual retail cost of these items will be $34.95 and $69.95 respectively once they are made available to the public at large so getting in early as a Kickstarter participant saves early adopters some "dosh".
They produced a little video to explain the concept better and sat back to see how the Kickstarter participants would react. Little did they know that they would become the single most successful Kickstarter project ever. As of this writing they have raised $699,247 and chances are funds will continue to come in until the project gets funded precisely at 11:02 PM EST on my birthday, December 16.
If you are into small, thin, almost fragile timepieces, don't bother watching the video. You won't like what you see. If however you don't mind wearing something a little bigger than average on your wrist, and on top of that the marriage of form and function gets your adrenaline pumping, you might really enjoy what these little gems look like. If you're not sure what you think of this, don't worry: time will tell. Literally.
I have had the pleasure and the privilege to get involved in this project pretty much from the onset. While this Jerusalem Post article does a pretty good job of explaining what GabiH2O is all about, in reality we are only beginning to scratch the surface here. We are working on exciting content: comics, songs, stories, clips, and more. All of it will serve to "edutain" us, our friends, our children and everyone around us to act a little bit more responsibly with the wonderful resources that we all take for granted every day.
An Antwerp-based advertising agency has just come up with a cool and innovative way to advertise an insurance company by combining iAd and newspaper print. For those who are not familiar with iAd, this is a mobile advertising service provided by Apple on their iPhone. I am not familiar with any other iAd that has taken advantage of this method to both (1) advertise and (2) install a free app on the iPhone. I did leave Antwerp some 24 years ago, but I guess it's kind of cool that the idea originated there.
Ever since the introduction of the iPad a great number of people have been saying that it will change the face of education. The first time I saw that potential in person was with the introduction of Theodore Gray's The Elements ebook for iPad. Suddenly there was a way to literally manipulate the elements of the periodic table and learn all about them in a fun and exciting way.
A few months down the line and we finally start to see something even more exciting. One of the major school textbook companies, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, has launched a pilot project to teach Algebra to California high-school students on the iPad. Apparently 400 students will participate in the project, with one group using the app and a control group using a regular textbook.
They even produced a cool little video that both illustrates how this app would work, but personally I find it exciting because it fires up the imagination and you start realising that in a few years time schools will look very different to what we know today. Maybe our kids won't have to "shlep" such heavy bags full of textbooks to and from school anymore. Instead of "Take out your Ancient-Greek history book and turn to chapter 4", they will hear "Take out you pad and turn to location marker 1467". It will make perfect sense to them. Probably will sound like ancient Greek to us.
I had left her behind. I had turned my back on her. It was January of 1986, we had been close for a couple of years, and the day I left Belgium I simply walked away without giving her another thought. It took almost 25 years for me to start remembering those long ago years, to once again think about the times we had spent together. To remember how she felt to the touch, to imagine her luscious curves and the unique sound she made when my fingers would touch her just so. Yes, you guessed it: I finally dug out my old bass guitar left behind in a locked case in Antwerp a quarter century ago.
It's been two weeks now since I got her back, twenty five years since I last attempted to play bass. It's safe to say that this time around my approach is a little more methodical. I probably learned more about playing the bass in the last two weeks than I had those couple of years way back when. I still sound like crap, but I have hope that one day I might even sound halfway decent.
But this time around I was able to marry my love of music with my love of tech like never before. One of the reasons the bass guitar came back into my mind was the introduction of one of the coolest apps I have yet discovered on the iPad. Actually it is a combination of hardware and software. The hardware part is the iRig and the software is AmpliTube, both made by a company called IK Multimedia. iRig is an adapter that allows you to hook up a musical instrument to your iPad (or iPhone/iPod Touch) and get sound output. AmpliTube for iPad is a collection of software based amps, effects and other musical tools that previously would have meant carrying tons of gear around with you.
Rather than write some sort of review I shot and uploaded a short video that shows this gear in action. I have seen a lot of videos online showing mostly guitar players putting the iRig/Amplitube combi through its paces, but so far no bass players doing their "thing". I have however heard of at least one electric violin player using it as well, so I am sure we are only in the very first stages of a modest revolution in the way musicians perform.
Forgive all the screeching though. Remember, for all intents and purposes I am really still a newbie.
The end of the Summer break is slowly approaching and while kids are starting to get nervous about the slow approach of the next school-year, some of us TV addicts are actually looking forward to the new TV Season. Some of this Summer's TV shows were actually not bad. We are still in the middle of a very exciting season of "True Blood", and "Entourage" has us smiling once a week, some of us like "Rubicon" better than others. and everyone loves "Sherlock". I have not been following the extremely well received "Mad Men" but have become acquainted with a cute little gem called "The Big C" that shows some promise. Those who caught the brief but superb (hopefully first) season of "Luther" right before the Summer break started, were left a little spoiled by the type of excellent drama only the BBC seems to be able to produce and others can only aspire to come close to.
But this little preview for the next season of "Dexter" definitely caught my attention. It would appear the popularity and "look" of "Inception" made its way across to TV-Land, as this clip clearly shows. Can't wait to take another trip into the mind of this very deranged, yet so lovable, serial killer.
With "Inception", what Christopher Nolan concocted in his fertile mind is nothing short of brilliant. Having just seen the movie I am still somewhat caught in its spell. I am not going to spoil anything for anyone here by revealing details about the story. Actually the best way to approach this movie is to walk in with no preconceived notions and just go with the flow. I suggest not even reading a single review. Reviewers often tend to be frustrated directors and sometimes like to spoil the experience for viewers by revealing just a little bit too much in their columns.
I am actually quite encouraged by the fact that the Hollywood movie machine was able to produce something of this calibre and intelligence. I can only imagine that the "pitch" session with producers must have been somewhat of a challenge. This is not a movie one can encapsulate in a 5 word sentence (anything above that tends to stretch the mental capacity of some of these producers) . Actually I challenge anyone to do it effectively in a 140 letter tweet.
I look forward to Mr Nolan's next projects. Maybe a movie like Inception will open the doors for other creative directors with slightly more complex projects than "Transformers XIV". Unless we are just going to wake up from this dream...