So I was browsing around through some blogs the other day, trying to find something interesting to share with everyone when I came across a neat blog series called Reasonable People Disagree. Now, I’m not usually one to snag an idea straight from someone’s blog, but these series of articles really grabbed my attention because it is two professionals sharing differing opinions on a variety of subjects — a recent topic was social media. I always try to look at things in a non-biased perspective, so I thought this was be a great article for me to share some of my thoughts about.

Dalton Conley, a Dean of Social Sciences at New York University and an author of multiple books argues that technology, in most cases, is tearing families apart. As more and more technologically advanced gadgets are being released, people are becoming more distracted by them. People have developed increasingly poor social habits and manners as they answer their telephones at the dinner table, text each other instead of simply conversing, and much more. Everyone seems to be too immersed in their individual social media to see beyond it. In some cases, I would say this is true, however, I feel like this is primarily based on the individual. I believe that technology has always been a tool, and an obstacle for man.

Sure, these same technologies help us to keep ourselves organized on a daily basis and keep in touch with those who are important to us, so its more about how we embrace it and use it as a tool. If you happen abuse it to the point where you’re a social slug that’s stuck behind a computer updating your twitter account every hour, that’s your personal choice. I agree with Conley’s statement that in order to be intimate with our families, we need time alone. This reaches a point where you need to ‘cut the electronic umbilical cord’ and give ourselves the opportunity to connect with people on a personal level and be the social beings that we are. I believe part of this has to do with the way we are raised. Dinner should be one time in the day where families can come together and enjoy each others’ company. He mentions making a no-screen rule as punishment and also a way to give them time for themselves. I think this could be effective as a punishment, however, I think its highly based on the individual. If you don’t want your children to text or answer the phone at the dinner table, then perhaps you should set a good example for them, and not allow it to happen in the first place. Be the change that you want to see.

Natalie Jeremijenko, a tech-obsessed artist, engineer, and blogger for the website HowStuffIsMade.org has a differing opinion on the subject. She argues whether technology is tearing families apart, or rather bringing them closer together.

It’s doing both at the same time. We can use technology to connect with one another or to disconnect. The question becomes: To what extent do we exercise that agency? And why don’t we feel more in control of it?

She begins addressing this issue by talking about the popularization of it in her household. While in agreeance with Dalton on the subject of ‘cutting the electronic umbelical cord’ and giving oneself time to reflect, she also talks about the idea that we are the ones in charge of our lives, not the technology. If we choose not to take some quiet time off from the world to contemplate and reflect, they we may not need it.

On another note, she comments on Dalton’s punishment of taking away the computer from children by simply stating ‘bring it on.’ She believes that facebook is the type of social tool that kids should use to interact, get school assignments from friend they may have missed, and so much more. ‘School is social, and a social technology like Facebook can be a worthy partner.’ This is true because much of what we learn in school is how to function socially. We learn from interacting and responding with others. Sure we can’t learn all of this behind a computer, but it doesn’t mean the this can’t be supplimented by social interaction online as well. If anything, I think this is supported by the fact that most schools nowadays are embracing the idea of computer labs, video conferencing, and other technology to help enhance the education of their students.

With all this being said, I think we all need to take in consideration that technology isn’t going anywhere, and at this point I don’t think social media is either. We are all in charge of our lives so whether or not we use these tools to enhance our lives is completely up to us. ‘We’re the authors of our own lives—we’re not under the remote control of our technology.’

The moving image has always been likened with magic and mystery, paired with the idea that filmmakers and photographers play tricks on the viewer through manipulation of the image. I love the idea that creating graphics and engineering each frame is the same as a magician carrying out a trick, it is all about creating a feeling through illusion.  Motion graphics and special effects might seem like a recent pursuit of designers and cinematographers but it is surprisingly almost as old as the medium itself. I present to you Exhibit A…

1856 - The first ever example of image manipulation is known as “The two ways of life” by Oscar Rejlander.

Courtsey of http://www.museeniepce.com/

Oscar Rejlander’s ground breaking picture is made up of 32 different negatives, a completely new technique in his time. Today, this would be less then a hours work for a skilled Photoshop designer.  To Oscar Rejlander defense, he was the first and if it wasn’t for the spark of creativity he started, todays image manipulation programs would most undoubtedly be lacking. his Innovations can be attributed to many such as…

George Melies 1861-1936
He was known as one of the first “Cinemagican”  because he created and help develop much of the in-camera tricks used today. Any film lover should know “A trip to the moon”, a great example of Melies ability to use special effects and motion graphics. I believe wikipedia puts it best,

“He was very innovative in the use of special effects. He accidentally discovered the stop trick, or substitution, in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his films.”

Courtsey of wikipedia

Could you imagine what film and media would look like today without the advancements in special effects and motion graphics that these founders of Illusion made. In a lot of my work I still use techniques like timelapse photography and the stop trick…

An example I did of the Stop Trick a while back

As a consistent iPod user and Apple enthusiast, I constantly find myself looking out for the latest and greatest applications. I’ve tried a multitude of personal productivity applications over the last year, however, it wasn’t until recently when I found Diacarta that I felt like I had one that I actually want to use. Other applications at times, seemed confusing while being overloaded with advanced options that in turn make them less intuitive. The user interface is so clean, simple, and intuitive that it literally takes you a few seconds to add another task into your day. With a library of over 50 different icons, the interface also does something I’ve never seen in another personal planner — visually map out your day! You can very easily drag-and-drop these icons to the appropriate time of day and it will snap in place, automatically adjusting the time. How much easier can you get!?

Another neat feature of this application is the ability to switch between your AM and PM tasks or even days, with only the flip of a finger. I liked this personally because if you’re as busy as I can be a times, all those tasks pile up and get to look a little intimidating! So in a way, this is feature is helping to organize your day, and ease your mind.

As a designer, one of the most interesting things about this application was reading about the development of it in another review. Created by Jake and Georgia Yanchar, two former New York City lawyers, Diacarta is said to have evolved from daily organizers that Jake would draw daily in his Moleskine notebook. I think this only says alot about the application and its simplicity. If one person can organize their life from a few sketches in a notebook, and turn it into a iPhone application, it just might be worth a try! You might be surprised!

Facebook has been working diligently, usually behind the scenes with quick glimpses of new features, to renovate and refine the experience of how you find information in the world’s largest social network at 400 MILLION users. The company celebrated its 6th birthday this week with a newly updated home page designed to give you quick access to the most important information across the top and in the left sidebar.  The bottom navigation is almost gone entirely, bringing all controls “above the fold,” and clearly visible regardless of your monitor size.

Let’s take a look at Facebook with five quick and easy tidbits of information that could make your transition to the new Facebook layout a little smoother.

1.  Stay UPDATED from the Top Menu

Quoting directly from Facebook’s blog: “In the top menu, you will find your newest Notifications, Requests and Messages. For example, when you receive a Facebook notification about someone writing on your Wall or tagging you in a photo, you’ll see a red bubble appear in the left-hand corner near the search bar. When you click on the icon, you’ll see a drop-down menu with your most recent notifications.”

Your Home and Profile links are always top-right and easy to bounce back to if you get sidetracked.  Privacy settings are easily accessed top-right in the Account tab, far right.  Now’s probably as good a time as ever to review your privacy settings and account settings (like updates via email, etc).

2.  EXPLORE in the Left-Hand Menu

Your friends’ content has become easier to explore using Facebook’s new left menu, furthering the “Peeping Tom” affection that rabid Facebook users have got going on anyway.  Facebook has been working tireless to make it easier for you to communicate with and discover content from your friends, including a new focus on Chat. You can now access your messages and other core features all in one place, to the left of your News Feed.

You can browse recent photos of your friends with the Photos dashboard. The Events dashboard lists all your friends’ upcoming events as well as your events in one convenient place. The Friends dashboard will help you see which of your friends have recently updated their profiles, find new friends, search the web using Bing’s built-in top-center search bar, and filter your News Feed by Friend Lists you’ve made to sort out the madness.

3.  Applications, Games, Ads and Pages….front and center!

Adding to the “easier to find” category, Facebook has granted prime time status to Applications, Games (new!), Ads and Pages, bringing them up from the bottom navigation to inhabit the side navigation just below Photos and Friends.  By bringing this navigation more front-and-center Facebook is consolidating even more of how we explore Facebook into the limelight and inviting each of us to use these features more.  While it was always frustrating to reach Pages you created (I keep about 40 Pages active at all times for clients and personal interests), I have to believe this is to engage more people to place and run Facebook advertising campaigns.

Discover friends activity, find new applications, see what your friends are using and how often, and let Facebook show you your most-used apps all in one place.  Click the More link to see your other important apps.  To quote the Facebook blog:

We think sharing information about the applications you use enriches the shared experience between you and your friends. At the same time, we feel strongly that control is an important element of any information sharing on Facebook. That’s why these features are launching with an entirely new privacy setting.

If you would rather not have your recent application activity visible in the dashboards to your friends, you can change this through your Privacy settings . We’re also working on a more granular set of controls for specific applications, so that you can turn off activity for certain applications while leaving it on for others. We’ll have more information to share on this soon.

All of these improvements will help users engage with their friends and follow their applications of choice in an easier-to-share location.

In an interesting move yesterday, Facebook granted developers the ability to dictate which applications and games the people in your friend list have been using.  Application developers can now choose whether their app or game will appear in a user’s friends dashboards or not.  This doesn’t give the USER the ability to decide what to share, but its a first step to giving more security options to Apps and Games.

4.  Wanna CHAT?  Now easier to reach, but the lone survivor in the footer.

Facebook has announced a new focus on Chat, moving your most frequent chatters and current online users in the left navigation, below News and Apps/Ads/Pages.

By keeping the important content together and to the left, this means less scrolling and quicker access to those you know.  The interaction online will keep users more engaged, almost guaranteeing that Facebook users remain on the site for longer periods of time (thus driving online ad sales because of the number of frequent AND captive users).  Facebook shows you people that you’ve chatted with the most, then those you interact with the most on the site, either through messages, writing on their wall, commenting, etc.

The Chat application is also notably the ONLY Facebook resource still grounded in the bottom of the browser window.  You can start chats from the left menu, but your active chats are still grounded at the bottom of the window.

In my opinion this is smart in terms of the user interface and keeping most of the content “above the fold.”  It was probably the only choice Facebook had to keep the rest of the window clean and accessible while participating in an active (or many active) chats.

5.  Open up that Most Recent News Feed!

The first thing I noticed in the new design was that my News Feed looked a little….weak.  In fact, my Most Recent News Feed was almost non-existent.  I have 800 friends or so, and I saw very little information initially.  So I thought I should investigate and found out that Facebook has initiated a new default number of people to include in the Most Recent News Feed.

What I found was that Facebook initiated a “ground floor” for Number of Friends to show in the News Feed, starting at 250 people.  I bumped this up to 600, but you could conceivably increase this to 5,000, the maximum number of Friends allowed.  Go to the bottom of your News Feed and look for “Edit Options” and bump up the total to 500 or 600 to see how much info that shows you.  You may also blacklist people, like those annoying relatives who just discovered social media and haven’t discovered the whole “add value to the conversation” principle.

Other Interesting Developments

Facebook also made it easier to manage ad campaigns, showing number of credits in the Accounts list, providing valuable feedback to those of us running Facebook ad campaigns – quick access to available credits and analytics.  In addition, the BIG rumor is something called “Project Titan,” which people have referred to as the GMAIL killer.  This functionality would most likely include support for standard POP/IMAP email accounts, allowing users to use other email clients like Outlook or Apple’s Mail to check their Facebook mail.  You might also see vanity emails like “scottdickens@facebook.com.”  Big things are afoot at Facebook, as they are at Google.  Strangely missing from the conversation is Microsoft, who seem content to reap the profits from their OS/Office business.  

In summary, I find the new layout refreshing and easy.  It was smart to consolidate the features the way people THINK of the site (profile/user info separate from the explore/community side).  While there’s always a furor over “new” interface designs at Facebook, along with the inevitable “1 Million People who HATE the New FB Layout” groups, I think the general public will embrace this update as a logical progression in the evolution of Facebook once they have a chance to digest the new layout.

Another puff of information exhaust from The Rocket Ride… Thanks again for reading!

- Scott

This piece really pushes the envelope when thinking in terms of what we could consider ‘traditional.’ Designed by Marlies Romberg, the Wooden Computer Station does a great job of fusing the lines between technology and traditional woodworking. For those of you who might have seen my posts in the past, this would be a great accompanying piece to the Wooden Mouse designed by Alest Rukov.

Props
Design: Marlies Romberg
Article: Design Milk

At first look, it might look like a regular plotting printer, but after a few seconds you’ll realize that this contraption is anything but ordinary. This invention called simply “The Plotting Machine” was developed by the folks at You Don’t Matter. This modified printer can work in various types of media and do anything from print, draw, cut, and scratch using any type of traditional technique, allowing for results that are neither man-made nor machine-made. I find the aesthetic to be one of its most interesting qualities. Although its a machine, none of the images it produces are ever the same. This may vary by pressure, color, media, etc. Furthermore, with the proper equipment, you could attach a glowing diode and take a timed exposure and actually watch this machine draw out its masterpieces with light. Overall, I think this is a truly unique piece of equipment. I hope anyone else out there will share my enthusiasm!

For more information and to view some of the work produced from this piece, click here.

Okay, so I was searching around this morning through some of my regular websites and came across a very interesting article that got me really thinking about typography on the web. A common problem I have is writing CSS and designing the type as I’d like it to be presented on the screen to the viewer. So you can imagine how insane of a task it might be for type designer who is actually crafting the fonts. There is a big difference between designing typefaces for print and the web; pixels behave differently than blobs of ink on paper. Typefaces for the Web need different qualities. “The bigger problem is all of the technology that delivers the font to the viewer. The website is delivered by one cluster of hardware to another, often with a different operating system, different browser and, in some cases, different pieces of software. That’s a very long chain. The number of variations is almost bottomless, and the results are unreliable at best.”

Imagine that you are a super-successful movie director, who’s been given hundreds of millions of dollars and lots of whiz-bang technology to make a cinematic epic. Sounds good? Not once you are told that people will have to watch it on fuzzy old black and white television sets.

The new publishing world of pixels presents striking complications to displaying fonts on the Web, according to a recent New York Times article. Browsers grow; eyes get strained; fonts become unclear and unappealing. As the Web world has evolved, typographers have worked to develop new tricks to fashion fonts for computer screens while preserving the craft’s rich history and nuance. For instance, if typographers “make enclosed spaces, like those in an ‘a’ and ‘e,’ bigger than they need to be in print.”

Props
Reference: All Top
Article: New York Times
Photo Credit: Fotolia

Image from thinkgeek.com

I have seen many different iphone lenses or microphones in the past but the ‘Bubo’ from OWLE really takes the cake. The rig itself is a single piece of aluminum with four tripod or accessory mounts on the top and bottom of the side hand grip as well as a cold shoe mount for a light or another microphone. It comes with a .45w wide angle/macro combo lens that screws into the rig and a microphone that connects directly to your iphone.

The videos on OWLE’s website are pretty cool, listen to the ukulele video on the Action page to really check out the sound quality. The snowboard video is very impressive, I bet having the extra handling made filming a breeze.

A little interesting fact: Bubo is the name of the mechanical owl in the classic film Clash of the Titans

Link • OWLE Bubo Tour on Youtube
Link • OWLE’s website

Okay, so this post might not be the most useful thing I’ve ever posted, but its pretty damn interesting. With technology constantly on the rise, its no surprise that digital cameras have pretty much taken over as far as photography is concerned. But have you ever sat and thought about how far you can really take digital photography? Well, with me and all my randomness I happened to stumble upon the largest picture in the world. Yep, you heard me right. And you thought megapixels were large . . . try gigapixels!

Technical Aspects

The picture was made with the Canon 5D mark II and a 400mm-lens. It consists of 1.665 full format pictures with 21.4 megapixel, which was recorded by a photo-robot in 172 minutes. The converting of 102 GB raw data by a computer with a main memory cache of 48 GB and 16 processors took 94 hours. With a resolution of 297.500 x 87.500 pixel (26 gigapixel) the picture is the largest in the world.

Image Content

The photo was taken on the roof of the building “Haus der Presse” and starts at the left side with the Ostragehege. You can see the Congress Center and the Maritim Hotel rightwards. In the center is the city of Dresden with the famous Semperoper (back view), the castle and the Church of Our Lady. In the background is the television tower and you can identify outlines of the Saxon Switzerland. In the right part you can see the south of Dresden.

To check out this enormous panoramic image for yourself and to find out some more information, please check out the following link:

Click Here For More Information