swatch it to me

kidrobot vs swatch

an exhibition

Nathaniel Stern is back in the country for a short sojourn and bringing his famous "lily scans" with him. Only this time, they're not our local Emmarentia lilies, but American Midwestern lilies.

For those who haven't seen this particular work before, Nathaniel has had a custom body-pack made so that he can strap on a desktop scanner and a laptop, and then he wades in to a lake - and literally scans lilies. Read more about his process here.

His latest exhibition will open this Saturday (30 July) at 2pm at Art On Paper (44 Stanley in Johannesburg).

ring ring!

Blackberry, iPhone, HTC, Android - the battle of the smartphones is on! But what if you're not interested in mailing your clients in Japan while you're lying on the beach? Or creating a map that will lead you back to where you parked your car? Or letting the world know what you're doing, minute-by-minute in 140 characters?

What if you just want a phone? That takes calls and makes calls. And that's IT! Then John Doe Amsterdam's phone is just for you! A risky bet in the age of smartphones to be sure, it has no camera, no fancy ringtones, no GPS. What it does have, though, is pen and paper built in for you take manually write down someone's number. Yes, pen and paper.

For anyone who's ever felt the itches of technophobia setting in, this one's for you...

Written for Don't Look Down's Hit Refresh blog.

pedal power!

This one's for all the cyclists out there - or for those who know cyclists. I never dreamed I'd be amongst that group, but there you have it. My hubby is a cyclist, and apparently I'm a cycling widow :)

Apple has once again filed one of those patents that get everyone all excited and hot under the collar with expectation. We've seen music in your pants, music in your shoes, now they're bringing music to your bike! And so, so much more.

The Apple smart bike promises to integrate not only your bike and your tunes - but all the metrics riders are so keen on measuring on each ride - how far did I go, how high did I climb, what was my heart rate? All the things that right now they measure with crappy little Garmin devices.

There's even a patent mention of, ahem, a holographic or 3D display. Curious. But then Apple always are.

objecthunt

A popular design blog, NOTCOT, recently put together an inspired competition for New York Design week - the first time I've seen twitter used so well, while staying in touch with the brand/ethos running the project. Welcome to #OBJECTHUNT.

Using silhouettes of recognisable objects in design (think the Aarnio puppy, Gehry's wiggle chair, Swiss army knife) NOTCOT created stickers which they posted around New York City for the week that New York Design Week was running. The idea was to track down the stickers and tweet an image of it along with the hashtag #OBJECTHUNT - every new object you tweeted was an entry in to the competition for some great prizes - weekends away, hotel stays and one of the design objects featured.

What's really incredible about this competition is that they've managed to tie a social platform in to real life in a creative way. It'll stick in people's minds, and they'll associate the brands involved with cool, fun and edgy. The key is to reinvent a platform everyone thinks they know so well.

Check out the #OBJECTHUNT stickers in the wild...

Written for Don't Look Down and Hit Refresh.

my top ipad apps

I figured it was only fitting to draft my post about my favourite iPad apps from within a blogging app. First time using it, so this should be interesting.

The iTunes store is filled with thousands of apps for iPhone and iPad, some extraordinary, some useful, some entertaining and some downright useless. It can be quite time consuming browsing through this vast library and I think people mostly rely on the "featured" pages to guided them on what's worthwhile. But a little peer suggestion also goes a long way, so this is my list of my current favourite/must have apps on the iPad for those of you out there lucky enough to be playing with one:

Blogshelf: follow your favorite blogs in a neat, bookshelf styled rss feed with images. It is $5 but I've found it well worth it. $5
iBook: this is an obvious one, and to me as given as the iPod app is on an iPod. Kindle competitor allowing you to read digital books from the iBooks store, much like iTunes. Slick, organized, user friendly, and people I've asked have said much better than Kindle app. Only waiting for the store to be stocked up now. Free

Converter: simple, well designed units converter, including currency. $1
Jumbo Calculator: free calculator based on the apple calculator on iPhones and dashboards. Free
Marvel/DC Comics: reading comics on the iPad is awe inspiring. Suffers from the same issue as iBooks (not enough material has been digitally converted yet), but an iPad without a comic book reader is nekkid I tell you. Free, with in-app comic purchases, $2 an issue
xkcd: everyone needs a good daily giggle. Free
Google analytics: keep track of your blog and site stats. Free
All subway HD: I have an unusual love of subway systems and riding trains. I love this one - every subway map in the world,  from Adelaide to Zurich. $1
eBay: with my recent vinyl toy hunting, this has served to heighten my addiction - beautiful layout of your watched items, clean easy communication with your sellers and lovely browsable search. Still missing some key features (saved sellers, saved searches), but there's little I go to ebay.com for now. Free
Flipboard: presents your personal Twitter and Facebook accounts in a magazine layout - like reading a mag of your favourite people - beautiful, if a little unreliable at this stage. Free
Twitter: the free, official app for twitter - best app I've used for managing multiple accounts. Free

So what are your favourite apps?

(While I used Blogpress to write the bulk of this post, I did find it a bit cumbersome. Look forward to the day Google/Blogger develop an actual blogger app. Better suggestions welcome.)

happy hobos

Fast Co Design has run a story on a designer item you’re not likely to see on the streets of South Africa any time soon – a compact mobile home designed specially for the homeless…

Looking like a small food delivery truck, the Bufalino has a mini cooker, drawers for organising your stuff and a small moped-like engine to get around with. Designer, Cornelius Comanns, has even given it a fabulous interior and exterior motif. Granted, the assumption is that you have food to cook, stuff to organise and money to buy petrol, so maybe it’s a little more for elite camping or playing vagabond in the countryside.

With a facility to plug in a laptop, it’s probably not for your average homeless…

Written for Hit Refresh, images from Fast Co Design.

ipaddington

Recently, hubby surprised me with the gift of the year (ask any digital blogger). An iPad! What every girl wants, right? Ignoring all the hype, the fact that I *love* apple, and that it's a first generation product many nay sayers said would need improving - it's awesome!

In the short time I've had it, we've become joined at the hip. And through the usual barrage of useful/fun/amazing apps, I'm able to turn it more and more in to my must-have daily companion. I watch TV on it, read books, shop on eBay (but more about that later), keep up with facebook and twitter, play games, store presentations, display photos, check mail, and get tailor-made news from all my favourite blogs and websites. Tailor-made being the key. It personalizes everything I need and actually becomes a completely customized tool through the apps that I choose to load. My iPad is a very different creature from hubby's iPad.

I'll blog my list of favourite apps soon for those who don't want to browse the store for days on end *hoping* for something useful. But for now, I have to go check what the exchange rate is so I can do some more shopping on eBay ;)

*sent from my iPad

fm-land

So yesterday I noticed something amazing - my car sound system can now tell me what track I'm listening to - from the RADIO!
And not all the radio stations either, Highveld seems to have beaten 5fm to the punch this time around - well done.
I love the idea of innovation happening in an environment we assume is stale and had its heyday.

do you poken?

You Google. You text. You chat. Do you Poken?

That what the guys at Poken want to know as they launch their new product to those addicted to their online social lives. Pokens offer a link between your “real world” life and your “cyber” life. Meet someone new, touch Pokens, and you have all the cyber data you need to be able to find them online – their MSN, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, whatever. The Poken caters for over 30 different networks, allowing users to customise the information that they give out when they “Poken”.

These “social cards” can by synced to your Outlook contacts or your Apple contacts, allowing other people to control the information you have about them – it’s always up to date, as they’re keeping it current for you.

Pokens can be bought in various shapes and designs to meet your tastes, and it’s likely the options will expand over time (think Mimobots). While it’s still a fairly new wave waiting to be caught, Pokens do offer an interesting look into what’s to come as people try to link up their two social lives – online and in reality.

View the welcome video here.

*blip blip*

Blind Melon! K's Choice! Bananarama! Coolio! Just some of the artists I've found I want to listen to, but definitely don't, and won't ever, own their album. I don't download them either. I blip them.

If you haven't used Blip.fm before, it can be a little confusing at first, but it's really quite simple - it's a database of just about every song in the world (even SA's own Zebra & Giraffe) at your fingertips to listen to at your whim. Great for those days at work when you suddenly think "how did that Female of the Species song go again?".

Blip.fm allows you to be your own "DJ", and for you to gather "listeners" as you build your playlist of weird and wonderful tunes and one-hit-wonders. If you've used Twitter before, it's like tweeting each song you listen to, and gathering "followers". Twitter with music. And it's fun. The only other time I'm likely to stumble across America's "Horse with No Name" is at a rugby braai at my parent's. Here though, the list of what you're listening to - if you're not actively searching yourself - it determined by what those DJs that you're following choose - and it could be *anything*.

While searching for Placebo this morning, I find myself listening to TV on the Radio thanks to AlyG, closely followed by Heisai Yasokawa's Empty Orchestra thanks to Matriax - something I'm never likely to have heard otherwise.

Blip.fm is great for finding those one-hit-wonders you remember jiving to at your school disco, as well as discovering new music from people with similar tastes to yourself, with very little effort.

Come find me on Blip!

each day

I have to remind myself to appreciate the astounding and out-of-the-ordinary things I come across on a daily basis.

if i was a robot

I got this from vanoodle.

play nice now everyone!

This is essentially a rant about social media.
While not many people use the incredibly stoic phrase "social media", it forms a part of most of our everyday lives. In fact, blogging right now I am "engaging in social media". It's intrinsic to almost everything we do, and more and more the "mainstream" sectors are starting to wake up to the power of this "social media" - cellphone networks have their own networking sites, fizzy drinks have mobile sites, ad agencies are making made-for-mobile TV shows, and PLENTY brands exist on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace to name a few.

My issue today, then, is that I am a digital native. I live and play in this world everyday. I love exploring new platforms, new arenas, new playrooms - I'm in Second Life, Club Penguin, I use Skype, MSN, Twitter, I'm trying to sign up for Habba... and my end frustration is - NOTHING TALKS TO ANYTHING ELSE!!!

For example... in order to Twitter on my iPhone, I need an application of some sort. There isn't an official Twitter app, so I download Twinkle - like Twitter, but allows for photo update. Great. Then I realize, the people available on Twitter aren't necessarily available on Twinkle. Those are Tapulous people. Not Twitter people. In several instances, they operate in both environments, but only if you physically cross over. So when I made a friend on Twinkle, it didn't reflect on my Twitter. Annoying.
Then, I see other people are using Twitpic to upload pics to Twitter. So let's try that. Issue NOW is, if I twitter a pic on the move, using Twinkle, it doesn't go to my Twitpic collection. I have to go back and upload it there if I want that stream to be a reflection of all pics I've uploaded. Annoying.

I'm working on different platforms - mobile and online - why can't my applications and logins reflect that while I needed to use different apps to access the system on each one, they're happy to talk to each other and play along? Why on earth, in this day and age of rampant personal publishing, internet stars and brand-agnosticism, do I have to remain true and faithful to one app? Huh? Tell me that.

And don't even get me started on my blog that wouldn't let me in because I used a different Google account for my Gmail than I used for my blogger....argh!

my new toy!

On our way back in through Heathrow I picked up a little summin summin... a new camera! It's the new Canon 40D with all sorts of exciting little features! My favourite of which so far is the "my favourites menu" and the ability to load your most-used settings.
I've been wanting one for a while now, and finally did it. Now I have to find a challenge, something to work towards... Anyone know of any good photo comps?

my tv interview

This is an interview I did on GO Stuff - a tech segment.



See more of my videos on @ngel on film.

my battery is dying

steve's done it again

Steve Jobs, head of Apple, has announced a new toy. Welcome the Macbook Air.
It's 56 % thinner than the Macbook Pro, making it the thinnest notebook on the market. Think Thinnovation.

I read in an interview this morning that "the machine is a reversal of field for Mr. Jobs, who in the past has insisted that less-than-full-featured laptops are undesirable", so we can only assume that this Macbook lacks some of the features others carry - it's been seriously slimmed down. Apple, smartly, have not yet released the spec, so it's not easy to see exactly what they've left off. Noticeably though, a few of the ports are missing - the cable you'd stick into them are thicker than the notebook itself!

I'm keeping this page bookmarked on my browser to see what other info they release - I like it. But I wouldn't rush out and pre-order just yet...

UPDATE: they've left off the optical drive, firewire ports, and there's only one USB port. Although you can get external extensions for these, that defeats the oject of having something so slim. I use these ports a hell of a lot more than I'd use the 2 hours extra battery or the multi-touch track pad. I'll wait for version 2.0...

i want a car pod

Driving home in the BMW the other night, I turned to look around me in the car - it's a big car. I was surrounded by all this empty space, and it was quite strange to think of myself manoevering this machine around. Kinda like being the only guy at the helm in a tank - you must get awful lonely.
Then I looked out my window and a man was waiting at the traffic light next to me in a people-carrier - one of those big soccer-mom cars. He was alone. Completely alone. Imagine all the space surrounding him.

And so I got to thinking, wasn't this a complete waste? Not only of space and energy and petrol, but of your buying power too. When you buy a car, you always end up buying it for what you MAY need it for. So a soccer mom buys her big car, but she really only carries the team once a week. And yet you can't buy smaller, because then you have a predicament when you suddently do need more space (a la smart car trying to fetch an aunt from the airport - laughable)

Hence my idea of PodCars. You buy your basic driving pod (the piece with the steering wheel etc), and thereafter you can add as many or as few as you want. So me and my handbag don't take out the full complement of car, but just the driving pod piece that I need. Going grocery shopping? I add another pod on for more space. And you could get specifically designed pods too - one for dogs, bicycles, canoes, kids - or the generic more-space-needed version. You then always have the choice of how many and what types of pods you own.

And not to take away the status that comes with any car - pods will still be designed with status in mind. An Audi pod for example, is very different from a Toyota pod. And I'm not talking about making everyone's cars look like the Smart car either - that's just ugly. They need to be decently designed like the ones we have now. Think Zaha Hadid's Z Car...

Yes, I know, the idea of having to assemble or disassemble your car after each trip is a pain, but that's a problem I'll let the car think tanks solve (maybe our garages need to be modified). Either way, I've given them the idea, they just need to perfect it.

I call it podular.

ps: great link from vanoodle which illustrates the why...

call me in the future

"Concept" models are always really great. And sometimes we're lucky - sometimes they get made (to a degree of their original design).
The BMW concept store in Paris is amazing - cars that run on grass, flowers that sing - all that fun imaginative sort of stuff :)

Here's a concept phone I'd love to see made: the Nokia 888 Communicator

"The bracelet-like 888 is envisioned to use a liquid battery, feature speech recognition, a flexible touch screen, and a touch sensitive body cover."

Can't you just SEE the fab accessories!