concordokken

“Robert Brunner, then
with Lunar Design, was floored when Ive showed him an elegant question
mark-shaped phone — not just a foam block but an actual model with all
the internal components machined separately. “It wasn’t just that the
product had heart, but it was engineered; he was thinking about how to
make it in volume,” recalls Brunner.” — Interview with and about Jonathan Ive’s, of Apple inc.

The interview is really interesting since it displays the lack of prestige within the apple design team and the attitude of hard work and good work ethics displayed in the work of and in the team.

It isn’t often you read about some of those things in the technology sector these days, programmers do a good job most of the time, but are more often than not far too preoccupied by their sense of what’s easier and more effective vs. the need of the user of the product.

technorati tags:Ive, Apple

Wikipedia, has been in turmoil, more than once over the seriousness of their project. recently they decided to delete the biography of Rob Levin founder and former project leader of PDPC and Open Projects aka. freenode. an internet relay chat communications network, used by a massive amount of open source projects.

This is because of him not being notable enough, which to me, is unreal. the man built and offered up a communications infrastructure for the betterment of the open source movement, this is a big milestone, it helped people to communicate, it also helped the various projects to pool their efforts.

it’s been said he’s not notable enough, but is really the latest internet meme notable enough? by what criteria should we judge people. by what they’ve done? by who they know? or by what they’ve done for others?

Rob did something, that no-one else did, prior to the freenode project. obviously a lot of people feel that they could’ve done it just as easily, this where i grew up, is called “hyperbole” either you deliver or just shut up.

freenode isnt just yet another irc network, freenode is an institution, and one that Rob Levin, was instrumental in forming.

i’d say that this could be seen as a failiure of Wikipedia, to prove it’s worthyness to knowledge.

technorati tags:lilo, freenode, wikipedia

Myself and many of my friends buy ebooks to read on our pda’s or just peruse onscreen on our computers, it’s boring and the multitasking nature of modern operating systems makes it very much like trying to find a needle on the street in downtown NY in the middle of a working day.

There’s been a few portable prototypes of ebook readers that’ve made it to market, sony being one of the foremost contenders, but still lacking in the ye-olde usability department.

another contender is the amazon project ‘kindle’ which I consider to be the bastard child of every device that has gone tits up since 2001, eerily reminescent of the n-gage & apple 2+ and seemingly packing an immense distaste for usability — ‘distaste’ might be the wrong word, it could also be lack of UxD / IxD schooling — and ambivalence to the goal, which.. would seem to be reading books and surfing the web, and well. texting a great deal.

some hobbyists did get it right with a prototype — not availible to the public aside from schematics — dubbed juicebox;

and oh boy did they ever figure out that an ebook reader doesnt need to be fifty eleven things at once, doing audio output and displaying the text on a readable display is all that’s really needed — note the lack of the kitchen sink.

technorati tags:UxD, Ebooks, usabilitymistakes

I logged on to irc this early morning to find that a friend of mine had passed away. gone was my cheery mood and my sunny disposition took over.

Rob Levin was one of the very few infrastructure moguls in oss, a who got “it” about open source, he wasnt all too concerned with global domination, but more about how to go about the revolution logistically. He was many things to me, a good listener, skilled in diplomacy, a strategist, but most of all. a good man in times of ambitious bastards.

I’d love to be able to do something more, anything. but I’m at loss as to what short of donating to pdpc, which is what I am going to do. but it doesnt feel … like it would be enough.

Rob, I hope you’re up there, showing them who you are, what you did for all of us, and living life to the fullest.

”Caelum videre iussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus”

via Laughing Squid

technorati tags:friends, elegy