Dell may be officially announcing their netbook next Tuesday. This week we also got to see the really sexy looking Lenovo S9 and S10 netbooks (the only other netbook I would actually consider. Something about the Dell E firebrick red netbook just appeals to me soo much.
Earlier this week I attended a talk with a manufacturer who was giving us a brief rundown of the differences between British/European standards (BS, IEC) and American standards (NEC and NEMA). I came into that talk with a host of mostly founded preconceptions however I left with a changed view for the emerging design philosophies and how certain constraints around you will motivate and influence design.
Preconceptions
I will rightly admit that before this talk my I considered American design over-designed, bloated, over-sized, unrefined (with the exception of somethings of course, this is after all a gross generalisation). The impression I had of American design could be summed up into, BIGGER is better. In fact there was an element of contempt when designing buildings to American standards, because I felt that I was cheating my clients of a superior design due to being constrained by bloated design.As it turns out I was right, after a fashion. I had considered the reasons but what I hadn't considered was the added value that could be brought to the table in an attempt to justify the reduction of good design and engineering practices.
External Influences
I don't want to get into specifics here, but ultimately a lot of gear that I specify for a building is 40-60% larger for a building that is designed to American standards than one that is designed to European standards. The reasoning behind this is partly due to constraints by the standards as set by a bunch of lawyers that have FUCK all understanding of what it is they are lawyering about and thus the end product is already on the back foot in terms of design because the constraint asks for an enclosure (no matter what the inside contains) of a specific size; a one size fits all mentality. The inards are then rated upwards or downwards as required.The end result is bloated, unrefined engineering/design because of these external constraints. Which does nothing but fuel the fire to preconceptions because they are partly true.
Added Value
You'd think such products would then be pretty hard to sell if their counter parts where that much more supperior right? Well that's what i thought was well. I thought that the only real reason for going down that route was because it was with stuff that the client or whomever felt comfortable with because that's all they knew. Maybe as their trusted consultant we should present variations and ideas on this. We are after all engineers that try and push the boundaries and present the best solutions to try and make things run better, provide a more efficient, cost-effective and ultimately greatly design final solution. By their own admission they're more expensive and bulkier in size.
The guys in America know they can't compete on physical size and overall design elegance. However one thing that they've enhanced (which is where the difference in philosophy comes to play) is the product's expandability and it's endurance. The American products will last much longer and take a longer beating because they've been designed to do that. They also allow individual components to be augmented within the field. This enables changes and enhancements to a particular component to be done out in the field, sometimes when spares are not readily available or expensive to get.
Therefore these products have their own marketplace outside their origin but it's really on a case by case basis. For me it was interesting because although I knew the constraints and the reasons what I hadn't anticipated was the fact that the products were not stagnant in their design and just hid behind the standards. They pushed their design boundaries within the set constraints.
I guess the crux of the matter is that no design is better, except when taken into context. People have to be open to bringing in other elements that they may not be familiar with or uncomfortable with in the hopes of creating a better design.
So last month I (as it turned out) foolishly decided to lend Gordon my camera on his little 'save the world' (or at least try and save a small portion of Bangladesh) trip. However unfortunately the camera got stolen right at the end of his trip, so he lost all the photos, which is a real shame, and I lost my camera, which is damn right criminal. However no point in crying over spilt milk, so the hunt is on for a replacement for my point and shoot camera.
I want to take this opportunity to wax lyrically about the fact that my stolen camera was actually an exceptionally good camera. My only complaint with it all was the fact that they've got a really shitty proprietary system for moving pictures from the camera rather than a simple USB cable connection into the computer and be done with it, honestly I don't need more photo applications on my computer, I've got like 20 of those, enough already.
It was also pretty unique in many respects as it was one of the few (only?) cameras to actually have two lenses. So you can imagine my disappoint,..nay, disgust at the fact that Kodak no longer make that type of camera..what is this world coming to when you can't rely on a company to continue developing the thing that makes them stand out from the rest, I ask you?
So the search for something different begins. I think I've decided on the camera to go for, specifically the Samsung NV20.
However before I go ahead and buy it I wanted to ask everyone about their thoughts on which camera is the best point and shoot on the market. I looked at the flickr camera list and I'm not so sure about the Canon, seems awefully generic to me. So what do you have as a point and shoot and what do you think about it, or if you're in the know, what camera should I be looking to buy?
In a word, RUBBISH. The newest MacHeist is up and running and basically it's a really poor showing this time around. See the last time was an AMAZING collection of applications that included Pixelmator and VectorDesigner. This time around you have some of the same applications and a few random new ones as well, but NO killer application.
Don't get me wrong I REALLY rate Awaken, use it every day, I really like Coversutra, use that every day (tried using Cha-Ching but couldn't really get to grips with it at all); crucially all three of these applications were in the previous MacHeist that was held not 3 months ago. What is the application in that bundle that would make you excited? Seriously? It's not there. Unless they start adding some good stuff, there is no way that this Heist will be as good as the previous one and for good reason. Who exactly are they trying to get on board on this?
On a personal note, there is really no application out there that I want, apart from maybe a better FTP application (there are a couple of good ones knocking about but I've not decided which one i should go for) and a better torrent client (transmission is doing exactly what I want and the development is constant so hopefully there'll get some basic UI issues sorted out and add being able to search and add torrents from within the application itself and I won't need a new torrent client either).
FontStruct is a website that lets you create fonts using an EXCELLENT flash interface right from within the website. You don't have to start from scratch as it's even possible to clone another font that has already been created and modify it to your needs. What I love about all of this is the option to actually control EVERYTHING about an particular project straight away, down to the font. Having created a font years ago, I know how difficult it is to keep your house in order. The interface on FontStruct keeps things organised for you to actually put more effort into the creative process. Now the issue of course is that it might not seem as flexible of being able to come up with any font design you can, but honestly I think for the average hobbyist that might not be an issue really. If you really get into it, then I guess you can start learning how to do it from scratch...although having said that, I have NO IDEA what the standard tool for font creation is nowadays? Font Constructor looks pretty cool. Also there is a pretty extensive list about the different programmes available (even talks about FontStruct).