Can anyone still remember life before email? Most companies and private citizens didn’t use eMail before 1995 - so the revolution is hardly 10 years old for many people. (I got my first email address 1991)

You remember the pain of snail mail? Typing or printing your letter on paper, stuffing it into an envelope, finding the right stamp and post it into a letterbox right on time for next day delivery?

Old school mail sucked - although spam is taking the fun out of instant electronic delivery as well.

Bernie’s Better Beginner’s Guide to Photography is exactly what it says - and not a bad one! Highly recommended if you want to know a bit more about making good snaps and buying the right camera. Although his tutorial focuses on SLR cameras, most stuff applies also to small snappers like the one above.

The next generation of Credit Cards could include a small keyboard to enter your PIN for transaction - which means it has it’s own communication and computing power ‘on board’. Great!

Anything with a computer can crash, have communication problems and can be hacked.

‘Excuse me, I need to reboot my credit card - it just crashed.’

What a Nightmare!

Thanks Edosan for sending this one.

Ah, the promise was so neat: a wireless technology for small gadgets. You simply connect your cell phone, headsets, coffee machines or vibrates with each other. Super easy and super simple. Yeah, right …

Reality check please!

Several years after the introduction of Bluetooth this technology suffers from the same stupid mistakes and problems almost all gadgets do: compatibility issues. Often Bluetooth devices from the same vendors won’t talk to each other.

And the bitch is that with wireless devices you never can ’see’ if they properly connect with each other. So searching for the real problem is hard - even for experts.

Even Bluetooth 2.0 didn’t fix the problem - it just made it worse.

I am a big wireless fan myself, but my Bluetooth headset, my Bluetooth mouse, my Bluetooth enables cell phone and my Bluetooth keyboard hate each other. Only one device at a times please.

So once again we have to update drivers, check compatibility before buying and spend hours making gadgets talk to each other.

Thank you so much Bluetooth people - please accept my thanks in form of a real hard kick in your wireless butts.

I always find it highly amusing when friends and client proudly show me their backup. After a solid decade of data loss most people finally understand the bare necessity of making backups. But still they are not ’safe’. DVDs themselves are a terrible backup media: they easily scratch, bright sunlight is bad for them and sometimes the data can’t be read in all DVD drives. Most of all they won’t last forever: manufacturer promise sometimes ten year or more. But try to complain about data loss in ten years to TDK or Sony. You must have done something wrong Sir!

And who knows if we will have DVD drives in ten years anyway? The floppy disk died a slow death, but I guess DVDs and CD-Drives will change and disappear much faster. Hopefully not your data.

The best protection: make backups on different media’s! I have my most important data on DVD discs, an external portable hard drive, an USB stick and on a secure server on the web. Overkill? Not really if your work means something to you. Most of all: backups onto web machines or online services can be done every night when you sleep.

I am usually not into desktop images and other computer gimmickry - but it was a great pleasure to explore this huge gallery of illustrations of many talented young designers.

What do these three items have in common?

They talk!

Sunbeds, that cell phone and new cars all have voices that explain stuff to you. And usually in a adorable and caring female voice. It’s like mother explaining you a technical gimmick and you get a boner while listening.

I find this very irritating. A machine goddess talking to me, with no way of proper interaction nor dialogue. It’s all so empty and often beside the point.

Watch the video …

That’s more I can take for one weekend. Modern consumerism doesn’t know any limits and insults my cultural sensitivity all the time!

Ouch! This means war … or I order some here.

Some people say that all technology serves only one purpose: procreation. Well in this case it’s also a workaround for some cultural and religious taboos (by Markus Kison):

The CharmingBurka deals with Freud’s idea, that all clothes can be positioned between appeal and shame. I decided for the Burka, because this cloth is positioned on the very side of shame and add a digital layer to it. With this layer women can decide on their own, where they want to position themselves virtually. This means that the Burka is sending a picture, which the wearer has chosen, via Bluetooth. Every person next to her can receive her picture on his mobile and that way see her self-determined identity. The virtual appeals can not be gathered by the laws of the Koran.

Therefore the Burka is equipped with a bluetooth antenna, micro-controller and uses the OBEX protocol, already working with most mobile phones.

Thanks to Edosan for this link.

No matter how advanced a piece of technology is, woman will find a practical way to use them for their own pleasure.

I just love this: this shirt literally shows you the good vibes around you - actually the strength of a nearby WiFi connection. God bless modern geeky consumerism. Another great gimmick from ThinkGeek.

In the good old days of consumerism you could learn a lot about other people by casually browsing through their record and book collection. But today most people don’t even have CD collections anymore - and they libraries exist only in a digital form.

But switching on someone’s computer, cell phone or iPod just to see what they have ‘on’ is rather intimate affair and not very nice.

In which neighborhood in cyberspace do you hang out?

Blogsville?
Pr0natella?
News-Junction?
Home-Makers-Place?
Single-Square?
EyeCady-Heaven?

So many places, so little bandwidth and even less time.

The know you are a 21st century person when your friends show their holiday snaps on a computer instead of a slide show of photo album. As much as I love the computer screen - but it sucks as a social event.

Full review @ Everything USB

This is not a Mouse - this is a highly complicated input device for 14 year old wankers. It is amazing what some people are willing to buy to prove they have a dick.

Actually some MS mice are pretty nice. This one - nope …

These were great machines - when Mac’s still were Mac’s - and PC’s absolute crap. How times have changed. Intel Inside - soon in every Mac as well.

To RGB or CMYK - that’s the Question!

You are a person with many interests and many skills? You love art, you produce art - but you also live with a huge pile of creative guilt? Welcome to the club! It’s hard to be a digital artist, since your computer enables you to run amazing tools - which have been unthinkable twenty years ago. A creative powerhouse in one small box.

Wanna make a movie? No problem use Adobe Premiere or AfterEffects. Are you a graphics person? Your choice is vast and wide - Photoshop, Illustrator, FreeHand, Painter - to name but a few. Wanna go 3D and do amazing effects or animations. Once again the list boasts absolutely amazing tools like Lightwave, Maya, 3D Max.

Oh my - you are a creative person! Wow!

You make music and love to sample and tweak sounds? A small feat these days - cool software is cheaply available, even Star Wars was remixed on a simple PowerBook using everyday digital tools and even great modern musicians use the same Samplers, Synths and Sequencer like you do.

Not to forget our good old writing tools to produce anything ranging from articles or complete books! You can go from a simple solution like Microsoft Word up to publishing powerhouses like Quark or InDesign. And how about your own web page or weblog? I am sure you want to show the world what you are capable off, let’s buy Flash, Dreamweaver or GoLive?

You had enough? Fine.

More human than human - welcome to the new 3D art universe (image: Miles Estes)

Modern designer are rapped and pushed to be digital renaissance artists - nothing is impossible. Since the DTP revolution in the late 80’s smashed the old lines between technician and artist - we creative types have to be both today a Geek and a Michelangelo in one person.

Once it used to be enough to excel as a writer, painter or photographer - know you have to be you own typesetter, reproduction expert, scanner and editor etc. as well. But since this is the analog2digital (A2D) generation we love to have multiple choice - since we know how limited we felt with our old tools: clunky typewriter, tipex, letraset letters, dirty chemicals to develop slides, dangerous cutters, slow snailmail and mechanical copy processes to name a few. No surprise: we love absolute control and absolute choice.

Welcome to a mad artists world.

But it’s driving us mad. Instead being limited to a certain area of art or projects we suddenly find ourselves doing a thousand creative things all at once: writing articles & weblogs, drawing illustrations, retouching photos, programming web sites, layouting a new CV and looking for background music for our presentations.

Did you really think one huge monitor would be enough?!

So much to do, so little time and energy. And the web as a global showcase doesn’t make things easier. There is a constant stream of competition and inspiration to cope with. Have you seen those cool Japanese animations? This great Danish photographer? These old retro covers of some weird fashion magazine?

All these choices, ideas and doors waiting to be opened drive any creator mad. The total overflow of choice makes it hard to focus on just one project, just one set of skills, just one insanely great idea. A tough decision for anyone who loves to surf in possibilities.

Modern artists still want and need to be kissed by their Muses as well.

And we feel a lot of guilt of not pursuing all those ideas that pop up in our minds. The guilt of not pursuing another great business idea or product the world desperately needs. We get paralyzed by all the doors we could jump through and enjoy another adventure in creativeland. And this guilt sucks big time.

Anything else Sir? But there is an additional problem: business. Today’s clients and employers all want a young super geeks with a Maestro’s thirty years of experience and wide ranging skill set. But just one arty farty person please. We are on a tight budget these days.

Ah, when art was simple and computers limited. (Image: Andres Becerra)

So it’s really hard to say ‘I am just an illustrator’ or ‘I can only write good articles’, since you don’t want to cut yourself out of the market. So we learn and buy many different software packages, try to stay on top of a gazillion technologies, names and gizmos. But most of all, we lose the time, energy and focus to be masters of our trade - to be simply open, productive and creative.

Although art involves knowledge and craftsmanship as well, once again we should start to make distinctions between mastering expressive techniques and mastering production technologies.

There is a difference between animating something and writing a flash script. There is a difference between composing a great stream of words to entice your readers and operating a content management system. There is a difference between taking great pictures and layout an art book. Let artists be artists, technicians be technicians and geek’s … oh well …

*repost 2003-08-19*

More and more people find their favorite websites blocked by corporate firewalls. Also email filters clamp down on stupid attachments like the newest ‘funny’ video or porn.

Actually I can only recommend to anyone working in a big company not to visits websites you like in private, nor use the companies email address for mailing your friends and family. Most admin’s don’t care about your stuff - but looking at your mails and surfing habits is a gold mine for any middle management asshole to find a reason to kick your butt.

So get yourself at least a private webmail account that supports secure transmission and is hopefully not blocked by your corporate admin. Don’t surf any pr0n, funny or dating websites during work - not even during lunch break. It will be recorded - and used against you …

Gee, the Mother of all image manipulation programs in it’s infancy. I grew up with Photoshop - but I don’t envy anyone trying to learn this complex beasts from scratch. Great software … almost an operating system by itself.

Photoshop (and computer graphics) have changed our world completely. The phrase ‘doctored pictures’ reached a new level with ‘it’s photoshopped’. Stretching the truth got a lot easier with this great tool.

And designer use it on a regular basis to masturbate eye candy for our screens … it’s all about filters, effects and coolness baby!

I remember these terrible drives for Atari, Commodore and Apple home computers - even more unreliable then pro drives for IBM machines. And the noise! Something you thought they are actually drilling the data into the floppies.

Good thing they are dead. Or do you wanna save your MP3 collection on a billion single sided 170 KILOBYTE disks?!

I have been using skype since it’s start. Today it’s the only Instant Messaging program I use. I also do many conference calls and all my text messaging to cell phones with it. It’s cheap (to call land lines and cell phones), free (to download and call other computers) easy to use and works fine most of the time.

Highly recommended for all digital human beings. Delete your ICQ, AOL, Yahoo!, MSN or whatever IMs - this is the future.

One professor called this generation once screenies:

We work all day in front of a screen.
We relax in front of a screen.
We educate ourselves with screens.
We socialize via our screens.
We pick out our next date on a screen.

I think he is right.

My virtual home, complete with Firewall, a secret VPN tunnel for escapes and a house dragon to keep all the spammers and hackers away.

Do we really need cell phone beds and iPod pajamas?

I love geeky products, especially when they are somewhat green.

From Thinkgeek.com:

Captured inside the Sun Jar are a highly efficient solar cell, a rechargeable battery and low energy LED lamps. When the jar is placed in direct sunlight the solar cell creates an electrical current that charges the battery over a few hours. This energy is then used at night to power the three LED lamps inside the jar.

The light is diffused by the frosted jar and give the appearance of sunlight emitting from the (warm colored LED lights are used to give a more natural and warm light).  You may have noticed that there is no switch on the Sun Jar - in fact there are no visible controls at all - but there is a clever light sensor inside that automatically activates the LEDs when it gets dark or the lights are turned out! (There is an override switch inside the lid to turn off the light at night and conserve battery life.)

More products should be like that: self sustaining and energy efficient.