Post PC

As for individual vendors, Lenovo stands out as the only PC manufacturer without a precipitous loss in growth — IDC says the company posted a 0.0 percent change year-over-year, maintaining its second place spot and closing the gap with HP. But all top five vendors performed unremarkably in the year since Q1 2012, with shipments from HP declining by 23.7 percent, Dell by 10.9 percent, Acer by 31.3 percent, and ASUS by 19.2 percent. IDC says even Apple took a hit in the first quarter of 2013, with a 7.5 percent decline in growth over 2012. "The industry is going through a critical crossroads," IDC writes. "Microsoft will have to make some very tough decisions moving forward if it wants to help reinvigorate the PC market."

​We're definitely post-PC now, but it's really only one of those companies that's managed to build anything like a convincing alternative.

Bringing "This England" into the Digital Era

With the first proper episode of Resolution under our belt, I took the opportunity this week to catch up with long-time professional portrait photographer Richard Battye by recording a conversation with him at his studio in Birmingham's Custard Factory. Richard's business River Studio has been a fixture there since the early 1990s, with a wide variety of commercial and fashion clients on its books, as well as being a busy studio location.

One of Richard's most acclaimed personal projects was "This England", which toured for three-and-a-half years at the turn of the century, and which constitutes a fascinating glimpse into British subculture and fashion. A decade later Richard is beginning to revisit some of the individuals and subcultures that formed a part of the body of work, finding them both affected by the passing of time and yet remarkably familiar.

This seems to me like the perfect time to both document some of the stories around the original project, and to consider how broader cultural changes—and changes in the landscape of photography itself—have affected Richard's approach to the subjects and to the process of building and touring a body of work. There's much to address of course; digital photography's rise, the new role of film, online image sharing, ink-jet printing, iPads and digital display technologies have all developed in the ten years since "This England" was produced, and any follow-up project will be transformed by these changes. Still, there's an underlying ethos and resilient heart to Richard's portraiture which, for me, makes "This England II" more relevant, and more necessary than ever.

Apple TV is the Missing Link in the iPad Classroom

Something great happens when a bunch of my students bring their iPads to the classroom. Individual work groups start looking things up on the Internet during tasks, bulky laptops and their power cables are left in bags, more notes get taken in lectures and posted immediately to our shared Minigroup spaces. I've walked around the room capturing student sketches with the iPad camera, then hooked up to the projector to share them with the whole class.

It's worked very well. I've switched entirely to the iPad for my own lecture presentations now, but there's still one thing I want to get rid of entirely: The VGA cable. The need to plug the iPad into an always-too-short-and-inconveniently-positioned cable in order to present has become the remaining limiting factor for most of my classes. The iPad's battery life and portability (especially with the iPad mini) mean that I'm no longer tied to the chained-down iMac at the front of the room. I can walk around, read my notes, talk to students, look things up on the Internet—but the ubiquitous VGA connection to the projector remains an anchor on everything we do.

There's an obvious and simple solution to this problem, and though it's not generally marketed as classroom technology it's a super product that's affordable and fairly straightforward to implement, with a couple of caveats. Apple TV was initially released in 2007 as a hard-disk-based but Mac mini-sized iPod equivalent at $300 that connected to a TV set and let you watch your movies and play music through your home entertainment setup. Since then it's remained a "hobby" for Apple, but it's shrunk to the size of a hockey puck, lost all of its moving parts (it's now flash-memory based), and costs a third of the launch price. It now connects to a TV via HDMI, runs 1080p video, and streams your purchases directly from the iTunes Store without syncing.

The killer-classroom-feature though is Airplay–Apple's video-over-wifi system that lets you send the screen of your iPad (and specific content from other iOS apps) to a connected HDTV, or HDMI-equipped projector. Since many modern classroom projectors have the necessary port it should be easy to hook up the tiny Apple TV box and then be free to walk around your classroom, presenting as you go. I say should though: While many of the classrooms in which I teach have HD projectors, IT-departments have seen fit to save money by not hooking up the necessary cabling, and we're stuck with VGA. Until that changes I'm keeping my own HDMI cable handy, and lobbying those in a position to do something about it.

Prototyping iPhone Apps on iPhone

BUILD FULLY-INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPES FROM YOUR SKETCHES - FAST.

When we started designing Protosketch we wanted to make it dead simple to build an interactive version of your drawings in a matter of seconds.

​Very cool looking free app (with in-app purchases) from the UI Stencils people. If you're in the early stages of planning an app this could be a fun and handy way of making a quick interactive prototype. I'll be playing with it later in the week to see if it lives up to the promise of speed and simplicity.

My First FaceTime

Another beautiful use for iPads: Letting new mothers recovering from cesarean sections see their babies regularly. Apple should put this in its ads.  ​

The Future of Photography Retail

This weekend Michael Priddy and I recorded the official first episode of the fourth Futurilla Radio show Resolution, which we piloted last month. This time we recorded over Skype, with Mike at his adopted home in the Netherlands and myself here in the UK, and discussed the recent relaunch of camera retailer Jessops, which closed down 180+ stores in January. We're intrigued as to whether a refocused and slimmed-down photography retailer can prosper in an age of discounted web stores, digital sharing, and unlimited online advice. It's a topic we're bound to return to again as Jessops' strategy becomes clearer, and it's a great starting point for Resolution's examination of how digital continues to transform photography and image-making.

Futurilla Radio Update

It's been just over two months since we officially launched Futurilla Radio with the weekly Doom Ray podcast, and we've been expanding slowly, learning as we go along. In March we added the Re: Sleeves show on a twice-monthly schedule, and this week our third show It's Alive! starts a weekly run after a warmly-received pilot.

Along the way we've also recorded and released a pilot for Resolution, and a couple of specials which we're releasing on an occasional basis. This week we've released three shows and we're not quite done yet, so we're definitely moving up a gear, and the plan is to have four regular shows by the end of April, with a couple more in development.

We're also still firmly in learning mode on all fronts, and keen to try out a range of subjects, topics, formats and presenters. One things we've learned is that there are all kinds of voices out there, and all kinds of stories we'd like to tell. If you've something you'd like to share, give us a shout via the Futurilla Twitter account, or write us here.

Thanks to everyone who's contributed, listened, and shared so far, and we can't wait to see what we learn over the next few months.

Facebook Wants To Be Your Home

​Om Malik is bothered by Facebook Home, and well he might be. Facebook's big announcement turned out not to be a phone but a step towards its own branded OS which puts the big blue F front and centre on your Android phone, and integrates a bunch of the social media advertising company's services into your lock screen. It'll probably go down a storm with the (twenty-something?) audience that lives on Facebook, but it ought to set alarm bells ringing for any of us who are uncomfortable with just how much information we're giving (for free) to a company that has done a fantastic job of giving advertisers more ways to sell us things.

As a friend pointed out to me a while back, most people really don't care about privacy as long as they get cool stuff, and it'll take regulators, governments and privacy advocates to really make a difference here. I'm optimistic though that that might well happen. It's recently come to light that a major reason for Google's shuttering of Reader was the expectation of onerous privacy regulation, and I'm certain that Facebook's land grab for your home screen has regulators and lobbyists going through the terms of service with the finest of fine tooth combs.

When Listening To Media Pundits on Apple, Consider Their Past Record

As we hit the third anniversary of the iPad's US launch and consider just how it's transformed the computing (and education) landscape, it's worth remembering what the prevailing tech/media view of it was at the time. Enjoy your 20:20 hindsight, and then remember that these are the same people telling us now how Apple has lost its touch, and how it needs to emulate Samsung to succeed.

​The UK release of iPad didn't come until the end of May 2010, and I picked mine up on the first day. As I hit my own three-year anniversary using it, I'll be considering just how it changed my own computing patterns, and how it's evolved over that time. Tune in soon for more, including a special podcast on three years with the iPad.

Shifting Up

It's the long public holiday weekend here in the UK, which both puts a few things on hold and clears some space to get a few things done. One of the things I finally managed to do was to acknowledge that the iPad mini has become my primary computer and to upgrade from the WiFi-only model I bought on release day to a WiFi-plus-cellular model.

All of my previous (full size) iPads have had cellular data, despite friends telling me to either tether them to my phone, or to pick up something like a Mi-Fi, so it was a bit of an experiment to see if I could manage with the WiFi entry model. Even buying a mini in the first place was an experiment, and I had no idea that it would quickly become my device of choice.

So, I've been tethering the mini to my iPhone pretty much every day when office wifi dies on me, or when a cafe doesn't have a decent network. While tethering works well It also shortens the phone battery life and eats up data on my phone plan (precisely the reasons I didn't consider doing this in the first place). A pretty good offer from EE—the combined Orange/T-Mobile carrier that recently became the UK's first provider of 4G/LTE—convinced me to trade up to a 32GB cellular model (having always had 32GB models in the past meant that 16GB was a tight squeeze for me).

The verdict? LTE is a joy. I'm turning off wifi in cafes this weekend because its slower than the cellular connection. While it's not available everywhere yet, I can see it rapidly becoming one of those things that you just can't imagine life without (a bit like 3G has been for the last few years). Trust me, when this is available everywhere (and when competition pushes prices down and speeds even higher) you'll start to hear of people who don't even have wired home broadband anymore. First it'll be students living in rented student accommodation and the like, but then they'll move into apartments and won't bother with cable and satellite, or with computers that don't have LTE built-in. Then, the rest of us will start to come around, just like we did with mobile phones instead of landlines. Slowly, everything changes.

It's Alive!

This morning we sneaked out a pilot for a new podcast. It's Alive! is the brainchild of the evil genius behind Agents of Evolution and the creator of the Matticus Tattooi channel on YouTube, and comes from the darkest heart of England's Black County, the land that spewed forth both Frankenstein director James Whale and some of the world's finest heavy metal (in both senses). It's Alive! is a movie podcast, with the emphasis (so far, though not exclusively) on fantastic cinema. It's a different vibe from other shows on Futurilla so far, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it develops. Great too to have two new presenters on our baby network—big welcome and thanks to Stuart and Matt for bringing the show our way.

Forecast is Amazing

I haven't posted about specific web apps or services here much yet, but Forecast is worth drawing to your attention. I always wanted to try out ​the Dark Sky iOS weather app, but it was US-only. Now the Dark Sky team has developed a complete global weather application as a web-app. It works beautifully in Safari on Mac and on iPhone/iPad, with delightfully smooth animations (and a great Time Machine feature on desktop browsers that lets you check weather on a given historical date). I could stare at Forecast's updating near-term weather predictions for hours.

I'm generally a bit sniffy about web apps–I'd much sooner have a native app–​but if this is the standard we can expect then I'm just fine with that.

Japanese iPad Applications

Applications unique to Japan are blossoming here thanks to Apple's (AAPL) iPad. In the absence of a popular home-grown alternative, domestic app makers have come up with some unusual -- sometimes inspiring -- approaches. "The fishermen in Hokkaido are using the iPad to record where they have fished to avoid over-fishing. In Saga prefecture, all the ambulances uses iPad to quickly locate where the patient has to be transferred. In Kobe, physicians using iPads during operations," says Tokyo-based tech consultant Nobuyuki Hayashi. "I could name another cool 50. There is almost nothing on Android tablets."

As William Gibson has said: "The future is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed".

What's Wrong With Free?

Back in the early 2000s it was de rigeur to talk about the rise of the free, about how digital was pushing costs down a curve towards zero, and how advertising revenue (or paid-for higher tiers of products) would turn the bulk of software into online services that most people would never need to pay for. In many ways this turned out to be true: The majority of emails I get these days are from people using Gmail (and to a lesser extent Yahoo Mail), and even more of our daily communication happens via Twitter or Facebook. We rely more and more on the availability of services for which we don't directly pay anything.

Most of us probably feel ok with this state of affairs. Anyone who started using email after about 2004 most likely isn't accustomed to email (or the bulk of online services) being something that come with a price tag attached, and the rest of us have grown used to getting numerous email addresses, blogs, and social media services at zero cost, or bundled with connectivity. But there's a problem with free, and it's one that's been highlighted in recent days by Google's decision to shut down its Google Reader service: If the provider of a free service decides that it's no longer critical to its business model, it's likely to just disappear.

Of course, paying for a service doesn't guarantee that it'll be there forever, but it does at least give a company a more compelling reason to support, develop and sustain it. It also tends to ensure that the relationship with the company is clearer: I pay for a service, you provide it. We all know by now that if you're not the customer, you're probably the product (though not everyone agrees), and I certainly feel a whole lot better about trusting something when I've paid good money for it. I'm pretty sure that Flickr wouldn't have survived the turmoils at Yahoo if it didn't have a solid core of paying users.

A quick tally of the critical online services I'm paying for: Photo storage (Flickr), Email/Syncing/Cloud storage (iCloud paid tier), File storage (Dropbox paid account), Domain hosting/DNS/mailboxes (Hover), computer back-up (Backblaze), web hosting (Squarespace), file hosting (Rackspace). I also throw some cash over to Instapaper to get my web reading lists in sync, and there are a bunch of other services where I'm on a free tier right now, but have from time-to-time been a paying customer, depending on my workflows (Evernote, Skype, Backpack, Highrise, Basecamp).

I'm not suggesting that this approach is the only one. Nevertheless, I'd recommend reviewing which services you rely on, asking yourself what you'd do if they went away, and what alternatives you might have that make you the paying customer.

Google's Kill Rate Dissected

Thorough piece by Charles Arthur in The Guardian looking at how long Google has kept its various free services and APIs running. This isn't the reason I've generally avoided trusting my data to Google services, but it's a compelling one nonetheless. To think I used to worry about Flickr going away, and shuddered at the thought of having to use Picasa. I'm feeling a lot better about that now.

Constructing Re:Sleeves

On Monday the MA course in Visual Communication at BIAD played host to Ben Waddington—design archeologist, historian and storyteller—who took the opportunity to open up some of the thinking behind the Re:Sleeves project. Ben has an incredible ability to take observations, details, coincidences, and to weave them into cohesive narratives which navigate their way through a landscape of shaky evidence and solid insights. The "lies in service of the truth", if you like. (Actually, Michael Haneke is a good reference point, as Ben's approach reminds me of that of the 'unreliable narrator' who talks us through Haneke's magnificently truthful film The White Ribbon.)

Ben's lecture is now available here as a special 'extra' edition of Re:Sleeves, along with a PDF of the presentation slides that you can listen along to if you're so inclined. It'll be hitting the regular Futurilla Radio feed soon.

Barnbrook on Bowie, Simplicity, and the Ethics of Design

Jonathan Barnbrook's talk at The Herbert Art Gallery on Thursday evening was timed to connect with the Caught In The Crossfire exhibition, so I'd assumed that he'd focus on his work as a graphic agitator and ethical designer. It was a surprise then that he was prepared to talk in such detail about his work with David Bowie, and in particular the process of designing (and un-designing) packaging for The Next Day.

​It's quite likely that the design for TND has polarised reaction more than any sleeve in the last few years. I fully expect to see it in both "Best of 2013" and "Worst of 2013" lists at the end of the year, and that speaks to the single-mindedness of its aesthetic. Having had a peek at the design process, and at the roughs that were offered up to Bowie along the way, it feels more than ever like the only possible solution to the brief, and that's something that I think characterises the very best design outcomes. Think about how obvious something like the design for the original iPod seems after having used it for the first time, or how the minimal-button-large-screen design of the iPhone has come to define an entire industry. Great design is both completely unexpected and totally obvious in hindsight.

​Barnbrook's passion for working with Bowie–a musical hero only after the fact–is also crucial. "Only design for the artists you like" is a mantra that many might consider luxurious, but it's entirely imperative to producing effective work, and might be extended to "only work on solutions to problems you care about". Without that central commitment our work as designers is absent of meaning, and we're taking up valuable space on a team. In Barnbrook's work it's become a central tenet that connects his activism with his more commercial passions; a guiding ethos that is at once challenging to apply consistently and necessary in order to live and function as a designer in society.

Doom Ray Weekend Edition

Recording podcasts to schedule is never easy, especially when ​you're waiting for something you want to talk about. This week's Doom Ray was moved at short notice to Sunday evening so that regular host Kyle Jobson and I could talk about the Spring Memorabilia show at Birmingham NEC, but I think it was worth the wait. The sheer creativity and passion of some of the people we spoke to there was staggering, and we're already setting up future shows to cover them in detail. In the meantime we hope this will whet your appetite.

Re:Sleeves Episode 2 is Online

Ben and I recorded the second Re:Sleeves show this morning, and it's now online for your listening pleasure. This fortnight's topic is a real treat for me: The sleeve art of the hugely influential US band Swans has long been almost as significant as their music, and demonstrates how—at its best—sleeve design is inseparable from the music itself. Hope you enjoy our chat as much as I did.

Remember, you can subscribe to all the Futurilla Radio Podcasts via iTunes.

Web Strategies for Creative Enterprise, redux

Over the last month I've been adapting and redelivering the Web Essentials material to this year's MA Visual Communication students, and to selected undergraduate classes too (final year Theatre & Performance Design, and second-year Graphics). ​It's always interesting to get a sense of the continued relevance of the material as time progresses, and to figure out how we need to adapt our strategies to the new realities. I wanted to capture a few of the key observations, and over the coming few weeks I'll try to make sense of them.

1. The digital native is still not what we expected, and probably never will be.
2. Requiring students to set up a blog for their course makes less and less sense (unless it's a blogging course).
3. There's a long tail of networks and services developing, but it's still fragile.
4. The network-awareness that enables students to make imaginative leaps is emerging, but slowly.
5. Confusing the strategy with the goal is still widespread, and our assessment makes the problem worse.

Much more to say about this soon. In the meantime get in touch here or via Twitter if you've insight or questions on applying online strategies in your own teaching.