A Chair for the Post-Desk Office

What the company concluded from its observations is that we no longer relate to the work desk the way we once did: “You’re on your iPad, you’re on your computer, you’re not really engaged with the desk anymore.” Whereas for older generations the desk and chair remain an inseparable whole, the modern worker is far more flexible and mobile. "Working out of the bag is a growing phenomenon," continues Small, noting that Steelcase's internal project for addressing the needs of mobile workers is dubbed "follow the bag."

That's all very well, but I still need somewhere to put my coffee.

2D Face Make-Up

This is a fascinating experiment in manipulating depth perception through make up and portrait photography. Like projection mapping for make-up artists.

A Rollerball Pen that lets Makers draw Circuits

The Circuit Scribe aims to make building circuits as easy as doodling, and while a single pen will only set you back $20, an extra $10 will net you a pile of other resistors, capacitors, batteries, and switches so that you can start building stuff right away. There’s even a $100 package with dozens of extra components like sound buzzers, photo sensors, and a motor. To be sure, the Circuit Scribe's silver-water-cellulose mixture isn’t the first conductive ink product on the market, but judging from the video above, it looks a lot nicer to work with than some of the alternatives out there.

Android support for RAW coming

This is perhaps the real point:

The most important possible improvement that wouldn't be visible in the source code: image quality. Android cameras arguably lag behind the iPhone in quality, so this new API may be Google's solution to that problem. Android's subpar image quality seems to be an across-the-board problem, so maybe the issue really is as low-level as the camera API. There's no way to be sure, though, until we get finished software and devices in our hands. With documentation using phrases like "substantially improved capabilities" and "fine-grain control" it certainly sounds like Google is out to fix Android's digital-imaging woes.

RAW file support in iOS would be great for sure, but Android needs it more, since companies like Samsung are building cameras around it.

Jony & Marc's (RED) Auction

$12,883,000 raised in total. Some amazing items. 

Improvements Coming to Leap Motion Software

Buckwald says that the new software has been a work in progress for over a year and that it’s needed to further improve latency and the overall experience. As he explains it, the existing tracking software on the market lacks the necessary logic to know how to determine what action to take when a hand is positioned in a certain way where fingers overlay each other. Soon, it will have the necessary “smarts” to observe and follow all the joints in your hands to make the required movements.

Specifically, Leap Motion will soon be able to better understand finger-to-finger (pinch) movements, when a user is grasping an object or interacting with it.

Leap Motion is a really exciting technology, and I've enjoyed playing with it. The software for detecting finger motion really needs some work though, so it's good to hear that they're hard at work on it. The potential for integrating gestures into existing desktop software is definitely there, and worth watching.

Anti-Productivity Apps

It might be from the developers behind the popular to-do app Clear, but Hatch is the antithesis of a productivity app. It's an attention-sapping reimagining of Tamagotchi and the countless other virtual pets that were all the rage in the late '90s. And it's adorable.

As someone who queued for the first Tamagotchi release in the UK back in 1997, I'm a sucker for things like this. If you need me, I'll be feeding my Fugu.

The iPad gave my Desktop a New Lease of Life

An interesting side note to yesterday's post on the iPad Air is that while the iPad killed off my desire to carry a regular notebook computer, it hasn't obviated my need for a  desktop Mac. In fact, it's made the iMac an even more essential part of my daily workflow.

I'm not suggesting I'm typical in this: Indeed, in the first six months of using the very first iPad I wondered aloud just how long it would take for the iPad to replace my workplace desktop computer. Maybe this was because I was stuck on a pretty old, low-on-RAM iMac at my office which took longer to load web pages or fetch my email than even the original RAM-cosntrained iPad. Maybe not though: Even before I upgraded to a 2012 slimline iMac for work I found myself coming back to using the desktop and the iPad as complementary devices, suited to sometimes subtly different tasks, or to different approaches.

What really altered my previous trajectory towards an iPad-only workflow was OS X, or rather the changes that we began to see with 2011's Mac OS X 10.7 Lion release. This was the OS X release heralded as representing a "Back to the Mac" approach, with Apple bringing the best elements of iOS to its Mac line. While more than a few long-time Mac users complained about changes like autosave, the beginning of the App Store sandbox shenanigans, and 'natural' direction scrolling, Lion also represents the beginning of the line that led rapidly to iCloud syncing, and eventually to last month's 'unification' of iWork apps across iOS and OS X.

The significance of these changes can't be over-emphasised. We're at a place now where it's possible to move relatively seamlessly between a large screen Mac desktop and a portable iOS experience; where I can start an email on the iPhone during a commute and pick it up at my desk, and where I can finish a Keynote presentation on my iMac and present it moments later through a web browser on a classroom PC.

The way that iOS increasingly shares an infrastructure with OS X has actually made my iMac more useful, not less as I originally suspected it might. The iPad might have become my mobile computer of choice—snuggling up with me on the sofa to finish a blog post after dinner or sneaking out of a noisy office to find a quiet cafe where I can write an important email—but the iMac feels more like the nerve centre of operations where I can sit back and see everything that's happening in an increasingly crowded and connected work life.

Pencil

Gorgeous new Bluetooth LE stylus from the company who made the wonderful, essential, Paper app. When this ships in the UK I'm all over it. Walnut, for those of you wondering.

David Cronenberg's POD is Live

However in the 21st century, storytelling has the opportunity to spark innovation that pushes beyond the entertainment industry. Earlier this year, without much fanfare, David Cronenberg quietly licensed the fictional technology and science found within his films Shivers, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome and eXistenZ for a mind-bending eight-figure sum. While it is common for a film’s IP to make its way into other mediums, such as books, television or games, it is highly unusual for a film’s fictional elements to become actual biotechnology.

As a long-time Cronenberg fan, I love this.

After Nokia, What's Next For Finland's Tech Industry?

If you were to ask a Finnish child 15 years ago where they wanted to work one day, the answer was almost always “Nokia.”

But as the company imploded in recent years — long before Microsoft acquired Nokia’s mobile division for $7.2 billion in September — former executives and staffers who left or were cut loose started to build their own businesses. Soon, hundreds of new companies popped up across the country.

Exciting times ahead for the Finns, post-Nokia's dominance. 

Two Weeks with the iPad Air

I've been using the iPad Air as my primary (and pretty much only) iPad since it launched on November 1st, and thought that it was about time that I shared some of my thoughts.

After carrying the first three full-size iPads pretty much everywhere for two-and-a-half years, I'd switched to the Mini full time last year. While for the most part this changed little other than being much easier to carry around all day (and meant I could more often switch to a smaller bag when popping to a cafe for a few hours), the Mini came with a couple of caveats.

Firstly, the screen resolution. In just six months or so of using the third-generation iPad I'd become very acclimatised to the retina display. While I don't wear glasses I probably should, and moving to a smaller, and decidedly lower-resolution screen really irked me, and almost certainly meant I did less reading on the Mini than I otherwise would have. When I did read for any length of time, I was frequently irritated by how much poorer the display was than on the iPad 3, though I comforted myself by occasionally picking up the older device and reminding myself how much it weighed.

Secondly, the screen size. While it's a pretty obvious part of the trade-off in choosing a Mini, and while 7.9 inches is a whole lot more useful than the widescreen 7-inch displays packed by many other small tablets, there are still a fair few websites (and web services) that I use on a day-to-day basis that just aren't built for tablet-sized screens. Some of them are barely usable on the full-size iPad, and using them on anything smaller is to enter a world of scrolling and zooming.

Trying to balance both of these concerns put me right on the border of the use cases for both sizes of the iPad. The Mini's new retina display solves the one issue perfectly, while the dramatic weight reduction (and slightly less-dramatic size reduction) in the iPad Air solves the other. The almost identical performance of the two new devices makes the choice even more difficult (as almost everybody has already written).

In the end, the choice for me came down partly to availability (the Air shipped in good numbers on the 1st November, the Mini is only just shipping and is much more constrained), partly to curiosity (was it the Mini's size that made it my favourite device, or its weight?), and partly to a desire to understand how some of the more desktop-equivalent Apps that have shipped over the last year might change the way I use the iPad. Long story short: I queued up on launch morning and snagged a 64GB Space Grey cellular model.

Much has been written about how significant the weight reduction is with the Air, and I have nothing more to add, other than this: I genuinely can't tell the difference between having the Mini in my bag or the new Air. I imagine that if I was in the habit of only carrying a handbag with me I'd think twice about bringing the Air along, but even carrying it one-handed around my workplace all day isn't an issue. I'm appreciative of the switch to the new-style Smart Cover, which removes some additional weight, and the move to the A7 chip (which the Retina Mini also gets) is yet another nail in the coffin of the traditional notebook computer. I honestly can't think of a situation in which I'd rather carry an 11-inch MacBook Air than this device (though if Apple really has a radically thin 12-inch MBA in the works for 2014/15 I'm betting it looks a lot like the iPad Air).

I'll share more on specific use cases and how I'm getting along as the opportunity arises. One final thing though: When Apple announced the iPad Air, quite a few of us half-expected an iPad Pro to complete the range. I'm still thinking that a larger-screen iPad is a distinct possibility, though—for now—the iPad Air is as close to a desktop replacement as I could have hoped for.

This is not the Surface 2 review that Microsoft needed

On its website, Microsoft makes a big deal about how the Surface 2 is “thinner, faster, and lighter than before.” Yes, technically the new tablet is thinner and lighter, but let’s moderate our Kool-Aid intake before this party gets out of hand. Compared to the model it replaces, the Surface 2 is just two one-hundredths of an inch thinner, and one one-hundredth of a pound lighter. If you can notice the difference, you’re a piece of scientific measuring equipment, and not a human being.

Ouch. In comparison, the iPad shed almost 80g when it went to its second-generation (the 3G-version lost 117g), and the new iPad Air is 280g lighter than the original version.

The Printed Book as Archive of Digital Culture

A millennium from now, a massive amount of today's digital data may have vanished or become unreadable, so a collective of artists in the Netherlands is trying to ensure that modern culture is preserved until then. The collective, La Société Anonyme, has created a book called The SKOR Codex, which contains encoded sound recordings, images, and diagrams that can be converted back into usable digital information.

Only eight copies printed. Print began life as the means for setting information free; it ends as the means of capturing and preserving it. 

Not All Tablet Markets are Created Equal

Ben Evans has interesting data on how the tablet market is splitting:

If this theory is correct, it suggests that Apple's $300 Mini really isn't a competitive problem, because the iPad doesn't yet face a strong competitive threat (quite unlike the iPhone). Rather, there are actually two quite different markets: the post-PC vision, where Apple is dominant, and a ultra-low margin product that’s also called a tablet but which is really a totally different product. 

Precisely what I said to Mail Online after Tuesday's Apple Event, though they chose only to use a small quote in a mostly Apple-bashing piece.

Thoughts on iPad

Birmingham City University's Views@BCU blog asked me to share some thoughts on iPad, as we head into the inevitable release of the new models:

The fifth-generation iPads (and second-gen iPad mini) that we’re expecting in a few days will be released into a very different technology landscape than was the original. The idea of doing at least casual computing on a tablet is now accepted by pretty much everyone, and the iPad has plenty of competitors lining up to steal its place in the popular imagination as the tablet that matters (and more than a few companies prepared to sell them at wafer thin margins – or even at a loss – to get market share).

In truth though, these myriad tablets compete well with the early perception of iPad as a device for consuming media – games, books, movies – but barely register as devices for getting real work done. It’s there that I expect Apple to put in the most effort over the next year, and to some extent we’ve already seen the beginning of this with the ‘desktop class’ 64-bit A7 processor that appeared last month in the iPhone 5s.

This is why Apple doesn't crowd-source its design ideas

I was tempted to link to this Eweek piece with a sarcastic sneer and little else, but a few of the suggested "improvements" deserve more thorough rebuttal. For the most part their list spans the blindingly obvious and the astoundingly dumb. Here, in order:

1. 5-inch screen: A fairly safe start. Apple will increase the screen size as it's able to balance resolution, colour accuracy, power consumption, usability, development fragmentation, cost, yield, size and weight.  If they can get extra screen area whilst considering all those factors then we'll see it as soon as they're good and ready. Next year? Your guess is as good as Eweek's.

2. A8 Processor: No shit, Sherlock.

3. Better Battery Life: Ditto. I don't think any consumer technology company is more focused on power management than Apple is, and there's no-one in the smartphone business better-placed to deliver on it. I'm also not hearing big complaints about this year's iPhones in terms of battery life. I'd say my 5s is better than my 5 on this front.

4. Infra-red: You have got to be freaking kidding me.

5. Wireless charging: Ah the perennial dream of a cable-free future. Sadly, you still have to plug in a charging mat or dock, and you still have to include a socket for the times when you don't have the mat with you. That is to say, almost all of the time. So, no.

6. Near Pro-quality camera: Sure, Eweek can imagine a better camera. 

7. Radical new materials: Yes Eweek, Apple likes to experiment with new processes and materials. You can bet their labs are full of these experiments. Thankfully, unlike some companies, Apple doesn't test its experiments on consumers.

8. NFC: No Freaking Chance.

9. New wireless standards: Yep, 802.11 ac would be nice. Finalisation of the spec isn't expected until 2014, though Apple's already added it to the Time Capsule. I have no idea what implications it has for power consumption or cost though, and neither does Eweek.

10. 128GB: I know some people who want 128GB storage on their phone, but I know a lot more who buy 16/32GB every time. I had personally hoped that the 16/32/64 price points would have been replaced by 32/64/128, but I also want a pony.

Four or five half-sensible suggestions does not constitute a list of "10 improvements", Eweek.

Now This Is How You Do a Crowd-funded Album

Michael Gira of Swans has been hand-making limited editions for years now, but this might be the best yet. Check out the options for fans who want to spend more than the basic $40.

Not just phones then?

Least surprising lawsuit of the week:

British manufacturer Dyson is suing Samsung over claims that the South Korean firm "ripped off" one of its inventions.

The dispute centres over the launch of the Motion Sync vacuum cleaner which the South Korean firm showed off at the Ifa tech show in Berlin last week.

Dyson alleges that the machine infringes its patent on a steering mechanism for cylinder cleaners.

A spokeswoman for Samsung said it had no comment on the matter.

Yep, That's Why The Surface Didn't Sell

Microsoft has finalized the design of its Surface Pro 2 refresh and plans to ship it later this year. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans have revealed to The Verge that the Surface Pro 2 design will be largely the same as the original, but the company is planning to include an adjustable kickstand on its latest tablet. The kickstand won't be fully adjustable, Microsoft is planning to support two positions of use with the Surface Pro 2: one traditional "laptop" mode and a new angle that's designed to make the device easier to use on uneven surfaces.