We all sorta knew it was coming, what with Facebook prompting us ad nauseum to fill in all those “where did you go to school, anyway?” details (edit: and really, really wants you to feed the Facial Recognition bears). But right about now it really feels like “being watched” is the new black, kwim?

Let 2013 be the year We The Mainstream Regular Average Dude realized exactly what we were trading for convenience when we clicked “allow xxx to use my location.”

Snowden confirms we’re all being watched; surveillance awareness infiltrates the North American cultural consciousness like zillions of British security cameras probably did years ago across the pond, as noted by the art of Banksy (above).

George Orwell’s birthday is seemingly celebrated by party-hatted cameras.

Stories float around about stores tracking which aisles you linger in by your cell signal.

Little bags are being concocted that prevent your signal from, um, signalling, and getting immediate financial interest.

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I recently thought I’d forgot one of the boxes in a multi-box IKEA purchase. They calmly informed me the routine procedure to determine if I was in earnest was to review the security camera footage of my purchase, which they duly did (I did get all the boxes; thank you Camera for your omniscient guidance).

I now try to look my best while shopping, in case me ‘n’ Customer Service have to review the tapes later. And I shop with a keen awareness of being watched.

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Why don’t we notice we’re being watched? We’re busy watching ourselves.

So as you know, thanks to my fabulous luck with Firefly Creative‘s iPad Mini contest, I’m newly introduced to the tablet-toting crowd.

I didn’t have my own iPad because my husband has a few test devices for Tactica‘s mobile stuff, and I couldn’t really see where it’d be much of an upgrade from my iPhone, beyond a little more finger real estate.

It is different, though. The iPad Mini’s joined the daily device rotation. Here’s a few ways it’s a different beast, and observations on using a tablet instead of a phone.

• • It makes phones become phones again. Mine hangs out in my purse way more than it used to (and I was definitely one of those “never more than 3 feet away from their phone” users).
• • That said, I kinda wish it could make phone calls. (Crap. Maybe I am a superphone liker).
• • It makes you want to lean back and consume content. Entertainment & conversational apps found their way to my home screen first. I didn’t set up my email. Who wants to get email when you’re chilling?
• • It makes you realize how unmobile most of the web is. Bad mobile experiences become pronounced in such a fluidly tablety environment.
• • The Mini is better for small kids, because it’s lighter.
• • The Mini is better for me, because it’s lighter. The small size makes it quite portable, too, and less conspicuous than a Big Daddy iPad.
• • I will pay for good content (curse you, Disney Channel), especially for my kids. Preschooler gaming has gone way up around here. Concurrent with this is a narsty increase in screen surface grime.

So I’m into this thing. It doesn’t have a flash, but I’m a pretty avid photographer so I can see it making its way into my photographic life pretty soon. More on that as it develops (ha).

So it turned out not to be a plot to steal my identity (my usual assumption about online contests). I literally won an iPad Mini from the fine folks at Firefly Creative.

It showed up yesterday & my first feeling was guilt. “I should donate this to a kid who doesn’t have an iPad,” I thought.

I’m a kid who doesn’t have an iPad, though, so I justified my way to keeping it. It’s important to understand all aspects of the mobile experience, right?

I wondered how it would be appreciably different from using an iPhone for dual screening and bed surfing. But right off the bat, the size of it is just right. It’s not onerously heavy like a big daddy iPad. It’s not squintably tiny like an iPhone (which, for the record, I hope stays tiny forever. Phones should not be super, because they have to fit in my purse.)

The most immediately life-improving thing about the iPad’s arrival, however, is that it brings another lightning connector into our household. After years of accruing Apple gear, we were pretty cavalier with the connector cords. I’m the only one with an iPhone 5, though, so suddenly my world revolved around not losing that stupid, special connector cord.

I’m free!

Patience.
Patience.
Patience.

Remember the good ole’ days when you just clicked “Oh yes, I assure you I’m over 21″ to play the whiskey game or whatever morally questionable content with which you wished to interact?

Those days are no more! Introducing The World’s Most Invasive Age Verification Popup.

Consider that a life goal achieved. I was hoping it’d be an illustration, but I’ll settle for a tweet. For now

And because it is, you gotta get yourself some conductive gloves. They somehow allow your iPhone to read your soul right through the wool.

While everyone’s wringing their hands about porn on Vine—and I think you can judge a new medium’s potential by the speed with which it’s colonized by porn—I’m blown away by the potential Vine clips have for videojournalism.

Vine will be justified when it's used to document a revolution & that most vivid #journalism, video, spreads like wildfire through Twitter.

January 29, 2013 4:12 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@EricaGlasier

Erica Glasier ♥

@EricaGlasier Agreed. Missed the US prez inauguration by four days. Had it been there, @vineapp's value would have been super-obvious.

January 29, 2013 4:56 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@wilalambre

Wil Alambre

Imagine the kind of images that will be captured and the speed with which they’ll be shared during the next Arab Spring. Revolutions will be televised after all.

Journalists—with their already-broad Twitter networks—should jump on this technology and test its capabilities now, before it’s time to do some serious documentary storytelling.

If social media’s done one thing to branding, it’s pushed customer service to the fore as a really important piece of brand interaction.

Customers, users, visitors now expect to be heard in real time, to have their questions answered, to chat, to interact with a brand. To be hosted. 

I’m impressed with the simple way Urban Barn‘s integrated that kind of feedback into its retail experience: low key, low tech (yet new media)—guests have a chance to express themselves as befits the year 2013—right away and to a person who can really do something with the information.

So, flat is the new Rich Corinthian Leather of interface design.

Gone like the coffee cups in Scott Forstall’s office are the bevels, shadows, and textures of our recent nostalgia-fuelled skeuomorphic design tastes.

All hail glorious, silk-screeny rectangles of pure colour.

Letterpress, a flatly-design iPhone app.

But it’s not just because we’re fed up with all the realism doodads. Daring Fireball writer John Gruber suggests retina displays are the catalyst for our fresh new feeling.

The whole default iOS look — the textures, the shadows, the subtle (and sometimes unsubtle) 3D effects — is optimized for non-retina displays. It’s makeup to cover up the fact that 163 pixels per inch, though better than anything we had before the original iPhone, is still a crude resolution overall. Retina displays are no longer limited in such ways, and need no phony effects to create interfaces that are beautiful.

The trend away from skeuomorphic special effects in UI design is the beginning of the retina-resolution design era. Our designs no longer need to accommodate for crude pixels. Glossy/glassy surfaces, heavy-handed transparency, glaring drop shadows, embossed text, textured material surfaces — these hallmarks of modern UI graphic design style are (almost) never used in good print graphic design. They’re unnecessary in print, and, the higher the quality of the output and more heavy-handed the effect, the sillier such techniques look. They’re the aesthetic equivalent of screen-optimized typefaces like Lucida Grande and Verdana. They work on sub-retina displays because sub-retina displays are so crude. On retina displays, as with high quality print output, these techniques are revealed for what they truly are: an assortment of parlor tricks that fool our eyes into thinking we see something that looks good on a display that is technically incapable of rendering graphic design that truly looks good.

Technology pushes visual style forwards again—and just in time. I upgraded my Mac OS a week or two ago and almost fell out of my chair when finally confronted in person with the dreaded beige iCal. Shudder.

My designery friend Wil Alambre sent me this funny (or is it sad?) review of Windows 8, the “metro”-styled flatest thing out there. Don’t let its usability problems scare you away from a skinny rectangular diet. It tastes so good.