SANGSARA

New office day photos

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 06:59:00 +0000

The SapientNitro Singapore team moved into our new offices today, a few hundred meters deeper into the CBD area. I used the excellent "1-bit camera" iPhone app to document this historic occasion in Classic Mac-dithered black and white.

If you see the place in color though, it's really quite nice.

Two instances of graffiti in Melbourne that cracked me up

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:13:00 +0000

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Australia, Days 5-8 on the Road

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:40:00 +0000

Our internet access got spotty after leaving Sydney, and the Posterous mobile app alternately choked on uploading full-size photos and crashed when composing posts with too many photos. Posting these highlights now that I'm back home.

Day 1: Sydney to Milton / Day 2: Milton to Eden / Day 3: Eden to Metung / Day 4: Metung to Melbourne

All three bed & breakfast places linked above were excellent, so have a look if you're going by those towns.

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Australia, Day 4 in Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:00:00 +0000

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Took a ferry out past the Sydney Opera House on a ferry to Manly Beach, where we ate great steak and ribs, followed by really good Hakata-style ramen in the evening at a place called Ryo-Tei near St Leonards, staffed by a trip of Japanese Australian girls and some dudes in the kitchen.

Australia, Day 3 in Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 08:45:00 +0000

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Pies, Chinese Garden of Friendship, Darling Walk, Mexican food, and back to the pub.

Having connection trouble with Posterous, so trying to upload these again at smaller image sizes.

From the archives: An on-set photo of Jessica Cambensy, 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I've been receiving emails from Memolane, which looks into my Flickr and reminds me of what happened each day five, sometimes two, years ago to the day.

Five years ago, I took this photo of Jessica Cambensy on the set of my first TV commercial shoot. She was a young model, nowhere as famous/infamous as she is now (http://singaporedaily.net/2010/04/16/daily-chiobu-jessica-cambensy/) in Hong Kong and Asia; I was a young copywriter, about to learn how little power writers have on a director's turf — eventually I figured out that I was there as a formality, and to eat the catered food.

There was lots of time between set ups for me to wander around taking photos. The shoot dragged on for over 8 hours, which she spent standing and getting her hair restyled (we went through at least 5 very different overall looks for her over the day/night), and I remember being amazed by her energy and professionalism. I would have fallen asleep or thrown a tantrum by then. She was incredibly chipper for someone who barely ate at lunch.

Australia, Day 2 in Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 19:33:00 +0000

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A weekend market in Paddington, a museum exhibit about Sydney's convict history, and St. Patrick's Day celebrations.

Australia! Day 1 in photos.

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:33:00 +0000

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Used the iPhone as my only camera today and it worked out quite well.

Everpix, The Rise of Centralized Cloud Photos, and The Decline of Flickr

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 05:32:00 +0000

I signed up for Everpix last night and have been thinking about it all morning, even as I've yet to get my photo collection uploaded to it.

In essence, Everpix is an online repository of every digital photo you've ever taken, supported by a background Mac utility that keeps it in sync with your iPhoto/Aperture/Lightroom, and an iPhone app that syncs your Camera Roll, and allows you to view your library in the cloud. Crucially, it also syncs with your online photos on Flickr, Instagram, Google+/Picasa, and Facebook.

Every photo is private by default, and making an album (called a Moment), or part of it, public, gives you an obfuscated URL that can be shared with others. You can also publish photos 'offshore' to Facebook Albums, Twitter, and possibly other destinations.

Philosophically, this is almost everything I want my Flickr account to be right now, but that they are so, so far away from achieving. I signed up for Flickr Pro to have an online backup of all my photos, with the ones I want to share set to 'Public' visibility. In the past few years, the internet has moved on, and we now share photos on other stickier social networks. There's been a fair bit written in the past week about Flickr's decline as a destination, and it's because photographers at all levels are getting more views and feedback through Facebook, G+, and even other photo sites like 500px and Smugmug.

Adobe had a go at cloud photos with a product called Carousel that was recently renamed to Revel (why?), but that effort tried to be an entire workflow, with a desktop photo management app that had half-baked Lightroom editing tools built in. Adopting a product like that involves a complete change of tools. Good for beginners, but bad for anyone comfortable with what they have.

Everpix promises to meet us halfway. Use whatever you're used to, and have all those photos in the cloud, with easy publishing to any and all online destinations through beautiful web and mobile apps. All publishing actions take place between Everpix's servers and the other web service, so the user experience is simply that of instantaneous uploads. It's the best of both worlds: backup and effective sharing.

You can tell this is an important facet of the service because one of their core features is "Auto Curation". Click a button, and the service picks what it thinks are your best photos, with clear faces, even exposure, and other secret sauce traits. Another click, and those are shared online.

More than just disrupting Flickr, it also shows us what Apple's iCloud Photo Stream could be, but understandably isn't just yet. Rolling out free, unlimited storage and access to millions of iOS users would test their billion dollar war chest; the inevitable failures, their invaluable credibility. Everpix is a small startup in beta that I've decided to entrust with access to all my photos; I'm hoping their pricing structure, when revealed, will be reasonable enough to pay for.

Shadow Cities: The moment a location-based game surprised me

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:22:00 +0000

Seth Schiesel's effusive review for the New York Times:

If you have an iPhone, you simply must try this game. Shadow Cities isn’t just the future of mobile gaming. It may actually be the most interesting, innovative, provocative and far-reaching video game in the world right now, on any system.

I looked up at the sole approaching man, and he looked back at me. I couldn't believe the first thought in my head: "Could he be one of them?"

I was walking up the street to my home, and had just been playing Shadow Cities when that moment, an experience of virtual world crossover that no other game had ever produced before, hit me. There are few truly new sensations in gaming each year, and that was a whopper. Giving another person in real life a nervous glance, wondering if they're a player too, sounds like the kind of crap you might put in an ad (sure enough, it's in Shadow Cities' trailer), but there it was, happening to me. Sure, the Nintendo 3DS has its StreetPass feature, but the mechanics there are like a coin toss, and largely irrelevant to the games you play on it.

Shadow Cities is a freemium, competitive, GPS-based game of global warfare on a local scale. Essentially, all players are divided into two factions. After picking a side in this MMORPG-style game, you see your surroundings in the form of a glowing map; a parallel world of magic. Your goal is to work, with others if possible, to gain control of territory and harvest energy to put your faction over the top. You're not limited to where you actually are, either. Creating a beacon will allow friends from around the world to temporarily visit your area.

The side that I picked, the science-based Architects, are total underdogs right now, forced into playing guerilla tactics against a more powerful enemy. All day, my similarly low-ranked colleague (@jeanfinds) and I had been running away from hopeless battles, trying to eke out small victories.

At the aforemention moment when I was walking home, I'd just placed two towers in the neighborhood that would help generate energy as long as no one disrupted them. I needed to protect them. When I looked up at the other man, I could feel my lizard brain actually priming itself with a fight-or-flight cocktail of apprehension and aggression.

But I won't lie: the game has a steep but short learning curve. I installed it last night at a company dinner party at Jean's suggestion, and only managed to fully understand its menus, unique vocabulary, and mechanics sometime this afternoon with her help. But it's worth it. Every gamer and designer remotely interested in multiplayer experiences should try it for at least a couple of days. Level up past 5, and play it with a friend or two (I'm going to convince my office to get together and dominate the central business district), and see where the bar is for location-based games on any platform, free or paid.

There's a lot of polish in this Finnish game. Unlike other freemium MMO titles, there aren't long load times between views. It renders its smooth 3D graphics quickly while loading network data secondarily, much like how the iPhone appears to launch apps instantly by going straight to static screens that look like running apps. It's all quite impressive, and I look forward to getting further with it.

Visit www.shadowcities.com

Going to Tokyo Again, Figuring Out a Camera Configuration

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:31:00 +0000

In less than two weeks, I'll be headed to Tokyo for a short trip with a couple of my colleagues — my fourth time in six years. I've never been in February, and especially not in the midst of what is currently a pretty chilly winter, where temperatures a breath below 0ºC each night are the norm; it's been so long since I've been cold that I can't accurately gauge how much clothing 5ºC really calls for.

But it's not what I pack for the weather that bothers me, it's what I should pack to take pictures with. After some deliberation, I decided to make this an all-Ricoh vacation, save for the iPhone 4S's camera, which I'll have with me anyway. The rules for how I shoot with the iPhone are a whole other story. And then last night I had to go wrinkle what was a fairly simple two-camera set up of the semi-pro GRD3 and the consumer pocket cam CX6 with the idea that I should shoot the former in black & white mode only. Which soon became BOTH of them in black & white, followed by a brief contemplation of "just an iPhone" like what Lisa Bettany is currently attempting (on a round the world trip, natch), and ended with the relatively adventurous and mildly stupid "whole vacation with only the CX6" idea.

If you've never gone through this mental exercise before a vacation, I envy you.

The CX6 has personal preset spaces on its function dial, which allows shooting mainly in black & white but switching quickly to color when necessary. Why not just shoot everything in color and then convert them when I get back? I don't know. I think I'm getting a little tired of the post-vacation fiddle (the last batch of a thousand photos took a whole year to get all the way through), and intentionally losing information and atmosphere the moment the shutter is pressed is an attractively frightening proposition.

I took the camera out on my way to work today to try it out:

See the full gallery on Posterous

After all that, seeing a single color photo just fires some pleasure center in the brain, so I don't know... maybe I'll change my mind again.

But if anything, going black & white will free me from the temptation to do this to every photo.

8tracks Mix: Hiphopotamus

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:18:00 +0000

I recently rediscovered and am enjoying 8tracks.com, an easy, free, and legal way to share mixes online. Even if you're not into that, it functions as an excellent community-driven radio site. There are even good iPhone and Android apps for tapping into it.

In mobile photography, "Instant takes precedence over Perfect"

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:56:00 +0000

1:24:36 PM Ci'en Xu: Was up last night posting Berlin photos.

1:24:51 PM Ci'en Xu: Sometimes it feels like in this day and age, editing is more redundant.

1:25:03 PM Brandon Lee: How do you mean?

1:25:56 PM Ci'en Xu: I remember the days when Flickr was kinda like a big social network, and people were more obsessed about the rules of photography and how you edited them, etc.

1:26:17 PM Ci'en Xu: I guess now with mobile, instant takes precedence over "perfect".

1:27:06 PM Brandon Lee: Yeah you're right.

1:27:31 PM Brandon Lee: Which is why I like Mattebox… it kinda makes you feel like getting it right in-camera is important again, and maybe even enough.

1:28:02 PM Brandon Lee: When you leave everything to the phone to do automatically, there's always the sense that you must insert yourself into the process, and that can only happen in post.

1:28:19 PM Ci'en Xu: But I still like editing, even if just to let you linger on your photos for a little while longer.

Bintan x Mattebox x Camera+

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:45:00 +0000

Have just returned from a short getaway to Bintan where I ate the local nasi goreng (fried rice) for most meals, and avoided getting horrendously sunburnt until the very last morning. It is agony.

The last time I traveled without a dedicated camera was in 2008 when I also visited Bintan and happened to stay in the same hotel; I used a Nokia N82 phone then (5mp, Carl Zeiss optics), as a sort of experiment. It seemed fitting that I try again with this year's model: an iPhone 4S (8mp, backlit CMOS sensor).

The day before leaving, I discovered Ben Syverson's excellent camera replacement app, Mattebox, and decided to use it exclusively. In short, Mattebox allows photographers to hold and use an iPhone in a familiar way by replicating the half-press to focus mechanism of most traditional point & shoot cameras in autofocus mode. This allows users to choose a focal point and exposure setting by pointing at one thing, and then recomposing before the final shot. Mattebox achieves what normally requires a physical camera button by means of a headslappingly-simple, and thereby brilliant, touch and slide gesture that no other app has used before.

One feature that got me very excited in the app's demo video turned out to have been removed at the last minute, although Ben has promised me over Twitter that he intends to restore it in the next update. When it returns, users will be able to see the ISO, shutter speed, and focal distance that the iPhone intends to use for a photo, before it's taken. This, too, has never been done before, and offers the advanced photographer a level of control and an opportunity for finessing shots that probably runs counter to everything the iPhone camera designers intended. And I love it.

Mattebox also includes the ability to tune a photo in post with an elegant gesture-driven interface, although you probably already have a few preferred ways of doing this, such as Snapseed. The high quality of its editing engine, however, is worth noting. For a number of photos where I wanted stronger contrast and/or more unrealistic color grading, I fell back to Camera+ for its speed and simplicity.

One can get lost in the editing loop for hours if not careful, and Mattebox and Camera+ both come with built-in creative limitations that can be quite liberating. I used to suggest that travelers should take no more than two cameras on a trip — as choice and paralysis go hand in hand — and that advice seems to carry over to photography apps as well. Pick two, and make the most of them.

Edit: Ben Syverson asked me a couple of questions on Flickr, and I thought I should clarify here that I used Mattebox as the "camera" for all shots, and then Camera+ for post-processing on some.

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The Starbucks at Rochester Park

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 17:44:00 +0000

If this Starbucks had an insufferable sub-brand like Starbucks Deluxe, Gourmet, or perhaps something more in character, like Primo, I'd be inclined to forgive it. Occupying an old two-storeyed colonial style house with a generous verandah and really nice interior touches, it's not your usual pick up and go joint in the city. Being in a pretty secluded spot off Holland Village/North Buona Vista Road means it's actually possible to get a little peace and quiet here on the weekend. Patronizing any other Starbucks on Orchard Road is an exercise in hating the entire goddamned human race.

I know a few people my age avoid Starbucks or take issue with some aspect of their homogenized product, globalized retail model, exploitation of coffee growers, etc. — and I don't normally care to indulge those viewpoints — but this barely registers, cognitively and experientially, as a Starbucks.

Wood is used liberally, as panelling and in furniture. Straws, stirrers, sugar, napkins, and other accessories are presented in a large armoire of sorts. Pastries and sandwiches are sold from flat, refrigerated glass cases. The kind that Fauchon uses for its macarons. IN PARIS. There's pour-over brewed coffee as an option, which was introduced earlier this year in the United States.

The coffee is probably the worst thing about this place, and I don't even mean that cruelly. If you're cool with Starbucks and can't find an awkward, vintage wooden stool to ironically and uncomfortably perch on at Kith, Forty Hands, or the like, this cafe will bear a Sunday afternoon visit.

37 Rochester Drive, Singapore 138640

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Dreams & Reality exhibition, National Museum of Singapore

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:08:00 +0000

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Visited the National Museum today for this joint showing with the Musée d'Orsay. I'm not the most art-obsessed gallery goer; my girlfriend fondly remembers the d'Orsay as her favorite in Paris, I remember its gift shop. Still, some very nice work is on display till February, so drop by if you can.

Jon Gold on the Lumia 800 and WP7

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:57:00 +0000

Jon Gold bought a Lumia:

Metro is undeniably gorgeous but I still can’t form an objective opinion about whether the phone as a whole is good enough to replace my iPhone.
The facts say it’s good enough. My heart says no.
I just can’t rationalise living outside of the Apple safety net. 80% of the population probably can, and will love a phone that smokes Android.

This is how sort of how I feel every time I see Windows Phone. The smartest people I know say it's good enough, worth trying, better than Android. I'm sure they're right but it feels wrong in my gut. Is it down to being too different to what I know, and it just needs time? It's easy to point out a few of Microsoft's bold design decisions and where their intended use cases don't apply to my own needs, but in the end it's about how everything feels.

But it's hard to ignore that with Nokia behind it, "Windows Phone 7.5 Mango" now has a bit of a chance, and it's one of the most interesting platforms to study for mobile design projects. The dilemma reminds me of the days when I shuttled between Nokia and Sony-Ericsson phones, where every phone switch demanded learning a lot of paradigms from scratch. With the iPhone being good enough that I haven't switched away in four years, I've felt free of that ritual. It's been comfortable. But the curse of curiosity is that I know I'm going to do it again anyway, and work just becomes the latest excuse.

(via Daring Fireball)

Presenting: Object Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:21:00 +0000

ObjectMag.com

I started a new site a few weeks back because I had a few vacation days and not much more to do than sit at home playing Batman Arkham City. The concept had been settling for awhile, without too much direct thought. Armed with the knowledge that I often take pleasure in evaluating things, and recommending said things to friends sans qualifying statements, I decided a blog about five-star, must-have products was going to have legs.

It's made with Posterous and a theme by Cory Watilo, with an Amazon affiliate store attached so I can keep as many of the featured items together in one place ready for purchase (and also because the thought of playing storekeeper sounded fun). I initially ran into some trouble with an unusual Posterous bug, but a complaint on Twitter later, and I had a direct email line to support thanks to one of their VPs, Rich Pearson. That was a great customer moment; just thought I'd mention it.

So, Object is dead simple. Just three main post types.

Features: Product reviews with big, full-width photography that I try and do myself. Usually with my Ricoh GR Digital III.

Perceptions: Stuff I don't have yet and haven't tested, but which look promising. Using photography found online and in press kits. I put these photos together in one carousel-based gallery instead of spreading them out.

Radar: Upcoming products. Photography as above.
It's a side project, and work has been keeping me pretty busy. Nevertheless, I'll try and have new content up on a weekly basis.

Loving a product for all the heart's reasons

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 17:58:00 +0000

I realized that I buy into the philosophy of a product, and the company that made it, more than any measurable aspect of the product itself. Those that reach high, have the right intentions, get a free pass now and then for falling short in some areas. I know many of you are with me on this. This is why we got excited over webOS and the Palm Pre. This is why some are falling again — unfazed by webOS's tragic journey into obscurity — for Windows Phone 7, a well-reviewed OS that has gotten close to no traction with real consumers.

It's a form of compensation bias, driven by emotion. It's why Instagram succeeded at launch despite low resolution 600x600 photos, why the LC-A sells and sells despite shoddy construction, why Prince and Tom Cruise's wacky religious leanings don't impact their bank accounts.

I'm more susceptible to advertising than most. The best ones put tears in my eyes because I want to believe that companies give a damn about doing the right thing, about making great stuff they're proud of. What is an ad if not a plea to be loved?

Have you seen the way some Japanese companies talk about their premium cameras? Look at the "Developer's Interview" Panasonic assembled when the LX3 launched. It overflows with passion (okay, it's modest and restrained) for the camera, and respect for its user. Whatever compromises they had to make along the way, whatever you believe or can't believe about the hyperbolic words of a marketing document, it's hard to deny that a product that has proven as excellent and reliable as my LX3 has to me was conceived by a team with the highest intentions. Ricoh's "Inside Story" for the GR Digital is no different.

While it's true that most people never even see the inside of their digital camera, you can rest assured that the LX3 is filled with only the very highest-quality parts from the lens to the CCD, the LSI and all the peripheral circuits. It's just possible that this was the first time that a camera development project went this far to specialize in raising image quality. Still, one of the things that I strongly felt was that this excellent level of image quality in a compact digital still camera was achieved by the synergetic effect of Panasonic's comprehensive expertise. I'm confident that anybody -- professional or amateur -- who uses the LX3 will easily be convinced of its remarkable image quality.
— Tomoaki Tsutsumi, Staff Engineer, Panasonic LX3

It may seem wholly natural to some readers that a product should be made by people who care about it, who aim high and want to beat the competition. It's insane to imagine the opposite, but experience has taught me that it happens a whole lot. It happens so often that I get excited and open my wallet whenever something that was clearly born of a different process comes along.

Another example of the GR legend is seen at the operation of the shutter button. “We wanted the user to feel the fun to take pictures using the camera,” says Mr. Yokoyama. For that, the touch of the shutter button is quite important. “Some say they like light touch but the others say they prefer heavier touch”. Therefore, we have studied the various factors to decide the release touch, including the spring force and the shutter stroke, etc. We have collected the advice from the professional photographers and the users, also have checked the shutter release touch of the various cameras available, to define the best,” he says. By the way, the shutter release touch can be fine tuned at the service facility to meet the various users’ feeling of the touch of the shutter release.

“Of course, not only the feeling but durability is required at the same time, and we have tested and designed the operating buttons to work for more than some hundreds of thousand times”.
— Ricoh GR Digital Inside Story

Someone agonized over the feeling of the shutter button, sought the advice of professional photographers, surveyed the shutter buttons on competing cameras, and then designed the best shutter button they could. Bowing to individual taste, they equipped every Ricoh service center with the means to accommodate a walk-in customer who wanted his button more or less resistant. That someone took care of this tells me that I should buy Ricoh cameras until I notice a change in management.

But ad men are good at selling crap, at creating the semblance of substance. Wanting to understand how this happens is one of the reasons I got into the business. The problematic nature of basing perceptions of an untested product on what its maker says is not new to me, and a simple B.S. filter usually does the trick, except when it doesn't.

This was acutely clear to me today when I watched Social 0.0, a short film series that forms a new Japan-only campaign for a Motorola phone called the Photon.

These are powerful films on the surface, employing a cast of some very influential Japanese personalities: artists, filmmakers, musicians, scholars. Even Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, a Harajuku fashion icon who defies easy description. Questions about wealth (abundance), creativity in a digital society, freedom of self-expression, capitalism, transhumanism, and government arise followed by the Motorola logo.

All my buttons were pushed. Somewhere inside, I wanted to go out and get a Motorola phone. Thankfully, I knew I didn't really want a Motorola phone. But seeing how effective these ads could be, how inspiring Motorola might be if it tried, made me wonder how many obstacles stand between it continuing down its mediocre path, and having a well-articulated philosophy running throughout the organization that would enable it to create a product line with singular purpose. One created from within, as Apple's Think Different manifesto was, that could differentiate in more productive ways than a patent portfolio. These ads are a plea to be loved, but they don't come from a company that seems to even want it. That's the disconnect that needs correcting.

It also seems dishonest that the voice of Motorola in Japan is so far removed from that of its global brand, which is bland and a little overshadowed by Verizon's work on DROID.

---

Anyway, I'm starting a new site dedicated to products worth loving. It's in a sort of beta now, and will be up soon.

The intriguing Jawbone UP, which we can't have in Singapore

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:04:00 +0000

via theverge.com

Site: http://www.jawbone.com/up

I'm not the first or fifth person to come to mind when a friend talks about fitness gadgetry; the only time I came close to being a buyer was with last year's iPod nano. I used the pedometer once. Then with the 3DS and StreetPass, I tracked my walking for maybe a week before forgetting about it.

The beauty of Jawbone's UP bracelet, which I've been waiting for most of this year, is that you can't really forget it. It stays wrapped around your wrist, through showers and workouts, sleep and meals, continually recording your movements and interpreting them as steps, calories, games of tennis, and fitful tosses and turns in the night. Every now and then, you plug it into your iPhone, and an app throws you beautiful infographics and logs your activity, even comparing it to friends' if you so choose. Competition changes everything, but so does have a visual feedback loop that makes you think about your behavior, and optimizing it.

And it's just $99.

I'm sure in 9 months we'll have an UP+ with Bluetooth 4.0 low-power technology that will work with the iPhone 4S, so everything can be wireless, but that doesn't change the fact that I want one of these NOW. And because this is a Jawbone product, I can't. It's only available in the US for now, and they won't ship it overseas.

This reminds me of the circus that getting a Jambox speaker last Christmas was, which ended with my girlfriend arranging a chain of favors through friends that I'm sorry to have inconvenienced. Jawbone distribution in Singapore is the pits. The Jambox, currently USD$180 in the US, hit the local market late and costs SGD$328, or USD$256. The Icon and Era headsets aren't far off. It's criminal bullshit.

They claim it'll roll out internationally by the end of the year, but I'm not holding my breath. If any kind Stateside soul I follow on Twitter wants to help send me one, I'll pay by Paypal!

View from Tokyo Sky Tree

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 05:49:00 +0000

via mdn.mainichi.jp

As @tokyoreporter noted on Twitter, the view from the Tokyo Sky Tree has been unveiled, only to be blocked by mascots. It's supposedly going to be ready by February 2012, but I'm sure a visit will be impossible until the crowds subside. Might be worth delaying my trip for.

Why Siri and Not Assistant

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:15:00 +0000

Tim Bajarin, via John Gruber:

Yes, Siri is an important product for enhancing our user interface with the iPhone. But Siri is in its infancy. When it grows up, it will be the front end to all types of searches conducted on iPhones, iPads, Mac’s and even Apple TV. And, if I were Google or Microsoft, perhaps I too would be playing down the impact of Siri since they know full well that it is not just a threat to their product platforms, but to their core businesses of search as well. In fact, they should be quaking in their boots since Apple is taking aim at their cash cow search businesses with their technology and could very well impact their fortunes dramatically in the future.

In the run up to the iPhone 4S's unveiling, everyone believed the natural language voice recognition feature would be called Assistant. Apple Assistant. Voice Assistant. iPhone Assistant. When we learnt that they had decided to keep the Siri name, a known brand to a small set of U.S. users but largely alien to the rest of the world (>75% of the iPhone market), it seemed like an odd decision.

Naming the interface Siri instead of Assistant makes more and more sense every day. It's a distinct, tangible, and ownable brand (yes, I said that), with personality and the potential to become more than a verb. People won't be saying "Let me Siri that", they'll say "Let me ask Siri".

iTunes' Genius feature is an example of an Apple naming convention that I assumed Assistant would follow: a standard word rendered with an initial cap that was immediately recognizable, and with enough exposure and excellence, stood a chance at being closely associated with the company.

Apple has always said "iPhone" and not "the iPhone" in reference to their platform and product line, but it was a subtle naming distinction. Few consumers are going to mirror that thinking and say "I'm considering switching to iPhone" over "I'm gonna switch to an iPhone". Given its potential and role as an intermediary — while it makes certain tasks effortless, and the necessary steps invisible, it is itself highly visible (and enjoyable so) — Siri had to be much more obvious.

State of the Singapore iPhone 4S launch

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 05:08:00 +0000

As at noon, Sunday the 23rd of October:

SingTel – No news on pre-orders with 5 days to go, but they've started taking names, at least. I suspect they will have a small window for pre-orders tomorrow or Tuesday, which will sell out within 2 hours.

StarHub – Publicly announced there would be no pre-orders, but has approached select subscribers via SMS to pre-order via a secret site. Other customers are learning about it, and are pissed. Poor move, in my opinion.

M1 – Midnight launch event and prices announced ahead of competitors. Will have online orders on the 28th with home delivery after the 30th. BUT ALL IPHONE PLANS NO LONGER HAVE FREE INCOMING CALLS. That last bit is just astounding to me. Subscribers will have to sign up for a free incoming plan and bolt-on an expensive data sub on top of it. I understand why they're doing it — the aggressive price wars from a few years back hurt all 3 telcos — but blinking first puts them at a major disadvantage.

Apple — Started selling unlocked, contract-free iPhone 4Ss on their site two days ago and sold out in under 24 hours. I managed to buy one in the initial batch, but it may not arrive till the second week of November, according to Apple's delivery estimate.

24/10 edit: Okay, I could be wrong about M1 removing its free incoming calls. A sub-page of their iPhone site still makes mention of the feature for "all iPhone plans". Most likely, it's a case of unclear web writing: by saying "or choose one of our free incoming call plans", they probably didn't mean to make it sound like an "either/or" choice. Free Incoming Calls Plans is probably their official name for that category.

Tiny Fry's electronics concept store, Singapore

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:22:00 +0000

I don't think this electronics store is affiliated with that Fry's, but I like the fast food/supermarket theme they've got going with refrigerators as storage shelves for iPads and MacBooks on the inside. The signboard outside shows featured products (everything with a screen is shown displaying a burger) with a superscript type treatment that makes $400 look like $4.00. Clever. They seem to have iPhone/iPad cases that the usual Apple authorized retailers here don't carry, as well as things that are outright impossible to find outside of Singapore's Sim Lim black market: Kindles, Nooks, current-gen Apple TVs, etc.

Location: Level 1, Millennia Walk.

Nudged

noreply@blogger.com (Brandon) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:33:00 +0000

It's been a long day. I heard the news about Steve Jobs from Facebook and Twitter while I was still in bed in the morning. I didn't think it'd be this soon; like John Gruber, I kept believing he'd pull through again. Not shocked, not depressed, but deeply moved by the enormity of what had been lost.

I said to someone that future generations capable of mapping time and parallel dimensions might look at their charts and see how the course of our world changed at this moment. Things are different now, for us all, than they might have been if he lived to be 90. I don't know anyone who could doubt that.

At lunch, I bought the iPod classic I've been thinking about for the past week. Silver, not black. Closest to the original. I remember getting an iPod with my first Mac, an iBook, and loving it passionately as an extension of that computing experience, one that I was thrilled to take out with me each day. The music player and laptop had nothing in common from a technical point of view, but they were both imbued with the same values.

Steve's values, or Apple's values? The common theory is that these days, they're indistinguishable thanks to codifying efforts by Jobs himself, but I can't discount the value of great leadership or ignore the subtle differences present even in people who share the same values. The company he founded will continue to succeed within the trajectory they're now on, but we're missing a nudger now. A man who puts the rest of us on a different course as a matter of his own existence.

I didn't want this to be a Steve-Jobs-changed-my-life post, but crossing paths with those first two instances of his work caused my own views and interests to be nudged, my trajectory recalculated. Until the maps of some time travelers fall into my lap, I can't imagine the life I was going to have before he touched it.