Recently, I realized that my iPhone gets a lot more photo action than my lovely nikon digital SLR. The photos I take with my phone are nothing like photography. They are documentation.
The phone camera is a kind of sketch pad that collects quick images of whiteboard drawings, interesting plants, spontaneous charm of the kid, a sign in Spanish with words for me to look up later. These bits and pieces appeal to me.
I picked up a flip video camera to see if capturing a few seconds of my life at a time has this same sort of attractive utility. So far, I am rather pleased.
I [read] this amazing story a few weeks ago. The narrative began by broadly telling the major plot points. Every chapter then filled in the moments between the crucial events, distorting perception with every detail. It is a fantastic mystery thriller, masterfully written.
This story is a [tv show], but there is so little that is tv show about it.
I downloaded the entire season from iTunes.
I watched the chapters on my own schedule.
The story filled 13 hours of my life, similar to a 400 page novel.
I watched it at home on my small laptop–cuddled up in a chair, and in bed.
I watched it on my iPhone at coffee shops and when waiting for appointments.
The story was designed to be experienced in a linear, sequential fashion, unlike tv programs that include both a self-contained episodic story as well as a season wide story.
It cost $23.99, around the same price as a new hardcover.
I don’t actually read novels anymore. I have a lot of fiction readers in my family and they lend me fiction and recommend fiction and ask me what I’ve read lately. I’m guessing I come across as a non-fiction design/cog studies new parent wonk, but really, I do like fiction.
Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Create Your Life, Your Relationships, and Your World in Harmony with Your Values
In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind
Designing Interactions
Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices (VOICES)
The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)
Emotional Life of the Toddler
Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design (Acting with Technology)
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Narratives from the Crib
The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences
Positive Discipline for Preschoolers, Revised Second Edition: For Their Early Years - Raising Children Who Are Responsible, Respectful, and Resourceful
Charles Darwin: A New Life
Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs, and Behavior
Montessori : The Science behind the Genius
Ambient Findability : What We Find Changes Who We Become
Thinking in Sound : The Cognitive Psychology of Human Audition
Strangers to Ourselves : Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious
2000x: The Machine Stops E.M. Forster
Children of the Mind Orson Scott Card
Death Match Lincoln Child
Ender’s Game: 20th Anniversary Edition Orson Scott Card
September 20, 2007 at 11:26 pm · Filed under minutiae, myPhone
The UPS woman brought them yesterday. A loud knock and by the time I got to the door, the truck had departed and these two ukuleles remained. I had initially ordered one, you know, so the kid would be well rounded and exposed to music and all that.
And then I thought, how unfun is that. So I ordered a second, within the hour. They are here now and already we are one uke short. Three people must have three ukuleles. Fortunately the First Act Discovery FG404 Soprano Ukulele is less than $25 a pop.
Aside from the fact that the Guinness Book of World Records purportedly declares the ukulele to be the easiest instrument in the world to play, Pinapple Pete’s Uke School may be the most lovely and amazing site for getting started with a new uke. Who knew that a person could go from zero to Rocket Man in just a few short hours!
So is the iPhone the break-through device that will finally deliver ebooks to the masses ( or the masses to ebooks)?
The iPhone has a lovely, bright, colour, high-resolution screen, and type is near glorious in its crispness. It has the form factor issues down as far as being ready at hand and useful for many different tasks, from making calls, to listening to music, to surfing the web, to watching the latest YouTube video. Why not reading books too?
I have been following this question throughout the blogosphere this past week or so, and there is so much hope. Some of the hope, and hope that I share, is that there is a magical software update in the near future that includes some decent ebook reader type software and a reasonable way to save and access files.
Pre-magical update, there are a few big challenges to the iPhone as an ebook reader:
It is currently pretty weird that documents, such as pdfs, can be viewed both landscape and portrait in the Safari browser but only in portrait if accessed through the document viewer via email…which right now is the only reasonable way to get files on to the device that don’t go away if you go off-line. This means that you can have one ebookish type experience with an emailed pdf and a different experience with a browser downloaded pdf.
Email is the only reasonable way to get files on to the device that don’t go away if you go off-line.
Navigating books by finger scrolling and manually zooming feels like the act of a rather desperate person. Also quite messy, if you like to read and eat popcorn at the same time. Next page/previous page buttons and automatically sizing to the width of a block of text would be most lovely.
Bookmarking.
Please software update, come quick!
In the meantime, I have seen some nice work by manybooks.net with their versions for the browser and pdf books. The type is legible and in the browser version some early attempts have been made at creating a navigation and bookmarking method.
As a user experience practitioner at WOWIO, I have been exploring how our books might function on the iPhone. WOWIO books differ from manybooks.net in that they are often highly designed, including refined visual, graphical and font treatments. Additionally WOWIO books include a wide variety of copyrighted books and illustrated comic books, travel guides, and children’s books. The attention to craft and visual design is an important part of our value offering.
Here are some prototype images of how three ebooks available from WOWIO currently look on the iPhone, pre-magical software update.Click on the images to see larger versions. I’ve also linked the books to their pages on WOWIO, but please note that we are still prototyping and the books on the site are not iPhone optimized.
( Taking a picture of my phone was harder than expected, so please excuse!)
Last summer it was over 100 degrees for over a 100 days.
This summer it has rained for 40 days and 40 nights…or something like that.
I haven’t really been counting, but there is a lot of rain and rapids in the usually dammed up Colorado River, more commonly called Town Lake. I was driving past a place where it overflowed the banks today. Some how it is stunning when nature refuses to be part of the background of everyday life.
Rain today meant reasonable temperatures. 80s instead of 100s, and life is richer for it.
I am living by the park in this picture. I am in love with the creek that run through this green belt, Blunn creek, that apparently starts in a Walmart parking lot a few miles away. By the time it reaches this point there are turtles gently drifting around below its surface and a few snakes resting on its shore.
We have been finding tiny frogs in the grasses, hip hopping about. Today the park was mowed when A. and I arrived. A chorus of squawky birds suggested a late lunch. We did see two survivor frogs though, unmowed, uneaten, and now unstepped on.
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