Apple’s specialty is the remix

An interesting article on Apple’s success:

Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere

{1} Go Into Your Cave
{2} It’s Okay to Be King
{3} Transcend Orthodoxy
{4} Just Say No
{5} Serve Your Customer. No, Really
{6} Everything Is Marketing
{7} Kill the Past
{8} Turn Feedback Into Inspiration
{9} Don’t Invent, Reinvent
{10} Play by Your Own Clock

Farhad Manjoo is FAST COMPANY’s technology columnist.

[From Apple Nation | Page 7 | Fast Company]

The good old times: 30 Old PC Ads

Looking at all those advertisements and remembering many of them makes me a tad sentimental.

[From 30 Old PC Ads That Will Blow Your Processor| Information Technology Schools]

The iPhone4 advertisement sounds quite familiar. Again.

[From Apple Inc.]

Dieter Rams: Innovative design

I just came across the German industrial designer Dieter Rams via a tumblr blog post:

“Innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.”

[From create.live.love]

Looking up Dieter Rams I found his ten principles to “good design”:

Good design is innovative
Good design makes a product useful
Good design is aesthetic
Good design makes a product understandable
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is honest
Good design is long-lasting
Good design is thorough down to the last detail
Good design is environmentally friendly
Good design is as little design as possible

[From Dieter Rams - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

According to Rams

Apple is the only company designing products according to his principles.

[From Dieter Rams - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

I can only agree.

Learning to present professionally and effectively

Giving presentations is part of my job, striving for memorable presentations is part of my profession’s as well as my personal ethos.

I started out preparing slides in the typical way, looking at other presentations and trying to figure out how it is professionally done. I assume my presentations then were as boring as those of most others, contributing to death by PowerPoint, by Apple Keynote, or any other slideware. All the tools can be used for putting the audience to sleep without any effort, but the tools are not the source of trouble.

Over the years I found some interesting news feeds, for example Les Posen’s CyberPsych Blog, with—among other topics—insightful analyses of Steve Jobs’ keynote speeches. I started to mimic the style of his slides with a less-is-more-attitude. My presentations got noticably better (according to positive remarks from attendees) but I still did not really know what I was doing.

Last year I began to work on my skills in earnest. A seminar at the University of Mainz set the starting point. A media training for scientists provided me with valuable feedback on my own performance in various situations and on a television screen besides lots of other media related information (see earlier post, in German).

But the most influential source about presentation-related knowledge was and is Garr Reynolds’ blog Presentation Zen. On this blog I found material what I was looking for. Garr Reynolds writes about my personal situation. That is the how I perceive it—and that is, by the way, why I love the Web so much. You can find kindred spirits there and people having similar problems / life situations … well … I get side-tracked—Presentation Zen is a valuable collection every presenter should check out. Fortunately, Garr Reynolds made also a book of it: Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. It contains lots of helpful hints on improving your presentations. What I like most about this book is that it is case-based. Lots of examples simply show you the better way of presenting ideas.

From the many books he recommends (scroll down a bit on his blog) I found two very interesting and would like to recommend them to you, too:

• Daniel H. Pink’s A Whole New Mind: While Right-Brainers will Rule the Future
• Stephen M. Kosslyn’s Clear and to the Point: Eight Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations

“Show, don’t tell!” is an important rule in story telling. In a way I got the feeling that Garr Reynolds shows whereas Stephen Kosslyn tells. Garr also got lucky that he could provide all examples in colour whereas Stephen Kosslyn’s book suffers from grayscale examples. The books are not really comparable. I like all the psychological explanations Stephen Kosslyn presents. They are important to deal with complex stuff and helps portioning what you want to convey. You will also find some of this in Presentation Zen, but I think both books could be seen as two sides of a coin.

Much has been written in the last years about the differences of our brain’s left and right hemispheres. Daniel Pink reminds us of our given creativity in A Whole New Mind. Have a look at the “six high-concept, high-touch senses” (see an overview here). The book is, as he says himself somewhere in it, quite US-centered and I do not agree with all of his political views, but it is definitely worth a read.

Getting Things Done and OmniFocus

For some time now I am aware of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (GTD) method of organising one’s tasks. I read bits and pieces here and there on the web, especially on Tim Gaden’s blog Hawk Wings, a website full of tips and add-ons to make Apple Mail even better. But I did not pay too much attention to GTD cause I was too busy with my tasks — duh.

Just when I had decided that I needed to do something about my being stressed out my colleague Marko Brunzel — and just on a side note — pointed me to a clever new tool he just had heard about, a tool called OmniFous. He could not try it out himself because it is only available on Mac OS X, but told me that OmniFocus implements GTD. I ordered the book at amazon.com and downloaded the current version of OmniFocus, which is currently in late alpha state but scheduled to be released on January 8, 2008. The program is already quite stable and fun to use (as all of Omni Group’s software). Try it out!

Now I go back to reading and learning more about GTD. This task was actionable, next on my list, and is now done.

Data detection in Mac OS X Leopard (10.5)

I took the time yesterday to watch the guided tour video to Mac OS X Leopard. Besides integrated notes and to do management it now offers also “data detection”. Here is what Apple says about it:

Say you get an email invitation to dinner. What if Mail recognized the address of the restaurant and let you map directions on the web? Or let you click once to add the date to your iCal calendar? With Leopard, it does. Mail even recognizes relative dates (“let’s meet next Tuesday”) and keywords (“dinner tomorrow”), so you can act on information rather than enter it. (Apple – Mac OS X Leopard – Features – Mail)

I look forward to try that feature out. It should become a nice little time saver for daily knowledge work.

[composed and posted with ecto]

Nintendo Wii meets Apple Keynote – Making a wish II

As Judi Smith pointed out there already is a possibility to use the Wii mote with the Mac. Remote Buddy lets one use a wide range of remote controls, including the Wii mote (but, unfortunately, not my older Keyspan model ). But watching the respective presentation reveals that the Wii mote is only used as a standard remote control. There is an infrared source—for example a tea-light (sic!)—necessary (for positioning, I assume). The motion-sensors are not used in the way I described earlier. In fact, the motion-sensors are not used at all. But the possibility is pointed out at the website.

Judi also points out that one needs to additionally use something like FlyGesture, but this still cannot provide the whole illusion I have in mind. There is no feedback between the execution of slide change effects and the (swiftness of the) gesture. This is why I “asked” Apple to do something about it. Apple would need to provide hooks to allow the user to control the speed of the animation. For example, if you want to tear off a page or turn a page very slowly in order to uncover some secret, maybe even give only a brief glimpse at the next page and then cover the page again … well.

[composed and posted with ecto]

Nintendo Wii meets Apple Keynote – Making a wish

Most of my friends and colleagues are hyped up about the Wii console. And it is the first time I can understand the hype about a game console. I even might get hooked up, too, if I am not careful Being physically active in a game and not just your mind and fingers is intriguing.

Many years back I had the chance to play some very simple game in a 3d virtual reality environment. I do not remember too much about it. I stood on a platform wearing a heavy, uncomfortable headset. The headset contained two small (not so high resolution) monitors in front of my eyes and some motion sensors that allowed the system to change the scenery, depending on where I turned my head to. It was quite an experience. But due to the hardware costs, I imagine, nothing came from it and the game disappeared. The Wii console seems to be a very good development of current play stations going into the direction of games where you are totally immersed.

Well, thinking about the Wii controllers with motion-sensing technology and some stuff I currently read about presentation skills (see, for example, the two inspirational blogs Presentation Zen and Les Posen’s CyberPsych Blog) I wondered how more interesting one could make a presentation if one had a remote control like a Wii controller for Keynote presentations. A presentation always is kind of a performance, isn’t it? Some presenters are better “actors” (more outgoing) and others are more on the quiet side. For those of us who like to make the whole stage their own and not only the square-meter behind the standing desk such a presentation tool could enhance the presentation experience and turn it into a presentation adventure.

Think about the turning cube effect of Apple Keynote (part of iWork). Now think about wanting to present some heavy material to your boss and you need all your physical power to turn the cube from left to right or, maybe even better, lift the cube to turn up. With a motion-sensing presentation tool you would be able to set up a certain resistance into slide change effects. During presentation you would then need to grab an edge of your slide and “manually”

move the slide. (Must be funny if you set up slide effects for yourself and then having someone else do the presentation who is not as strong as you.) You could even do part of your workout during a presentation! Who would have thought.

I think you get the picture. So: Apple, do something about it! It would be fun.

And, Apple, when you are at it: Think about Les Posen’s suggestion to use iPhoto for storing all of one’s Keynote slides.

[composed and posted with ecto]

Why you’ll love a Nepomuk(ed) system!

Thilo Deussen–a student of Philosophy and Computer Science at University of Ulm and currently working at SAP Research, Karlsruhe–got me thinking when he pointed me to the Get a Mac ads. Wouldn’t it be great to have such kind of advertisements for the upcoming Social Semantic Desktop? Imagine an Information Retrieval based Google Desktop Search talking to a Nepomuk-enabled system, discussing, or better, describing the benefits of the latter system. Maybe we should set up a competition within the Nepomuk consortium, or beyond.