'Cross The Breeze

A lesson from Steve Jobs

June 11, 2012 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

I just finished reading Steve Jobs’ biography. It took me a while to read it but I’m happy I bought it. I wasn’t all that sure in advance, and not because I used to work at Microsoft once, but because I just didn’t want to read a book about how great everything at Apple really is thanks to the genius etc etc.

It’s not at all like that. The book manages to give a very real – at least it feels that way – image of Steve Jobs and very human, much more human than how your regular fanboy will be talking about him. And that made it interesting. You get a better idea of how he really was, about the things that made him great, about the people that have been his mentor, about how he often wasn’t really such a nice person, about the genius, …

I made quite a few notes while reading the book, notes about things and ideas that I recognized or that I should look into a bit more. One of those things was the Apple Marketing Philosophy that was written down by Mike Markkula. Short but crystal clear.

Empathy – that intimate connection with the feelings of the consumer to truly understand their needs better than any other company
Focus – eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities in order to do the best job possible
Impute – a company should convey its values in everything it does, from packaging to marketing because ‘people do judge a book by its cover’

You should read the book. Seriously. Not because you want to find out what an epic genius Steve was or anything like that – but because just like Steve you should steal from the best, see things with new eyes, work hard to make them different and don’t stop until they’re perfect. Respect.

My next book? Indeed – Steal like an artist, by Austin Kleon.

art, books, creativity, design, electronics, inspiration, strategy

apple, biography, book, future, learn, manifesto, marketing, read, respect, steal, steve jobs

Another week, another tablet

May 23, 2011 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

For about 10 days now I switched my iPad for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to see how they compare – thanks to Belgacom. First things first, this is the first version of the 10.1 (now renamed to 10.1v), there’s a newer one coming on the market that has the same name but is slightly thinner than this one.

The hardware specs on this tablet are quite impressive. It has a 1280×800 screen resolution, runs Android Honeycomb 3.0, has an 8 megapixel camera (that doubles as 1080p HD video recorder), Wifi and 3G and a 1 GHz dual-core processor. That all weighs just under 600 g making it a bit lighter than the original iPad (it’s also a bit smaller).

What do I like about it?

First of all – nice screen, solid battery, powerful, … everything you expect from a tablet that wants to be a serious competitor to the iPad. Getting the basics right is obviously crucial in this game so no remarks there.

It’s my first real experience with Honecomb and I must say that I was rather pleased with the result. It’s an intuitive experience and something I like about Android in general is that you can add more than just app icons to your screen. The widgets for recent browser history for instance is one that I use quite often and.

The tablet came with a data subscription and I was surprised by the loading speed in both browser as well as with downloads from the Android Market place when on 3G. It’s definitely faster then the data connection Mobistar currently offers on my iPhone.

Flash. You sort of learn to navigate around Flash enabled websites when you’re surfing on the iPad but it’s still annoying when trying to consult a webpage that cannot be displayed due to the no-Flash policy of Apple when it comes to mobile. The Samsung’s browser displays Flash just like you’re used to and that still is a nice surplus.

Last but not least

What can be improved?

I like the more solid, the more polished feel of the iPad. The Galaxy Tab feels a bit more plastic but as mentioned before it’s probably the reason why it weighs less as well.

What needs most improvement in my opinion has more to do with Android Honeycomb than with the device itself. Unlike with the iPad you cannot see which apps on the Android Market are built for tablets, meaning that most apps you download are regular Android apps. Those are decent apps – nothing against that – but they don’t use the screen estate like they should. Similar with the browser as most websites detect your device as a mobile device, defaulting to the mobile phone experience. You will have to switch to desktop version to get the full advantage of the tablet. Since that is a change you can make it’s just a little annoyance, the differentiation for Android and Android Honeycomb in the Android Market is something I would like to see changed soon though.

Overall pretty decent result and definitely worth checking out in my opinion.

[Disclaimer: Belgacom provided the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v to me including SIM with data subscription]

consumer, electronics, gadgets, pr, software, technology

belgacom, galaxy, ipad, proximus, samsung, tab, tablet, test

When augmentation is about reducing (Pt. 2)

October 22, 2010 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

In February of this year I wrote a post about Kevin Slavin’s talk on Augmented Reality at PICNIC NY Salon. In that video he talked about something that made total sense to me… which to be honest is true for most of what Kevin says anyway :)

“His thoughts around augmented cities and why maybe ‘augmented’ should be about taking things away instead of just adding them to the world as we are already drowning in data as it is.”

So when I got this video today from a colleague about a research project on ‘Dimished Reality’ by Jan Herling and Wolfgang Broll of the Ilmenau University of Technology, it was like a proof of the concept Kevin talked about a year ago now. I don’t like the name ‘Dimished Reality’ because it still is doing more on top of what is really there. But in this case less really is more, check it out:

beta, creativity, electronics, inspiration, research, technology, tracking, video

ar, areacode, augmented reality, augmentedreality, ilmenau, kevinslavin, lessismore, research, study, technology

Reading white papers on the iPad (Evolved)

October 1, 2010 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

I recently figured out a nice way to read white papers on the iPad and thus finally catch up to the reading of all those white papers. It was/is a good solution but there are 2 elements that could be improved:

Would have been nice to be able to open the PDF’s in iBooks straight from Dropbox without having to open them in Dropbox first and then in iBooks. Minor issue but could be easier.
You can bookmark pages in iBooks on the iPad but that’s pretty much all the interaction that’s possible. It could have been better if you could make all kinds of annotations on the document, like notes or highlights etc.

And well what do you know, I just found out there’s a solution for that called GoodReader, a relatively new app for the iPad. It doesn’t look half as good as iBooks where you get that nice view of all your document covers on those shelves… but you can sync with your Dropbox folder from within the app and you can make all kinds of annotations on the document which you can save separately as annotations or immediately within the document. Sounds like a winner to me.

Check it out.

electronics, research, software

app, goodreader, ibooks, ipad, literature, pdf, research, whitepaper

The promise of interactive television (Cont’d)

September 30, 2010 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

Via Brandflakes for Breakfast I learned about Yap.tv which seems to be another interesting view on what interactive could be like. Other than the My Generation app from abc which I mentioned earlier this week, the Yap.tv app is useful for all channels and all interactivity is added without collaboration from the channels themselves.

If this is the direction we’re going – and it sure looks like it – interactive tv will be re-invented by people and companies outside the tv business and not by the networks or content owners. I suppose that’s what happens when you try to protect an outdated business model. That’s kinda sad in a sense but also very exciting. Wanna bet that is exactly what is going to happen? I do ;)

In the meantime check out Yap.tv if you’re living in the US, I can tell you it’s pretty useless in Europe. It’s the idea that counts.

community, consumer, electronics, social media, technology

abc, interactive, mygeneration, network, television, tv, yap, yaptv

The promise of interactive television (part 2)

September 27, 2010 by Kris Hoet 2 Comments

There are 3 reasons I once decided to get a digital television at home:

Better quality. Especially with one of those fancy new full HD screens that’s a much better experience.
Comfort features. Think about the EPG, easier recording, movie rental, …
Interactivity. Push the red/blue/whatever-color button and you will get a richer experience

The end score, 2 out of 3. I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world, but in Belgium interactive part is pretty nonexistent. I’ve used the red button less than 5 times in the 3 years I’ve got digital tv at home. It was always a disappointment. Useless information, bad experience, ugly, … Content makers nor advertisers seem to show any interest in it. Too bad because I had really high hopes for this. It’s pretty easy to imagine how this could be used in many really cool ways. Didn’t happen.

When I read about the My Generation iPad app from abc it sounded like they built an app to do what interactive tv couldn’t. The same promise all over again, but you’ll need another device to experience it. And only with My Generation on abc.

Don’t get me wrong, I think these are cool evolutions. I’m just wondering why none of the richer tv experiences have ever really succeeded without the help of peripheral devices. Sounds like a missed opportunity to me for television makers.

Anyway, good stuff from abc. Curious to see how this will evolve further. What do you think?

advertising, belgium, consumer, electronics, software, technology

abc, app, digital, interactive, ipad, mygeneration, pvr, television

Dear cell phone user

September 20, 2010 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

So there you are, reading a newspaper on a terrace while you’re kids are playing on the playground and the phone rings. Not yours, but that from your neighbor. It’s long, loud, … can’t even hear myself read the newspaper anymore.

This initiative from Coudal might be old, but I sure wished I had a card on me yesterday. Printing them out right now.

ageofconversation, consumer, electronics, strategy

cell, coudal, mobile, noise, phone. calling, rude, shhh

Apple iSad

September 20, 2010 by Kris Hoet 0 Comments

I was just reading this:

“Apple issued a cease and desist letter to Newsday regarding their iPad app commercial. The commercial essentially showed how the iPad can’t completely replace newspapers as the screen will shatter when your hit flies with it. Long story short, Apple doesn’t want their iPad’s glass getting shattered as a newspaper app commercial.”

Is that true? Because of this ad?

You have to be kidding. Really Apple, sometimes you can be so small. Small-minded that is.

advertising, consumer, electronics, gadgets

advertising, app, apple, commercial, ipad, legal, newsday

Rethinking the mobile web

September 13, 2010 by Kris Hoet 1 Comment

When we think about mobile today, we think about the iPhone. And if you’re lucky we think about Android as well. But as this presentations shows (once more) that is only a small percentage of the mobile market. Wouldn’t we want all (or at least most) mobile users to be able to experience ‘our offering’.

This presentation is a good eye-opener on the question we should all ask ourselves? Shouldn’t we make the mobile web more inclusive? And how would we go about to do that?

consumer, design, electronics, inspiration, mobile, presentation, technology

android, iphone, mobile, mobileweb, nokia, presentation, web

My issue with the iPad

September 1, 2010 by Kris Hoet 4 Comments

It’s not about the lack of Flash support. Although you visit less sites in their mobile version (if available) on the iPad thus the lack of Flash support is a bigger pain than on the iPhone, I knew what I was getting into when I bought one. Nor is it the lack of multi-tasking capabilities, I’m sure once iOS4 arrives on the iPad we will have that (kinda) sorted out. And also the fact that there are only few really good iPad apps is an issue (for now). There may as well be several thousand apps available (250.000 if you count all iPhone apps), we all know most of them are rubbish.

My issue is with the OS. It still is a big phone, without the phone functionalities then… probably to avoid situations like this to happen. Now a mobile phone typically is a very personal piece of technology. You don’t just hand to someone else to toy with it, it’s yours and personal. And that’s where the problem lies, for me the iPad isn’t personal. Not like the iPhone (or any other mobile phone for that matter). My wife and I both have our own mobiles but it’s rather unlikely that I we will get a second iPad, we both use it. But since it’s built on a mobile OS, it’s not really built for multiple users. There’s no need for that on a phone but it means that on the iPad there’s a primary user next to other people that can also use it. But not in the same way.

Still don’t see the problem? I really enjoy Flipboard, so does my wife. But it’s logged in with my Twitter/Facebook accounts so she cannot really enjoy that part. I could add her email account(s) to the iPad but then those would be visible to both of us, that’s not really what you want. And we try and beat each other on playing Mahjong but since there’s only one high score, it impossible to tell (remember) who it was from. It would enable me to personalize the iPad for the kids when they use it as well. With us, the iPad is typically lying around in the living room for anyone in the family to use when they feel like it. But since I’m the primary user (and the geek – yes, that too) it’s mainly setup towards my needs. I find that a missed opportunity.

It would be great to see the iOS for iPad change in a way you can have a user login upfront, similar to what we are used to on our PCs/Macs. Or the possibility to switch between users, all to get a more personal experience on a multi-user/shared device. I’m afraid that is not going to happen (soon) so maybe in that case it’s worth asking the developers of Flipboard, Reeder, Mahjong, … to implement the possibility to switch between users in the app itself. Less ideal, but it would still solve my issue with the iPad.

design, electronics, gadgets, technology

apps, experience, flash, flipboard, ipad, iphone, issue, problem, reeder, user