Month: April 2012

  • Sony Vaio PCG C1 series: Throwback gadget

    I’m an unusual choice to write about the Sony Vaio PCG C1. I’ve only had PC envy with a couple of devices during my twenty something years at a Mac user:

    • The IBM ThinkPad 701 series with its butterfly keyboard
    • The Sony Vaio PCG C1 series of notebooks

    In common with the 701, the Sony Vaio PCG C1 impressed me with its product design. In a pioneering design for 1998, the Sony Vaio PCG C1 included a built in web camera above the screen that could be rotated to try and ensure an optimum camera position.
    Picturebook PCG C1-VN

    Sony made a small modular computer. What was important was what they had left out in their device case and instead relied on a set of outboard peripherals so the user could bring or configure their computer set-up to suit their needs.  The PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) slot was equivalent of the USB socket today and used to connect a wide range of devices including both fixed-line and GSM wireless modems.
    Sony Vaio C1 VE

    The beauty extended on to the inside of the devices with some of the range using a Transmeta Crusoe processor. The Crusoe was the Intel Atom almost a decade before the Atom; it used a combination of software techniques and hardware innovations to reduce heat output and improve power consumption. This had some benefit in terms of battery improvement, but battery life relies on a combination factors such as screen power, hard drive power and other parts on the circuit board.

    This device is even more remarkable when you  realise that the Vaio PCG C1 was launched some seven years before Steve Jobs went on stage at Apple’s Worldwide Development Conference in 2005 to announce the move to Intel processors because of a new focus on computer power per Watt. You could consider the MacBook Air that I am typing this post out on as a spiritual successor to the Vaio C1. More Sony posts here.

    More information
    More about the Sony Vaio PCG C1 and one man’s adventures trying to install Linux on it

  • Throwback gadget: IBM ThinkPad 701

    Before we think about the IBM ThinkPad 701, I wanted to flag that I’ve been a Mac user for almost all of my computer-owning adult life. But there have only been a couple of devices that have ever given me PC-envy.

    The first one was the IBM ThinkPad 701, my friend at college Jouni whom I lived in halls with at the time had a 701 and the product design blew me away.

    The IBM ThinkPad 701 had a carefully designed set of accessories providing a full system of accessories that the road warrior would need including a desk dock, cable adaptors, spare batteries and a detachable disk drive.  That was clever and as good as what Apple was doing with with its PowerBook Duo sub notebook. It’s hard to explain how connectivity pre USB was much trickier.
    Design Museum iPad application screen shot
    Surprisingly for a computer manufacturer, IBM turned out laptops that had interesting industrial design. They used magnesium alloy shells, titanium and carbon fibre in different model designs over the years and got less credit than they deserved for it.

    Richard Sapper, a German product designer based in Italy came up with the design language for the ThinkPad which he modeled on the traditional black lacquer bento box. An ex-automotive engineer with Mercedes Benz Sapper was better known for his work with Alessi and the Tizio lamp for Artemide.

    Sapper has kept a connection with the ThinkPad brand and is involved as a design consultant for the current ThinkPad range made by Lenovo.
    Design Museum iPad application screen shot
    What made the IBM ThinkPad 701 special was the butterfly keyboard designed by John Karidis solved the problem of making a portable computer with a full-size keyboard. It had a better action than modern laptops in terms typist feedback and was a compact full size keyboard. This was unheard of at the time. It was delicate the way it folded into place as one opened the lid on the laptop and robust enough to cope with travails of mobile working. More design related posts here.

  • Korean Oreo ad

    Korean Oreo ad

    Looking at the Korean Oreo advert that seems to have caused a stir in the US, it seemed obvious to me that the advert was a case of throwing creative against the wall. It may have been used as a calling card, a way to spur debate or a mock-up for an award as Kraft seem to suggest.

    In this respect it is rather like Volkswagen Polo car bomb ad that went around London agency world a number of years ago.
    Controversal Oreo advert
    Korea like Singapore and China is a quite conservative country and has a higher proportion of practicing christians than you would expect. So I am not inclined to think that this was really designed to go out as marketing material from the band.

    The Korean public would create uproar. Korean consumers have a reputation for staging protests and product boycotts. That would be way too risky for a foreign brand like Kraft.

    I also found it is also interesting that Kraft has thrown Cheil under the bus really fast on this.

    For what it’s worth I think that this could be a great creative if it had the right context – say targeting young men as a snack rather their more traditional demographic of  family decision-makers – housewives. But you would have to select your media very carefully and be prepared for Lynx / Axe type backlash. More related content here.

    More information

    Double Slip: Controversial Korean Oreo Ad Leaked – ABC News

  • Instagram and Facebook

    I started posts on the Facebook acquisition of Instagram a number of times but got nowhere, so I thought I would collect up some of them thoughts and put them here. So here are some of those random thoughts:

    • Instagram and Facebook are very different types of social network. Instagram seems to tape into a latent passion for us to be creators, it came up with an application that flatters us into thinking that we may have a good eye for photography. Facebook is much more about gathering and sharing humint with their loose network, a poorly designed address book and an event organisation platform
    • Instagram and Facebook have very different design philosophies. Instagram is much more of a traditional web 2.0 firm. It’s product does one thing very well and makes the complex simpler for the consumer. Facebook’s user experience is well shit. This is probably for a number of reasons:
    1. Facebook has a culture were engineering trumps design rather than the two disciplines been seen as equal partners like say Apple
    2. Competition – Facebook has evolved from its original mission adding additional features as it was threatened by different platforms: notably Twitter. But the user experience hasn’t scaled as well
    3. Monetisation – Facebook has been working hard to monetise its business with its advertising units, but you need content to advertise against. Much of the design is about wringing content out of consumers (and then having the opportunity to sell inventory against it)
    4. Privacy – In order to get the humint to share with audiences, Facebook needs to strike a balance keeping the law and privacy advocates at bay whilst making it sufficiently difficult that consumers don’t lock down their data and consequently constrict advertising opportunities
    • An extension of the design difference between Instagram and Facebook makes me wonder about how long the Instagram talent will actually stay at Facebook beyond any lock-in period? I am making assumption that the deal was at least partly motivated by the Instagram’s team expertise in mobile service development and that would be dependent on retaining the talent.
    • Talent retention is also critical if Facebook acquired Instagram as a defensive play like it did with Octazen. In this case Facebook would be looking to lock up talent for as long as they could.
    • 1 billion dollars in shares isn’t as expensive as 1 billion dollars in cash; consequently the cost is probably relatively cheap for Zuckerberg. Think of it this way – how real is the money that you make when the value of your house goes up or down until you actually come to sell the house? Cisco was a past master at large share-only purchases when it was a hot stock. This hasn’t impacted Facebook’s cash-flow, but it has shaken the institutional investors looking at Facebook’s IPO. Again this doesn’t really matter to Zuckerberg because Facebook shares will sell anyway because of the heat around the company. Zuckerberg has less to lose than the Cisco team did because of the way that Facebook’s voting stock is structured allowing its CEO to retain power
    • It used to be that there were a number of start-ups whose business model was to sell themselves on to a large dominant industry player. Over time the industry player changed: Cisco, Microsoft, Google but the business model remained constant. I expect the new target acquirer to be Facebook as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists dream of a quick buck rather than building something great
    • 10 years from now, I still don’t know whether we will be looking back on the Instagram acquisition as being a similar folly to Yahoo!’s purchase of Broadcast.com now looks in hindsight. On one hand I feel confident because of the deal structure being in Facebook shares, and the price being small in comparison to the current notional value of the Facebook business. But for the reasons I have outlined above I am less convinced in terms of long-term fit with the business and relative importance of Instagram
    • Instagram were right to say yes. The timing couldn’t have been better, on the one hand in the short term Instagram is growing fast; its move on to the Android platform previously being an iOS-only application. In retrospect, this looks like Instagram moving from early adopter usage to early majority service users. At the same time a number of services are now integrating Instagram-type filters into their mobile applications, one of the examples I use is Tencent’s Weixin (WeChat) application, so it could be rapidly becoming a feature rather than a reason for purchase

    More related content can be found here.

  • Bob Barker interviews….

    Bob Barker is a client that I worked with on nascent digital work for RFI Studios. Bob worked as the CMO of Alterian. Alterian started off in customer experience management, they did a series of acquisitions when I worked with them including Mediasurface the CMS company. The company was acquired by SDL and some part of it was sold on to private investors.

    Recording
    Flip video camera

    Bob decided to delve into social media and understand it as a marketer. The Flip Video camera which includes basic software inspired him to do video content. Bob had a ‘Gorilla tripod‘ for the Flip and the lighting was just done with daylight. I did an interview with Bob Barker for his blog last week, you can read his take on things on his blog.

    I realise that we talk through a number of social platforms, so here is a list of what I use:

    • iMessage – though I have found it to be flaky
    • Skype
    • Fastladder.com for RSS feeds. I am currently experimenting with FavShare as a Fastladder client on my iPad and iPhone which started after my interview with Bob
    • Pinboard.in for social bookmarking
    • IFTTT to syndicate content
    • Microblogging: I use the Twitter client on my Macs at home, and m.twitter.com on my iPhone. I use Weibo’s iPhone client and WeiLark for the Mac to post on my Sina.com Weibo account, rather than Sina’s sluggish web interface
    • I use Kakao Talk and Tencent Weixin (WeChat) social messaging clients on my iPhone. The international versions of these tools don’t have all the features the local ones.

    I use a mix of technology:

    • MacBook Pro
    • Dell 22 inch widescreen display
    • MacBook Air
    • iPhone
    • iPad
    • Samsung feature phone with dual SIMs

    The video is on YouTube so may not be available to all readers. You can find Bob’s video channel here.