One more quickie...

In a 180 degree turn from the frivolity of my post 90 minutes prior, I feel obligated to pass along a link of this absurdly cool design work that has been done for mobile devices.



Oh, MAN, do I ever want a gadget that will do that kind of stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I really like my cell phone, and when I used a PDA during grad school, I thought it amazing. My iPod is really great, as was my old mp3 player. But no matter how great these gadgets are, being able to have my devices tell me information without actually looking at any of them… I’m sold.

Different, novel, and most importantly, USEFUL interface enhancements are something that just gets my juices flowing. Anything that gives me a way to filter the huge quantities of data I ingest daily, that gives me a way to not worry about routine tasks, I will just eat alive.

It is for this reason, more than any other, that pushes me away from amazon.com’s most recent device, the Kindle. Despite being a huge book fanatic who looses all sense of control at the thought of a device with this kind of battery life, this kind of storage capacity and this kind of portability, just gave a big ‘Meh’ when Bezos announced his new toy. The device just looks like something out of a 70s sci-fi show. It has keys, something you don’t see on any book, anywhere. I know it would decrease the battery life, but slap an iPhone style virtual keyboard on there, expand the screen out to cover most of the device and remove those horrible looking angled sides and you might convince me that the design itself was at least something noteworthy.

True, it still has a lot of issues with actual usage, but at least the design would be credible. Bezos, if you’re listening, take a look at the above video. Add an accelerometron to the device and allow me to 'shake’ Kindle 2.0, like I did with my Etch-a-Sketch to turn it off and back on. Then you might begin to win me over. Ditch the EVDO connection for WiFi and then I’ll really be on board.