More about the project:
http://sonjahinrichsen.wordpress.com/snow-drawings-rabbit-ear-pass-co-sunday-jan-29-2012/

Source: Colossal
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/02/snow-drawings-at-rabbit-ears-pass-by-sonja-hinrichsen/

20 hz

“Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception.”

More about the project:
http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/root/20Hz/20Hz.htm

Created for Invisible Fields exhibition:
http://www.lighthouse.org.uk/programme/invisible-fields

Source: yummie.hu
http://yummie.hu/archives/2011/10/23/20-hz/

Compressed 01

Compressed 02

Via The Daily What

This clock by Christiaan Postma consists of more than 150 separate clocks, each of them playing a role in a hybrid typographic/hand device to tell what time it is.

Christiaan explains the concept:
The word “three” completely appears when it’s exactly 3 o’clock and will then transform again as time passes. The word “four” begins to appear and at exactly 4 o’clock the word “four” is clearly visible. The word “three” is by then totally vanished and no longer readable.


Hard to visualize? Watch the accelerated animation below to see how it works.


Via Lunch-url

The Lytro light-array camera features a plenoptic sensor which collects directional data that allows software to recognize when objects are on different planes. This makes it possible for the audience to manipulate depth of field by just clicking on the part of the image they want to focus on. Don’t believe me? Try for yourself:

Click anywhere on the pictures below to change focus..

Crazy, right? This may just spoil some of the art of taking great pictures, but think of the possibilities on the publishing side!

Haven’t seen enough?
Take a look around the extensive
lytro.com picture gallery.

where | Grand Palais
what | Leviathan by Anish Kapoor

Titles like 200 prepared dc-motors, 2000 cardboard elements (2011) and 121 prepared dc-motors (2011) may be factually descriptive but you need to watch the video to see what they mean.

Zimoun : Compilation Video V2.8 | Sound Sculptures & Installations from ZIMOUN VIDEO ARCHIVE on Vimeo.

VIA BLDGBLOG

Trying to find out how to manually adjust shutter speeds on my camera, I messed up some settings. All photos came out overexposed.

When I tried to save some of the images it turned out that they worked a lot better in black and white, but I then I was sad to see the lovely orange and yellow details go lost. So I fixed it.

Activation
“Please place a valid sim without PIN code to activate the iPhone.”
I’m sorry? I got this sim from my telco and it has a PIN code by default. This can’t be right?

“This sim is PIN locked. Install a newer version of iTunes and reconnect your iPhone.”
Alright, If you say so.

“This version of iTunes (10.0.1) is up to date.”
What? Then why did you just tell me to update to a newer version!?

Never mind, let’s just use a proven Windows technique to work around failing software. If at first you don’t succeed, reboot.

“Congratulations, your iPhone is unlocked.”
Hurray! Now let’s get to w..

*pop* “Mobile data not..” *pop* “Welcome to FaceTime, your provider may..”*pop* Something commercial *pop* Something technical *pop* “PDP identity not accepted.”
Wait, what?
Popups fall over each other at a rate of 1 per second. How am I supposed to read all that? Of course iOS doesn’t have popup history so I’m five seconds into my unlocked iPhone and I’ve already missed three important messages. Uh oh.

Contacts
First things first, let’s get my contacts into my phone. It’s easy. Just add a Microsoft Exchange account with Google account settings, and watch the contacts sync to the iPhone. At least this works. Finally the Apple feeling. Thanks to Google. And Microsoft.

Time to go, let’s hit the road. The first test of my frequent usecase scenario’s: stereo bluetooth music, internet, ebooks.

Bluetooth stereo
After I had to return one of my earlier phones with a broken headphone jack I bought my first bluetooth stereo headset. After that I couldn’t go back. It’s great not having to fiddle around with headset wires when listening to music and taking your mobile out of your pocket to do check your mail or read an ebook. Exactly the thing you’d expect Apple to care about, but they took a long time to get A2DP right.
But now it just works. My old Sony headset connects without problems. Great! But it does seem to have problems with the distance between trousers and headset. Music chops up when the connection struggles. I hope this doesn’t mean that I’m going to have to move the phone around from trousers to coat and vice versa. Wireless isn’t so wireless at all with this iPhone4. That’s a bit of a drawback.

“PDP identity not accepted.”
My first iPhone traintrip is effectively offline because the iPhone doesn’t seem to be configured automatically. Some provider settings need to be entered manually, apparently so after every iOS update.

eBooks
No internet so let’s take it offline: Stanza is the eBook reader of choice, connecting to a number of online libraries. Finding books is easy, downloading works like a charm, however to my surprise some services don’t allow downloading books outside the USA.
After some configuration of colors, font and lay-out, the app looks good to go.

Safari
First verdict: not good. Safari feels crammed up and clumsy compared to Opera Mobile 10. I miss fullscreen browsing. The topbar, the location and search bar and the bottom bar eat up way too much of the iPhone’s screen, which is small enough as it is already. Safari doesn’t seem to handle css and javascript as well as Opera does. Animations are (very) choppy, absolute positioned bottombars end up in the middle of the screen, on top of the content.

And I miss the 4.3″ screen of the HD2. The iPhone’s Retina Display backfires when displaying text: it’s either too small to read or line length is too short, which makes reading uncomfortable with too few words on each line. The HD2 was perfect for portrait reading, the iPhone4 really doesn’t feel comfortable unless rotated to landscape view. I didn’t see this coming.

On the positive side: I was pleasantly surprised with the way Safari handles embedded YouTube video. Sure, I played around with flash on the HD2, but it was a bit of  a chore to get it to work, and there was no fallback mechanism. Safari just shows a ‘player’ which links to the YouTube app. Cool.

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So far for now..

Next: bluetooth multiplayer games.

…
“Really? You!? You weren’t joking?
Well, you’re in for a pleasant surprise!”

..people told me, not knowing the first thing about windows mobile. iPhone users have this faith in its superiority, much like many Mac users just know that their system is better than anything else. I’ve used both long enough to know that both have their flaws. But who am I to spoil their party. Ignorance is bliss.¹

As a designer I agree, Apple has always been ahead in style. As a user I’m not so sure. My long-time experience with both systems is that one isn’t better than the other, they just give you different problems. But choose carefully: run into trouble with Windows and everybody knows what you’re talking about, but if your Mac fails the problem must be you. ¹ ²

Why change now?
Because let’s face it, what does the iPhone4 have that the HD2 doesn’t? 960×480 Retina display? I’ve had 800×480 screens for almost two years now. ‘Retina’ just means smaller, and not necessarily better. 5mp camera? Bluetooth Stereo? Been there. 1Ghz processor? Done that for the last 7 months.

In fact, hardware has been the main reason not to buy an iPhone. Apple has always been conservative in the iPhone’s hardware specs. But at this moment they are on par. 1Ghz is the standard today, 5mp is enough for a mobile camera, and Apple finally seems to have finished BlueTooth Stereo support. If I ever want to try an iPhone without giving up too much on hardware specs, this is the moment.

Why this post?
The reason why I’m writing this down is because the design approaches are so totally different that it has been hard to find the definitive answer to the question: which suits me best? I’m just plain curious for my own user perspective. The little surprises, the small annoyances, everything that stands out from what I expected it to be. So what are my expectations?

Keyboard
Let’s start with the bad parts. One thing that I know is going to hurt is the keyboard. For example: entering my password on my HD2 takes 8 keystrokes, on the iPhone’s lay-out it takes 14(!). And iOS needs it every time you install an app. Of course I know what they’ll say: “Change your password”.

Secondly: what’s with the capitals? Why the lack of capslock feedback on an onscreen keyboard so you keep having to take your fingers away to glance at the shift key? Was it developed on Caps Lock Day?

Thirdly and lastly: I’m going to miss the HD2′s little force feedback buzzes on keypress. Yeah yeah “Turn on the keyboard clicks”. Well rest assured, I’ll spare everybody that annoyance and type silently.

Battery life
This hasn’t been an issue since I started ordering one extra battery with every new phone I bought. As a power user I needed them too. I’ve seen the iPhone4 battery cases, the solar chargers and the compact recharging accus, all of which are at least four times bigger and four times more expensive than the extra batteries I used to order for my WM devices. Not good.

iTunes
After living in the cloud for the last couple of years, wirelessly synching not only mail, but also appointments, contacts and media between my HD2, my PC and my online services, I’m not looking forward to being (cable-)chained again. To one computer. With iTunes.

Overall costs
In the last seven years I must have spent around 85 euros on windows mobile applications for which there were no free alternatives around. The average App Store application may only cost $1.99, but I’m not sure if I’m going to last 7 years on the same budget, even if I restrain from buying novelty apps.
Of course I’ve already paid twice that amount extra for the iPhone4 handset than I did for the HD2 seven months ago. Again, hardware specs really don’t differ that much, and seven months is half a lifetime in mobile gadget years. This is going to hurt.

Camera
On the positive side there’s the iPhone4′s 5mp camera which seems to make better shots than its one year old competitor from HTC. Granted, I’ll need a custom camera app to take panorama shots (default on the HD2) but they also offer a number of special effects that just wasn’t available on the HD2.

Video
Another thing that I look forward to is the quality of video apps. Microsoft dropped the ball in that department, and developers had too many types of handsets to develop for. The UG player for windows mobile was nothing less than an insult, with stamp sized video in the middle of the 4.3″ screen. The iPhone version is tailormade for the hardware and much, much better. I never put much time in setting up pod- and vodcasts on my HD2, but even if I would have I doubt that it would be as good as on iOS.

Augmented reality
Augmented reality never really took off in Windows Mobile. For a large part due to hardware compatibility issues. Too many handsets, too many standards. I can’t wait to fiddle around with Layar and similar stuff that never grew up in Windows Mobile.

Other apps
There’s an app for that, they say. Well, bring ‘em on! Anything from home streaming to home automation, navigation, social and leisure apps. Let’s see what you got to offer that I can play with like I played around with all kinds of experiments on my HD2 – including Android ROMS etc.

.

..fight!

Cover me I’m going in! How will iOS4 match up to Windows Mobile 6.5? How will the iPhone4 do vs. the HTC HD2? I’ll keep you posted!

> WM user meets iOS

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And what about you?

Do you have an iPhone? Do you still remember what you expected to get? Where did it let you down, and what was better than you could have ever imagined?