Following on the heels of a story in NYT here, I made a few changes, added the Flyover States video, and a random function to load a few images at launch. Yes I had to do a lot from scratch because blah blah blah Flash CS3 is not Flash CS4. Its 2:35am…Just pay for a site is my advice…

Back in the day story #16734: Encounter with Dan Winters. Shooting his opening at Saba Gallery for InStyle. (that will date this story…) Making sure to get pics of Sandra Bullock, and that guy in Speed 2. Whatshisname. Not really what I do. It was a hurricane outside, literally. But that did not stop Dan’s Fans from coming out. Obviously it speaks to how much people like this guy.

I thought of all this after reading about his new Aperture book here and the process of making it, the little cutouts, moving things by hand. (via Rob)

The other desktop

And all this relates back to-running-yes. I bought the book at the opening and indicated the picture I liked most, Dan explained that he was on a job somewhere and got up early to wander around the downtown to make some pictures. So that is how he signed it, “To Robert- Get up Early- Dan Winters”

This is week One of Sixteen in Marathon training. Gonna hafta get up early.

Here are a few different concepts for ebook readers, mine on the lower left, essentially a larger iPhone, Classicapp, available now for the iPhone, Greg Raiz’s concept for a resdesign of Kindle (via daringfireball.net) with less clutter, and Plastic logic, currently vapourwear but who knows.

It is interesting to read the comments on Greg’s redesign and what is argued over, colour vs. not colour, keyboard vs. not keyboard. etc. We are all very concerned with how the object is the make or break aspect of reading books and magazines on an electronic device. My last post also focused on the importance of the feel of the object, how Apple gets form factor right. (sometimes)

The more I look in to this however, (being a blog I have spent, oh, probably 10 minutes but who is counting?) the more I see a glaring issue that is probably the single biggest obstacle-format wars. Consider how many different formats and ways we have of representing text and images on screen, html, pdf, text, Word, ePub, eReader format, whatever form of DRM Amazon is using, etc. We haven’t even begun to develop the marketplace for electronic reading and already it is balkanized. 

You thought it was hard for Apple to get some sort of consensus from the music labels for the iTunes music store, this is more of the same. Amazon perhaps has the headstart now with two versions of the Kindle and their massive catalogue behind them. But don’t be fooled by the device. The device is critical, but the format is where the real money is. 

You will probably see the entire magazine and newspaper publishing industry go down in flames before you will see a consensus on how to deliver the product to a handheld device. A magazine publisher would do well to throw in with someone soon, although there is no real competition (Apple, where are you?-SJ famously said he was not interested in the market because no one reads anymore. I hope he was being disingenuous). 

You could envision a bundle where the reader is subsidized by the publisher, buy a Kindle and get to select from a few magazine subscriptions to get you started. Here is Popular Mechanics and oh, by the way, the entire archive going back to 1945 is there too. Vogue back to 1935. I think the obstacles are probably not what we think they are. All of this eInk technology hubbub is a tempest in a teapot. We already read more from LCD’s than paper. I believe the eInk thing is a canard. “Market Research” said that people don’t like reading online but the question is more about typography, presentation, and screen resolution. We now have small hi resolution devices that are more than adequate for reading. It will get better. This is not the issue. Bandwidth, there is a real issue, 3G is the bare minimum and laughable that North America is still stumbling along with this. Blame your phone, cable and internet provider. Detect a pattern here from my last post?

There is a great opportunity here that is going a begging and we are  not arguing over the right issues. Format, DRM, Service.

Publishers, get on board while you still have staff left to publish…

A new feature here, screenshot. Just what I am working on at the particular time. This is a group of corporate portrait outtakes for the Assignment section on my website.