Rolandt

Matt McFarland, CNN, Aug 22, 2016

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I've predicted on numerous occasions that data from our everyday life will be used to assess performance, instead of tests or assignments. It's a simple example here but illustrative: by using data from your smartphone programs can determine whether you're a good driver. For example, "access to whether or not you regularly slam the brakes is something that can help predict how safe a driver you are. Drivers who regularly brake hard are likely struggling to anticipate what lies ahead, making them more at risk for a mishap." The flip side here is that insurance companies are now requesting this data in order to determine how much to charge you. Should we be required to hand over this data?

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Images courtesy of the artist

Using the image of a woman murdering her husband as a means to address gender imbalances could definitely be a jarring choice, but throw in some goofy animation and it becomes a lot more palatable. This is the route that artist Adrita Das has taken as she's pushed for the rights of women and the LGBTQ communities in her home country of India.

By creating clever GIFs and Photoshopped artwork of women stomping out oppressors and enjoying themselves publicly without judgement, she's sneaking her ideals into the public mindset. Her most popular series is Gods Taking Selfies, which features Hindu and Buddhist deities (and pop royalty from the subcontinent) gleefully snapping pics of themselves and their friends.

The imagery draws on centuries of Southeast Indian visual language, and nothing is off limits. Traditional Indian movements like Warli and Madhubani are thrown in the mix with local advertising styles and portraits of psychedelic pop stars. The result is a crash course in religion, art, and politics that puts women at the forefront for the Age of the Feed.

"In a country like India, even acknowledging misogyny and patriarchy in everyday life is a task, since a lot of people would much rather carry on with the status quo," Das tells The Creators Project. "However, I feel that instead of throwing big words or opinions at people (which generally agitates them), subtly planting the idea through artistic interventions may go a long way." It also helps, she adds, to create work you believe in.

Based in Pune, India, a city outside of Bombay, Das' work is steeped in local culture, and as such, it gets more attention from those familiar with and engaged in it. But quality work is quality work, which means that attention to her art has bled beyond her borders into the global community.

"Over the past few years, I’ve found that the West is genuinely fascinated by how starkly different South Asian scriptures and iconography look," the 24-year-old artist explains. "I try to keep my content as universally relevant as possible, and sometimes have to stop myself from making esoteric jokes."

The religious community hasn't entirely gotten the joke, however, and there was something of a backlash, mainly from right-wing Hindu groups who felt that Hindu Gods taking selfies was in some way disrespecting the community. She points to this blog post as an example, finding some humor in it at the same time. Although she considers herself an atheist, she does not mean to disrespect those who are not. "I have a longstanding fascination and respect for religion," she says. "It has grown to be such a comprehensive phenomenon that affects all our lives so deeply."

"The overarching message usually is to not take ourselves too seriously," she continues. In a sense, the humor is a message in itself, and more than just a medium. There is, after all, truth in jest.

For more of Des’s work check her Behance profile here.

Related:

Sculptures and Collages Explore Indian Womanhood

Independent: Laura Callaghan's Illustrated Women

An Augmented Reality Superheroine Is Fighting the Social Stigma of Rape in India

Vancouver Bike Share @mobi_bikes
Now available: Mobi day passes and monthly passes! Check out our day pass how to videos below! youtube.com/watch?v=gdHqeU…

Work in progress, Industrial Avenue at Station St, near Main & Terminal

Vancouver Mural Festival details.

I’m unconvinced of the familiar “designers must code” refrain. Sure, some designers need to code—just to get closer to their materials. (For example, if you create data visualizations, you probably want to turn the knobs for yourself.) That said, this unilateral belief that all designers must code seems simplistic. First off all, both coding and design are deep practices. Being strong in both seems improbable.

I’m not the band

A lot of designers who code are neither great designers nor great programmers. (Admittedly, there are some exceptions.) For most, though, it’s better to collaborate with a good coder. I have a bias to this approach, as it’s what I’ve done, with my friend Eric Shelkie. Our collaboration works well as it allows us to best utilize our strengths while distributing our learning and workload.

If I were forced to use a metaphor, I’d compare what we do to being in a band. Sure, either of us could probably learn to play the guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards. But, I doubt either of us would be great at any of them. (There are only so many people like Prince in this world, and neither Shelkie nor I possess such genius.) At the same time, an appreciation for other instruments, roles, or skills is beneficial. This sort of understanding helps us play well together.

Cross-training

I suppose appreciation/understanding isn’t the only benefit of learning indirectly related skills. The most important one is in broadening one’s outlook—and this makes you a better designer. (Designers who only talk about design tend to make boring work.) We see the same in sports. To get better at your chosen one, you might take part in other ones. In doing so, you work muscles you otherwise wouldn’t. This approach also helps you escape the doldrums of doing the same thing day in and day out.

As an aside, design is in a weird place these days. On one level, we have designers who make pretty things (see Dribbble). I fear that this results in a whole class of tragically myopic designers who mostly just imitate one another. It’s a kind of visual masturbation that might feel good, but is only about one’s self. On another level, we have the “design thinkers” who seem happy to attend conferences and speak about design in the abstract.

This latter group is as self-serving as the former, but in a notably more deluded way. While their counterparts are happy to spend their days polishing their work; those in the latter group seem to truly believe they can “save the world” with design. (Oh, brother.)

What drives the work

The more we talk about the aura (for lack of a better word) of design, the less action-oriented we seem to be. (I worry that I too am guilty of this.) What I’m trying to get at, is that the act of making/designing is infinitely more compelling than our discussions about the nature of design. If you’re a designer, you know how right I am in this assertion. We fell in love with this work because of the creation. In comparison, the debate over whether we’re product designers, UX designers, or whatever-other-label, seems dull.

Part of the challenge designers face relates to perspective. The dribbble-focused designer gets too close; meanwhile, the “save the world with design” designer is too far removed. None of this has much to do with actually producing good design. To get closer to the making, we need to focus intently on the task at hand. This requires us to gain understanding of our users/clients actual obstacles and needs.

Design isn’t about the designer. It’s not about the dialogue surrounding the profession. It’s not about what others call us. Design is essentially about marrying purpose and form. And that purpose component is missing from far too many design solutions. This is because the wrong desires (e.g., winning an award, peer admiration, or building a portfolio) get in the way. The principle concern for the designer must be in facilitating a suitable outcome.

Why marketing is so darned important

The phrase, “I don’t do marketing,” is spoken by many designers. I’ve probably said it myself. And I get it. It’s challenging, and difficult to quantify. It can also feel cheap—like a form of trickery. That doesn’t make it any less necessary, though. In fact, I say the vast majority of designers would be just fine if they never learned a line of code, and instead started thinking like marketers.

Perhaps this seems contradictory, given all I note about collaboration. Fair enough, but I’m not proposing you become a marketer. Instead, I believe you can benefit by learning how to think like one. Good design is found in the end product—but it’s not limited to that. That end product is the culmination of many conversations, debates, and revisions. The question is: What’s directing those conversations, debates, and revisions? For many, the answer is a gut feel, internal power-structures, or some silly trend. (Not one of these is a suitable answer.)

Designers need to think like marketers because doing so breaks our siloed mindsets. It forces us to ask questions like: Who needs, or will use, this? Where are they, and what are they using instead? Why does what we’re making matter to them? How will we get them to care? What will we do if no one pays us any attention? …and so on. I’ve watched designers obsess for days over a typeface, without knowing the answers to any of the above questions. This is a travesty. Good design requires all those big questions to be sorted out, so the smaller—more detailed—decisions are made appropriately.

A beautiful marriage

More than anything, I want to impress upon you the notion that design and marketing are two sides of the same coin. Designers who think marketing is the domain of “someone else” relegate themselves to the role of craftspeople. For some, this is fine, but it generally involves acting on instructions provided by others. I believe this is an unnecessary limitation of a designer’s skills.

I spent part of last week canoeing in Algonquin Park. Knowing I’d have some time to relax, I brought along Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw. The book is a collection of selected articles from The New Yorker. The first article in the book centers on Rob Popeil, and his kitchen inventions. You’re probably smirking at this reference, but I assure you, this piece is worth a read.

Following is one notable passage from this essay. I believe it argues my points above more convincingly than I can.

If Ron had been the one to introduce the VCR, in other words, he would not simply have sold it in an infomercial. He would also have changed the VCR itself, so that it made sense in an infomercial. The clock, for example, wouldn’t be digital. (The haplessly blinking unset clock has, of course, become a symbol of frustration.) The tape wouldn’t be inserted behind a hidden door–it would be out in plain view, just like the chicken in the rotisserie, so that if it was recording you could see the spools turn. The controls wouldn’t be discreet buttons; they would be large, and they would make a reassuring click as they were pushed up and down, and each step of the taping process would be identified with a big, obvious numeral so that you could set it and forget it. And would it be a slender black, low-profile box? Of course not. Ours is a culture in which the term “black box” is synonymous with incomprehensibility. Ron’s VCR would be in red-and-white plastic, both opaque and translucent swirl, or maybe 364 Alcoa aluminum, painted in some bold primary color, and it would sit on top of the television, not below it, so that when your neighbor or your friend came over he would spot it immediately and say, “Wow, you have one of those Ronco Tape-O-Matics!”
—The Pitchman

Post script

This is probably the last of this sort of article I’ll write, for a good while. There’s plenty of commentary out there about what designers should/shouldn’t do, and I’m not convinced that I’m contributing anything particularly useful to it. Instead, I’m going to go a little narrower and focus on a topic I find more interesting.

A lot of us are making things—or want to make things—of our own. The tough part in doing so often revolves around how to get anyone to care (in other words: marketing). So, for the foreseeable future I’m going to think and write more about identifying purpose, communicating values/ideas, building things, and making meaningful connections.

Story by James Williams

The Bullitt might be gaining attention wherever it goes for its unusual style. However, ever since people first began trying to invent bicycles, there have been several interesting contraptions created. Some of these date back to one of the first bikes ever constructed, the penny farthing. Of course others still were created by much more modern minds.

It seems that no matter how long the bicycle has been around for, some feel as though there is always room for improvement.

If you need further proof take a look at some of the most incredible machines described on this image by the cycling website Cykelvalg.

Graphic by Mads Phikamphon

There are a few who bear a resemblance to the Bullitt although considerably less streamlined in design.

The Christiania bike and the Long John were specifically created to haul things around from one place to another. There are some other bikes that seem to have a less obvious role to play such as the aptly named Stoopid Tall bike. Here, the rider sits aloft a fifteen foot machine that can actually be ridden. Some of the other bicycles are also as macabre although certainly noteworthy.

The inventors of these machines have taken something as simple and ordinary as a bike and made it a sight to behold. While you may not see one of these being ridden down your street, it is still a wonderful feeling knowing that they are out there. It is also a treat for any bicycle enthusiast who wants to find out more about these fantastic machines.

About the Author:

James Williams is a bike engineer who has been in the bicycle designing industry for over a decade. James is fascinated by all bicycles and is an avid follower of new and innovating designs. He created this list as a way to share his interest in all of the macabre machines that various individuals have put together over the years.

This article first appeared in our Spring 2010 issue. You can order back issues here.

Camper Bike

Kevin Cyr paints and constructs RV-bike hybrids

Story by Leah Sandals

Many avid cyclists already feel like they live on their bikes but few have taken the idea as far as Brooklyn artist Kevin Cyr, who created a head-turning RV-bike hybrid in April 2008. Here, Cyr talks about China, Maine mill towns, Cormac McCarthy and other influences.

Where did the idea for your Camper Bike come from?

I was working for an artist who started doing a project in China, so I went over for work in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Right away, I was fascinated by China’s amazing bike culture. I used to be a bike messenger so I’ve been interested in bikes for a long time. What interested me in particular are Chinese bikes that have three wheels and a kind of flatbed. Working-class people make a living by carrying stuff on them: everything from refrigerators to televisions. I loved those bikes and their utilitarian aspects. Then, one day, I was eating breakfast outside a market, and it reminded me of camping as a kid. So I said, jokingly, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great to have a house on the back of that bike?” And I started doing sketches. How did your sketches turn into the actual bike? It evolved over a few trips. I’m primarily a painter, so I first thought of this as a drawing or painting project. But it seemed really hard to paint from concept and I thought, “I should just build this thing.”

How did people react when you tried your creation out in public?

The reaction was mixed. Some people didn’t notice, because there’s a lot of odd vehicles in China. But some people did make us stop for photographs. The camper was actually the most interesting part to a lot of people, because it was the least familiar. There’s not that much camping in China.

You’ve also made some lovely paintings of old delivery trucks and vans, a fact that some cycling activists might find surprising. What’s your response?

Those paintings of vans and trucks actually come from when I was a bike messenger in Boston. At that time, I started photographing old run-down cars and delivery vehicles I encountered on my routes. The common link was they were all really old working-class vehicles. I guess that’s my overall interest in some ways. I come from a small mill town in northern Maine.

More recently, you made a camper out of a shopping cart. Why?

The inspiration came partly from the Camper Bike and partly from The Road by Cormac McCarthy. In that book, they were pushing a shopping cart, another kind of very utilitarian vehicle. And because they were constantly looking for shelter, I thought I could make a Camper Kart. Again, I think it connects to my past, and to camping as a kid.

You also ended up making some nice paintings of the Camper Bike. Why was that important?

Well, the nice thing with the paintings was I was able to place the bike in a mountainous landscape. In Beijing there’s only city scenes, so the paintings and drawings allow me to put the camper-bike in different scenarios.

So what’s next for you and the Camper Bike?

Well, the bike is in China in storage right now. I hope to exhibit it in a gallery at some point. I’d also like to document travelling with the bike some more – I’d like to do a little mockumentary about travelling through China documenting people’s reactions.

kevincyr.net

As you may have noticed, Apple has been plastering billboards and magazine pages with photos taken by iPhones.

What you may not have 
noticed is that they’re all basically snapshots. The subjects are either 
landscapes or people five feet away. There’s not much freezing of motion, not much low light. That is, you won’t see many photos like
 these on a “Taken by iPhone 6” billboard:

And no wonder: Phone cameras can’t zoom. They don’t have manual controls. They don’t take interchangeable lenses. Their sensors aren’t big enough to freeze motion in low light.

In the last few years, a company once left for dead in the camera marketplace has come screaming back, eating Nikon’s and Canon’s lunches in certain categories of camera: Sony. Its magic formula: Stuff great big sensors into tiny little cameras. (If you care, here’s why that radical idea is so effective.) The one I’ve been carrying around for a couple of months, the flagship of Sony’s mid-size line, is called the a6300.

Now, this camera costs $1,150 with a lens. I know, I know: For that money, shouldn’t you be getting a bigger professional camera?

But that’s the fallacy of camera-size thinking. To many people, a smaller camera is more valuable than a bigger one, as long as they’re equally good at photos and videos. Miniaturization ain’t free.

The a6300 contains an APS-C sensor, shown here second from left (these are accurate relative to each other, but not actual size):

Bigger sensors are better. They make better photos and videos possible (better clarity, color, blurry-background effects, and so on).

If you can handle the concept of a coat-pocketable SLR that costs over a grand, you have a lot to look forward to. Here are some of the highlights.

World’s fastest focusing

The a6300 is the successor to Sony’s a6000, which Sony says is the best-selling mirrorless camera in history. (A mirrorless camera is just like an SLR, but smaller, because it eliminates the whole mirror/prism apparatus. Here’s a primer.)

Although the two cameras look nearly identical, there’s a lot of improvement under the 6300’s hood. Among the upgrades: The body is a magnesium alloy instead of plastic, and it’s dust- and weather-resistant. (I can confirm: the camera got plenty rained on when I filmed my kids enjoying a local lightning storm last week, and it didn’t mind a bit.)

There’s also a microphone input now, which is incredibly useful if you’re serious about video. (There is not, alas, a headphone jack, although you can buy an external mike that includes a headphone jack.) The optical viewfinder is spectacularly fast and clear.

The camera can record 4K video now, and it can also shoot ¼-speed slow-motion (that is, 120 frames per second — very rare in this price class). Here’s what it looks like to drop a head of garlic into a glass of water — first in real time, then in slo-mo:

But the biggest headline is the a6300’s insanely fast, sure focusing system. Sony claims this is the fastest-focusing camera on earth, capable of attaining focus lock in 1/20th of a second.

On the camera’s new 24-megapixel sensor, furthermore, there are 425 focus points.

Here’s a teachable techie moment: A focus point is a pair of pixels, two among the 24 million on a camera’s sensor chip. With phase-detection autofocus (the good kind), the camera figures out how to attain sharp focus by comparing the light striking a given pair of these special pixels. The more focus points there are, the smarter the camera can be about keeping a subject sharp as it moves. Most cameras in this price range have, say, 120 focus points. The Sony’s much denser array make quick work of tracking shots like these racing piggies (notice how they’re always in focus, even as they move, even though the foreground and background are both nicely blurred):

The quick focusing, subject tracking, and 11-shots-a-second burst mode all make the a6300 a sensational choice for action shooting, like sports.

Ditto for the smart-tracking mode; you get “only” 8 frames a second in this mode, but the camera can keep tracking a moving subject even if something passes between you and it.

The a6300 also an incredible video shooter. No, not many people have 4K screens on which to play back 4K video—but if you use the a6300 to film in 4K and then convert it to regular 1080p high definition, you benefit from sharper, better-looking results than if you’d shot at 1080p in the first place. (In fact, this camera actually captures 6K—that is, six times as much picture data as high-defintion video—which it then scales down to 4K for even better color and clarity.)

A note about lenses

The a6300 can accommodate a huge range of lenses — not just fit them, but autofocus them in a fraction of a second, too. That includes 34 of Sony’s E-mount lenses and, with a lens adapter, 37 of Sony’s A-mount lenses. And that doesn’t even include the compatible lenses from companies like Sigma and Tamron.

I even got to try out the a6300 with some of Sony’s new, top-of-the-line, top-of-the-price G-series master lenses. Wow.

(Examples: a lens that zooms from 24 to 70mm, with a constant aperture of f/2.8, for $2,200. Glorious. Or an 85mm non-zooming f/1.4 lens for astonishing portraits and luscious blurry backgrounds for $1,800. Yeah, gulp — but like I said: wow.)

Nits in the ointment

You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who will declare that any rival camera on earth produces better images and videos. The Sony a6300, for its size and price, rips apart anything else on the market.

So: Image quality, video quality, size, and price: A+. (I’ve posted the full-resolution originals of all photos in this review, plus a few more, right here, for your pixel-peeping pleasure.)

There is, alas, more to a camera than that, and people who’ve lived with the a6300 for a while have lists of legitimate complaints.

• The battery. This is not Sony’s finest moment. You get 350 shots per charge. That’s better than the older a6000, but nothing like the 1,100 shots of the rival Nikon D7200, or 960 shots on the Canon 80D. (You can operate the Sony while it’s plugged into power, but that’s only a partial solution.)
• The tilt screen. It looks great. But it’s not a touchscreen like the one on the Canon 80D, it doesn’t tilt down much, and it definitely doesn’t tilt and swivel to face completely forward.
• Overheating during video. When shooting 4K video, some a6300 owners say the recording shuts off after about 20 minutes of continuous shooting. (It’s not a problem when you’re shooting regular HD footage.) I never encountered that problem, which seems to arise more often if you’re shooting in direct sunlight on a hot day. But Google it for other people’s accounts, and some workarounds.
• “Jelly” rolling shutter effect. In the 4K modes, if you pan the camera sideways fast, your image can distort, wiggling as though it’s on Jell-O. This video shows the effect well. (Start at about 1:30 into the video.)
• Ergonomics. Frequent photographers complain a lot about the a6300’s control layout. On a “real” SLR, your right index finger rests on a front dial for quick aperture changes (forexample)—but on the a6300, that dial is on the back, so you have to shift your grip to turn it.
• Movie button. Then there’s the much-maligned Record Movie button, a tiny, lonely, indented button on the back-right corner of the camera. It’s nice to have a dedicated button like this, so that you can start filming no matter what mode you’re in—but when you’ve set the top mode dial to Movie mode, why can’t you use the shutter button to start and stop video, as you’d expect?

What really matters?

There’s no such thing as a perfect camera. You want better battery life and a better button layout? Then you’ll have to get a bigger, heavier camera. You want lower price? Then you’ll have to settle for a smaller sensor, and your photos won’t be as good.

For the advanced amateur, or for, say, the parent who wants to do the best job possible in capturing the kids’ golden first years, I’d think that stunning photo and video quality, compact size, astounding low-light capability, and insta-focusing on action would be some of the most important qualifications in a camera.

Obviously, the designers of the Sony a6300 thought so, too.

David Pogue is the founder of Yahoo Tech; here’s how to get his columns by email. On the Web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. He welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below.

Work in progress, Western Street at Industrial Avenue, near Main & Terminal.

Vancouver Mural Festival details.

At this point in the week, we've seen quite a few things on the internet while working on the computer. The Weekly Round Up is a few links we thought we'd share, some informative, some helpful, and some just for fun! 

Nearly every paragraph in this article had me shocked. The measures the countries around the world are taking to address pollution by cars is impressive. Government parties are confronting terrible air quality in major cities by considering laws such as banning private cars from city centers, or having rationing days based on your license plate number. Quite impressive especially when compared to the countries who are taking little to no governmental initiative on climate change. 

This Philadelphia-based company creates business appropriate shirts that are also functional for bike commuters. Read: their sweat-wicking materials allows you to show up to work dry and ready to get to business. 

Bikey Face is an artist and biker who produces hilariously accurate comics about her encounters while biking in Boston. She's clever and always gives us a laugh about the all too real and ridiculous circumstances that (mostly) car drivers put us (bikers) in. 

 Bicycling Mag breaks it down for you about whether To Wave or Not to Wave . A helpful article about how to interpret and handle interactions with a motorist when passing through an intersection on a bike. 

Lastly, take a bike tour of Mexico City with Coldplay! 

Work in progress, 5th and Main, City Centre Motor Hotel.

Vancouver Mural Festival details.

Writing Outside the Lines

Work in progress, Native Education College, 5th east of Main.

Vancouver Mural Festival details.

It's a few months now since I first read about the Großes Oldenburger Liegeradtreffen (big Oldenburg Recumbent Meeting). That this event was going to happen came at me from three directions at once: It was listed on the ligfiets.net website, and two friends who also had an interest (Theo who is local and Klaas who I know from Cambridge but who now lives in Oldenburg). Thanks to the Schengen

Work in progress, Broadway east of Main

Vancouver Mural Festival details.

Work in progress, Station and Southern St, near Main & Terminal.

Vancouver Mural Festival details.

Work in progress, Industrial Avenue at Station St, near Main & Terminal.

Vancouver Mural Festival details.

Postgres-BDR goes 1.0, MongoDB updates the stable and development branches, a look at Hexastores, Sophia's key/value storage gets rows, Go goes 1.7, PowerShell goes open source, Github makes page publishing easier, GnuPG gets fixed randomness, Apple talks Black Hat and the world of Wikipedia in a Wikiverse - All the links that have crossed Compose's content curators web filters this week - It's Compose's Little Bits.

Database-y

Postgres-BDR 1.0 - The 2ndQuadrant developers have announced Postgres-BDR 1.0, their multi-master bi-directional replication system for PostgreSQL. It's based on PostgreSQL 9.4.9 and is said to support up to 48 nodes. BDR has been the source for PostgreSQL enhancements like logical replication, replication slots and background workers, but the developers still have features in BDR they don't expect to see in PostgreSQL 9.6 or 10 and are pushing on with developing the next BDR, based on PostgreSQL 9.6.

MongoDB updates - The development only MongoDB 3.3 branch, which will become 3.4, has been updated with MongoDB 3.3.11. Interesting additions include wire protocol compression using Snappy for intra-cluster communications and an $bucketAuto stage for the aggregation framework. Meanwhile, MongoDB Inc have also rolled out MongoDB 3.2.9 in the current stable version of MongoDB with range of fixes.

Hexastores - An interesting data structure for representing graph data is the hexastore and one it turns out you can do in PostgreSQL rather neatly. As an added bonus there's a pointer to the paper on Hexastores and a link to Hexastores in Redis.

Sophia - Coming up on the Little Bits radar is Sophia - a RAM-Disk hybrid transactional key/value store. It's been about for three years and just got a new 2.2 release which adds row storage to its capabilities and a new storage architecture which claims O(1) complexity for read, writes and scans.

Developer-y

Go 1.7 - It's here! Go 1.7, with smaller executables and better performance in compiling and a bit of extra speed when running, has been released. The Go Vendor support (for handling external dependencies) is now locked in and the optional context package has proven so useful, it's now baked into Go's standard libraries net, net/http and os/exec. There's plenty more so head over to the release notes for the details.

PowerShell for all - Microsoft announced they have made PowerShell open source and then doubled down by releasing an alpha of their Linux and Mac OS X ports. PowerShell's thing is passing objects rather than character streams and strings through pipelines, making it easier to use when orchestrating automation or building configuration management. Don't expect it to become anyone's default shell on Linux in the near future, but there's some ideas in there worth checking out. Or you can read the inevitable frictions of when cultures collide.

Github for publishing - Github pages have been about for a while, but now Github have made it even easier to publish with simpler publishing process which lets you select the docs folder of a project to publish, rather than the entire repository. Now your code and documentation can live in the same repository - so one less excuse for not keeping the docs up to date.

Securit-y

GnuPG - The GnuPG project issued a fix when it was discovered that the libcrypt and GnuPG random number generator could be predicted after 4096 bits of output. The good news is apparently this is "unlikely" to weaken any keys generated, but it's also a reminder that random numbers are hard to make.

Apple's Black Hat - The video of Apple's unprecedented presentation of how they manage security across their cloud, given at Black Hat 2016, is now online and full of interesting security content.

Finall-y

Wikiverse - Bored of seeing Wikipedia in two dimensions with no allusions of travelling through a linked three dimensional universe of information? Then try Wikiverse.io where, although you'll max out currently at 5% of Wikipedia, your graphical travel through the data will be exquisite. It stands on the shoulders of many previous Wiki-visualisations but as we get better at managing information, we're getting better at rendering it too.

Did you know Compose is having a conference at the end of September? Check out the DataLayer conference before the Early Bird ends.

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I see opportunity but not without risk. 

• Lenovo is hanging on in the difficult markets that it serves, but I think there is an opportunity for it to be as creative in PCs as it has been in handsets.
• Q1 17A revenues / EBIT were US$10.1bn / $245m nicely ahead of estimates of $10.0bn / $167m.
• This was mostly driven by good profitability in PCs which chalked up 5.3% EBIT margins despite a 7% decline in revenues.
• Handsets increased their losses compared to Q4 16A as sales and marketing expenses have been increased ahead of the new models from Motorola (Moto Z and Moto Mods).
• Here, I am hopeful that these products will be reasonably successful as the Moto Z offers a lot of phone for a very reasonable price and Moto Mods is the most interesting iteration of modularity I have seen for a very long time.
• Motorola has crammed an Android device into a very thin package leaving space for a series of backs that magnetically attach to the device offering a range of functions such as camera, projector and high quality speakers.
• If these devices ship reasonably well, there should be a corresponding improvement in profitability that should be further augmented by steady cost reductions.
• All of Lenovo’s end markets are having a difficult year but Lenovo is continuing to do a good job at making the best of them.
• However, I think it could do more and I would like to see some of the creativity in Motorola spread to the other parts of Lenovo.
• The softest target is PCs where Lenovo’s strategy is to differentiate by addressing certain segments where there is growth such as tablet PCs, Gaming PCs and Chromebooks.
• Unfortunately, its tablet PCs are nothing more than laptops where the keyboard comes off and then instantly stops working.
• What Lenovo needs to do is to go further than even Microsoft and Huawei have gone and make the most of the fact that the laptop form factor is now obsolete.
• Having the keyboard and the screen physically separate allows for the vastly superior, much healthier desktop PC experience to follow the user out of the office.
• I have long argued that this offers the potential to create a 3 to 4 year replacement cycle where laptops are replaced with something that is just as powerful but offers a vastly superior user experience.
• The problem is that the PC industry has been selling laptops for 40 years and seems incapable of accepting the notion that there is now something much better on offer.
• This is the opportunity for Lenovo but it is not without risk, nor will it come cheap as users are even more oblivious of how the tablet PC can improve their portable computing experience.
• Consequently, I do not expect Lenovo to do down this road, but I believe that if it wants to see a return of growth and better than commodity margins, this is where it must go.
• Of all the PC makers, I find Lenovo to be one of the best run and most pragmatic, even if it is a little unimaginative.
• I would back it against almost any of the others.

I never thought I’d be shocked to see a counterfeit item, having browsed the wares of illicit street vendors everywhere from New York to Shanghai. But I was indeed amazed by what I encountered when I toured Southeast Asia earlier this summer: Bogus replicas of the Bose SoundLink Mini Bluetooth speaker clogged every market I visited in Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia.

Considering that the SoundLink Mini II is one of our current picks for the best portable Bluetooth speaker—a model so good, I bought the review sample even though I already have more than a dozen Bluetooth speakers—I couldn’t contain my curiosity. The fakes were as obvious as a cheap toupee, but I wondered how bad they could be, especially at a typical US-equivalent price of $12 to $15. That’s about 1/15 the cost of a real SoundLink Mini II. We’ve struggled to find recommendable speakers at that price. Could one of these bogus Boses really be a viable alternative to our favorite budget Bluetooth speakers?

The clerk at one of the stalls in Bangkok’s sprawling Fortune Town IT Mall immediately sized me up. When I asked the price of a phony SoundLink Mini, she insisted, “Oh, no, you want quality!” and attempted to step me up to a counterfeit JBL Charge selling for the equivalent of about $30. Happy that I impressed her as a discerning shopper but determined to buy the Bose, I picked one up for 450 Thai baht, or about $13.

(Incidentally, it isn’t illegal for US citizens to buy counterfeit items, but it is illegal to sell them.)

I could tell at a glance the speaker I’d bought was a counterfeit. Bose offers the real thing only in dark gray, while the counterfeit is blue. (Advantage: counterfeit.) While the genuine article has its jacks on the side, the one from the stall has jacks on the back. The fake adds a microSD card slot apparently intended for playing MP3s. (Advantage: counterfeit.) The knockoff also sports a USB Type-A jack, about whose function I can only speculate. Regardless, I could have told the difference even wearing a blindfold, because the real SoundLink Mini II is 77 percent heavier. (Advantage: counterfeit.)

When I tried mating the fake SoundLink Mini with my Samsung Galaxy S6, I got another surprise: an actual voice prompt coaching me through the process. Not bad for $13! Even better, the prompt was a female voice in heavily accented English. (Advantage: counterfeit.)

Things were looking bad for my SoundLink Mini II until I put the bogus Bose up against the $5,000 worth of test equipment I use for speaker reviews in audio-enthusiast publications. When I measured both speakers’ frequency response—the evenness with which audio gear reproduces various frequencies of sound—I noticed a difference. Ideally, a speaker’s response plot looks like a fairly flat line extending from the lowest bass notes up to the highest treble tones. That means no tones come across as emphasized or muted, and the sound is at least reasonably natural and full.

The real SoundLink Mini II produced a surprisingly flat response for a small Bluetooth speaker, with a bass range that extended down into the lowest notes of a cello. But the counterfeit had no bass at all—it could barely play the lowest note on a flute! It didn’t have much treble response, either, which meant that you wouldn’t be able to hear much of a singer’s whisper, a flutist’s breath, or a cymbal’s ring.

Of course, it’s no surprise that a $200 speaker beats a $13 speaker. I then wanted to find out how the counterfeit compared with other speakers in its price range, but every similarly priced Bluetooth speaker I had on hand lacked an audio input I could use for measurements. I did have a $30 speaker I could try, though: the Cambridge SoundWorks OontZ Angle 3. And as you can see in the graph above, the measurements of the OontZ Angle 3 easily outclassed those of the counterfeit Bose. So not only is the counterfeit no substitute for the real thing, it isn’t even impressive for its price.

Even after having measured the response of thousands of audio devices, I’m still reluctant to judge any item entirely by the graphs, so I sat down for a long listen to compare the counterfeit against the genuine article. It didn’t turn out to be a long listen, though.

I think the counterfeit might be the worst of the 200-plus wireless speakers I’ve heard. The sound was incredibly raspy and rough; even the smooth-voiced singer Holly Cole sounded like she had the flu. When I turned up the volume to play Mötley Crüe’s “Kickstart My Heart,” the sound distorted terribly, almost as if a tiny gnome had kicked in the speaker cones. Turning the volume back down didn’t improve the sound at all.

After a few more tunes, I started to think I’d had enough, but the speaker itself quit before I could turn it off, even though I’d been running it only long enough to do the measurements and to play a dozen or so of my favorite test tracks. I charged it back up and put it through the same battery-life test I do for all of our top picks. A mere 90 minutes later, the battery died. The shortest battery life I’d previously encountered in a portable Bluetooth speaker was five hours.

Even though the bogus Bose is an illegal device, produced in violation of intellectual-property laws, it feels unfair to judge such a speaker from my comfy living room in Southern California. It wasn’t made for me. It was really made for people in developing countries who would probably love to have a real SoundLink Mini II but who might never be able to save up $200 for one.

But even if your budget is under $20, you have much better options, such as the AmazonBasics Nano, which sounds pretty nice yet is much smaller—and splash-resistant, too. So if you find yourself in an exotic locale, facing piles of Bluetooth speakers at prices too good to be true … go for the wooden frog instead.

(Photos by Brent Butterworth.)

I was sick of advertising. This presented a sort of problem, as our studio was doing more of this type of work. We first pursued it hoping it would even out our cash flow. As we did, though, I realized how vast the gulf between design and advertising was. While design is about clarification, advertising often seems like a trick. I wanted nothing to do with it, any longer.

Truth be told, I was pretty burnt out in general. My role was less and less about the creative work I loved, and more about project management. Although I was capable in this capacity, it certainly didn’t make me happy. Nevertheless, there were 10 of us in the studio, and someone had to make sure jobs were completed as we’d promised.

I no longer looked to design annuals with awe. I wasn’t excited by new technologies. And I didn’t really care some new studio that was “breaking the mold.” Instead, I started asking myself questions: Why am I doing this? What do I want? Are the things I aspire to really worth the effort? All of this thinking led us to launch a side-project called Deliberatism.

Watch me mess this up

Deliberatism was a paradox. In it, I wrote about balance, while working 70 – 80 hour weeks. I lampooned advertising, while helping clients promote their brands. The weirdest part was in meetings with staff. In these I often talked about how fucked consumerism is—even though we were all working in a design studio. I’m sure some of those folks left for the day wondering what I was smoking.

There was no part of me that should have been running our studio at the time. There are plenty of good projects, clients, and pursuits—but in the state I was in, I could hardly see that. Truth is, I had already moved on to other things—even if my body was still in that physical space. Deliberatism was an effort to turn the ship—but a poorly executed one, and it resulted in a bit of a mess.

For a while, I thought we could feed Deliberatism with smashLAB revenues. I reasoned that as we gained momentum, we’d be able to do more with it. It didn’t work out that way, though. Although you can do two things at once, you can’t run in opposing directions. It’s just too discombobulating to switch gears in this way, on an ongoing basis.

Fallout

In the end, all I did was make a mess of things. The time we put into Deliberatism quickly drained studio funds. Meanwhile, my mindset left me ill-prepared to pursue new design gigs, which left the studio vulnerable to slow-downs. Worse yet, I introduced a lot of confusion for those who worked for us. This is a bad thing. If you run a company, you must lead—and I didn’t. Instead, I let my personal frustrations and exhaustion cloud my vision. I hired those people to work in a design studio, and then entangled them in existential questions they hadn’t signed on for. Bad Eric! Bad!

In the meanwhile, Deliberatism gained some interest, but floundered when studio tasks were more pressing. Studio work continued, but felt less inspired. This diminished morale, and left everyone wondering what we were actually doing. This isn’t how any operation should run. To do your work well—regardless of what you do—you must know your purpose. It’s this clarity that aligns efforts, builds energy, and fuels your pursuits.

This isn’t the first boneheaded thing I’ve done, and it won’t be the last. I share this story with you for one reason: so you can perhaps benefit from my misstep. I’ve talked to countless studio founders who are tired of services work, and want to build a product. If you’re one of these people, I urge you to carefully consider how you’re going to turn the ship.

Lessons learned

With every person your studio has on staff, changing course is more difficult. So, if your studio consists of one or two people, you can start transitioning to doing something else quite easily. However, those with 10 or 20 people are’t quite as well equipped.

This might seem counter-intuitive, as most would reason that a larger shop could reallocate 10% of their resources to such a project—and be fine. The real problem, however, is that overhead is so much higher in such businesses that they need to focus more on cash flow. I know of many small studios who’ve built a successful product. Those built by larger studios, however, are more often stillborn (launched with enthusiasm and fanfare, but abandoned due to limited uptake).

Of course, a smarter approach for most would simply be to determine what kind of a company you want to build—and to then build that. There’s nothing wrong with a services company, if you like running a services company. Meanwhile, a product company isn’t all cupcakes and daiquiris. So, if you’re early on in your business, think carefully about whether your personality is better suited to products or services.

If you already run a services-based shop, and want to make a change, I recommend a few tactics. First, plan on a longer build out schedule. If you drop everything to build a product, you’ll end up off kilter. So, take your time, and transition slowly. Avoid the impulse to leap, as doing so might later force you to correct course—and lose momentum. (The 30/30 principle might work for you.)

Also consider whether your services offering and product might be complementary. If this is the case, you can distribute your earnings sources, adding resilience to your organization. Even more importantly, this approach keeps you from splitting your focus (which, as I just illustrated, can be painful).

Whatever you choose to do, try to think through how it might all work. As you do so, give yourself little latitude. Few companies/projects are outright successes. By planning for low uptake, and even worst-case scenarios, you afford yourself more room to maneuver when obstacles arise.

Sometimes a simple, single-purpose utility makes all the difference. Feed Hawk by John Brayton of Golden Hill Software is exactly that type of app. The app’s functionality is encapsulated in a share extension that makes it easier to subscribe to RSS news feeds in several major RSS services, including:

• BazQux Reader,
• Feed Wrangler,
• Feedbin,
• FeedHQ,
• Inoreader,
• Minimal Reader,
• NewsBlur, and
• The Old Reader.

To get started with Feed Hawk, you need to subscribe to one of the RSS feed services listed above. Next, sign into your feed service in Feed Hawk (a 1Password link is helpfully included if you use that app) and activate the share extension. That’s all there is to it.

Using Feed Hawk's extension.

The Feed Hawk app can be used to add feeds to your service, but its real power is in the extension. If you visit a site with an RSS feed and tap the Feed Hawk extension, Feed Hawk will subscribe to the feed and display a confirming alert. If the site features multiple feeds, you can pick the ones you want before subscribing to them. If you revisit a site with multiple feeds that you already subscribe to, you can change your subscription selections. You cannot, however, unsubscribe to feeds using Feed Hawk if a site has only one feed to which you are already subscribed. Feed Hawk works with Safari, Chrome, and most third party iOS browsers.

Many people have replaced RSS with Twitter, Nuzzel, and other news gathering apps and services. I use RSS less than I used to, but I still think it’s the best way to scan a broader spectrum of headlines than I tend to discover in Twitter and Nuzzel. In the past, if I found a site that I wanted to add to my feeds, I’d have to go searching for Feed Wrangler’s JavaScript bookmarklet in my Safari favorites and using it would take me out of whatever I was reading to the Feed Wrangler website. Now, I can just tap the Feed Hawk extension and after a second or two be subscribed without losing my spot in the article I was reading. It’s a little thing, but Feed Hawk reduces a friction point that makes keeping up to date on the latest news a little easier.

Feed Hawk is available on the App Store for $2.99.

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Work in progress, Station and Southern St, near Main & Terminal.

Work in progress, Station and Southern St, near Main & Terminal.

Vancouver Mural Festival details.

Most collaboration problems are workflow problems.

An organisation tries to force employees to use tools outside of their regular workflow. The employees rebel. This ends up with some caving using the new system and others resisting clinging to the old system. The organisation gets the worst of both worlds.

A workflow is a routine of working. For most people, that workflow is still based around email. Email lets you communicate, prioritise tasks, share files, collaborate, and schedule activity etc. It’s not the best tool for any of these, but it’s simple, accessible, and highly adaptable.

You can get most of your work done without leaving a single window.

Don’t underestimate just how important that is.

Too often organisations find a better tool than email and decide to upgrade. Trello becomes the to-do list. GDrive is where you store files now. Slack is where you chat. Google Docs is where you collaborate on documents etc…

Now people who could have done everything in one window are jumping between several. That feels incredibly disruptive to getting work done.

The best collaboration practitioners out there know there are better platforms but realise that minimizing workflow disruption is usually key. You can make big changes with small groups or small changes with big groups but it’s hard to do big on big.

This is where you exercise creativity. Sometimes the solutions are dead simple. Nancy and I discovered one client’s employees were never going to visit a community to store knowledge. Instead we used a simple ‘cc’ address that filtered, tagged, and stored the knowledge for curation later. At FeverBee we would never get round to updating Salesforce, so we introduced an automatic BCC plugin for gmail. Other times we use tools like Zapier to stitch together specific sentences in Slack or instructions via email to update systems elsewhere (Salesforce, Trello, Mailchimp etc…). Again, keeping things in the workflow.

Understand that most collaboration problems are workflow problems. Either gradually help individual teams within the organisation make a big change or simplify the change for the entire organisation. Minimise the disruption to workflow by being creative and embracing integrative tools. It’s a lot easier to make improvements this way.

p.s. If you have the time, we would really appreciate learning how your team collaborates here.

 

To get on the world stage and show everyone that you can compete in the face of unbelievable real life adversity - I'm talking separation from family, escape from war zones, crossing the sea in a dinghy, growing up in a camp with very few resources, going to country after country where you don't speak the language -and then still having the grittiness and bravery to give it your all against athletes who don't have to deal with any of that! Truly incredible!@teamrefugees has something more than a gold or silver - they have the respect and admiration of refugees and sports fans and humanitarians all around the world! #root4refugees #yourule #thanxalot

A photo posted by 11th member of Team Refugee (@refugeeguy11) on

Aug 15, 2016 at 5:43pm PDT

Catastrophilia aside, the most fascinating part of the Rio Olympics is without a doubt the Refugee Olympic Team. Coming from Syria, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the athletes competing under the Olympic flag were brought together by the International Olympic Committee to raise awareness about the global refugee crises but to also act as heroes of hope and determination amidst unfathomable circumstances. As they share incredible stories of willpower and survival, the ten outstanding men and women have garnered much attention in the press, but when it comes to full-fledged support, one particular fan sticks out:

Meet @RefugeeGuy11, an unflappable Instagram and Twitter user who’s made it his personal mission to spread the gospel of his favorite olympians. The self-proclaimed “11th member of Team Refugee” has made handmade shirts, created a hand signal for fans of the team, designed a slew of misguided memes, and run his own swimming practice. His tweets and graphics are cringe-worthy—like when he tweeted repeatedly about being “totally confused about it being winter in Rio” and complained that he couldn’t sleep because he was worried no one would see his shirt designs—but when it comes to pluck, few fans compare.
 

 

One last pitstop before I have to leave #rio2016 such an amazing journey! So glad I got to support @teamrefugees - even tho I didn't meet any of them I know they felt my enthusiastic presence #root4refugees #olympicgames #christredeemer

A photo posted by 11th member of Team Refugee (@refugeeguy11) on

Aug 16, 2016 at 5:42pm PDT

But even though his Twitter, created a little less than a month ago, has only five followers (including us), and his social media skills leave quite a bit to be desired, @RefugeeGuy11, like his Olympics heroes, isn’t giving up. Posting new memes alongside videos of himself every few hour on Instagram, his commitment to the team is charming, if a little weird, and never less than inspiring. Apparently after trying to arrange corporate sponsorships for the team, the superfan traveled to Rio to get the message out about “Team Little R.” 

 

Boris Mann @bmann
Have an email address you use for company updates that forwards directly into your CRM. Instant news feed! #personalcrm

Renée Stephen @ReneeStephen
New rule: if there isn't a fully-realized female character in the first ~70pp of your new sci-fi or fantasy novel, I will stop reading.

Robert Costa @costareports
Huge rallies. Gloves off. Brutal fights with Clinton. Heavy emphasis on nationalism and populism. That's the Bannon strategy.