Bob Schwartz

Category: Technology

September 25, 2012

Diztronic: The Wonder Case for Smartphones


The world’s most advanced tech companies spend unlimited money and time to make sure your smartphone is as thin, light and beautiful as possible. And they have succeeded. The Samsung Galaxy S3, for example, is a work of practical art.

Then you put it in a box. An expensive box. As in, say, an OtterBox case.

You do that because you are human. And human beings have been known to drop or otherwise destroy five hundred dollar smartphones in the blink of an eye.

What was once sleek and sexy—but vulnerable—is now bulky and unattractive—but safe. It’s like the father who demands that his teenage daughter go out wearing a dumpy and loose-fitting dress that hides her arms, legs and everything else.

Then there is Diztronic.

Admittedly, the Diztronic cases do not include three or more layers of protection that some other overly-expensive body-armor cases offer. So if you know yourself to be dangerously clumsy or demand a case that will withstand an asteroid, you may have to live with your phone in a box.

But if you want to enjoy a more than reasonable amount of protection, be able to appreciate and enhance the beauty of your phone, have it feel great in your hand and save money, the Diztronic cases are for you.

Diztronic makes its cases from thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), a plastic stronger and tougher than silicone, offering excellent shock absorption and scratch resistance. The cases are flexible, ultra-thin and perfectly custom fit for each type of phone. A subtly raised edge allows you to lay your phone down on the screen side without damage or worry. Then there are all the colors that match or complement your phone.

On top of that, Diztronic cases are ridiculously inexpensive, currently $9.90 for Android cases and $11.90 for the new iPhone 5 cases (some even less at their Amazon store).

If you have a new phone, visit Diztronic and buy your phone a new outfit. In fact, at that price, you can afford to buy it more than one look. And if your phone is currently encased in an unattractive hard shell, think how much better you and it will feel with something a little less restrictive and a lot more beautiful.

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September 24, 2012

The Art of the Lock Screen


If you are a smartphone user, you look at the lock screen—the opening screen you swipe to get into your phone—maybe a hundred times a day. Just a second at a time, but seconds add up to a real experience and impression.

The pre-loaded images on lock screens are pretty banal, meant to show off the screen’s high-resolution capability without offending or overexciting anyone. The state-of-the-art Samsung Galaxy S3, for example, out-of-the-box displays a close-up of a dandelion. It can be changed out, but the few stock alternatives are not any better—beautiful, color-rich, but not much else. There is a cool effect that when swiped, the lock screen image ripples like water and fades, but a rippling and fading dandelion is still a dandelion.

As noted, it can be changed out, to any image at all. Outside the parameter of its being a vertical rectangle, the possibilities are infinite.

That’s how Jackson Pollock came to this lock screen.

It wasn’t an easy choice, but the road to it was a fascinating journey in art.

The first decision was to steer clear of the figurative. Even if a work was found that could properly fit the dimensions of the screen, or it was cropped to fit, people and things didn’t seem so appealing. There was also the issue of having typed words—time, date, etc.—and maybe icons on top of those figures.

That left thousands of variously abstract works of art. To narrow it down to a manageable, shorter-than-a-lifetime task (this is, after all, a phone, not the Getty), the online collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate were reviewed.

And so, for a couple of hours, an intensive search. Surprisingly, the functional nature of the application wasn’t a drawback. It wasn’t like the derisive cliche about an interior decorator picking paintings on the basis of whether they match a planned color scheme. Instead, it was like speed dating art in a museum—in a good way. Every image had a chance to speak, but instantly, because that is exactly how it was going to be seen from now on.

A few styles were rejected. Pure monochromatic paintings may be important as works of art, but on a phone screen just look like a single color background. Op art seemed like it might work, but in that confined space, the screen seemed overbusy and dizzy, and a little jarring.

The finalists were Ad Reinhardt and Jackson Pollock. From Reinhardt, his blocks of color were especially inviting, including this version of Abstract Painting (Blue) (1952):

In the end, Pollock’s Full Fathom Five (1947) is the art of this lock screen. Here’s a description from the Museum of Modern Art:

Full Fathom Five is one of Pollock’s earliest “drip” paintings. While its lacelike top layers consist of poured skeins of house paint, Pollock built up the underlayer using a brush and palette knife. A close look reveals an assortment of objects embedded in the surface, including cigarette butts, nails, thumbtacks, buttons, coins, and a key. Though many of these items are obscured by paint, they contribute to the work’s dense and encrusted appearance. The title, suggested by a neighbor, comes from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, in which the character Ariel describes a death by shipwreck: “Full fathom five thy father lies / Of his bones are coral made / Those are pearls that were his eyes.”

All along, before the search started, there was something about putting Pollock on the phone, just as there is something about putting him on the wall. People mocked abstract expressionism—and Pollock as its most famous artist—as some kind of cultural con game. “Anybody can do that, hell, my five-year-old can do that.”

Well, no. If you want evidence that this is art, check out the few square inches of screen above. Even if the screen says “swipe,” even if you’re in a hurry to get to a call or an app, just linger and look for a few extra seconds. What is going on there reaches out sixty-five years, from a time when pocket phones and pocket computers were glints in the eyes of scientists, madmen and mad scientists. And now Jackson Pollock lives there.

No dandelions. Just pure digital cool.

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September 21, 2012

Think the Same: Apple as IBM, Android as Apple


Think Different.

That was the theme of Apple’s award-winning and successful ad campaign that ran from 1997 to 2002. Among other creative inspirations, the concept played off of the even more famous one-word IBM slogan “Think”, which had been in use since the 1920’s, when it was devised by IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, Sr.

To make the point, Apple created a series of commercials and posters featuring those who had thought differently, including Albert Einstein.

The ad copy included this:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

Keep this in mind as thousands line up—camp out in tents on the street—to be one of the first to own an iPhone 5. Even many self-aware tech pundits have had to admit it: in the current state-of-the-art, the iPhone 5 is not all that cutting edge. But even knowing that, they too are craving it. Resistance is futile.

Apple began as the “other” personal computer. The IBM/Microsoft-based paradigm relentlessly rolled on and over the market. The hardware technology was almost universally licensed and adopted as a standard. Microsoft dominated the operating system, and software was developed for it. PCs were available at every price point and capability, and the market exploded.

Apple thought differently. From the beginning, and with only one brief foray into third-party licensing, Apple decided it would control everything. Quality and style could not be left to the vagaries of the market and to the poor judgment and penny-pinching ways of third party vendors. The result in personal computing was that while Apple won only a minority share of market, its products were not only different but (in the view of some) better, and adopted by creative and thought leaders.

The turning point came when Apple went mobile with the iPod. There had been portable music players for years, beginning with Sony’s revolutionary Walkman. By applying its computing model to this device, Apple did something just as revolutionary. Unlike having a minority position in computing, Apple took the lead in digital music players and never looked back. It not only owned the device, it owned the store for feeding the device. Apple was no longer the other; Apple was it.

Apple took the same tack as it always had when it entered the mobile phone market: superior technology plus superior style. And as with its earliest computers, it maintained complete ownership and control. This was more than just a matter of not sharing the rewards with third-parties. As a consumer, you could be sure that any application would run flawlessly with the Apple OS on an Apple device.

The iPhone is now a standard, one embraced by millions with a fanaticism that approaches a cult. Henry Ford’s famous message to car buyers of the original Model T was that you could have any color, as long as it was black. Steve Jobs may have never quoted this, but this is the experience of the iPhone buyer. And they are ecstatic at the lack of choice.

The iPhone is a standard, but not the standard. The other force in mobile phones is Android.

The metaphorical differences between Apple and Android are infinite. If Apple makes the trains run on time, Android has powerful trains still looking for the conductor, the schedules and even the track. If Apple is a tightly produced Broadway show, Android is a three-ring circus with the ringmaster on acid. If Apple is Singapore, Android is the Wild West.

And yet, Android is the dominant mobile platform in the world, and its lead over Apple is widening.

The Android system—if you can call it that—works like this. The operating system is developed and upgrades. Each version goes out to device makers, who adopt it to their own needs, including overlaying it with proprietary additions, and test its integrity and compatibility. These devices are then sent to carriers and service providers who add their own proprietary touches and do further testing. It is a lengthy process that is fraught with missteps, and explains why new versions and upgrades can take months to reach consumers.

Then there are the applications and developers. Quality and qualified developers face the challenge of making sure that their applications work properly on all permutations of Android versions and device-specific overlays. Developing for Apple iOS, on the other hand, is as simple as developing for Apple iOS: if it works, it will work for everyone. And anyone can and does develop for Android. With the exception of malicious apps kept out of the Android market, anything goes. There are thousands of Android apps that are dysfunctional, sometimes comically so.

For some of us who appreciate the excellent and forward-thinking devices in the Android world, even the weirdos and app pranksters are part of the charm. Yes, it can take far too long to get Android upgrades, and even then things may not work perfectly. But most of the time, the results are spectacular. If that is the price to pay for not enlisting in the Apple Army, we’ll pay it.

In the final analysis, that is the irony. Apple has become the world’s leading tech company the way IBM did in the 1950s and 1960s: by telling the world how computing should be done and making them accept it. IBM salesmen—in fact everyone in the company—was required to wear a uniform white shirt and tie. One of the legendary mantras of that period was recited by corporate purchasing agents: “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.”

Android is an adventure. It might say of itself, as one corporate iconoclast used to:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.

Apple is now IBM. Android is now Apple. It doesn’t take a genius to see that.

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September 13, 2012

The Day We Discovered the Gamers


It’s a cliché from a hundred movies: Right before the wedding, the father of the bride looks over at his daughter and discovers something: the little girl is all grown up. This isn’t the day she grew up; that has been going on all along, for years. This is just the day he learned that.

Sean Smith, the Libyan embassy officer killed yesterday along with Ambassador Chris Stevens and two others, was also a world-class online gamer. In the 400,000-member EV Online community, where his name was Vile Rat, he was known as perhaps the greatest of all space diplomats. Most did not know that was what he did in his other life.

The community responded immediately and in force. Members gave assurances that his family would be supported, including making sure that his children went to college. In the digital world, space stations were named in his honor.

Those two things may not make sense together to some, but it is fitting. There is an image, outdated if it was ever true, that digital gaming is filled with socially inept people, mostly men, suffering from some form of arrested development. To the contrary, just ask the digital gaming industry, which is reaping the rewards of one of the few truly healthy entertainment genres. Or ask the millions who are citizens of the communities, who are also grown-up, responsible men—and women—who live complete and complex non-digital lives.

Or ask the wife and young children of Sean Smith, who may or may not have understood the different way he was important as an online diplomat, esteemed member of that community, and friend to thousands who had never met him. As one member posted, it is a “stupid game” that stands in the shadow of Sean Smith’s real world contributions and passing. But the gaming itself and the community it fostered is not stupid.

This is the day we learned that.

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June 4, 2012

The Ultimate Notepad?


The best reason to get a very expensive, very powerful smartphone is to have it serve as the ultimate notepad.

No. But if you are someone whose practice has been, since the beginning of time (that is, since the earliest digital days), to go around with a pocket memo book, you may have noticed that the notepad has become vestigial, like a no longer useful appendage about which you still maintain some habitual affection, even if it is no longer useful.

Smartphones are remarkable notetaking devices. Even without the added convenience of voice-to-text, with the right keyboard (recommended: SwifKey) and the right app (recommended: AK Notepad), the flash-of-brilliance scrawl has now become the flash-of-brilliance digital non-scrawl, polished, spell-checked, and ready for prime-time.

A state-of-the-art memo book (Mead top-bound) ended up squarely on a desk next to a state-of-the-art smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S2). Here are some observations.

They are both quite elegant. They are almost exactly the same size: memo book 3×5 inches, smartphone 2.60 x 4.93 inches. The memo book is considerably cheaper, less than a dollar (pen not included), while the smartphone can be hundreds of dollars, depending on the contract. There is no contract available for the notepad.

Obviously, the notepad will never run out of battery power, even if the notetaker does. The worst that can happen is that you run out of ink, at which point lipstick, burnt matches, or dozens of other things will do in a pinch. The upcoming J.J. Abrams television series Revolution is about a world where all electric devices suddenly and completely stop working. Dystopia or utopia, if this possibility lurks on the fringes of your thoughts, for eighty cents or so, you can buy an insurance policy against your most groundbreaking but ephemeral thoughts being lost forever. Seems like a bargain.

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June 1, 2012

Going Naked On Your Smartphone


It is a continuing discussion among thousands of people in the smartphone world: Use a screen protector or “go naked”?

What is so glaringly notable about the debate is how much it echoes the same discussion about sex: Use a condom or go naked?

It is about sensation and response. The thicker and less sophisticated screen protectors seem to reduce the touch and responsiveness of the device.

It is about size. Many people find that screen protectors they purchase don’t fit their device, even when the manufacturers claim they do. Trimming and adjustment are often required.

It is about aesthetics. Even the thinnest and most expensive screen protectors seem to take away from the inherent beauty that has been designed into the device.

It is about messiness. One of the biggest complaints about screen protectors, even among those who choose to use them, is that they are a mess, tending to slip off and be constantly in need of readjustment.

It is about unwanted and unexpected outcomes. No matter how careful you are, screens can get scratched. Once that happens, the experience with and the relationship to the device are never the same again.

That last is a risk many seem willing to take. Maybe they can’t be blamed, because the feel of a gliding fingertip on Gorilla Glass instead of plastic, and the instant, electric response you get is like nothing else. If there’s a price to pay for going screen naked, to a lot of people it’s worth it.

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May 16, 2012

MoneyDesignDigitalSex

Sometimes you stumble upon an item that perfectly embodies America, the 21st century, and America in the 21st century. All in a good way. This is from a company called Crave:

Our first product – DUET – was submitted for pre-release funding on international design funding platform CKIE.com in August 2011 where it raised $104,000 from over 950 backers – 694% of the original target. Word of DUET consequently spread across the web, which has effectively raised the profile of the product even before its official release, while also providing a springboard for further CRAVE products and developments.

Crowdfunding. Check. Design. Check.

But what exactly is Duet?

In a world where high technology and luxury design seem to touch every corner of our lives, the most intimate experiences should be no exception. The dominating culture in adult products often feels cheap and sleazy. We were craving something better: something beautiful, something discreet, something environmentally friendly, and something sophisticated. After all, if anything deserves good design, it’s the things we bring to bed with us.

Design, again. Check. Sex. Check.

But what exactly is Duet?

With dual motors and a V-shaped angle, DUET delivers powerful and precise vibration for external clitoral stimulation. The tip, inside edges, and outside edges provide slightly different intensities, while the flat surface is ideal for massaging the area around and on the clitoris. The dual motors’ unique ‘split at the tip’ combines with the four vibration patterns to enable a variety of sensations for you to explore…

Duet will let you how much charge remains when you turn it on. It will pulse one to four times – one pulse meaning 25% full, and four pulses indicating your DUET is 100% charged. When plugged into a USB port, a light indicator will blink to let you know your DUET is charging. The intensity of blinking will change depending on how close to being fully charged. With four vibration modes and four power levels, DUET gives you flexibility to find the perfect intensity and pattern. The settings have been designed to be easily altered at whim, but won’t accidentally change on you in the heat of the moment. Vibration modes include steady, dual pulsing, circular pulse, and wave.

Sex, again. Check. USB port??

Yes, this is Duet. A vibrator and a USB flash drive.

This is, without irony, the sort of creativity that makes America great. Purse-sized vibrators have long been around, as have flash drives. But this story that combines cutting-edge financing through crowdfunding, high-level design, digital capability, and, of course, sex goes well beyond bringing together chocolate and peanut butter. This is American genius.

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May 11, 2012

The Spotify Cover Game


Note: Two online music services launched in 2006, one in Palo Alto, California, one in Stockholm, Sweden. Both shared a vision of offering on-demand, track-by-track access to streaming music. Lala, the American service, was a simple and usable platform. It was offered free, and was based on an evolving business model that had something to do with future subscriptions and music sales. It was a wonder. In 2009, Apple bought the company, possibly to integrate the platform into a future streaming service of its own. That vapor service never materialized and, instead, Apple killed Lala.

At the same time, Spotify was developing its own more sophisticated service in Europe. Music licensing held up its introduction in America until 2011. Lala lovers, still smarting from its demise, have to admit that Spotify is indeed everything Lala was and more. Spotify is flourishing, though it still has to prove the viability of its business model, but we enjoy it while it lasts. Maybe Apple will buy it and kill it too. Sorry—still a little bitter.

Spotify has changed the way we listen to music. What music lovers hoped would happen in the future happened: Click on a track, there it is on your computer. The future is here.

Spotify enables a lot of listener creativity and sharing. There are thousands of playlists created and available. Of course, commercial media, artists, and labels are drawn to popular platforms like moths to flame, and there are now plenty of those generated playlists too.

Spotify also allows unlimited exploration and discovery. Among the unique paths is what might be called the Spotify Cover Game. You can choose any song and listen to nearly every version of it ever recorded, minus the small number still unlicensed and unavailable.

The Spotify Cover Game is fun and educational. To try it, take any popular song from any era. Search for the track, and the results will list all—sometimes dozens—of the recorded versions from different artists.

To demonstrate, Mad Men fans might pick The Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows from Revolver. (For non-Mad Men fans, this is the track that in a recent episode young and sexy Megan Draper plays for her older and sexy husband Don Draper to introduce him to the Beatles in 1966.)

Here is a very partial list of artists you can hear performing Tomorrow Never Knows on Spotify:

Phil Collins
Junior Parker
Jimi Hendrix
Michael Hedges
Danielle Dax
The Pink Fairies
Cowboy Mouth
Wayne Krantz
Living Colour
Trouble
Monsoon
Tangerine Dream
The Mission UK
Dwight Twilley
Herbie Hancock & Dave Matthews
Dweezil Zappa
Grateful Dead
Phil Manzanera

The proof of the song is in the covers, and Tomorrow Never Knows doesn’t fail. Whether vocals or instrumental only, it pushes artists to rise to the occasion as they aspire to recreate a cultural milestone.

Best: Herbie Hancock and Dave Matthews. A surprise, given the competition from Jimi Hendrix, Living Colour, and others, and given that neither Hancock nor Matthews are noted for this kind of psychedelia.

Worst: Grateful Dead, hands down. They are noted for their psychedelia, but in this particular live version from a 1992 concert in Oakland, the vocals are literally unlistenable and the music isn’t all that great either. Probably better the next night or if you were really high.

Most Interesting: Legendary bluesman Junior Parker, who recorded it as part of a Beatles album. His smooth and full-bodied voice is in stark contrast to the usual ethereal takes. Accompanied by a spare arrangement of hypnotic bass with a touch of guitar and keyboard, this is a perfect realization and transformation of the original. One of the most interesting Beatles covers ever.

In addition to hearing the multiple ways that the strongest songs are treated, the SCG—and Spotify itself—is about serendipity, the exploration and discovery of unheard artists and tracks. The Hancock/Matthews track, for example, is from a 2010 collection of collaborative covers called The Imagine Project (containing Imagine, but it’s not a Beatles-only collection). There you will find a cover of the Peter Gabriel-Kath Bush anthem of hope in hard times, Don’t Give Up, with John Legend and P!nk performing. Nearly (only nearly) as good as the original, it is mesmerizing, heartbreaking, and uplifting at the same time:

No fight left or so it seems
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted
I’ve changed my face, I’ve changed my name
But no one wants you when you lose…

Moved on to another town
Tried hard to settle down
For every job, so many men
So many men no one needs

Don’t give up
’cause you have friends
Don’t give up
You’re not the only one
Don’t give up
No reason to be ashamed
Don’t give up
You still have us
Don’t give up now
We’re proud of who you are
Don’t give up
You know it’s never been easy
Don’t give up
’cause I believe there’s a place
There’s a place where we belong

That’s the Spotify Cover Game. Try it. Enjoy. Explore. Discover. And don’t give up.

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May 1, 2012

Breathing and Relaxing with the Department of Defense

The U.S. Department of Defense might seem an unlikely place to look for cutting edge technology to relieve stress and promote psychological well-being. That is exactly what you find at The National Center for Telehealth and Technology (T2):

Our mission is to lead the development of telehealth and technology solutions for psychological health and traumatic brain injury to improve the lives of the Nation’s Warriors, Veterans, and their Families. T2 seeks to identify, treat, and minimize or eliminate the short and long-term adverse effects of TBI and mental health conditions associated with military service.

Out of this work, T2 has developed some remarkable mobile apps , aimed at military communities, but available and valuable for anyone. Two of these will be of particular interest to those who believe that simple breathing techniques are a primary key to psychological health.

Tactical Breather and Breate2Relax are simple yet sophisticated tools for an instant, easy-to-follow exercise of breathing for stress reduction and relaxation.

Tactical Breather is the much simpler of the two apps and techniques, involving just a four-count system of inhale, hold, exhale, hold. Along with the onscreen prompts and guiding voice, there is an introduction and tutorial.

Breathe2Relax is more comprehensive in terms of supporting text, videos, and UI, offering a host of options for the interface: beautiful background images (including photos from NASA and NOAA),  relaxing background music (with titles such as Ambient Evenings and Evosolutions), and more. The deep breathing exercise is simply inhale/exhale, and you can change the length of each breath (default is 7 seconds) and the number of cycles for the exercise (default is 16). Coolest of all is a floating body scan animation about the effects of stress, showing a virtual human with highlights about organs and systems that are compromised by stress—with all the flash and special effects you would expect from the Pentagon.

At some points, the apps reflect their military origins and mission. In Breathe2Relax, a Wellness Tip suggests that “Problems with drinking and drugs can be tough to work through on your own. Talk to a chaplain or health care professional.” On the one hand, this gives a non-military user—no matter how beneficial the app is for everyone—the feeling of intruding someplace where civilians don’t belong. But then again, using the apps may be a strangely good reminder of a price we ask our military members to pay. These and the other interesting apps from T2 are twenty-first century ways of making their situations a little better. That others of us get to share in the benefit is a bonus.

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April 26, 2012

Hey, You, Get On Your Own Cloud


The PocketCloud Explore app from Wyse Technology has won numerous awards, including being named LAPTOP Magazine’s Best of Mobile World Congress 2012. It deserves consideration as one of the best apps of all time, for choosing to do something so essentially simple so well.

The Cloud is supposedly the digital version of heaven. Your stuff will be out there, floating around, accessible wherever you are. Your stuff gets there either by your effort or, more frequently now, by being automatically synced and transported there.

Of course, there are challenges. Space in The Cloud is not unlimited and not always free. And many of us still have all our stuff on an old-school legacy device known as a PC, a machine surprisingly spry and popular for a technology reportedly on its last legs. Wouldn’t it be great if our PC could be our own personal and private cloud? Now it can.

As Wyse describes it:

Your Stuff…Your Device…Your Cloud!

PocketCloud Explore brings an intuitive view of your Windows/Mac file systems to Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, and lets you search, view, organize, and share across all of your computers.  It enables you to create a personal cloud out of your computers plus an online “Cloudbin” (PocketCloud Web beta) for anytime, anywhere access and sharing.

“Create a personal cloud out of your computers.” This sounds too good to be true or, as is the case with so many ambitious apps, too complex and difficult to be smooth and painless—or to work at all. But five minutes later, after installing the desktop companion software and the mobile app, an entire PC hard drive was accessible on a smartphone—to seamlessly access documents, books, music, videos. Your 32 GB (or less) mobile device is instantly your 500 GB PC.

That is more than a cloud. That is digital heaven.

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