Month: April 2008

Life on the Road

My friend Joe is a truck driver. He’s my age (only a week older than I am, but always reminding me of this fact), single, and loving his job. A few months ago I gave him an old digital camera and told him to take some pictures while on the road. Here’s the first batch he sent me.*

“I woke up to my alarm and threw back the curtain between the cab and my bed. It was still dark out! I checked my alarm clock and took another look. I had been snowed in!”

He tells me this is a fairly common way to empty a trailer full of raw materials, like coal. Just pick it up and dump it!

While I would never be brave enough, it would be totally cool to be in the cab of the semi during something like this.

And last he sends me a photo of some mountains in Tennessee. I look out my window at work and see a dull static city skyline. His is aways changing and new.

*From a truck stop where wireless is accessible from your truck. No need to leave!†

†Except for the bathroom, of course.

Next time I’ll have to retell the story about the mating rituals of the common Lot Lizard…Until then, stay safe Joe and keep sending me photos!

Not Home Again

An often overlooked design choice for mobile platforms is the Home button. Usually this button will instantly return you to the main OS screen for most major PDAs and smart phones. For as long as I can remember the most often used icon was that of a house.

And while the HTC Touch forgoes the Home icon on the ‘main menu’ button it does include it in the OS itself.

(update!) My good friend Josh tells me that the HTC Touch’s physical button is not a home button. It’s actually a big honkin’ Enter button. As in Select/Accept/Return. Wow. Even worse that I thought.

As you can see, even very recent devices use this house as a home icon approach. I understand where the designers are coming from. Humans are comfortable with their homes being the space that is their physical center. But it doesn’t make any sense from a UI perspective. (Or in the modern world where home takes on so many different shapes and sizes, not to mention the increased time we spend away from home, but I digress.) Home is where you launch everything from? Home is escape from this program?

Now let’s take a look at what Apple has done with the iPhone and it’s little brother the iPod Touch.

The icon used to return to the main OS screen. (Call it the desktop, springboard, etc) What does it represent? At first glance it’s just a trendy rounded-cornered box. Second glance, it’s a representation of the shape of the device itself. But even that is a bit off, as the device is rectangular and the icon is visibly square.

But wait, what do all the applications look like in the moblie OSX environment?

Small rounded-cornered boxes. Just like the main physical button on the device. Simple, clear iconography.

First Portable TV for under $100

I was at a Historical Society meeting the other night and came across this gem. Part of the evening’s activities was a Show and Tell where various members brought some items of antiquity. Marlin Makley brought in this TV.

Look at that screen size!

For the full details including the history of this portable TV head over to the Fenton Historical Society.  They should have an article up in a few days covering the details.