Magical in its simplicity.

* * *

source: The Form Group

Hartmut Esslinger, one early superstar of high-tech design, was responsible for the design of Apple devices in the 80s. He then developed together with Steve Jobs a prototype of a touchscreen phone whose main function was to make possible sending digital bank checks though a phone wire. This quite revolutionnary gizmo – remember that we’re then in 1983 – was part of the Snow White design language applied to the IIc and the original Mac.

Was Apple already trying to raise the buzz?

like it or lose it, it’s here, and in images.

> iPad by Apple [official webpage]

> News about the iPad on Google and Twitter

> want more? read this Why the iPad Will Crush Netbooks and Ebook Readers [Industry Analysis] and 8 Things That Suck About the iPad [Dissenting Opinion]

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And for the most skeptikal, I’d recommend to have a look before at those very impressive mockups below of what Chrome OS may look like on a tablet form factor. According to TechCrunch, “the photos have been posted to the official Chromium site (Chromium is the open source project behind Chrome and ChromeOS). And [...] it appears that these mockups were put together by Glen Murphy, Google Chrome’s designer. In other words, there’s a good chance that the final version of Chrome OS will resemble this”.

Stunning. It seems that just as it happened a few month ago with this sudden eBook readers’ frenzy, the tablet war will be the new theater of operations for IT giants, where they’ll demonstrate who the boss is. Apple fired first, but missed. Let’s wait for Google’s answer

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More on the upcoming Google Tablet (The Chromium Project)

Here’s a bit of the executive summary of the report:

In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, a million million gigabytes. These estimates are from an analysis of more than 20 different sources of information, from very old to very new . Information at work is not included. We defined “information” as flows of data delivered to people and we measured the bytes, words, and hours of consumer information. Video sources dominate bytes of information, with 1.3 zettabytes from television and approximately 2 zettabytes of computer games. If hours or words are used as the measurement, information sources are more widely distributed, with substantial amounts from radio, Internet browsing, and others. All of our results are estimates.

I wonder if this research could be extended to determine the total amount of information communicated and consumed in human history… Via Neatorama.

And the teacher asked the children what they wanted to be when they’re grown-up. At age five or six, such an easy question merely insult their intelligence. Without careful consideration or hesitation all of them squeaked back something along the lines of,  “I’m going to be a doctor”, “an astronaut!”, “I want to be the president!”, “I would like to be a teacher”, “I’m gonna be a queen with a purple crown and a castle made of glitter and my cat, Miss Kitty, can be a princess“. This last input caused less disturbance than my own answer.

- “I want to be a digital nomad”

The teacher stared at me disturbed and upset. She probably wondered what was wrong with this kid and if my parents where some kind of hippies, nerds or communists.

This morning I read one of the most interesting posts about being a mobile worker I’ve read in a long time. It was only 215 words long but the beautiful images it featured said it all about what you get when you manage to get free from this static place called “office”. And those images reminded me once again why I chose to live that life of Digital Nomad. And because we’re human, words are often not enough; we sometimes need impacting images to trigger a spark in those 4% of that little thing called “brain” to make us realize what we’re missing.

Of course, when you work anywhere but from an office there are a lot of advantages: you can organize your time as you want it, work when you’re the most efficient (early in the morning or late at night), take care of your kids when they need to be taken care of, avoid rushours (on the road, at the supermarket or at the sportcenter), save money on telecommutes (and give a break to the environment…) and preserve your mental health by working in a less stressful environment you can adapt to your personal and physiological needs. That’s not all, but that’s not bad either.

Obviously, nothing is perfect in this life, and there are drawbacks. But the fact that I can work wherever I want to work from is far superior to any cumulated advantages (call it better pay check, quicker promotion, hot technological tools, funny co-workers or yearly company offsite) I’ll get by working in an office.

There is a WORLD and a life outside. A big, beautiful, colorful and accessible world. This is what I (re) discovered when I watched those pictures in “50 Photos to Inspire Life as a Digital Nomad”.

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And when you spend 8 to 10 hours a day working in an office, what will you really see of that world and taste of that life? Okay, you might tell yourself  that you’ll keep that for when you will be doing some tourism during your next summer holidays and that it’s well enough (do you actually believe that?). Maybe that will please “the commons”, but will you ever feel the real essence of those things around you and live them for real*? You also might end up pissed at me and think that after all you’re happier than I am. Maybe, I don’t know.

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When you’re free to choose what you want to see from your “office” window, travel the world while earning a living, standing for real in the middle of those postcard-like landscapes, knowing that as soon as you get bored from a place and “lose the inspiration” you can get a train, a plane, a car (or, please, any green transportation!) to another place, enjoy from that summer holiday house you’ve been renovating for some years, then and only then you’ll have the deep feeling at the end of the day that you fully live your life.

Remember that there are thousands of jobs opportunities available for mobile workers and freelancers and that there is at least one waiting for you. It is never too late to change your way of working.

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While writing this post I realized once again how lucky I was to live this life, and that there is an infinity of possibilities to live and work anywhere in this world when you’re “office-free”. “Anywhere”? I should say “everywhere” as the concept itself of mobile worker implies that

So I thank you again Corbett Barr for reminding me why I chose to live this marvellous life of a digital nomad. If you liked the pics Corbett put together, you might also like those Kerolic, another digital nomad (not totally emancipated from the traditional-office-cubicle system – but this is just a question of time…) took along his various journeys around the world.

Other websites of interest to turn dreams into reality:

Freelance job offers on Elance and Guru

64 Ways Location Independent People Earn a Living by Corbett Barr

List of companies hiring telecommuter

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*I’m not too fond of that thing I’d call “fast-food-like-travelling”. Flying 13 hours to spend a week (or two) in a place I’ve never been before, and actually believe that I’ll have the guts to say “I know that place” because I’ve been there, tried a couple of local gastronomic specialities and took some pictures to prove my facebook friends (or to boast?) that I was actually there, is not for me. Sometimes you’ll learn more about a place by reading a good book than actually getting there; this week-end I made an impressive travel like never before: I discovered Calcutta after reading Dominique Lapierre’s s The City of Joy. Unforgettable.

Physical distance used to dictate how remote a place was, but no longer. Now that there are airlines reaching around the globe, bullet trains, Autobahn-like superhighways and go-fast boats, the remoteness of the location is measured by how good the transportation is between here and there. In the map above, the darker a location is, the harder it is to get there.

Created by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center in Italy and the World Bank, the map started out as a model based on how long it would take to travel from each point to a city with a population of 50,000.

Just be happy you’re not in Tibet, the most remote place in the world — you’ll travel three weeks to get to a city of any decent size, including 20 days on foot.

Now you know where you have to go if you feel like tasting the edge of a real nomadic life.

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New Scientist, via Fast Company

]]> http://www.52ndwest.com/gizmos/mobility/picture-of-the-week-living-in-a-small-connected-world/feed/ 0 http://www.52ndwest.com/design/snows-revenge-laptop-sticker/ http://www.52ndwest.com/design/snows-revenge-laptop-sticker/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:01:09 +0000 Nicolas http://www.52ndwest.com/?p=1685

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the baddest b**ch of them all?

This “Snow’s Revenge” laptop decal, sold by Vinylville on Etsy, is one of the best uses of logo integration I’ve seen. Unfortunately everyone else on Etsy seems to think so, too–the $14 sticker is currently sold out.

it is also available in a glossy white for dark laptops

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the baddest b**ch of them all?

“Disposable Technology: A response to our consumer relationship with technology and obsolescence”. Quite an impacting truth!

Take a moment to think about that.

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Want to see more? http://www.kylebean.co.uk/