does google have any designers … or do they just don’t have any style?

now i know that people have different tastes, and what one person might think looks good, another person thinks looks absolutely horrible or boring.

google today introduced “themes” to its personalized home page. i have been a user of the home page service for quite some time and find it pretty good. better than yahoo’s similar service. plus, while the google logo is not my favorite corporate logo, the overall simple, plain design of the site was useful and sufficient. when the “themes” arrived i took a look at them. there seem to be six themes, plus the traditional white, classic, look. now there are pictures of this all over the web, if you want to take a look at it just go to google and look at the personalized home page. so the other six themes are called beach, bus stop, city scape, sweet dreams, tea house, and seasonal scape. some of them seem to change slightly (like the sun moves around during the day) depending on the time of day and location. what all six themes though have in common is that they are plain ugly. they all look kids drawings. it is not that there is one kids drawing theme and then there are a couple of others, no they are all kids drawings and nothing else. i don’t know who at google had this idea, but i bet they have a six year old kid at home.

not every company needs to have amazing designers like apple, but before i add a service like themes why doesn’t google at least look at what other portals offer? like yahoo, a couple of simple color variations, some movie inspired ones, some kids themes, and others, just a variety, and a variety in styles, that will match a broad range of tastes. i don’t say that yahoo’s themes are all great, very few are, but at least they offer a style variety, while google doesn’t. and that is my big problem with this and when i look at other services that google offers, like the news section, they don’t have much better designs either. there seems to be a complete lack of visual interest at the company.

when will people understand mobile content?

so the other day the founder of the company i work for gave a speech about business and what he had learned over the years. after selling his stake in the company he went on an bough a magazine and is now trying to make it work in the digital age. then at one point he said that one of his challenges was that not only did he have to worry about the internet, but he now had to worry about mobile devices connected to the net and that content not only had to be made to fit the PC screen format but that now they would have to make the content fit into 15 words. since this guy is a semi-god in the company, execs are now quoting this anywhere they can … we have to make things fit into 15 words.

so it seems that he isn’t only about to get the net wrong, but definately the mobile net. the mobile net is not about reading a 2000 word article in 15 words, it is about providing me with the right content at the right time. now if i take the new yorker for example and their recent profile of karl lagerfeld which is 6 or 7 page article and turn that into a 15 word story, the thing become useless. even the half page movie review of the new yorker is useless and will even stay useless in 15 words. but if i want to know what the new yorker had to say about a movie (because i trust them on movies) then i want to have an easy and quick way to tell me if they liked or hated a movie (a simple thumbs up or down will do, maybe in combination of who rated the movie). another way to provide this information is to give me a list of the top three reviews of movies that play in the zip code i am in or something similar. what a magazine like the new yorker would have to do is look at how they can reuse content that they have (but maybe don’t use to publish in their main publication) which could be of value to mobile users … in most if not all cases this will not include any multi page content from the magazine or some tiny summary of that content. it is about understanding the needs of a mobile users in combination with the limitations of the device they use.

what is wrong with some parents?

last night i went and saw the new movie 300, which is an adaptation of the comic book by frank miller about the battle between the spartans and the persians. it is obviously a bloody movie (frank miller + battle what else can you expect), and it is rightfully rated R, not question asked. i won’t go into much detail if the movie is good or bad, but i will just say that it is visually amazing, but quite flat on acting, dialogues, and story line.

the level of violence in the movie is immensely high, frequent beheadings, scores of people killed shown in all kinds of close ups. i am certainly not blaming the movie for its violence, going into the movie i was fully aware of this, expect it. kill bill 1+2 are still some of my favorite movies, so violence in general and in 300 do not offend me.

but what really shocked me was that when i left the theater at the end of the movie i passed a row in which two parents were sitting next to their two kids … who were probably aged somewhere between 6 and 10. the boy was obviously shaken by the movie. plus, this were not the only under 16 children in the movie, there were several others in the theater, together with their parents. so this is clearly not something one can blame the theater for.

now i just read a story about rock star gams, the company that makes such video games like vice city and manhunt, and how they are being sued for inciting violence in kids that play these games. but seeing those parent, sitting their with their kids watching 300 i just wanted to jump over there and smack some sense into those parents (i guess these kinds of movies do incite violence ). i don’t know what these parents are thinking taking their kids into a movie like this? why do we even bother to provide ratings for movies, if parents do not follow them?

i don’t believe in banning violent games or movies, i think that grown people can chose what they want to watch. i am though a believer in providing a rating system that says what games and movies are appropriate for whom. and i am a believer that parents have a responsibility for the education of their kids. so why is no one ever suing parents of kids that run amok? i think if those kids of these parents that took their 8 year olds to see 300 turn into some crazy sobs then the parents have way more responsibility for their kid’s behavior than the movie or some video game, but no one holds them accountable, it is the movie that is held accountable but not the stupidity of the parents. and on the same subject, where is the outrage of politicians or the religious right on wrong parenting? i guess the idea is that one can’t blame those poor parents because they don’t know any better? come give me a break, if you put a human being on this planet you are responsible for that and have to start acting like a grown up, no excuses.

right wing nuts should leave DC’s gun laws alone … or at least give us full voting rights

the washington post is reporting that a US appeals court has declared most parts of the washington dc gun ban unconstitutional: Appeals Court Guts D.C. Gun Ban.

interesting to see that the people who challenged the DC law were supported by:

The residents filed their lawsuit against the District in early 2003, months after then-Attorney Genral John D. Ashcroft declared that gun bans violate the Second Amendment. They were aided by the Cato Institute, a non-profit group that advocates personal liberties.

so they support personal liberties at the cato institute. but when you search for “DC voting rights” you don’t find anything. i guess it is more important to have the right to shoot others than to vote. this is what i don’t get, so it is completely ok to not allow a couple of hundred thousand americans not participate in the probably most important task of an american — to vote for the government — but it is certainly not ok to not have the right to own a gun. so on the one side those republicans are happy do give DC a special status within the US, but only as long as it is to their benefit. and the only way they will allow people in DC to vote is if they get another seat in a mostly republican state … what, are voting rights some sort of horse bargaining? i thought this was a democracy?

another interesting bit of information about the two judges who voted against the DC gun ban:

Silberman was nominated to the appellate court by President Ronald Reagan and Griffith was nominated by George W. Bush. Henderson was nominated by President George H.W. Bush.

oh, and here something more about from the people that are in favor of shooting around … this is a tremendous victory for civil rights … yes, right. and monkeys flight out of my butt. what kind of victory is this? and what are the further implications? that more people will be killed now? oh, no i forgot, it is people who kill not guns.

Alan Gura, an attorney for the plaintiffs, issued a statement saying, “This is a tremendous victory for the civil rights of all Americans. The case has implications far beyond the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms. The court today affirmed that the Bill of Rights means what it says.”

the ap wire-story on this in the new york times has an additional piece of information:

Judge Karen Henderson dissented, writing that the Second Amendment does not apply to the District of Columbia because it is not a state.

the past, present, and future of the news

pbs’s frontline has an amazing four part story on the state of news in the US. so far only three of the four parts are online, but the three parts can be seen in full on their site.

part three looks at the future of news talking a lot about the impact on the news from the internet and blogs. this made me think about blogs, the internet, cable, and 24 hour news stations and their negative impact on the news. all of these certainly have changed the playing field of the news business, and changed the way we consume news. but i think they all also have watered down news and made news less important in the progress. one thing interesting to see in this whole disucssion is that while some argue that the internet and blogs are changing the whole landscape, but then when one goes to blogs like dailykos or talkingpoints memo what you see is a lot of links that go out to the new york times, washington post, or cnn. in the end these blogs are not replacing the traditional news, they are just editorializing, and in some cases editorializing editorials. if this new news would be on the verge of taking over the news then why do they rely on the “old” news outlets? they do rely on the traditional news outlets for the actual work, the research, the analysis, and most of all the time intensive investigation.

so what will happen if the new news pushes the old one way but then the new news has no more news to bitch about?

reasons for the iphone not to be a mobile phone success

there doesn’t seem to be much of a middle ground when it comes to the iphone, people are either all excited about it and think it will be biggest thing since sliced bread, or they are utterly pessimistic saying it will be a complete failure. apple itself has recently upped the ante saying other phones are stupid and should certainly not cost anything, and mentioned they wouls sell 10 million in ‘07 (which mostly be US sales since outside US sales just start later in the year).

i think the phone itself is certainly a tech and design gem. there is a lot to like: the touchscreen, the navigation, the user interface, the menue, the look of it. but then there are also a lot of things that are not to like: the size and most of all the weight, the battery life, the limitation to one carrier only, no 3G (at least not in its early version), the price of it (especially since the $500 price point comes in addition to a 2 year contract), and a closed system that seems to allow little room for third-party developers (in a way exactly what operators want).

while i think that the positives will result in the iphone having a huge impact on how mobile phones will be designed in the coming 10 years, i think that the negatives will lead to apple not coming close to its goal of 10 million units sold by the end of this year. key reasons for the sales failure will be the price and the size of the iphone. people say it is not that big, but unlike other phones the iphone will require some sort of screen protection making it even more bulky and heavy, and users are willing to have large size devices for work, but will want something small and sexy for every day usage (especially the Friday and Saturday night usage) hence the success of the Razr and most of the Samsun phones. in the mobile phone space small is beautiful, that and good battery life, and the iphone is failing on both. there will certainly be a market for gadget geeks, but this will not be worth 10 million devices (especially not since not all of them are on cingular and would have to justify switching carriers).

another problem of the iphone to reach a mass market is that it is no longer a simple device. the ipod attracted such a large market by offering the best and simplest mobile music player. people were ok that it didn’t have a radio or other whistles and bells, because it was easy to use and operate. the iphone is anything but easy. well yes, things all look intuitive when steve presents them, zooming into a picture is done by moving two fingers across the pictures, well but for users who have been used to nokia and motorola menues, keys, and arrors this will not necessarily be intutive. plus, the phone is not only a phone but it is a whole bunch of different devices put into one (phone, camera, web browser, email clients, mp3 and video player, picture viewer … did i miss anything?). do people need all this in one device? most people will probably ask themselves this question and not come up with a yes. the additional problem with the iphone is that it is no longer a great music player since navigation is not harder than on the regular ipod, at the same time it is not a great phone either, the touch screen will make sms writing harder and the battery life is not amazing. so in the end the iphone will be a device that does a lot of things well, but nothing great. in a way the reasons why so many mp3 players failed against the ipod.

guy kawasaki (another apple fan) has an interesting list of questions about the iphone … Great Expectations

will i buy an iphone? — no. i thought i would, but then decided not to. why? because if i buy a phone i want it to be a good phone and anything else is secondary, the phone functionality has to be great (including messaging). that’s why once the prada phone was announced my excitement for the iphone already diminished. but then the other day i saw the sony ericsson w880i and the thing that sold me was the 79gr in weight, the overall size of the device, the amazing reception, and battery life of more than a week of standby. oh yes, and it looks great, and no finger prints, and did i mention is has a gig of memory for music. what more can i ask for in a mobile phone?