Online Cortex Thoughts on Science and Technology

I took a look at the new iPod shuffle today and I was dismayed by Apple’s continued development of the “intuitive” control system. To help people use their products, Apple actually has to have a website devoted to instructions.

The ipod shuffle (3rd gen) requires a table of instructions

These instructions include

Play: click the center button once (status light blinks green once)

Fast-Forward: double-click an hold the center button (status light blinks green once)

Rewind: triple-click and hold the center button (status light blinks green once)

Hear song title and artist names: Click and hold the Center button (status light blinks green once)

Go to the next track: Double-click the Center button (status light blinks green once)

This reminds me of the combination of buttons I had to press to perform that triple roundhouse kick in Nintendo! And that all informative status light! Thank goodness they thought to put that in there, otherwise who would ever know that the ipod shuffle was getting your commands correct.

The problem is that to make these things slick and sleek Apple needs to minimize the number of controls on the device. This puts the burden on the user to remember precisely what pattern of button presses and holds will give the desired result. Its unfortunate that Apple couldn’t at least add some extra LEDs so that the status light actually conveyed meaningful information.

I find this a disturbing trend in consumer electronics resulting in devices that work like that darn overhead ceiling fan. You are never sure how many times you need to pull on that string to get the thing to stop. Or it reminds me of the crappy little alarm clocks where you have to press two buttons in some crazy pattern to set the alarm. I think most people have at some point in their lives overslept because of this “feature”.

A good friend of mine Asaf Degani who is a NASA research scientist wrote a book called Taming HAL: Designing Interfaces Beyond 2001 where he examines the design of effective user interfaces. I should find out what he thinks of Apple’s interfaces.

Me? I disapprove.

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

Posted under Gadgets, Product

Today Amazon.com released Kindle 2, the next-generation wireless reading device.

Kindle 2 can download a book wirelessly in under 60 seconds from the largest e-Book store in the world, which contains over 240,000 books.

Its improvements over the original Kindle include: more storage, longer battery life, and improved display.

Get Kindle 2 at Amazon.com Now!

Posted under Gadgets, Technology

The GigaPan EPIC Robotic Camera System takes your camera and uses it to take multiple images from a robot-controlled platform. These are then stitched together to form a single Gigapixel panoramic image.

Here is an example of a Gigapixel image from President Obama’s inauguration.  Special prize if you can find Yo-Yo Ma taking a picture with his camera.

My brother even found WALDO!

Posted under Gadgets, Technology

Xylocopa sells some very cool Mad Science Blocks

Mad Scientist Blocks

These blocks sport mad science imagery ranging from caffeine to goggles, and are a MUST for your favorite Mad Scientist.

Posted under Gadgets, Product, Stuff

Google accidentally released its new browser called “Chrome” earlier than had been planned.

http://www.google.com/chrome

Google has designed the browser from scratch with the philosophy that current browsers represent an old way of thinking about surfing the web, accessing email, etc.

I am downloading mine today!

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

Posted under Gadgets, Internet