Khoi Vinh's Blog, page 117

Why Don’t Designers Take Android Seriously?

I’m an iOS partisan, but I try to pay attention to what’s happening on Android. Regardless of where your mobile platform allegiances lie (if you have any allegiances), this post by Twitter designer Cennydd Bowles is a must read. Bowles makes an extremely well-argued, compelling case for designers recognizing the current reach and future potential…

Animal Odd Couples

This has little to do with design or technology or even unhinged rants about popular beverages, but I thought I’d share it anyway because it really left an impression on me. Over the weekend, my wife, my daughter and I watched this episode of the PBS series “Nature” called “Animal Odd Couples” and it left…

Censorship in The International New York Times

Saturday’s edition of The International New York Times (formerly The International Herald-Tribune) had an above-the-fold story censored by the government of Pakistan. Sometimes “censored” means that certain details in an article are redacted, but in this instance it means the entire article was stripped out of the front page with unapologetic starkness. The missing article…

Map of Woman’s Heart

This “Map of Woman’s Heart” appeared on Brain Pickings a few years ago, but I’ve just happened across it this morning. Its gender politics are grotesquely unreconstructed, but I have to admit it’s graphically exquisite. It also reminds me of this ridiculous interpretation of Freudian theory, which has been around forever — though its origin…

Designed by: Lella Vignelli

Vignelli Associates has produced this book dedicated to the work of Lella Vignelli. The book is only available as a PDF, which is handy and immediate, but it makes me wonder if the Vignellis were unable to find a publisher for it. If that’s the case, it would be a shame, because Lella Vignelli’s body…

How to Build a Secure Online Presence

A friend of mine is very security conscious (unsurprisingly, he wishes to remain anonymous) and believes that, since no one is going to watch out for us, we should each be better informed about how to secure our own online presences. So he put together this excellent overview of his recommended steps. I’ve seen a…

The Scourge of Coffee

Who doesn’t love coffee, that life-giving, community-bonding nectar of the caffeine gods? Me, actually. While it’s true that on occasion I will gulp down a cup of it after a sleepless night, by and large I’m mystified that so many smart, caring, sensitive people that I love and admire are so enthralled by what are…

Bus Time

The future came to my neighborhood a few weeks ago when the city’s MTA bus system started reporting each bus’s location over the Internet. Brooklyn residents can now point their browsers to Bustime.mta.info to find out where along a given route the next bus is currently located, and therefore avoid long waits in inclement (or…

Next Generation Apple TV Concepts

Industrial designer Martin Hajek produced these impressive concepts for what a next generation Apple TV might look like. There are some interesting ideas here: multiple color options, adding a curved touchscreen to the remote control, turning the set top box into a charging station, and using the remote as a game controller. This kind of…

Notes on New Notebooks

You wouldn’t think that there a lot of new products to be dreamed up in the notebooks/sketchbooks category, but people keep trying — presumably because other people are still very fond of the tactility of real paper. In just the past few weeks, I’ve become aware of three new lines of notebooks. Mod Notebooks offers…