Sony are about to release the gadget I have been dreaming of.

The size of an iPod (that great form factor that fits in your pocket), the ‘PacketPC is basically a WiFi enabled portable bootable drive. Plug this into any computer and use it as if it were your own.

With 60GB internal storage this can hold most of your applications and important data. Lets face it, although many people use more disk space, the critical stuff like email and applications account for far less space than replaceable items such as MP3’s.

The PacketPC has a screen and Palm Pilot style text entry capability, but is primarily designed for read only (I always used to update my palm from scraps of paper when I had it connected to my PC anyway). The built in GPS chip will make use of location aware mapping services and entertainment/travel guides. Without hooking up to a PC the PacketPC is not designed to run much other than a web browser and contacts manager, but to be honest that’s all I would use on the move. It has an MP3 player and headphone jack etc.

The best thing about the PacketPC and the reason why it has pre orders of 150,000 units from Fortune 500 companies, is its simple approach to backup. Sony’s enterprise backup service (a consumer service will be available later this year) means that the PacketPC will remotely sync via WiFi or Ethernet with an identical machine in a datastore. Lose your packet PC and clone replacement will be delivered by Fedex with 48 hours. The backup seems to be a simple disk image so there are no settings to really worry about, the offsite model is an exact clone of whatever is on your machine, and data is transferred in encrypted chunks for the enterprise service.

Jeez I sooo want this, if only for the backup.

Macromedia care about software design, and there are not many companies that do.

The software industry is maturing and customers are beginning to care about well designed products. A few months ago, Macromedia looked like an acquisition target for Adobe, perhaps today’s 20% surge in value will help propel them out of Adobe’s reach.

Forbes.com: Macromedia shares up 20 pct on analyst upgrade

BusinessWeek runs a piece about the Segway’s lack of marketplace segue.

The Segway is an example of bad design. By that I don’t mean that it isn’t a seductive and innovative object, but it is an example of innovative engineering rather than design. Design includes how something fits into context i.e. society and the Segway is a Cuckoo.

Like Kamen, Clive Sinclair is an impressive innovator, after a string of successes he launched an electric vehicle the C5, which was intended ” to herald a new era of ecological personal transport”.

“The Sinclair C5 was a commercial disaster. The Press hounded it as a dangerous joke. Only around 12,000 C5’s were ever produced, many sold off abroad after the project folded. ”

The Segway is the new C5.

BW Online | January 16, 2003 | Is Segway Going Anywhere?

Workers at businesses and municipalities that have tested the transporters aren’t exactly sending in rave reviews, either. “You can’t keep warm if you’re not walking,” says a postal worker in Concord, N.H. “You end up like a frozen popsicle on a stick.”

Two all beef patties, lettuce, 1GHz PowerPC G4, 1MB L3 cache, 512MB DDR333 SDRAM, 60GB Ultra ATA/100 SuperDrive, pickles and onions all in a lightweight and durable aluminum alloy enclosure.

Apple - PowerBook G4 17″

I want a media PC - and by that I mean a PC that controls all the media I watch/listen to/photograph etc. I don’t want a separate Tivo, DVD player, MP3 player, digital photo archive - I want one machine to handle all of this.

Apple are heading in this direction, both in terms of hardware and software - and who better than Apple to provide this most luxurious of items.

The problem is that every attempt at a media PC that I have seen makes an annoying amount of noise - meaning that it gets switched off at ‘bed-time’, and then takes an interminable time to boot, ruining somewhat the spontaneity of waking up to the sound of music.

Please Apple, given that reliable sleep mode never works and instant boot never will, design me a silent machine that I can leave on all the time.

“Because clean dishes remain in the washer, the table becomes an ersatz cupboard between meals.” The new York Times lists the ’self cleaning dinner table’ as one of the ideas of the year. - What year would that be, 1958?

I have a big problem with dish washers - I hate unloading them - it seems pointless to move dishes from what is essentially one storage place to the next. The solution for slackers like me is to have two small dishwashers - pull clean dishes out of one and put dirty ones into the other. No unnecessary unloading exercise for me.

Ho hum, now I guess I’ll drive three miles to the gym and walk for half an hour on the treadmill.

NYT: Self-Cleaning Dinner Table - login required

The iPod is a work of art and it brings back the utility of the original walkman, without the hiss. The promotional material for the Walkman 2 showed it hidden behind a compact cassette box. The iPod does the same thing - but contains 400 cassettes.

Cassette tape Walkmans have always been more ergonomic than CD Walkmans, which can’t fit the into most pockets. In fact, clothing dictates one of the most successful form factors: ‘pocket size’. Regardless of any other issues, MP3 players don’t have the problem that CD players have, and the iPod is almost exactly the same size at that other design classic Sony’s 1983 WM-20, cassette tape sized Walkman. The CD was never a successful portable form factor.

Walkman History

Ikea, who are usually known for bringing modernism to the masses are threatening to demolish a building by Marcel Breuer, best know for his classic modernist furniture.

ArchitectureWeek - News - IKEA Threatens Breuer Icon - 2002.1204

Creative projects that people take on after the dot com crash - photographs of the entire California coastline:

California Coastal Records Project — Aerial Photographs of the California Coastline

Lets face it - most software and computer hardware is crap. In most tech. organizations, design doesn’t exist or is part of marketing or engineering, something that would have managers from other product-based industries slapping their thighs and crying with laughter.

In “the ten reasons ease of use doesn’t happen on engineering projects”, Scott Berkun outlines some reasons why the most basic of design requirements, ‘ease of use’, is willfully ignored in software development.

Over the next month or so, in an attempt to justify my ranting, I’ll elaborate on the future of design in the Computer Industry.

via Tomalak

The ten reasons why ease of use doesn’t happen on engineering projects - UIWEB.COM