Looking up! The view from the lobby at SF MOMA. Photo by Dave Schumaker

Earlier today, team gdgt took a field trip over to the SF MOMA, to check out the Dieter Rams exhibit. Known for his minimalist design aesthetic, the exhibit showed off timeless looking products that he has designed and influenced over the past 50 years.

Numerous quotes from Dieter Rams were posted around SF MOMA. Photo by Dave Schumaker.

One part of the exhibit was dedicated to his 10 principles of good design.

1. Good design is innovative – The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.
2. Good design Makes a product useful – A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.
3. Good design is aesthetic – The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products are used every day and have an effect on people and their well-being. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful.
4. Good design Makes a product understandable – It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory.
5. Good design is unobtrusive – Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.
6. Good design is honest – It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.
7. Good design is long-lasting – It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail – Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly – Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimises physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.
10. Good design is as little design as possible – Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

It was pretty awesome and inspiring stuff. Check it out at the SF MOMA. The exhibit runs until February 20, 2012.

  This piece was originally posted on gdgt. Check it out, here.

A number of third party browsers have been developed and released for Apple’s iOS. Despite the requirement that they must use WebKit, most of the browsers have executed some pretty interesting ideas and provided a lot of enhancements over the basic Safari browser found in the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Some of the browsers off the top of my head:

• Atomic Browser
• Dolphin Browser
• iCab
• Mercury Browser

What I would love to see is them offer some extra enhancements that would seriously make me switch. What are some of these enhancements?

• TextExpander support: A number of applications (mostly text editors) have been released for iOS that take advantage of TextExpander. I would love to see this added to browsers! I do most of my work in a browser window each day anyway, and on the desktop, TextExpander has been a completely critical feature.
• 1Password: If 1Password could find a way to allow other applications to user their database / keychain for passwords (similar to how other apps can use TextExpander macros), this would be huge! I use it all the time to ensure that I have completely random passwords, and if any one site is compromised, I don’t lose access to everything. The 1Password app on iOS is well done, but I don’t want to use their built-in browser. If there was a way I could access the passwords from another browser, this would be huge!
• Xmarks: Xmarks has been an important tool for me when keeping all my browser bookmarks in sync between Chrome, Firefox, and Safari on the laptop. Why not bring that over a third party browser in iOS? If this was available in any third party browser, it would instantly become my go-to browser.
• Ability to set a default browser in iOS: (Sadly, it will take Apple to build in this feature — there’s no way developers or users can do this short of jailbreaking) I’ll admit, having the option of running third-party browsers in iOS is pretty damn nice. But it still feels like a kludgy hack when you open a URL in any other application in iOS. It always goes to Safari, without fail. If there were a way to set a custom default browser in the system preferences, this would be awesome!

What sorts of other features do you want to see in third party browsers that they don’t currently offer (and aren’t offered in Safari)?

  This piece was originally posted on gdgt. Check it out, here.

Been using various iOS 5 betas (and now the GM) for awhile now. One of my favorite features (besides proper notifications, of course) is Safari Reader. Basically, it strips away all the cruft from a webpage and simply displays the content you want to read. It works similar to things like Readability.

It’s especially nice, since it presents the content in an eBook like format and you can dynamically resize the text.

Something I find interesting though — I haven’t really been using the “Reading List” feature. Basically, it’s a way to temporarily bookmark articles and websites you want to read late. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t do offline access though (so, I’ll still be sticking to Instapaper for my offline needs).

More info on Apple’s website.

  This piece was originally posted on gdgt. Check it out, here.

A friend of mine (see Marcie Lynn Photography) rented a Nikon D3x this weekend for a photo shoot. She took it along on a wine tasting trip a number of us went on, and I had a chance to play around with it.

The photos that came out of this thing were absolutely incredible. That said, it’s a beast of a camera and you probably need a Sherpa or two to help you carry around the camera and lenses.

It’s a 24.4MP full-frame camera. Coupled with a 50mm f/1.4 lens, this thing practically had night vision. It also absolutely nailed the focus on photos and the images were tack sharp.

The really interesting thing about 24.4MP is your ability to crop the image and still maintain high enough resolution for multiple uses. That was the most impressive thing, in my opinion. You could take a group photo of 10 people, then zoom into any one of them, and there was enough resolution and fidelity for a flawless 8 x 10 portrait. Incredible!

The other impressive thing was the image quality at ISO 6400. Properly exposed, you could barely see any grain! Seriously, that’s insane.

This is totally going on my “WANT-but-probably-not-ever-own” list. Anyone have $9,000 laying around?

My friend Scott and I took the afternoon off this past Friday to check out the Blue Angels practicing over San Francisco. We somehow found ourselves on a boat and ended up having front row seats to the practice. It was incredible!

If you need some proper theme music, may I suggest the Top Gun soundtrack? You’re welcome!

http://www.rdio.com/#/artist/Various_Artists/album/Top_Gun_-_Motion_Picture_Soundtrack_(Special_Expanded_Edition)/

Steve Jobs, September 9th, 2009 by Dave Schumaker

There’s little that I can add or say about Steve Jobs that hasn’t already been covered by more eloquent writers elsewhere.

I feel fortunate that I was able to see him in person on a number of occasions, showing off some of his most beloved inventions.

His enthusiasm was intoxicating and his drive was inspiring.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

We’ll miss you so much, Steve. Thanks for showing us what the future will be like.

Around the web:
– So long, Steve. [gdgt]
– Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011 [Wired]
– Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An Asshole) [The Wirecutter]
– The Steve Jobs I Knew [All Things D]

Last night, I went to a panel discussion on community management. It was pretty fascinating to hear how others use different tools and metrics to measure community influence and engage their users.

I put together a story on Storify using tweets from the event. If you’re interested in community management, it might be something worth reading through! (more…)

One of our cats, Tosh, decided to smite our dinosaur plants while we were sleeping last night.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, they’ve chopped down their cat tree at one point.

I’ve been messing around with the ridiculously cheesy (but pretty fun) Songify app on the iPhone which auto-tunes spoken word and applies it to a backing musical track.

I thought I’d make my own musical debut. Rebecca Black, watch out!

It’s Monday. (Only it isn’t, because I’m dumb and recorded this song this morning — when it was actually Tuesday.)

[MP3 link]

I should post some more updates soon. It’s been pretty hectic lately with travels to New York City, Yosemite, Austin, and soon, Seattle.