It’s only been recently that I’ve decided to opt for a nice pair of headphones, after trying out Kyle’s Sony MDR-V150′s.True audiophiles may balk, but consider this: I’ve used iPod headphones my entire life. The one thing I’ve noticed though is that there’s never really a great place to put my headphones, they’re just large enough to awkward. So when I spotted this MacHook by Workerman, I realized it was a perfect and elegant solution.

The MacHook is made in the USA from Baltic Birch, sealed with an all natural wax finish, and sticks to your computer with “nano-suction technology”, which sounds made up to me, but I’ll give them the benefit of a doubt. Major props to Adam Brackney for creating a really smart solution.

Bobby

I came across this photo taken by Flickr user m-s-y earlier and was totally amazed by how far the iPod has come in 10 years. I’ve seen other comparison shots before, but there’s something about the way this is shot that made an impact. A part of it is the difference in the shadow, not to mention all the ports on the top of the first generation iPod. You could probably stack up three of the newest iPods to make one of the first gens.

For those curious, here’s a list of all the models that Apple has released.

Bobby

I’ve been wanting to write a post about Instagram for a while, as it’s probably the one app I use most. For a long time there were a number of people talking about how iPhone photos, and Instagram photos in turn, weren’t “real”, basically that they held no value. I say bullshit. Instagram has opened up a new world of art and community that couldn’t have existed without the iPhone or app culture.

When I read this article by Nate Bolt over on Techcrunch it was basically all of my thoughts wrapped up into one, concise article. Nate does a great job of outlining what makes Instagram special: Quality, Audience, Access, Immediacy and Constraints. The final point, Constraint, is exactly why Instagram works, here’s what Nate has to say:

It might seem trivial, but showing one photo at a time is a design decision that creates more value for each image, and enhances your viewing experience. Plus it doesn’t hurt to have the images trapped inside a beautiful iPhone screen. It almost doesn’t matter who you follow—their photos probably look better one at a time. From a UX perspective, we keep learning that interfaces with constraints are successful, and it seems like such a straight-forward principle (140 characters, ahem), but it’s kind of worthless on it’s own. Obviously you can’t introduce constraints without other elements, which is why this is the last point. There’s something enticing about knowing that most Instagram photos are created on the iPhone, since it introduces a NASCAR-like equality. That makes it fun to see what other people can create with the same technical constraints you have. Photography has always been all about the equipment, and not at all about the equipment. Knowing millions of people are creating with roughly the same camera and app as you makes it exciting creatively. So constraints, combined with quality and an audience are what makes Instagram so addictive.

Above is a photo I took of Los Angeles and the Hollywood Reservoir. If you look in the back you can see a thin white line, which is actually the Pacific Ocean. The camera is on the iPhone 4 is amazing, and the social aspect of Instagram allows me to share this amazing site with my friends. Be sure to read Nate’s article, it’s a winner, and if you’re not on Instagram, what are you waiting for?

Bobby

I feel I should preface this post with, “I hate gift guides.” When a blog or website does a gift guide, most of the time they’re sponsored, and if they’re not, the person writing them is usually trying to get something free for writing it. In my opinion the gift guide has become the infomercial of our time, a way of saying that you don’t know how to buy gifts for the people you know best, so here’s a bucket of items to consume.

That said, I love what The Daily has done with their Gift & Gadget Guide app. To be honest, I didn’t spend a lot of time really looking through the app, though it seemed well put together and pretty fun to flick around on the iPad. What I enjoyed the most though were the awesome illustrations by Matthew Lyons, who helped bring across the theme of the guide, which was retro futurism. He’s a fantastic illustrator and it’s always great to see him doing work, especially on something special like this. The app is free, so for those of you with iPads I suggest giving it a spin, it’s a fun experience all around.

Bobby

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the iPhone 4S, both good and bad. A lot of folks had some silly expectations of what the iPhone 4S should be and do, and how it shouldn’t have even been 4S, how it should have been 5. But what Apple has done has made some small but powerful tweaks to a nearly perfect phone that makes it only better, perfect example, the camera.

The video above was shot completely with an iPhone 4S, and the quality is stunning. I wonder how many people would have guessed it was shot on an iPhone if they didn’t have previous knowledge?
The video was made by Benjamin Dowie, who did a wonderful job of capturing a day at the beach, but couldn’t anyone do the same with an iPhone and a bit of knowledge of filmmaking? That’s kind of the magic with this update is that we all have the potential to make beautiful things. The iPhone is good at cashing in on this, democratizing tools and allowing most people to create amazing things, like what Instragram does with photography.

Bobby

I had several people criticize my recent post about Steve Jobs, my thoughts on how he effected my life. I deleted them all, because soem of them were nasty or otherwise just negative in general and have no place on this blog. These comments though came to mind as I watched the video above, a recording of the keynote Steve Jobs gave from the Apple World Wide Developer Conference back in 1997. I hadn’t ever seen this before, but I was riveted as if it were being broadcast today.

To give a little backstory, Steve Jobs had been previously kicked out of Apple, that is until 1996 the company he started in the interim, NeXT, was purchased by Apple of nearly $500 million and Jobs was brought back into the company. At the time of the taping of this video his position was fuzzy at best, although he was still extremely opinionated. The video sounds like it wouldn’t be that interesting, it’s essentially him answering people’s questions for a solid hour, giving his opinion on the state of Apple and the future of the company and technology in general… which is exactly why I’m posting it.

To show you what I mean, here’s my favorite line from the video, as well as the most prescient one. I’ve paraphrased it slightly for clarity.

To me, what I want is this little thing I carry around with me, it’s got a keyboard on it – to do email you need a keyboard, until you perfect speech recognition, you don’t sit there and write stuff, you need a keyboard. And, you need to be connected to the net, so if someone would just make a little thing, where you’re connected to the net all the time… my god I’d love to buy one.

In 1997, he was describing the iPhone. Nearly 10 years later, he released the iPhone. I’m not sure how many people, technologists or otherwise, have made such a prediction and actually followed through with it.

It’s interesting that he mentions speech recognition, especially in regards to the recently announced Siri. You can read John Gruber’s review of Siri which gives a good look at how it works and what you can expect from it. To me it seems that speech recognition is the next step in Apple’s course. Earlier tonight I tried out the the existing voice commands on my iPhone 4, and the results, as they’ve always been, were miserable. I asked my phone to “play Radiohead” and it started to call a random contact from my address book. This has always been my experience with the voice commands, they’ve never worked. There are other phones that have voice recognition voice commands built in, though I doubt that any of them will match the quality and precision of Siri, and that’s where Apple will excel, because they do things better.

It’ll be interesting to see the mobile computing market (let’s stop calling them phones) in the next couple of years. Apple has made it clear that Siri is in beta, which means that it’s not perfect, and it’s certainly has room for improvement. Like the original iPhone, it lacks a certain polish and refinement, but it will surely be leaps and bounds ahead of what others have to offer. In the coming years the refinement will be there, and with it a slew of competitors trying to meet that seem quality, though trying to play catch up, just like what’s happened with the iPad. Pundits and analysts will, as usual, try to analyze what makes Apple work, and espouse their opinions on how things Apple should do to become “truly successful” and end up giving more awful advice.

The thing is, I think Steve Jobs has had a course charted for Apple for longer than any of us can possibly imagine, and that we’re all still in for a very long, exciting journey.

Bobby

Like most people, I have a phone charger next to my bed so that my iPhone will have a full charge for the next day. I do this everyday because I use my phone often, making it through 24 hours on one charge is about all I can do. When I woke up yesterday morning, it was at 100%. Throughout the day though, I noticed that my battery life had been draining rather quickly, noting to my co-workers how I thought it was weird. It was a busy day though, and I kept forgetting to plug my phone in, so around 4-ish it ran out of battery… and news was released that Steve Jobs had passed away. It took me a while to realize the oddness of this coincidence, which I do understand is just a coincidence, but one that was certainly weird to me.

Yesterday was also a very rainy, gloomy day. We haven’t had real rain here in Los Angeles for… I don’t remember the last time. But yesterday, the sky dumped on us. Shortly after the announcement of Steve’s passing, around 6, I went outside and took the photo above, a beautiful sunset framed by puffy clouds. Yet again, another coincidence that the rain had stopped, but it’s these odd things that make me question life and get a little deep.

I used my first Mac in the 3rd grade. I couldn’t tell you what kind it was, but I learned the struggles of the Oregon Trail on it, a life of cholera outbreaks and broken wagon wheels. This was 1990. I didn’t get another Mac, a Power Mac G5, until 2003, when I realized that I wanted to be a designer. All designers used Macs, it was a fact, so I knew if I wanted to be properly outfitted I needed to join the gang. I felt proud of what I was using, a machine that so many other important people used, it was inspiring.

Last night I had dinner with some old friends, one of them I’ve known basically since I moved to Los Angeles. We lamented about the passing of Steve Jobs, but our conversation easily turned to how much he’s shaped our culture via technology, and how few people have done that. We through ideas like “he’s the Mahatma Ghandi of our generation” or “he was our Michael Jackson” and “how many CEOs have you morned?”

Ultimately, the conversation boiled down to one truth: Steve Jobs made the world better by making our lives better. We live in a hyper connected world, and he helped make the devices we use on a day-to-day basis better. He made them feel human, he made them feel special. In turn he’s shaped the future. Without his vision we wouldn’t have a plethora of touch screen technology. Were there touch screen devices before the iPhone or iPad? Sure, but they sucked. Steve Jobs helped make them good. With the iPhone 4S, Apple is trying to make voice commands work, you know, for real. Android already has voice commands, Apple didn’t invent the idea, nor did Android. But I believe that Apple is going to perfect the idea, and that’s what makes them, and Steve, special.

There really isn’t a big point to this, I guess it’s just my way to get some of my thoughts out. I wasn’t sad when Michael Jackson died, I was shocked more than anything. Michael Jackson wasn’t my hero though, Steve Jobs was the kind of person I looked up to. He was smart, he was inventive, he was passionate about design. He had a tough life, he was kicked out of his own company and survived pancreatic cancer for 7 years. At the end of the day, and the end of his life though, he made a difference in the world, one which will continue to influence us for the rest of our lives. If any of us strived to be half as brilliant and determined as Steve Jobs, the world would be a much better place. User your time wisely folks, it’s gone before you know it.

Thanks Steve.

Bobby

Word just filtered through Twitter that iPhone photo share app Instagram just updated with some very exciting features. For people who don’t use the app, this is just noise and fanfare from iPhone nerds. But, for the nerds, this is huge. In a blog post revealing all of the updates, Instagram details that they have added four new filters (seen above), quicker filter switching, instant tilt shift, rotation, optional borders, higher resolution photos, more supported devices, and a new, somewhat cuter icon. To all non-Instagrammers, these are all seemingly normal things you would have thought already existed on the app but they did not. News of these things are huge! Particularly the fact that you can remove borders, rotate photos, and switch through filters and tilt shift much faster is a blessing.

I played around with the new app and it is very, very good. Let me show you some of the features that I captured, while using my dog Dottie as a model.

As you can tell from these three, the whole photo editing experience is completely different. Gone is the beige backdrop and somewhat invisible tilt shift button and in are new features and clearly noted functions. On the left, you will see how the tilt shift works. Although there is no longer a way to adjust how much tilt you are getting, you can now more clearly and easily see what is being affected by the tilt shift as a white glow displays the tilt shift. The middle photo displays the new filter carousel which loops the filters into a constant stream. You’ll also see there are new icons to represent the filters, which look much cleaner and crisper than the previous version of the app. Also, the shoes are gone and trees are in! On the right, the photo is upside down which–although seemingly silly here–is very valuable when you take a photo that you want oriented in a specific way so you don’t have to use another app to get it as you like. Although you cannot crop your photos (yet!), rotating your photo is a step in the right direction for Instagram to combat other photo sharing systems like Hipstamatic and Camera+.

You’ll also notice that all three of the photos do not have a border, which you can turn on or off with the icon on the top left. Speaking of icons, the second to the left icon rotates the photo, the middle reverses camera view, the fourth icon manages tilt shift, and the fifth exits from photo editing back to your stream. The fifth icon–the X–is a bit redundant in conjunction with the lower red X, which simply takes you back a step to retake a photo. Beware of which X you employ! The eye on the bottom right also turns off/on the filter carousel, making your view of photo editing less congested.

All in all, I think the Instagram update is very great and much needed. Granted, the updates are mainly only in regards to editing the photo versus the interactivity. The update gives users the power to make their photos look better than Instagram has ever allowed, which is a very, very good thing. Now, go forth and update your Instagram, iPhone nerds…and let us know what you think in the comments!

KYLE

Yesterday, it was discovered that Samsung, in an effort to not get sued by Apple, is attempting to prove a point that Stanley Kubrick created the original form of the iPad when he made 2001: A Space Odyssey. As you can see in the images above, there’s clearly some kind of electric tablet sitting there, and Samsung claims that “two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers.” It’s that last part that I don’t agree with.

Is that really a personal tablet computer? Or is it a personal television? As you can see there are 10 buttons on the bottom of the tablet, and what they do, we can only imagine. The scene which this was featured lasts only two minutes, and they never actually touch or interact with the devices in the scene. Looking up a timeline of the personal computer, in 1968, the same year 2001 was released, Hewlett Packard coined the phrase “personal computer”.

An advertisement in Science magazine by Hewlett-Packard introduces first programmable scientific desktop calculator, which Hewlett-Packard calls “the new Hewlett-Packard 911A personal computer”. (This is claimed as coining the term “personal computer”.)

In another example, you can see the Nova by Data General, which is basically a giant filing cabinet with a tiny monitor on top. So to say that the image is a personal computer seems just a tiny bit far fetched. What’s also funny to me is that you can clearly see a tiny IBM logo on the bottom right of the device. Interestingly enough, IBM launched the first laptop called the IBM 5100, in September of 1975, 7 years after the release of 2001.

Now, I’m not saying there isn’t similarities. Perhaps Kubrick did envision this as a personal computer, and perhaps IBM or a prop guy built something close to his idea? But is there any solid proof that says that’s what this was? Either way, I found the history lesson of personal computers rather interesting. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come in the last 40 years. Imagine the computers we’ll be using 40 years from now.

Bobby

Here’s a challenge: Find a local liquor store in the United States without California wine. Ok, maybe if you went to a store that doesn’t sell wine, you’d win. But seriously. Check your local deli.

The great American viticulture and oenology explosion of the past half a century has brought an entire industry to the many fertile regions of California. It has been a magnificent success. An entire economy of wine bars span the nation, supporting the local growers who have achieved so much in such little time. The perk of our weakened economy means that Europe and Asia can drink California wine on the cheap. It’s a wonderful time for California wine drinkers, and the native drinkers are getting even younger.

But this article has nothing to do with California wine. I am rejecting the prominence, strengths and beauty in favor of the old, tried and true methods of Europe. Mignon LA does the same.

Started by two local LA boys, Mignon is their second venture. When owners Santos and Danny came together to start their first endeavor, Bacaro, there was a curious focus on Italian wines and food in the vein of an Italian tapas, if you will. And when they opened Mignon, California wines were simply taken off the menu. This is not from a foolhardy position: having worked in local wine stores and traveled the globe extensively, the owners were deliberate in their choices.

Deliberation, in this case, meant success. Mignon claims to be a wine and cheese bar but I have found plenty more in it than that. Located in one of the revitalized corridors of downtown LA (6th and Main) that I affectionately refer to as “booze alley,” it is the only place to get a great glass of vino in the neighborhood. Tucking you around a bar with food and drink being served from the center outwards, it is cozy and inviting. Clever and comfortable decor (mens ties painted onto the walls, hangers for chandeliers) keep it informal, with the friendly and knowledgeable staff willing to not only elucidate your journey into Old World wines but navigate it as well.

Reward is in the pairing of wines to traditional yet robustly flavored tapas. Italian wines dominate the menu and on this particular night I was recommended the Etna Rosso. This Sicilian red is drawn from the volcanic slopes of Mt. Etna, bringing in a whole different meaning to the word “earthy.” The alcohol hid under a fruity nose and I was drawn into its strawberry, possibly peach like essence. Soon after I found myself drizzling sage honey onto slices of pecorino, following it with the smallest of sips to complete a triptych of flavor. A plate filled with jamon serrano, barolo, mortadella and salame kept my palate on its toes. While a smattering of cheese and charcuterie is perfect, the menu’s traditional focus allows me to enjoy dishes I would be too shy to order outside of Europe. Pate? Yes please. Brie tartine with fig jam and a glass of rosé? Say no more! You mean I’ll get bechamel with that croque monsieur? Now you’re embarassing me. I’ll take two.

This reverence of an intimate, rustic wine bar makes Mignon a find in the city. You can get great California wines anywhere in California. But Old World? Look no further than the heart of downtown LA.

Mignon LA
128 E Sixth St, Los Angeles, CA.

Alec