I came across this rather simple infographic created by Jose Duarte this morning. Using only balloons, the infographic compares the Internet usage of the people of China to other entities, such as the entire EU, India and Mexico. This is actually last year’s list. This year, the figures have already gone up a considerable amount. In 2010 there were 422 million Internet users in China, but in 2011 that number jumped to 477 million.

55 million NEW users in one year. To give you some perspective, that’s the size of five Los Angeles’s. to give you even more perspective, the United States only has 312 million people. Pretty crazy to think about.

Bobby

I came across this silly game called Where’s The Pixel? this morning after Pieter from Today and Tomorrow tweeted about it so I thought I’d share it. As the title suggests, you simply have to find the one black pixel on your screen. Sounds easy, but it’s actually harder than you’d think. I was playing it on my MacBook and lord knows how dusty the screen can get. I figure some of you can play this game against your co-workers to see who has the best visual prowess.

Bobby

Last Thursday I was given access to the beta of Vimeo’s new redesign, a bold effort to to make the site feel very 2K12, rather than 2009. Here are some thoughts on the goods and the could-have-been-betters of the design.

- The UI is a ton cleaner, giving all the focus to the video. This is evident in a couple spots like the home page, which now gives you three different ways to view the site, the version above being my favorite. The large, bold preview images definitely take the focus.

- The top navigation now opens up to reveal a drawer full of options, which is a great way to showcase a ton of different places to go. It’s also nice that they spell out what each section will contain for people who are unfamiliar.

- The individual video pages have also been cleaned up immensely. All you really see is a giant video on your screen, the way it was meant to be.

- Text hierarchy has strongly enforced around the site, telling you exactly what you should be looking at, such as the titles of the videos which come in at a whopping 36 px font.

- The More Video tab at top is a nice touch, showing related content as well as videos you’ve recently views and other videos from the user who’s video page you’re on. Some people I showed said they wouldn’t have noticed it though, so perhaps it’s a bit too discrete?

- Glad they didn’t touch the video player, it’s perfect.

- They now give you a more clear option to switch between the Flash and HTML5 player. Unfortunately, the HTML5 player sucks and barely worked when I used it at home. That said, my developer friends at work said that HTML5 sucks at playing video, so this probably shouldn’t reflect on Vimeo.

- The sidebar feels a bit sloppy and slightly overwhelming. It’s definitely treated subordinately, which I’m sure is the point, but it ended up feeling a it neglected. Not sure if there’s a fix or if they should change anything, but it was something I’d noticed.

- The site is starting to feel more social, like you’d want to try and hunt down your friends and see what they’re doing. I didn’t get this vibe before and never bothered to look. The only users I followed were those making rad shit, using the site more like a bookmarking system.

Overall I’d say the redesign is a huge step forward, especially for it’s art and design-centric community. Looking forward to the Vimeo team to continue rolling out improvements like these, hopefully they don’t take another few years.

Bobby

For me personally, I use and love Gmail. The team behind the service has to be one of the best, hardest working teams in tech, as they’re constantly rolling out new changes and improvements, especially on the mobile front. The big problem is, they’re a part of Google. Lately Google has been getting pretty shady, like adding in Google+ results into search, and now their policies are being updated as of March 1, 2012, which means a few things. The good is that you’ll have a unified “profile” across all of their divisions. The bad being that they’re going to start using even more of the data we input to further sell more advertisements. Remember, Google is not here to help you, it’s here to make money. So why isn’t anyone taking this opportunity to make some money on their creepiness?

I’m the first to admit that I have no idea what it takes to create an online email provider. I’m sure you’d need all sorts of server clusters and cloud membranes and yadda yadda, but isn’t that stuff getting cheaper by the second? So imagine that we have the backend figured out, and it all works like magic. Couldn’t someone design a cleaner, more human version of Gmail that doesn’t use your information to sell ads? You’d probably have to pay for it, but don’t we all pay for things that make our lives easier? I pay for Rdio, I pay for Dropbox, I pay for my water and electricity. I don’t know about you, but I’d put email up there with all of those essential services.

As far as I can tell there are about 3 or 4 major web-based email providers, namely Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, etc. But where’s the cool, design driven alternative? Perhaps I’m being to flippant about this, and maybe it’s way too hard to actually do, but I feel like there’s a serious gap that could be filled by a strong team with a great product. As Google (and Facebook, can’t forget about them) start to creep their tentacles around our lives, shouldn’t we start building our own alternatives?

Bobby

This makes me so happy. The extremely talented and oft-featured Pogo has released a new remix using footage from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Vivian, Carlton, Geoffrey, everyone is excised from the mansion, the early ’90s, the videotape, and moved into an updated digital melody. As the early ’90s would have it, the cast is wearing some of the only clothing that could compete with the song they now live in. But isn’t that part of Hilary’s charm?

I’m a bit skeptical of nostalgia when it seems inauthentic, but this is legit. Watching the Fresh Prince with my sisters after school is one of my favorite memories. We were on a first-name basis with the Banks and watching this again, I think we still are.

Alex

P.S. Did you know that Pogo came to the States and got arrested? He is banned from reentering the country for 10 years which is very sad for us. I would cite SOPA, but I’m a day late.

Yesterday morning, Twitter unveiled a totally redesigned UI for the iPhone and Android which in turn unlocked a new UI for the web. I had no idea that Twitter was gearing up for any kind of redesign, so I was pretty excited to see what they had done. In my opinion, they’ve completely upped their design game.

The entire idea of Twitter has been simplified down to it’s essential pieces. You’re not presented with three main options: Home, Connect and Discover. The home is still where your feed of friends are, the Connect section shows your @ mentions as well as interactions, such as retweeting and favoriting of things you’ve tweeted. Clearly Discovery is a place to discover, and to my surprise the topics have been pretty much in line with things I’d enjoy, so good on Twitter.

Purely from a design point of view I love what they’ve done. They’ve taken out a lot of the heritage design elements and slimmed things down even more, which I didn’t realize was possible. The UI on the iPhone is stunning, I’d say nearly perfect. There are some new behaviors though, like flicking up on the Me tab to see your DM’s, which I found interesting. People don’t like change remember, so this will be hated at first. The web app itself is nice and about as minimal as it gets, just some modules on a background. I don’t use the web interface often, but I’ve been popping on there more since the redesign, and in turn neglecting Twitter for Mac.

There seems to be some differing opinions on the redesign so far. Dan Frommer seems to really like it, while John Gruber really isn’t a fan of it. It’s funny though, because John Gruber also really likes Tweetbot, which I thought was clunky and hated using after a week. Either way, I’m really enjoying the change and applaude Twitter for really going for it.

Bobby

Let’s agree, this is proof that the internet is great. To fill the void where Peter Zumthor’s website should be, a humble tumblr site has been steadily amassing images of Zumthor’s work since late August. As proof that the internet is murky, I have no idea who’s adding the images or where the images are coming from. Still, however slowly or steadily, a stream of images is broadening to include Zumthor projects both well-known and less celebrated. It’s easy to browse the hundreds of images, but maybe frustrating to try and learn more about any particular one.

Alex

I figure a little classical music in the morning is a good way to start the day, especially if it’s done in such an interesting manner. The video above is from a project called Baroque.me and it was created by Alexander Chen while a resident at Eyebeam. The Baroque.me is a web app of sorts, created entirely in HTML5 Canvas, Javascript and SoundManager, which allows you to fully interact with it. I also thought it was cool how he chose to visualize the piece, with the four rotating spheres acting as fingers and the lines stretching and changing to represent the strings. Pretty rad project.

Bobby

I first started Internet-ing back in the late 90′s. My first computer was a Compaq with a dial-up connection. It was a different time, it’s kind of funny to think about it now. It was also an important time for me as I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. At the time I wanted to be the nebulous concept of an “artist”, not really knowing what my options were. Thankfully I was lucky enough to come across a site called Kaliber 10000, which billed itself as “The Designer’s Lunchbox”. Honestly, I didn’t even really know what a designer was, I hadn’t even thought of things being designed before, and that’s where K10K (as it’s affectionately called) came in to play.

It was a collection of links, of ideas, of events to go to, of people to know. Being 18 or 19 I didn’t really know what to do with it, but I knew I liked what they posted, that it spurred creative thoughts inside my head. Sadly, after nearly 10 years, the site has come down. Though it hadn’t been updated in a very long time, it’s still a bit sad to know that it’s gone, kind of like the ice cream shop in your home town closing up.

It was absolutely one of the biggest influences on me, on shaping who I wanted to be, on why I created this blog. If I can be a fraction as inspiring as K10K was I’d be extremely content. I have to give a big thanks to Toke, Michael and Per, the creators of K10K, and all the other contributors over the years who inspired me to do awesome things.

Bobby

Like a house, every paragraph in “Enquire Within” has its number, and the Index is the Directory which will explain what Facts, Hints, and Instructions inhabit that number.

For, if it be not a misnomer, we are prompted to say that “Enquire Within” is peopled with hundreds of ladies and gentlemen, who have approved of the plan of the work, and contributed something to its store of useful information. There they are, waiting to be questioned, and ready to reply. Within each page some one lives to answer for the correctness of the information imparted, just as certainly as where, in the window of a dwelling, you see a paper directing you to “Enquire Within,” some one is there to answer you.

- Editor’s Preface of Enquire Within Upon Everything.

Two years ago I bought this copy of a copy of the Paris Review. I didn’t really have a reason except to be distracted from the monotony of law school. I was half inspired by the opportunity to read an interview with the classic LA writer James Ellroy, and hopefully find a transcendental moment in Rainer Maria Rilke’s unpublished work as was 22 year old. I was stoked. The quarterly always has been a source of inspiration. While not quite religion for me, I cherish it like an appreciating asset. To me, it defines the art of the interview, it stretches an archetype of the short story. And the photography is always rad. I want to be published in the review, someday. It’s on my bucket list.

With all the recent hullabaloo over the Facebook redesign and the new timeline, I was instantly brought back to a story at the end of the Fall 2009 issue. This particular story is by Richard Powers and it is entitled Enquire Within Upon Everything. To give a vague, non-cliff hanger ending, it is a story about about the generation of kids who are turning 21 this year. The kids who never used a microfiche, text better than they can hand write, and never bought music from a store. It follows one boy who makes money in college categorizing other people’s travel photos and then develops a form of advertising, using browser history, that predicts items that people are going to buy in the next six months. He marries by crossreferencing his bride across hundreds of dating sites to ensure compatability. And years later, after a completely digital life, comes to a conclusion that all of the net is about fifty five percent accurate. Especially the parts about your life.

Kyle expertly noticed this trend of memory reproduction and commodification several months ago. And Bobby’s great post about quantifying your memories focuses on Facebook’s new Timeline, which attempts to chronicle your life. Every time I log in, look at a photo, “like” something, comment on a friend, de-friend somebody (I have only de-friended maybe five people total in my entire Facebook history, no joke), or send a message, the code automatically logs this for future usage. Even your previous marriages, engagements, girlfriends… My taste in books, music, film and art is now information to be sold and used. My memories are being quantified regardless of my wishes.

Then again, all memories are quantified by our brain. Sometimes against our own wishes.

Outside of a horrifying / exuberant moment, what memory from over a year ago do you remember completely? Chances are your memory isn’t accurate in the first place. Even the most notorious type of memory in humans – photographic memory – is based primarily on one sense. The most vivid memories I have are smatterings of time, smell, and feeling that I can never accurately replicate. Not even the movie that is my imagination can tell the story well. I remember falling in love with a girl in college and I hardly remember her face. I remember her smell. None of my memories are accurate. I would be lucky if it’s fifty five percent accurate.

Which leads us to the original Enquire Within Upon Everything. This British almanac from over one hundred years ago has been gloriously digitally reproduced for us by Project Gutenburg, allowing us to examine archaic linguistics and Victorian era thought. It’s quite a remarkable achievement as the book attempts to give advice on… well, everything from that era. One copy of this book could provide knowledge for a whole family, really. But how could it be accurate in modern terms? It was written in 1890 and could not anticipate its own irrelevancy. They didn’t even have airplanes back then. I mean, they wrote in “archaic linguistics,” I can’t get more disparaging. They’d be LUCKY to be fifty five percent accurate. How can I talk to them about aircraft moving twenty times the speed of sound or techno music? We got NOTHING in common on paper. The writers probably have more in common talking to this guy than me:

This still from The Manchurian Candidate provides a great illustration of the change between fifty years ago and right now. Sinatra is drinking straight booze (ok, bad example). He is smoking indoors with the windows closed. He has to find information in books. His primary resource. All this is so… irrelevant in light of today. I count at least forty books in the shot. All that information, might be held in a generous two or three megabytes (an already obsolete unit of measurement if there ever was one). 90% of the tension of this scene would be gone if all of it was replaced by a eco-friendly light bulb and a laptop. These almanacs are useless in the face of contemporary knowledge.

But what is similar between Sinatra and I? That distrust of the government? Fear of a world moving out of control? Frozen out by the country you love? In that regard, as this era escalates faster and faster towards singularity, it is important to understand what about us is human. Bobby is right – uploading myself into the Facebook matrix is no way to define who I am. But what else do I have besides my own senses that both define and restrict my experience? I am like Sinatra that way – I touch, imbibe, breathe, smell just like him. We may live in different worlds but we are still human. It’s the human existence that we both have in common, more flawed and priceless than any code.

While companies try to reduce your taste into a form of currency, realize it’s all just a sales pitch. A corporation such as Facebook can try to label what I encountered in my life. So I dare them to suggest to me to buy a copy of the Paris Review. Preferably issue 190, so I can ignore the story until I need to read it again and realize how dated it is to even hold a magazine.

So make real memories with a sense of the human experience. Make them unforgettably forgettable. Our species has been doing this for thousands of years now. Make a memory without a facebook upload, a twitter shout, or a photo. None of that can replicate the inhalation of cold air in the redwood forests. Or the dinge of the Green Mill before they banned smoking and manhattans were the best thing to order. Go and lose that memory as fast as you made it. Be something like 37% accurate.

What do you remember imperfectly? I remember the first car accident I had. But I mostly remember the smell of the chili burgers that I was taking home that day, I don’t remember the impact at all.

You can buy the Issue 190 of the Paris Review here.

Alec