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Apple: Their Tablet Computer History – liquidpubs’ blog:

This is a treasure trove of early prototype pictures and history of the devices and ideas that eventually led us to the iPad of today. I’m actually floored by how many of these are new to me because I thought I had seen them all. I’ve been a fan of Apple’s moves in the space since before I owned the first Newton.

This link is a day wrecker for any true fan. Consider yourself warned. (via MacStories)

What Simplicity And Minimalism Isn’t About…| Simple. Organized. Life.:

In tune with my last post.

Minimizing bicycles is one of my favourite thought experiments, so imagine my delight when I just ran into this prototype for a foldable city bike: Full Circle.

It was Korean designers Sang-hyun Jeong and Jun-tae Park’s submission for the Seoul Cycle Design Competition 2010.

The design is truly minimalist: symmetrical, built from two circles, two vertical lines and one horizontal.

The simplistic exterior contains all necessary technical stuff to make it a functional bicycle, and on top of that highly foldable. The design shows so many interesting solutions and ideas; look at the pedals for instance. Quite the engineering feat!

(Also very beautiful are submissions Bike 2.0 and Neo Essence. Yummie yummie ;-)

MacJournal for Mac, iPad, and iPhone | Mariner Software [Sponsor]:

I’m incredibly excited to welcome MacJournal for Mac, iPad, and iPhone from my friends at Mariner Software as the sponsor for the RSS Feed this week. For me, it is essential. I have been using the Mac version for as long as I can remember. I compose every post on my personal site in MacJournal as it easily allows posting to a number of blogging platforms (Wordpress in my case). I have several other secret projects going on in there as well. It is elegantly designed. It is feature rich, without letting those features get in the way. But for me, the killer feature is it’s full screen mode. It has my favorite full screen experience of any program on the Mac (Yes, all of them). Now, with newly released and redesigned versions for iPad and iPhone, I can capture, sync-up, and work on my posts and secret projects anywhere.

For over 45 years, James Turrell has been an artist fascinated by light and space. His walk-in light installations provoke emotion among viewers and make them think about space and simplicity.

James Turrell says:

Through light, space can be formed without physical material like concrete or steel. We can actually stop the penetration of vision with where light is and where it isn’t. Like the atmosphere, we can’t see through it to the stars that are there during the day. But as soon as that light is dimmed around the self, then this penetration of vision goes out. So I’m very interested in this feeling, using the eyes to penetrate the space.

I know from personal experience how great and relaxing a walk in his exhibitions can be. The Gagosian Gallery in London has his latest work on display, so if you are in the neighbourhood, check it out yourself!

If you are trying to live a clutter-free and minimal lifestyle, like I am trying to do, that doesn’t mean you need a Mac. No. However you will eventually levitate towards Apple, especially if you are a geek or you use computers as your mail working tool.

Why?

Clutter free: try having a clutter free desk when you are using a desktop PC, I can count at least 5 wires going in different directions in your desk. This is not just aesthetics, no, this is the way PCs are. The laptop world is a bit different, but again you have distracting things on the PC laptops (more on that later). On the virtual desktop it is impossible to maintain a clutter-free non bloated PC. After a month working with a brand new one you will find yourself with a soup of DLLs from installed programs, temporary files that never get deleted, swap files that never get clean and a myriad of other annoyances from windows that will make your life miserable, not to mention will slow down your system. Mac OS, while not perfect, handles this way better. Linux might be a solution, but then again if you are like my mom it will only confuse you.

Focus: windows is constantly bombarding you with messages such as your battery is now fully charged or you just logged in. In other words useless messages that only help kill your focus. You can get rid of most messages by using utilities like my own killballoonmessages but windows will still kill your focus with other useless messages. Linux is a far better solution for this, but again it has a steep learning curve. Also, and i don’t know why this happens, PC laptops has a large number of unneeded lights on them, by the keyboard. Always flickering, always graving your attention as if telling you look, I am working, look something is happening pay attention! and I find that very very annoying.

Simplicity: the your life simple commercial from window 7 is, for lack of a better word, bullshit. It’s the same windows with the added difficulty that they make managing it uber complex. Try getting your ip on windows 7. Or enabling the firewall? Another thing is why is windows always whining if you don’t have a antivirus installed or a firewall or any other anti malware? Why don’t instead make it simpler for the user and actually write an OS that is secure? And plea do not insult me by saying that windows 7 is secure, I do this for a living, you can hack a windows 7 in under 40 seconds if you need to. So, no, no simplicity either. PC still come with PCMCIA slots, and other ports that no one uses, they just add to the clutter and make the hardware thicker and heavier, so no, no simplicity there either.

And since my baby just woke up and my focus changed to her I will finish this here.

Hans Renzler is responsible for the beautiful design of this record, Denoising Field Recordings.

The recoding uses denoising techniques, bringing trains, streets, swimminghalls and public transports, all to create a new experience.

This interesting deduction method is matched beautifully with Renzler’s design of the transparent 12″ vinyl, in my favourite colour combination, white on white.

You can find yourself a copy by contacting the guys at Wald Entertainment