More Relief On The Go
Who is writing the copy for the new Samsung GALAXY Tab website?
I thought the headlines were a little awkward to read. After a run through the site I discovered that most of the copy is unintentionally funny. Somebody did a very poor job in the translation department.
I can’t believe that a corporate giant like Samsung would release with headlines like:
- HAVE YOU EVER HEARD THAT FLASH IS PLAYED ON THE FULL WEB BROWSING PAGE?
- DO YOU HAVE TO CONTACT WITH THE COLLEAGUE FOR THE URGENT WORK DURING A COSY TIME?
- DO YOU WANT TO GET VARIOUS CONTENTS FROM BOOKS, NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES AT A TIME?
I half expected to see ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US buried in the copy as a joke. Sadly, this is the real deal. i wonder how long it will take them to figure out how embarrassingly bad their site is? If Apple’s agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day ever released something like this they would be fired in a second.
Don’t forget. GALAXY Tab give you “More smiles on the go.” Visit Samsung GALAXY Tab for more smiles.
Posted in Technology at 5:43 PM | Comments (0)
My 2010 TIFF Films & Schedule
I’m seeing 9 films at TIFF next week. I tried to stay away from the hyped films with a lot of A-list stars and directors. In years past, a lot of these films have plain sucked (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) or they’re released shortly after the festival ends.
I tried to choose films that might be not receive a North American release or might be to difficult to find after the festival ends - Easy Money, Outside the Law, The Big Picture and Submarine.
Half of my original selections were documentary films. I’ve narrowed this down to Inside Job, Waiting for “Superman” and The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town. I wish I had tickets for Werner Herzog’s Cave Of Forgotten Dreams in 3D the luck of the draw wasn’t on my side this year. Hopefully it gets a theatrical release.
I’ve listed my film picks below in order of screening date and time:
Inside Job
Sep 9 @ 9:00pm - Ryerson Theatre
Waiting for “Superman”
Sep 11 @ 4:30pm - Winter Garden Theatre
Easy Money
Sep 12 @ 9:15am - AMC 3
Submarine
Sep 12 @ 8:00pm - Winter Garden Theatre
Outside the Law
Sep 13 @ 12:00pm - Varsity 8
The Big Picture
Sep 13 @ 6:30pm - Varsity 8
Buried
Sep 14 @ 9:00pm - Ryerson Theatre
The Debt
Sep 15 @ 11:00am - Elgin Theatre
The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town
Sep 15 @ 11:00am - Elgin Theatre
If you are attending the festival and going to any of the screenings above, look me up. Say hello.
Posted in 2010 TIFF at 3:47 PM | Comments (0)
Stan Lee at FanExpo 2010
Stan Lee was by far the coolest guy at FanExpo 2010. You’ll never meet a nicer celebrity that is so accommodating to his fans. His panel was entertaining and funny. For a guy that is 88-years-old he has a tremendous amount of energy. Excelsior!
Posted in Movies at 8:23 PM | Comments (0)
Premium Screenings Are On The Rise at TIFF
It used to be that the premium screenings at TIFF were gala events at Roy Thomson Hall or the Elgin Theatre. This year there is a disturbing trend whereby the number of premium screenings has increased.
Why is this a big deal? Premium screening tickets cost $38.27 and limits your choice of screenings in the schedule. If you have a 10-ticket flex pack you can’t attend a premium screening.
Last year you could attend a world premiere or a North American premiere of a film with a 10-ticket flex pack or with some of the other film packages. This year you can’t and this is a huge disappointment to regular festival goers.
Blame Underfunded TIFF Bell Lightbox
It’s a money grab that I assume will help pay down the debt on underfunded TIFF Bell Lightbox - the new home of the festival. One of the commenters of a Globe and Mail story nails it on the head:
And, surprise, surprise, they’re likely to charge the unsuspecting general public more, either via tax dollars from their C.R.A.P cronies, or by charging even more exorbitant prices for film tickets. They certainly won’t short the industry goody bags, come festival season.
Yup. This year the ticket prices and tax have increased while the selection of film screenings for most ticket packages has decreased. The cost of the programme book is higher than Paris Hilton and you no longer get a swag bag with highlighters and Starbucks coffee. Can’t TIFF rename their new home TIFF Bell RBC Blackberry Lightbox and give festival goers a break on the exorbitant ticket prices?
Many of the gala films at Roy Thomson Hall really aren’t worth the hype or the money - Passchendaele, Burn After Reading, A Good Year, Revolver, Mrs. Harris, and Edison (which went straight to DVD). I generally stay away from the gala films knowing that many of them will be in theatres within weeks or months for a third of the price.
In previous years I was permitted to enjoyed the world and North American premieres of The Wrestler, Bad Lieutenant, and Mic Macs where the director and stars were on hand to discuss their films. Unfortunately that won’t be happening this year.
Posted in 2010 TIFF at 6:42 PM | Comments (0)
2010 TIFF Picks
TIFF is right around the corner and the deadline for ticket selections is tomorrow at 1pm. I’m hoping to catch 8 films year. Below is a list with links to TIFF’s website where you can read the film summary.
- Submarine
- Outside The Law
- I’m Still Here
- The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town
- Cave Of Forgotten Dreams
- Easy Money
- Buried
- Stone
I’ll be posting a final list of films next week with screening times. If you’re in town or going to the festival then drop me an email or let me know what you’re planning to see this year.
Posted in 2010 TIFF at 6:20 PM | Comments (0)
There’s something sad about FanExpo
Picture thousands of nerds, geeks, Peter Parker wallflower types and Star Wars Kids in full Jedi costumes. Imagine hundreds of overweight women spilling out of their Princess Lea bikini costumes parading around the Toronto Convention Centre and you have some idea of what it is like to visit FanExpo Canada.
This is where Hollywood’s B-list actors and senior citizens sign autographs or sit around trying not to look bored. There was something sad about seeing 93-year-old Oscar winner Ernest Borgnine sitting alone with his handler, waiting for someone to request a $30 autograph. I watched as Borgnine was later helped into a wheelchair and wondered why he was at the expo as a sci-fi guest.
As I wandered around the show floor, 66 year-old Peter Mayhew limped past me with a cane. This gentle giant who played Chewbacca in the original Star Wars film looked frail instead of menacing.
I get that FanExpo is an opportunity for people to meet comic book artists, writers, actors and directors but I don’t understand the whole costume subculture. I felt like I was in a large room with a lot of very lonely people trying to escape from reality.
FanExpo continues tomorrow at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and wraps up on Sunday August 29.
Posted in at 12:38 AM | Comments (1)
BlackPad
Research In Motion is supposedly getting ready to launch their BlackPad to compete with the iPad. A lot of companies are rumored to be prepping their iPad killers but a I don’t think any of them will enjoy the success that Apple has.
RIM just released the Blackberry Torch to compete with the iPhone. The problem is that the Torch has a small 480x360 screen that was cool back in 2007, lacks apps and fails to impress Android or iPhone 4 users.
How will RIM compete with the iPad? According to BlackBerryCool.com it will have front and rear facing cameras (like the iPhone 4), Bluetooth and no 3G support. There is still no word on whether it will have a slide out keyboard for business use.
Apps? There hasn’t been much talk of killer apps to compete with Apple’s App Store. Still, circle November on your calendars and stay tuned.
Posted in iPad at 9:09 AM | Comments (0)
Richard Ayoade’s ‘Submarine’ at TIFF
Richard Ayoade who plays Moss on The IT Crowd wrote the screenplay and directed the film Submarine. This is Ayoade’s feature debut and it gets a world premiere at TIFF next month.
I had to laugh when I read the description of the film on the TIFF website:
One boy must fight to save his mother from the advances of a mystic, and simultaneously lure his eczema-strafed girlfriend in to the bedroom, armed with only a vast vocabulary and near-total self-belief. His name is Oliver Tate.
It all sounds bizarre. I hope I get a chance to see the film and hope that it is half as funny as the premise. Ben Stiller is listed as one of the executive producers.
Posted in Movies at 2:28 PM | Comments (1)
6 Great Docs On The Movie Network This Month
There are some great documentary films on The Movie Network this month (Canada only). I saw some of these films at Hot Docs and highly recommend them. The list below links to a description of the films and displays the times they are being broadcast this month.
You won’t want to miss Gasland. Like The Cove, it is the type of film that gets under your skin. You’ll wish that the film was pure fiction instead of real life.
Visit the film’s website to watch the trailer or read James McNally’s review over at Toronto Screen Shots.
Posted in Movies at 9:39 PM | Comments (0)
Missionless Statements
Dan Benjamin’s online talk show The Conversation is outstanding.
I watched Episode 27: Missionless Statements, which featured Merlin Mann and Jeffrey Veen (with host Dan Benjamin) talking about productivity, email, working for yourself, why mission statements are useless and a million other things that I found fascinating.
One of the nuggets of information mentioned, referenced a blog entry from Liz Danzico - Proposals for busy people. Danzico’s suggests that if you want to get something from a busy person (via email) then limit the choices you give them.
Instead of asking a client when they are free for a meeting, ask them if they are free on Tuesday at 10 am or alternatively on Thursday at 2 pm. Chances are you’ll save them time and you’ll keep the email exchange short.
Another interesting topic that came up was auto responder emails. I recently went on vacation for 4 days. When I came back I had a lot of email to sort through. If you’re going on vacation, why not tell people that you won’t be replying to any email at all. Instead, tell them when you are back to work and when you can be reached. Chances are, most of those emails sort themselves out or can wait until your return.
The amount of email we generate these days is insane. The biggest interruption to my workflow is email and phone calls. There are days when I put by phone on Do Not Disturb (DND) just to get an hour of work done.
I need to reduce my ‘check for new email’ frequency and stop being a slave to my inbox. I’ll often get an email that interrupts my workflow and pulls me away from my current task. This reduces my productivity during the day and is why I often prefer to work at night or on the weekend when the phone calls and emails are less.
I need to check my email less and hit the DND button on my phone a little more often.
If you get a chance, have a look at some of the other episodes from The Conversation or The Big Web Show. There is a gold mine of useful information in these video podcasts.
Posted in Web at 6:40 PM | Comments (0)
No iPhone 4 Antenna Issues in Canada
It seems that the iPhone 4 antenna death grip doesn’t seem to be a problem in Canada according to the iPhone in Canada Blog. Speculation on the blog points to the anemic AT&T network in the US.
John Gruber linked to a review of the iPhone 4 in Australia’s Daily Telegraph where dropped calls and signal strength haven’t been an issue.
Could it be that Rogers Wireless and a lower volume of iPhone users in Canada prevents the iPhone problems? Maybe. I’m just happy that I can upgrade to an iPhone 4 in the near future and not have to worry about antennae issues that our neighbours to the south are having.
Posted in iPhone at 4:43 PM | Comments (0)
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
Yesterday I launched a film website for Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel. I’ve always wanted to do a film website and never would have guessed that it would be a documentary film about Hugh Hefner.
The film opens in NY and LA on Friday. It opens in Toronto at the Cumberland the following week (Aug 6).
I’ve seen the film and can honestly say that it is a winner. Director Brigitte Berman did a great job of presenting Hef as a guy that has contributed so much more to American than Playboy. For example, I wasn’t aware of his involvement in the civil rights movement. Watch the film and I think you’ll be surprised.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel will be shortlisted for the Academy Award this year.
Posted in JAK MEDIA and Movies at 7:19 PM | Comments (0)
The Fox Islands
It’s been a while since I had some time to plan a photography trip and this year I thought I would try some paddling out in Georgian Bay near Killarney Provincial Park. I hadn’t used a kayak in over 20 years but that wasn’t going to stop me from getting some photographs of windswept pines and rock pools surrounding by pink granite.
After two trips to Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) in Toronto, I had a waterproof bag for my camera gear, a new compact stove, water purification tablets, paddling boots and all the requisite gear for camping on an island in Georgian Bay.
My first night was spent in Killarney Provincial Park at the George Lake campground (view a Google map). At sunrise I did a quick hike to A. Y. Jackson Lake which was only 20 minutes from my campsite. It was overcast and foggy but the scenery was incredible.
View a larger version of A. Y. Jackson Lake (first photo of my trip).
I arranged ahead of time to rent a sea kayak from Killarney Outfitters. They delivered the kayak to the Chikanishing Creek boat launch (point A on the map below). I parked my car here, loaded up the kayak and paddled out into Georgian Bay with my waterproof map and compass in search of The Foxes (point B on the map below).
After two hours of paddling and navigating I arrived at North Fox Island, exhausted (point B on the map above). View a Google map of this location.
I can’t tell you how relieved I was to make it to this island without rolling my kayak. Along with some mink, I was the island’s only inhabitant for 3 days. The photographic opportunities on the North Fox Island and the surrounding Fox islands was incredible. The weather was outstanding and my camping was problem-free.
I think I hiked around “my island” at least 4 times and at different times of the day as the light changed. I’ve never been at a location with so many options for making photos. If I tired of North Fox Island I just packed some water and food and headed over to one of the other Fox Islands for the afternoon. The quickest and possibly the best way to explore Georgian Bay for photography is by kayak. The landscape is simply stunning.
Posted in Photography at 9:15 AM | Comments (0)
Why I Love The Wired iPad App
I resisted purchasing the first issue of Wired magazine for the iPad. I bought the June print edition for $5.99 CDN instead. I heard all of the negative criticism about the magazine app - URLs don’t open up in a web browser, email addresses aren’t clickable, you can’t copy and paste text and so on.
I didn’t think the iPad Edition of Wired was worth the $5.99 CDN. So I took a pass.
Wired dropped the price to $3.99 CDN and I decided to take a second look. I really enjoyed the experience of reading the magazine on the iPad. Given a choice, I would prefer to read the iPad edition of Wired.
Clicking on an email link at the end of a story will now open up Mail and allow you to email the writer of the story. I still found that links didn’t work in the stories and ads but I didn’t care. It’s almost like reading the print addition - no hyperlinks and no copy/paste of text. I’d rather focus on reading one of the articles instead of getting sidetracked with another website anyway.
There are a few neat features such as embedded video and multiple charts. In some cases the video is used perfectly but I found the charts to be a little gimmicky, although, they are efficient in terms of saving space in the layout.
I don’t know if it is the novelty of a new app but I find that I’m reading more of the magazine in the iPad edition of Wired. The layout is beautifully customized for the iPad screen in portrait or landscape view. So far, I’m very impressed and look forward to next month’s issue and the new features that Wired plans to to introduce.
Posted in iPad at 9:39 PM | Comments (0)
Forrester Research Is Wrong About iPad Sales
Fortune wrote a commentary about a recent Forrester Research that seemed to indicate that iPad sales will plummet. Forrester Research predicted that only 3.5 million tablet computers like the iPad will be sold in 2010.
On June 22, published a press release on its website - Apple Sells Three Million iPads in 80 Days. If you believe the Forrester Research report, then Apple will probably sell another 500,000 iPads in the next 6 months. This doesn’t even take into account the other tablet computers that are on the market.
If anything, iPad sales are speeding up. As more people get a chance to use the iPad they tend to want one. I haven’t come across anyone that didn’t want an iPad. A lot of these same people aren’t sure what they would use the iPad for but they still want one.
I’m beginning to wonder if Sarah Rotman Epps actually used an iPad before she wrote her report. Her forecast for tablet computers is way off. Epps just doesn’t get it.
Use the iPad for a couple of hours. Read a magazine, surf the web, play a game and check the latest weather forecast, and then you’ll begin to understand why iPads are flying off the shelves.
Until you actually use the iPad, I don’t think you can really have an opinion about it that matters.
Posted in iPad at 8:46 PM | Comments (1)
Woody Allen Can’t Have An Opinion About His Films?
In late June, Woody Allen did an interview for The Times (which doesn’t want you linking to any of its stories) in which he listed his six favourite Woody Allen films:
- Purple Rose of Cairo
- Match Point
- Bullets Over Broadway
- Zelig
- Husbands and Wives
- Vicky Cristina Barcelona
For some reason people around the web were shocked or upset with some of Allen’s choices. Roger Ebert went as far as incorrectly tweeting “Woody Allen picks the six best woody Allen Films, and is wrong.”
Roger, Woody Allen listed six of his favourite films. This wasn’t a top six list of his best films. How can you say that Woody’s opinion is wrong? Ebert’s tweet has been retweeted hundreds of times and mislead a lot of people that never read The Times article.
Sure, some of the films Allen listed in the interview weren’t his strongest but he’s still allowed to call them favourites isn’t he? I’ve seen a lot of Woody Allen films and my six favourite Woody Allen films would be:
- Sweet and Lowdown
- Annie Hall
- Bullets Over Broadway
- Purple Rose of Cairo
- Hannah and Her Sisters
- Mighty Aphrodite
For the record, I really enjoyed Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Posted in Movies at 8:03 PM | Comments (1)
Simple Sells
I love great design which is why I admire so many of Apple’s products and software. Whenever a user interface is required for a product or an operating system, a simple solution always works better than a feature-rich solution. This is why so many of Apple’s products are successful in terms of user experience.
There is a great piece in the July issue of Fast Company about Steve Jobs called “Apple Nation”. I laughed out loud when I read how Apple’s DVD-burning program (iDVD) was created. A team was assembled and spent 3 weeks working on beautiful mock-ups of what they considered to be the perfect user interface. Documentation was written to describe how the prototype would work.
Mike Evangelist headed up the iDVD team and describes their first meeting with Steve:
“Then Steve comes in,” Evangelist recalls. “He doesn’t look at any of our work. He picks up a marker and goes over to the whiteboard. He draws a rectangle. ‘Here’s the new application,’ he says. ‘It’s got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says BURN. That’s it. That’s what we’re going to make.’”
The entire team was dumbfounded at first but when Evangelist now looks at the slides he prepared for that initial meeting, he describes them as being “ridiculous in their complexity” and that Job’s rectangle was the right way to go.
I love this example. Steve Jobs is a guy who knows that ‘simple sells’. Simple works.
37 signals is a company that understands simplicity and strives to remove complexity from its web applications. Guess what? Their apps work and are wildly successful.
Great design takes something that is often complicated and makes it really simple whether it is a phone, a software application or a website.
Posted in Apple at 1:07 PM | Comments (1)
What iPad Apps Are You Using?
I’ve had my iPad for a week now and I’m slowly figuring out what apps are actually useful as opposed to eye candy apps to show off the features of the iPad. I’m always curious to see what apps others are recommending. Let me know what works for you.
Here are some of the apps that I couldn’t do without:
I use this app to manage all of my passwords and logins on my Macintosh, iPhone and now my iPad. I can synch my iPhone and iPad via Wi-Fi with the Macintosh version of 1Password and keep everything up to date. This is one app I can’t live without.
My version of 1Password Pro for iPhone works on the iPad and the interface is stunning. I’ve read a lot of negative things on iTunes App Store about the iPad version being really buggy but so far so good.
Next to Safari, I use Twiiterific the most on my iPad. This is a gorgeous app that makes using Twitter a great experience. I still use Tweetie 2 Twitter on my iPhone but given a choice I would always be using Twitterific.
The best thing about Twitterific is that it is FREE althought I would gladly pay to use this app.
Online backup, file sync and sharing made easy. If you want access to your files from your Macintosh, iPhone and iPad then Dropbox is your best bet. I backup files to my account, share larger files with clients and store working files so that I have access to them wherever I am.
I have a basic account that doesn’t cost a thing and provides me with 2.5 GB of storage. How amazing is that?
CloudReaders is a free book/comic viewer, fully optimized for iPad. It supports PDF, CBZ, ZIP, CBR and RAR format.
Until iBooks gets upgraded later this month to read PDF files, this is the best PDF reader on the iPad in my opinion - fast, ad-free, and doesn’t cost a thing. I like that it also provides a Two-Up display for reading and based on the reviews it performs better than some of the paid apps out there.
I purchased the pro version of Instapaper for iPad ($4.99) which lets me read save web pages offline. I have a Wi-Fi version of the iPad. If I know that I’m going to be in a dead zone like the subway then I can read web pages that I stored earlier.
Other Apps
I purchased Moto X Mayhem for 99ยข - a great little motorbike side scrolling game that can be addictive.
The Marvel Comics app is very cool. Check out the free comics to get a feel for the app and then choose from paid comics for just $1.99.
The Weather Channel Max has great graphics, 5 day forecast, weather radar and more. Free app.
The Epicurious Recipes and Shopping List is another beautiful app with a lot of recipes from epicurious.com. The tab interface is really well done. I also have this for the iPhone but almost never use it.
The WSJ and New York Times Editors’ Choice are decent apps but I prefer to read the web versions of these newspapers in Safari. Same goes with the IMDB app. The website is much better than the actual app.
EW’s Must List is an interesting app for the simple approach it takes with the interface. PCalc Lite is another app I actually use quite a bit. I can’t understand why Apple wouldn’t include a simple port of the calculator app for iPhone.
So what am I missing?
Posted in iPad at 11:46 PM | Comments (0)
The West Wing Loves Their iPads
The Washington Post says has a story on how the West Wing loves their iPads:
The folks who gather early every morning in the West Wing office of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have something new in common these days. Practically everyone has an iPad - or will have one very soon.
I was curious to learn what kind of apps people in the White House are using on their iPads. It turns out that Scrabble, all of the newspaper apps, Epicurious and the Vanity Fair magazine app are popular.
Posted in iPad at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)
Loving my new iPad
I cancelled my pre-order for an Apple iPad when I found out that it would ship sometime in June. I waited a month for it to come to Canada. I’m not ready to wait another month while shipments trickled in.
I checked Twitter for “iPad availability in Toronto” and was surprised to see that Carbon Computing still had some in stock. Today I phoned them and picked up the second-last iPad (16 GB Wi-Fi version) in their store.
3G? No thank you. I already have an iPhone 3G for when I’m out and about which isn’t very often. I work at home and wouldn’t really use the 3G option. The Wi-Fi version of the iPad should be perfect for my needs.
Why buy an iPad in the first place? The simple answer is that I’m an Apple fanboy. I drank the Steve Jobs cool-aid. I also design websites for a living and want to be able to design sites so they render properly on an iPad. Apple sold 2 million of these things in the last 60 days. The tablet market isn’t going away any time soon. It’s still too early to tell if the iPad is a game changer but if it is, I want to be prepared and that means using an iPad.
A lot of people say, “I don’t get iPad.”. The commercials and the print ads don’t tell the full story. You really have use an iPad and experience it to see what all of the fuss is about. The web browsing on this thing is great. I don’t know how but web pages load much faster on my iPad than they do on my desktop computer. Everything feels fast, the user interface looks amazing and it is a lot of fun to use.
I’m typing this blog post on the iPad and I’m surprised at how quickly I’ve adapted to the on-screen keyboard. In landscape mode the keyboard is almost full-size and quite usable.
If you’re a photographer then I think you will love this device. Photos look great on the iPad and it’s a great way to show your portfolio. Optimizing my photos for this device is now on my to do list.
You can use most of your iPhone apps on the iPad but they don’t fill the screen. There is an option to display apps at twice their size but they don’t look very good. Try using the iPad version of Twitterific to manage your Twitter account and you’ll be impressed. Twitterific is free and much nicer than the new Twitter app for iPhone.
Using the iPad is similar to the experience I had when I purchased my first Macintosh in the late 1980s. I can’t put it down and turn it off.
Posted in iPad at 6:58 PM | Comments (3)
