I don’t believe in information overload.

I think it’s a term used to explain away losses of productivity or minor inefficiencies, or a scapegoat for whatever you choose to distract yourself with at any given moment. (I should know.) I don’t believe it’s an impossible phenomenon, but for the most part I think its manifestation is really a consequence of information flowing into your brain in the wrong context.

Today, computers are the hub of information retrieval in every home and workplace. A TV is good for information viewing, but it’s passive and not intended for fetching information based on a query, it just spits out what’s sent, whether you ask for it or not. When you want a specific question answered immediately, you always go to a computer.

Mobile devices are slowly cutting into this monopoly, albeit at a snails pace. What is really starting to work are mobile applications specifically designed for the context in which they are used. For example, you want a taco and use your phone for a location-based search of a Mexican restaurant. It’s a map-based interface, and the information is given to you based on your immediate location. That’s all well and good, and is technology widely available today. (App Store anyone?) You can also do that from your computer, but what’s important is that that information is available in the context that you need it in.

The proliferation of this type of information retrieval is the answer to information overload. (If there really is one, that is.) What is important is that there is information there, in the background, available and context-sensitive.

Cooking Up an Example
I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. I keep recipes on my computer. Not because it’s convenient or practical, but just because my computer is where I save everything. When I want to cook something, I either print or write down the recipe and take it to the kitchen for prep, or scamper off to the store for ingredients.

Here’s the dream scenario. Recipes are available on my computer, but they’re also available on my microwave, fridge, and above my stove. When a recipe is selected a shopping list is made available in my phone. Better yet, my fridge checks it’s own contents and lets me know what I need from the store. If I have all the ingredients maybe my stove starts preheating. You get the idea.

The point is a computer is more a gatekeeper, or even roadblock, today than ever before. With wifi chipsets becoming ever-more microscopic and flexible OLED displays starting to be practical, it’s nearly possible to have a genuinely useful information cloud out and about in meat-space. More seamless devices (don’t think phones and computers) with more connectivity spread out into their appropriate context could make a lot of sense.

Perhaps even….gasp…reserving your computer just for work. Wouldn’t that be novel?

The more information available in the correct context lets it blend into the background. If the retrieval isn’t a burden, yet another task to complete, that’s where it’s most useful. That’s the goal…providing information in context, perhaps that can make our current concept of computers and information overload slowly go away.

Man-children everywhere finally have representation. With Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly together you know you’re going to get laughs, though considering the length of this movie there should have been a few more.

Anchorman it is not. In the supporting cast, or at least the comedic supporting roles this movie stumbles. They really aren’t given the lines or time needed to shine. Add that with the fact that the movie hardly ever gets past the central joke…39 year-olds living at home and acting like children…and what you’ve got is a solid rental. If you’ve seen all the trailers you’ve seen most of the best parts, and I hate it when that happens.

Oh the highly anticipated follow-up to the resurgent Batman catalog! As with Batman Begins, The Dark Knight is directed by Christopher Nolan, and this is definition summer blockbuster stuff folks—it’s comic book inspired, a sequel, and full of action. The film doesn’t disappoint, and in some ways improves upon Begins.

First, Maggie Gyllenhaal steps in for Katie Holmes, which completely eliminates the possibility we’d have to try and take Katie Holmes seriously for over two hours. Dear Maggie, thank you, thank you, thank you. Heath Ledger’s performance should also be greatly appreciated. Although I’m far from bestowing an immediate posthumous Oscar, call me a hold-out, Heath’s Joker was plenty sinister.

What was most intriguing to me in the film was something completely unexpected—an all-out attack on warrantless wiretaps and the PATRIOT Act.

(VERY MINOR SPOILER AHEAD.)

“No man should have such power,” claims Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox, as he’s asked by Batman to monitor an entire city by using Gotham’s cell phones as impromptu sonar receivers. Batman admirably promises that the monitoring system will be put down when the present crisis abates. How responsible of you Batman! I suppose it’s no wonder privacy is one of the rights you choose to celebrate…as opposed to say Habeas Corpus…Batman solves crime with his fists dammit, not due process. Such is the strange relationship between necessary ass-kickings and lawyerly heroics in Gotham City. That much we’ve come to expect from these movies I’d argue, but a blatant attack on the Bush administration’s heavy handed “safeguarding” techniques was a big surprise to me. Well, somebody’s got to say it right? It might as well be Batman and Lucius Fox. As far as I know, fictional characters are the only people you can’t send down to Gitmo.

There are many other strong themes to explore in the film, the vicious survival instinct embedded deep in humanity, the corruptibility and delicacy of the modern psyche, and of course the thin line between anarchy and the orderly society we presume is good. TDK isn’t a perfect movie, but for summer pulp action you can’t ask for much more.

Note: I wrote this review the day after Cloverfield was released, just after watching the movie. I delayed posting it because I felt it was too pessimistic. However, upon reflection, I realize this is pretty much on par with the rest of my movie reviews, so I’m cleaning out the “Drafts” bin.

I love a good thriller and I love a good mystery. If you promise both of those with a trailer that graciously doesn’t distill the entire plot of the movie in 15 seconds then I’m pretty much already standing in line at the Cinerama. Nice work J.J. I’d love for your example—an alternative to culture-spamming the movie synopsis across all spectrum of media—to become the norm.

Cloverfield is difficult to watch. I consider myself a hardened soul, nearly impervious to disorienting camera convulsions—not out of superior physiology mind you—but typically a potent mixture of perseverance, spite, and judicial application of Maritime’s Jolly Roger. I hate overzealous camera shake in movies but as a frequent movie-goer in this day I’ve come to feel it’s a necessary penance.

I digress. Cloverfield’s major flaw isn’t the camera shake, but the botched early character development. The lack of sincerity, the blanket of unreality at the start of the film cheats the rest of the movie out of what it deserves…genuine attachment to central characters.

So What’s Great in Cloverfield?
Hud is the guy who carriers the camera for the majority of the film, and while he’s physically in the background, providing narration, he’s reduced to being a mechanical (and frequently comic) device. The camera lens is a barrier between him and reality, and capturing becomes more important than feeling—despite the tragic circumstances. Even facing death taking pictures takes precedent. “Hud” conjures H.U.D., a “heads up display” in a fighter cockpit or increasingly popular as informational readouts projected onto consumer car windshields or motorcycle helmet visors. Hud is a transparent purveyor of information, and the camera that lets us experience his trauma cheats him out of that experience.

That’s the important place that Cloverfield goes. The beginning of the film introduces the footage as property of the Department of Defense. An evidence. An entry in a database. A visual archive and nothing more.

At what cost do we come by our digital rememberences?

Blog hiatus over! I’m back, writing again, posting pictures and the like. I’ve finally taken the time to put together a new design for the site with the goal of bringing a more photoblog-like experience to my posted pictures. Check that out over at 17mm, and please don’t be shy in pointing out any glaring deficiencies. It all needs a bit of code massaging and there will be many tweaks in the future, but I’m happy with the separation of the photo-centric posts away from my text-based diatribes.

“Dig Deep” is not only the name of the new theme, of course for the grass + soil + sullied paper composition, but is a bit metaphorical…with me of course there’s always a metaphor. It was difficult to work this all out in a satisfying way. Certainly the structure is a drastic improvement. I’d say I’m about 75% happy with the overall result, and it’s certainly good enough for me to look beyond the superficial design details and get on to what’s of genuine importance…sharing words and pictures. There will be much more of that, oh yes!

After Brian Dorsey’s Noonhat presentation at the 4th Ignite Seattle I decided to give his app a shot: sign up on a particular date and find random people to eat lunch with. Simple enough, and fun too.

Wednesday morning, right on schedule, I received an email confirming the fact that there were two other folks in my proximity with the same plans as my own. I got the email addresses of Beth and Deepak and we began to exchange pleasantries and firm up the details.

Then there was the email from Brian asking if King 5 could tag along. Lunch with strangers isn’t nearly as awkward as lunch with cameras and microphones.

Thanks to Beth and Deepak for a great lunch. You can check out Noonhat here, and see King 5′s coverage here.

In case you were wondering, yes, on Friday I stood in line at an Apple store and bought an iPhone.

Hands On Review, iDay, 4 Days Hence

In short it’s exceeded nearly all of my expectations. It’s hard to keep the darn thing in my pocket it’s so fun to play with. The media functionality and Google Maps integration seem particularly well executed, but nearly every interface shows polish and attention to detail. The screen is not only extremely scratch resistant, (I was worried prior to getting it in my hands) but without doubt the best one I’ve ever seen on a portable device; the touch-based interaction is fun and intuitive. I even love typing on the non-keyboard.

My software experience did get off to a bit more of a rocky start. I had to reinstall iTunes even though I had the latest version, but after that I was off to the races with a smooth activation and transition to my new phone. (I was lucky apparently.) Syncing has been effortless, and I’ve got a full feature length movie, a few hundred photos, all my usual podcasts and a dozen albums loaded on my iPhone with plenty of storage to spare. (I, like most people, opted for the 8GB version.) Battery life has been much better than I expected, but that stat could always be better couldn’t it? With my current usage I’ll need to charge it every other day.

There are a few things I’ve found lacking however—divided into three sections—things I think should have been included from the get-go, apps I’d like to see on the device, and finally things that are most likely on the horizon but that’d I’d love to see in iPhone some day.

What Should Have Been in the Box

• MMS
  Email is the only way to get photos off your device besides syncing. It’s a pinch to send email with photo attachments with iPhone, but why not be able to do it via SMS as well?
• Video and Audio Recording
  The 2MP camera included is performs well and has a great interface—but why no video capabilities? Why no audio recording through that mic?
• IM
  Text messages are organized just like iChat’s, but that’s no replacement for a true IM client. Why no iChat?
• Ringtones
  Custom ringtones tend to drive me crazy, but I know many people love them. Why isn’t there a way to purchase ringtones through the iTunes store? What happened to that tab? (It’d be great if you could create your own, but I know that’s never going to happen.)

What I’d like to See

• More Widgets
  More Yahoo! widgets just like the weather widget. Apple could release pre-approved widgets, and allow customization of the home screen without even offering a full SDK.
• Standalone RSS App
  I’d love a full RSS reader, as opposed to Safari and web-based solutions.
• Flash and Gears
  Safari, though it’s a great implementation, in general could use a bit more versatility. Flash would help. Gears could would too…allowing offline functionality in web apps.
• Games
  I’m pretty sure that DS thing—that other thing with a touch screen—is doing pretty well.

The above widgets, games and apps all could be realized with an SDK or some sort of an Apple controlled iPhone app ecosystem. (I brought up the “walled garden” question when the phone was announced.) Though Steve Jobs made the case at WWDC that web 2.0 apps address this need that’s at best just a stalling tactic. Right now I think they’re just nailing down the basics, and for all the fun games / apps / widgets we’ll have to wait a while. That’s what will really unleash the power of this device.

For the Next Gen?

• GPS
  Make those GMaps (and everything else) really location savvy. The possibilities are endless.
• 3G
  I’ve been pleasantly surprised with my EDGE performance. Then again, I haven’t used it much.
• A2DP
  Time to finally cut those white earbud wires? I think so. A firmware update could uncripple the iPhone’s bluetooth.
• SDK
  The aforementioned SDK would really open up the iPhone world. Once the platform is solid enough that stability isn’t an issue I think we’ll see widgets, if not full blown apps right behind.

Video Conferencing? iChat AV on the go?

Now I’m reaching a bit further. Initially the whole lack of a video camera and true iChat functionality confused me—but then it dawned on me—does version two have a video camera—facing the user—for live mobile video conferencing? If it doesn’t I think it should.

Conclusion

My initial experiences with my iPhone have been extremely good. For me it has completely lived up to the hype. I’ve peeked into nearly every nook and cranny of the device and really put it through its paces. I’ve had only one app crash thus far, and every person I demo it for is genuinely blown away if not stricken with pangs of jealousy.

I can part a crowd of techies with a marimba chime, but more telling I think was the incredible demographic diversity I saw at the Apple store on Friday when I made the purchase—a huge variety of people, all sick and tired of disappointing devices they have to use on a daily basis. For them, and me, Apple has solved a problem.

Similarly, the future looks bright for the platform as a whole. When an SDK, 3G , GPS and maybe even video conferencing hit this handheld it will be even more of a show-stopper than it is now.

Ace and I were both born June 20th. Most likely, however, this is where the similarities end.

Paul Muldoon, another June 20th birthday, is an artist that I’m a very considerable fan of.

But then there’s Lionel Ritchie.

Arid Lands, the documentary covering the people and history of the Columbia Basin I reviewed after it screened at the Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival, is showing again in Seattle if you missed it.

It’s playing Saturday, Jun 2nd at 5:00 pm SAM as part of STIFF 2007, find out more and buy tickets here. Highly recommended!

Find other screenings of Arid Lands.

The lawn bowling green just above Green Lake.