sammi needham : cogitate

The Apple Australia site says that iPads will be available in late April May. Well, it’s officially late April. Where’s my iPad!

*Update. iPad orders have been pushed back a month outside of the US. Makes the (potentially) over-priced eBay option look better than ever.*

Funnily enough (that’s a term my mum used to use, i’m not so sure it’s correct grammar “funnily”?) the site also mentions the unbelievable price. What is funny about that statement is that no one has any idea what that unbelievably new price is going to be. No one that can say, anyway.

It’s pretty amazing that there’s such hype in this country about a device that has no fixed release date, very few details about available models, and which nobody knows a thing about the 3G capability, not to mention the fact that all the ruminations about video iChat point to an updated release (no doubt within 6 months).

Still, i’ve got a deposit down and i’m in line for the top of the line model (whatever that happens to be).

I’ve spoken to a lot of people about this device, and i’ve been describing it as “the best computer for your mum”, ever. Of course if your mother is a 30 something technology writer for a National newspaper, that description doesn’t apply. Mine isn’t, and so for my 50 something mother, i think this machine is perfect. Here’s a few points that i’ve had on my mind as a rationale…

1. It’s pretty simple (and meant to be)
   It does one thing at a time. My mum can only manage about one thing at a time on her macbook pro. But the ability for her to be able to physically do more makes her run into trouble, and get confused watching anyone else use her machine. The lack of multi-tasking (actually there is multitasking in OS4 but it’s not real) is a perfect way for her to be more immersed in what she’s doing, while she’s doing it. Lack of multi-tasking is a feature for my mum.
2. Touch is intuitive (duh!)
   All you have to do is look at the way that it’s portrayed in walkthrough videos and ads, this device is super simple to use. Everyone has fingers (sorry to the fingerless?) and it’s easy to walk them around a screen and point at things that interest you. Sure there’s gestures and multi-finger functionality but that stuff is mainly optional, and as you get more comfortable with one finger touch, these things will make my mum feel like a power user. The popularity of the iPhone among a very wide demographic has shown that touch is a very natural way to interact.



3. It’s a bit fancy
   Although an internet luddite, my mum likes to show off a bit. When i set her up with Skype, she showed all of her friends like she invented it. The newness and flashiness of the iPad will make her want to use it around her friends, this meaning that mum and her buddies are online more. Sharing and surfing and watching and creating with friends of all ages can only mean better, more diverse user bases and more eyeballs
4. It’s “available at an unbelievable price”
   Who knows what this even means for us (Australians), but if it truly is a great price then i think the usual barrier to entry with Apple products could be close to eradicated. It’s a shame that you’ll need a computer to activate it, but any machine will do the trick, and then sit gathering dust while mum plays with her shiny new toy.
5. It’s a toaster!
   Well it’s not really a toaster is it, but it should be considered an ‘appliance’. It will sit in the lounge room or the kitchen (the bedroom?) not resigned to a special room for ‘corm-pyu-ting’. This is a good thing, with more digital integration in everyday lives, probably less television-time, and more looking at your son’s Flickr photos.
6. It makes content more fun
   I can see my parents buying newspaper and magazine subscriptions on their iPad, for sure. Dad will find it more compact to grasp an iPad on the toilet as he reads (or probably watches) the sport pages, mum will get richer media for her hollywood gossip, dad’s golf magus will include interviews (probably in higher res than his crappy SD foxtel) and it should all come down the pipe automatically in a way that is way more fun to consume and share not having a convoluted way to seek it out in the first place will be the key.
7. My parents might start to understand what my job is
   I’ve always been described as the son that “works with computers”. It’ll be nice for them to be a bit closer to integrating with things that i do for a living. They might just start to get it

I love this device even though i’ve not yet touched it i’ve only spent a short time with it (we’ve got one at work doing the rounds), but I really lament the lack of a front facing camera. I think being able to Skype is one of the things that my mum got most excited about when i set her up with her macbook. This, for me, is almost a deal-breaker. I’m sure it will come and iPhones are already being used as remote bluetooth cams, but the more abstracted that gets the less likely my mum is to do it. It’s a shame, but i’m sure we will see it in the next revision from the looks of all the “iChat” references in the 4.0 software.

I’m still waiting, and i’m waiting with baited breath, Mum doesn’t know it yet but i i’ll be swapping her laptop for an iPad when they’re arrive. I think she’s going to love it, i just hope she shares it with dad.

Before Avatar and the mad 3D crazy that is sweeping the world, i went to see Up in 3D and was super impressed by it’s subtle and tasteful use of 3D. After watching the previews before the film and being surprised that there was so much 3D production going on i’ve started looking into the use of 3D on the web. If you’ve ever looked into it, you’ll know that it’s not easy to find any half decent examples around, those red/cyan glasses are pretty hard to use and they don’t work for everyone, not to mention that most of the examples on the web are from old SD content made in the 80′s. Given the current rapid trend, It now looks like YouTube is getting on board and this example is the best implementation that i’ve seen so far.

Click the video to view in HD on youtube.

The HD version is really good quality and the options to choose between any possible implementation of 3D colouration via the drop down caters for any possible combo of glasses and styles available to a standard computer screen. The option of ‘cross-eyed’ 3D is also pretty cool, so that just by crossing or squinting your eyes you may be able to achieve the effect without glasses. It didn’t work for me, but it’s a cute experiment.

Hopefully we keep experimenting with this colourised stop-gap approach while the world (and all of our content) get’s ready to upgrade all our screens again once proper polarised (or even native) 3d becomes available to consumer sets and monitors. Plasma/LCD/LED/HD/FULL HD/3D/ let’s hope it never stops.

Click the image for a larger version

Oh, and you’ll need some red/cyan glasses to demo any of this stuff properly, the cross-eyed thing doesn’t really work (not for me anyway). Go get some glasses.

On friday the 27th of November Visual Jazz held our first (potentially annual?) in-house exhibition. There were no punters, no auctions, no fancy gallery, what there was, was a huge VJ turn-out, a bunch of very talented and dedicated people and enough champagne to keep us all occupied for several hours.

We have this long curved wall when you enter our studio, it’s white, and it’s really boring. There’s been much talk of what to apply to it to spruce things up a bit over the years although nothing had really come to fruition. But 2009 is the year to get things done and the idea that was sprung was to flex our creative muscles a bit, get away from the computers and make something physical to adorn this eyesore once and for all. The VJ exhibition was born, the theme: One Wish. This seemed like a good flexible name for our first exhibition, as if you didn’t like the theme, you could just post-rationalise your artwork by announcing that your one wish to change the theme.

For some it was a several-month-long crafting of finite detail, for others it was a mad rush to the finish, but when the time came to unleash upon the VJ at large, we had a whopping 25 artists providing finished work for the exhibition. The analytics guys tell me that’s about a 26.23% participation rate, which is apparently quite good.

We gathered at about 4:30pm in front of the curved wall with all the art hung and shrouded in black covers. Our resident office MC Jonno gave us a stellar introduction alongside national CD Gavin Heron, at one point a single tear rolled down his cheek to illustrate the sheer passion that we all shared at that point, the anticipation was palpable. Then the pieces started to be uncovered…

One by one each artist took the covers off their work and shared a sometimes funny, sometimes powerful, sometimes insightful, always interesting story about why they had created their artwork and what ‘One Wish’ meant to them. We got through the 20 odd pieces over the course of an hour and a half and then the voting began.

Overwhelmed by the quality of work that was presented, the judging wasn’t easy. Winners had to be named though, and after 30 minutes worth of deliberating 4 prizes were awarded.

The adjudicating committee of exhibition organisers crowned their MVPs, both male and female.

The Sammi Needham trophy for ‘Best boy’ went to Matt ‘The’ Baron for his piece ‘Batman’. Co-developed by him and his 4 year old son Leo it introduces to the world a collaborating team that i’m sure will continue long into the future.

The Gavin Heron award for ‘Lady of the night’ went to Abby Kelly for ‘Make a wish’ for it’s sheer craft and beauty. No one could really believe the intricate fingerwork that must have been required to achieve this level of delicacy.

The Simon T Small encouragement award was fittingly awarded to Caroline Jeppe for the best damn Hamburger anyone has seen, but not been able to eat. It’s title ‘Eat Me’ teases you as it’s felt and plastic apparently contain magical powers, but should probably not be eaten, if only because it wouldn’t allow anyone to every appreciate it’s perfect form again.

And the people’s choice award, voted for by all VJ staff and awarded the coveted prize of 1 additional day of annual leave went to: James Cook, for “I want everything”. It’s a killer piece, literally a crowd favourite. All night there were people huddled around this artwork finding new details hidden within the fine line work.

Having all of the officialdom over, that’s when the party began. A tremendous night was had by all, we danced the night away on and over things that were never meant to be danced upon, it was a perfect warm-up to xmas party season.

We shot a great video from the night with everyone introducing their pieces, hopefully that will show up at some point somewhere within the mangled intertubes that we call home. Until then, here are most of the pieces that appeared in the exhibition. Enjoy…

Oh, and if you want a closer look, they will be on show in the VJ office until christmas.

Incidentally, we also had a live stream of the exhibition enveiling, and i think we even managed to attract about 3 people to watch it! Yeah!

Ocean Recon is a project that i have been working on for the last 12 months or so. We started planning this project just after i started at Visual Jazz. Trying to get a Submarine project off the ground is a process that had taken place a few times before and now we’d finally found an approach that everyone was happy with.

To show what life is like on a submarine is not an easy thing to do. It’s pretty hard to get on board one, and they’re not the easiest things to photograph in their normal state (underwater). So we set on a 3d approach for the sub and a whole lot of motion work to get a 1/2 sky/water look to the majority of the scenes.

The planning stage was meticulous. We went back and forth for a long time with actual Submariners getting the plans to construct the sub in 3D, getting the scripts right for the scenes and making sure that all of the details were accurate. This was really important as we wanted to give as realistic as possible interpretation of actual operations on board.

Here are a few examples of the kind of details that we adhered to, all based on facts:

• The sub tilts to 10 degrees as it surfaces
• The uniforms were real and displayed correct rank
• The dolphins sequence was taken straight from footage on board the HMAS Rankin
• The equation used to calculate a firing angle is the same trig that is actually used

…and a heap more.  But anyway, there were a lot of details that we paid attention to. It really helped us learn more about what goes on and how, so that we could then communicate that during the site’s presentation.

We incorporated 8 ‘activities’ into the site that intersect the scenes at poignant moments, they’re like little mini-games, but i think activity-points are a better description of them, as they’re not really games. These were also very true-to-life, or as much as possible given the simple interactions that we wanted them to have. Not designed to be sticking points for users, moreso to make sure that people are paying attention and to further explain the details of what is going on in a more interactive way.

Tomma from VJ, in one of the diving suits, getting extremely hot very quickly as i continually instructed him to climb ladders and jump off boxes. He was a sweaty, horrible, angry mess at the end of it, but his enthusiasm and awesomeness was never in question. Props.

Doing the sound mixing with Tristain at BangBang! Studios in Port Melbourne, these guys were really great to work with and always came up with the goods.

And here’s me, showing off the site at the media launch like a proud dad.

At the end of the day I’m really happy with it, but as always, there are things that i’d like to add and change. I’m working towards some of those things now. Stay tuned.

ps. Step it up.