The Jeff Beckham Weblog

Over at CrunchGear, Peter Ha has been spending some time with inventor James Dyson (he of the famous vacuum cleaners) talking about design and engineering principles. In this hilarious video, Dyson puts one of the new vacuums through its paces, showing how trying to break something is the best way to test it. It also speaks volumes of the confidence Dyson has in his company’s products that he’d consent to do this on video.

Barack Obama made news last week by announcing he’s opting out of accepting public funds for his presidential campaign. Instead, he’ll continue to rely on individual donations.

XPLANE, a company that specializes in explaining complex information in a visual format, has come up with a terrific visualization to illustrate that concept, and show how Obama has reshaped how people donate to political causes.

Individuals are limited to donating $2,000, so “bundlers”, those fundraisers who influence their network of friends to make maximum donations, have been critically important in the past. The Obama campaign has made use of the efficiency of the web and social networks to take bundling in a new direction.

Millions of small individual donations allowed Obama to raise $32 million in January, $28 of which was raised online.

Infographic: Released by XPLANE under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

This Smithsonian article about diamonds grown in the lab that are indistinguishable than those taken from the ground had me thinking in terms of disruptive technology, a la Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma.

Disruptive technology is a term that describes low-end and new-market innovations. Typically, the new technology isn’t quite as good as the existing technology, but it’s “good enough” and so much cheaper to build and buy that it begins to take hold and push the existing technology away.

In this case, the diamonds that are grown in the Apollo Diamond labs have proven to be as good as those that come out of the world’s diamond mines. Apollo can’t grow gems much larger than a half-carat at this time, which is the biggest limitation. And looking at the Apollo website, the prices of the Apollo diamonds is a bit cheaper than can be found at a jeweler, but not markedly so. Without the size to match natural diamonds nor a tremendous cost difference, it will take a while before synthetic diamonds make a dent in the current diamond market.

Photo by jurvetson on flickr

The Cuisipro® Ice Cream Scoop & Stack has come up with an simple, elegant redesign of the ice cream scooper. Where a flat spatula is enough for gelato and the industrial-strength spoon version is found in ice cream parlors and kitchens everywhere, this scooper elegantly rethinks that model: Plunge the device into the ice cream, twist and lift out a cone-sized scoop. A button releases the dollop, which is flat on top for stacking multiple layers.

I’m delighted to find things like this, with simple improvements on age-old gadgets.

Discovered via Boing Boing Gadgets
Cuisipro corporate site

The latest issue of The Economist takes a look at how Speedo’s new LZR swimsuit has revolutionized the sport in the four months. Forty-two world swimming records have been broken since the suit was introduced in February, and 38 of those record-breaking swims were by competitors wearing LZRs.

The technology that went into the $600 suit is remarkable:

• A dense, but light material that compresses the swimmer’s body into a sleek shape but is extremely light. The suit also has no seams, but is held together by ultrasonic welding to reduce drag.
• A corset-like “internal core stabilizer” that holds the swimmer’s form in the water, keeping their hips high and allowing them to swim with less effort.
• Polyurethane panels in spots on the suit to further reduce drag in the water.
• A three-dimensional design — in that the suit is more like a second skin than a piece of clothing. It holds its form when not is use and doesn’t lie flat.

The improvements have been so drastic that some people have referred to the suit as “high-tech doping”. Swimmers at the Beijing Olympics this summer who are wearing the LZR will have a distinct advantage, so much so that athletes who are sponsored by other companies, like Nike, will be wearing them, rather than equipment from their main sponsor.

The Science of Sport weblog has been doing excellent reporting and analysis on this topic. The international governing body of swimming has approved the LZR for use in the Olympics, so it’s inevitable that other manufacturers will produce suits to compete with this breakthrough piece of equipment.

As IBM researcher John Tang says here, there is “a certain amount of irony” in the fact that top technology firms are banding together to study ways to solve information overload. Even more ironic is the proposal that the solution to this particular technology problem is “simply more and better technology”.

It’s not a technology problem, however. Mark Hurst, whose book Bit Literacy addresses this very issue, has said time and again that the solution lies not with technology, but with learning to “let the bits go“: getting your email inbox down to zero once a day and deferring action items to a to-do list. Psychology and human action is the key — not technology.

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders also is skeptical that technology or rules like “No Email Friday” will address the problem:

Bottom line (and I’ll never stop saying this): stop trying to eradicate human communication problems by introducing waves of new technology or made-up rules of social engineering. A company with email problems is also experiencing people problems. Until you understand why the wetware isn’t working like you’d expected, don’t go nuts with top-down technology solutions and over-clever edicts.

At the end of this video of BMW’s GINA fabric-covered, shape-shifting concept car, designer Chris Bangle describes the philosophy as “Context over dogma”. It’s a nice moment to close a remarkable three-minute video presentation, but there’s something more profound lurking there as well.

Certainly it’s about, as Bangle says, being flexible and acting flexible, but it’s also about challenging the traditional way of doing things in favor of ways that work in their particular circumstances. It’s a concept that’s easy to understand in a number of fields, for example, how web design and information architecture should favor what makes sense over a rule that there needs to be a link in a particular place on every page. 37 Signals promotes this in their Getting Real book as “Context Over Consistency” and even demonstrates how the home screen of the iPhone puts an icon not where it must be, but where it makes sense to be.

Bangle has been a controversial figure while at BMW, but it’s exciting to see his refreshing approach to the automotive industry.

Nick Carr has a terrific article in this month’s Atlantic magazine titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?“. It’s an insightful look at how the Web is changing the way we think — moving away from deep concentration, understanding and analysis toward short, scannable, sharable bursts of information.

I don’t agree that Google and the Web are making us stupid, but they are changing the way that we think. Rather than take in a long, scholarly article in one sitting and absorb its meaning, we can read that same article online and easily look up related topics, contextual information, and explanations of key concepts.

There’s definitely irony in the fact that Carr’s article is featured online (broken into four pages), but without the type of linking and contextual information that would make it even more valuable on the Web.

The answer is not all or nothing, however. We need that method of continuous partial attention and quick information retrieval, but we also need to carve out time for quiet thought and contemplation. Although the tools exist now that encourage the former, there is history and tradition to continue and uphold the latter.

One additional note: Last year, our summer interns helped me put together a list of panel and presentation ideas to submit for the South by Southwest Interactive Conference. Among the ones we liked was:

Has Google made us brainless?
Got a question? More than likely, Google has the answer. Has the most powerful search engine made us stupid? It’s easier than ever to find a cursory answer to a meaningful question and the methods of intensive research may be falling by the wayside. Also, how do we determine which results are credible and which are not?

No disrespect to Carr — one of the things his article did was remind me of just how sharp our interns were. In fact, their idea about Google never made it beyond my boss’ email in-box. We submitted three other ideas to SXSW.

This week’s Economist looks into the field of open-source hardware: “an emerging class of electronic devices, for which the specifications have been made public, so that enthusiasts can suggest refinements, write and share software improvements, and even build their own devices from scratch.”

Owners of open-source devices benefit by owning something that doesn’t go out-of-date or become antiquated quickly, and makers of the those devices can get their products to market faster and respond to their customers’ needs in a more timely way. Such advantages, the article says, outweigh the drawbacks of exposing what are usually seen as corporate secrets. It’s another example of how “open” beats “closed”.

One such open-source device is the Chumby, a coffee-cup-sized, soft-sided, Web-enabled puff that can be used as an Internet radio player, a digital picture frame, an alarm clock, weather station, and more. It’s got a touch screen and can run off AC or battery power.

Experts quoted in the article disagree on whether open-source hardware appeals to the tinkerer or the everyday consumer, but it also correctly points out that everyone benefits from open-source collaboration — the choices and improvements made in an open-source environment lead to better products all around.

Wired News reports that even though cellphones in Japan have become increasingly difficult to use, and that their owners only use 5 to 10 percent of the functions available, the complexity of the devices remains a positive to buyers.

When the iPhone hits Japan later this year, it’s possible that the simplicity of that device would be a turn-off to consumers there.

“It doesn’t have 3G, the camera is only 2 megapixels, and it lacks fun little features like mobile wallet functions and an LED flashlight,” journalist Nobi Hayashi said. “It may sell modestly as a smart phone or as an upgraded iPod, but it’s not quite cutting it as a competitor in our mobile-based culture.”

It’s an interesting look into the Japanese culture, where people experiment with different key combinations to kill time during long commutes and discover cool features hidden deep within the phone’s complicated menu system.

While there’s a sharp contrast between the Japanese fondness for technical specifications and complexity and the U.S. trend toward simplicity, there is another angle that the two cultures share. A shiny new device serves as a social object — a conversation piece that draws like-minded people together.

“Cellphones are always part of any conversation,” Daiji Hirata, an executive at News2u Corporation said. “People are always using them and holding them, even in the middle of a meal, so they might not think you’re hip if you’re carrying an old one.”