technology

advertising / android / iPad / observatory / technology — 9 Comments
25
Jan 11

Attack of the vapor tablet

In his column this morning, Philip Elmer-DeWitt lists 101 iPad challengers seen at CES earlier this month.

Obviously, most won’t be around by next year’s CES. But Toshiba’s entry not only comes with a cool website, it comes with an attitude. Try accessing it with your iPhone or iPad and you get this message:

Such a shame. Add this to the list of interesting places on the Internet you can’t see on your device. Of course, if you had a Toshiba Tablet, you would enjoy the entire Internet. Yep, Flash sites too.

Then again, if you had a Toshiba Tablet, you’d be living in an alternate reality where this device was actually shipping. It’s coming “sometime this spring.”

But kudos to whoever built this site, because it really is nicely done. It starts off with a spirited video presenting a list of mouthwatering features. This resolves to a home page that is equally well done, in which you can poke around to learn more about each feature.

Why on earth would anyone buy an iPad when they could have one of these? Well, there are a few reasons — most of which stem from that little ”nonexistence” issue.

Problem #1 is that Toshiba’s track record in tablets isn’t exactly stellar. Which is a gentlemanly way of saying that last time out, they completely soiled their nest.

Just last September, Toshiba proudly announced their Folio 100 Android tablet in Europe. It was an Android tablet that, astonishingly, would not work with Google apps. So it couldn’t connect with the Android Market. Nor could it run Flash. It only worked with the Toshiba Marketplace, which as you can imagine, looks like one of those desolate Old West towns with tumbleweeds blowing through. To top it off, the Folio 100 was embarrassingly huge and unwieldy.

So now Toshiba is back, hoping to wipe the slate clean. But they aren’t exactly instilling us with confidence. Start with the name. Or, more appropriately, lack thereof. “Toshiba Tablet,” it is reported, is only a placeholder. While the other iPad killers at CES were demoing their hearts out under their true monikers, Toshiba is sticking to “Tablet” until they’re good and ready. One can only imagine the debate going on back at HQ on that score.

More worrying is that fact that, unlike other major models that showed up at CES, the Toshiba Tablet was only running Android 2.2 — which automatically makes it second-fiddle to iPad. Supposedly, that too will change.

Still, the website makes the specs sound tempting. Here are the main points from the site’s opening video, with a few editorial comments thrown in.

Meet the Toshiba Tablet (but really, we’ll rename it later)
Powered by Android-TM (send for the Taste Police — that TM is way horsey)
10.1 Inch Screen (okay)
16:10 High Resolution Display (great format, but why do I suspect it isn’t quite Retina-quality)
Stereo Speakers (I’m with ya)
5 Megapixel Rear Facing Camera (cool — iPad 2 is rumored only to have a 2-megapixel camera here)
2 Megapixel Front Facing Camera (don’t they have hyphens in the Toshiba world?)
The Full Web - Even Flash (sorry, but not once have I wished I had Flash on my iPad)
Long-Lasting, Replaceable Battery (with Flash, you’ll probably need that extra battery) (Oh, there’s a hyphen — I feel better now)
3 Ports: mini-USB, HDMI, USB (sweet)

At this point, the features are reprised, with Five Colors thrown in. Nice extra touch, but let’s reserve judgment until these things ship, just to make sure they aren’t Zuning us with brown.

The video closes with line: The Perfect Sum of All its Parts.

Like that moment in the movie where the villain unwittingly unmasks himself, this is the moment when I saw Toshiba’s true colors. The expression they’re trying to echo is “greater than the sum of its parts.” Every device on earth is the sum of its parts — but that doesn’t mean you’ll love using it. 15 million people have been seduced by iPad because iOS makes it feel like something more.

With a little luck, Toshiba will get their unnamed Tablet out the door before iPad 2 is launched — when, as usual, the bar will be raised higher.

apple / iPad / technology — 12 Comments
10
Jan 11

CES 2011: putting Apple in its place

It only takes 2,700 exhibitors to put Apple in perspective.

The annual Consumer Electronics Show is unimaginably huge. More than 33 football fields’ worth of displays. I left my measuring tape at home, but I suspect Sony filled one of those football fields all by itself.

While Apple declines to show up at such gatherings, their absence allows us to make some interesting observations. Much the same way that astronomers draw conclusions about planets by examining the forces surrounding them.

First, just to keep the astronomy metaphor going, it’s hard not to appreciate the “speck in the universe” aspect of Apple when you walk around CES. Apple is dwarfed by the sheer volume of its competitors. It is also dwarfed by the many lines of products offered by its biggest competitors.

Having been to enough Macworlds in my day, it’s easy to imagine what Apple’s booth would look like next to the booth of, say, Sony or Samsung. It would be a fraction of the size, simply because Apple focuses on a relatively small number of products — featuring only single lines of desktops, laptops, music players, phones and tablets. The other guys have product lines out the wazoo, churning out everything from TVs and DVD players to washers and dryers. I imagine it will be a while before we see Apple going up against Whirlpool.

Apple’s accomplishment, however, becomes more amazing given the number and size of its competitors. Creating far fewer products, selling to far fewer people, Apple generates more profit than every last one of them. By far.

Standing in that Sony booth, being awed by the depth and breadth of that company’s product offerings, watching the enthusiasm of the crowds, it defies belief that Apple is the more successful — and more valuable — company. In my opinion, it’s the ultimate tribute to the power of simplicity.

There’s only one reason, of course, why any company would bother with CES in the first place. It’s that one time of the year when they can buy themselves some great PR and generate excitement for their new products. In other words, they have to pay for what Apple gets free all year long. While some may grouse about that, let’s not forget that Apple doesn’t derive this benefit because journalists, bloggers and media companies have such big hearts. Apple gets the buzz because over a couple of decades, they’ve repeatedly created new categories by innovating so successfully. They’ve built expectations that are in themselves newsworthy.

Last, I did want to offer an observation about the many tablets on display at CES. Rather than bore you with model-by-model reviews, I’ll just say that there are a number of solid contenders out there. There is every reason to believe the tablet market will evolve much as the smartphone market did. Apple takes the early market share lead by reinventing the category, then Android and the others step in with more features and lower prices. Fans of those platforms will find much to like. Ultimately Apple will sell fewer units than the others, but as is the case with computers and smartphones — they will continue to generate greater profit.

As long as Apple continues to innovate as it does, there will be a large audience willing to pay the premium.

android / iPad / microsoft / observatory / steve jobs / strategy / tablets / technology — No Comments
3
Jan 11

CES: the second annual tablet-fest

No matter how hard I Google, I can’t find the exact number of tablets that were launched at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. Best I can come up with is “dozens.”

Whatever the number was, it’s a perfect match for the number of tablets that have been largely forgotten in the 12 months since. Steve Ballmer, Vapor Master, made the keynote speech in 2010, delivering a non-demonstrative demo of HP’s Slate tablet, which never saw the light of day. At least he didn’t try to hype Microsoft’s own Courier tablet, which was quietly euthanized three months later.

Now comes CES 2011. Once again, Ballmer will take the stage for the keynote, giving him a chance to wash down the emptiness from last year. With the tablet floodgates opening, one would hope he’d have an easier time coming up with a few devices that actually work. Logic says he’ll try to wash away the bad memory with sheer quantity.

Another company with big dreams is Toshiba. A quote from their director of marketing in today’s New York Times sums it up perfectly: “We could have done this a year ago and rushed it out, but it wouldn’t have had the right features.”

He might just as well have said, “We could have done this a year ago and rushed it out, but we didn’t yet know what to copy.”

There’s really only one strategy these guys can follow: offer more features than iPad, hopefully at a better price. The problem, of course, is that iPad is more than just iPad — it’s rich ecosystem with 300,000+ apps and countless accessories. A few more features or a slight savings don’t quite make up for the lack of such things.

While one of the favorite anti-iPad zingers is “It’s just a giant iPod touch,” we will now see a deluge of tablets that are simply giant Android phones. This is not a criticism, as I’ve long felt that this is exactly what tablets need to be — a faster and bigger-screened version of the smartphones we’ve already come to love. Now that the Anti-Apple is following Apple’s course, we’ll see if that put-down begins to fade.

Expect also to see the haters out in force, damning Apple’s evil plan to control us all, cheering on a spate of superior devices that will finally turn the tide against Apple. By necessity, they will gloss over the fact that none of these new devices would exist if it weren’t for Apple’s invention. And never mind that Apple customers have been enjoying the tablet’s benefits a full year before everyone else.

As always, the problem with copying Apple’s technology is that you’re copying last year’s model. Just a month or two after all these new models show up at CES, Apple introduces iPad 2. For the most part, competitors are playing a game of leapfrog in which they never manage to leap the frog.

This year, I refuse to get my information second-hand. I will be journeying to CES to get my furry little hands on these devices myself. I’ll let you know how it goes…

app store / apple / apple news / iPhone / mac / observatory / steve jobs / technology — 5 Comments
22
Dec 10

It’s an app-happy world

Art credit: Koka Sexton (via Flickr)

I get all wispy and nostalgic when I think about the days of the first iPhone. How innocent we were then.

When we talked about apps, we were talking about web apps. The kind we had to load up in Safari. No, developers weren’t allowed to get their greasy fingers anywhere near iPhone’s innards.

Apple tried to calm the natives by putting on a number of iPhone developer events to help them make the best web apps they could. But those apps only gave us a taste of what a real app might do.

Some say Steve Jobs only reversed himself when he realized the enormity of the potential for 3rd-party apps. Others believe opening iPhone up to apps was the plan all along, and it was simply a matter of “first things first.” iPhone needed to become a solid platform first.

Whatever, within six months of iPhone’s birth Apple welcomed developers into the tent. Six months later, the App Store was born. It soon became clear that apps were by far the biggest part of the iPhone story. Apps are what turned a communicator/iPod into a true pocket computer.

When competitors started to appear, Apple’s advantage depended on its lead in apps. Apps became a given for every platform. No competitor could seriously contend without an app store of its own.

In fact, the very word apps, a geek word turned mainstream by Apple, was instantly adopted by Apple’s competitors. It’s now as generic as a screen full of app icons arranged in a grid.

Now, as if the world of apps isn’t big enough already, the other shoe is about to drop. And this is one humongous shoe. The Mac App Store will open for business on January 6th.

You can’t help but feel this is going to be a “how did we live without this before” kind of thing. Surely it will spark another gold rush for developers. Happily for AAPL stockholders, it will also spout a new gusher of cash. Apple will now start pocketing 30% on software sales — as opposed to the 0% they’ve been taking for the last 25 years.

Given the historic success of the App Store, this development wasn’t hard to predict. Even yours truly saw it coming back in October of 2009. As the App Store does for apps and iTunes does for music, the Mac App Store will give millions of Mac people one simple place to discover great new apps, talk them up with friends and get instant gratification 24/7. While mega-apps like Adobe CS5 and Final Cut Studio may not work this way for a while (but then they may), the Mac App Store will be the Big Bang for more bite-sized apps and utilities that make the Mac a more fun and customizable place. Mac apps will suddenly be a spontaneous decision, just a click away.

The Mac App Store will be one more reason for people to be drawn to the light. Though none of us should be surprised when a certain entity announces its intention to copy the idea on the PC side.

advertising / android / app store / creative / google / observatory / tablets / technology — 7 Comments
21
Dec 10

Motorola, iPad & the theory of evolution

I love it when technology companies talk tough. Add Motorola to the list of contenders who brazenly proclaim that they can make iPad look silly.

This video is Motorola’s way to help build the excitement leading up to the grand unveiling of their mysterious tablet-to-come at CES.

Does it work? Well, as always, that depends on who you are. I’m sure there are people in the world who look at this video and think, “Wow, cool, I wonder what they have up their sleeve.” As a teaser for the event, that’s all they can ask for. So I’ll give them the honorary G.W. Bush “Mission Accomplished” medal for that.

However, as our friend W. discovered, things aren’t always what they seem. At some point, Motorola has to produce a working tablet that really does make you want to move beyond iPad — or they’re going to look laughable for making the claim.

Let’s just pause for a moment to consider the reality:

One year ago at CES, when everyone knew Apple was about to revolutionize the tablet category, companies fell over themselves trying to beat Apple to the punch. Not only did they know what Steve Jobs had up his sleeve, it was pretty obvious Apple was going to build upon the technology already established in iPhone. Steve Ballmer stood up during the keynote waving the Microsoft/HP tablet prototype, which was never heard from again.

Now, after all this time, with Apple owning the lion’s share of the tablet market and still no real competition in sight, Motorola will now “evolve” beyond iPad?

Pardon my lack of faith, but it’s a bit far-fetched.

The technique used in the video is to establish a sense of humor by first bashing “tablets” that have been around for eons (Egyptian Hieroglyphic Tablet, 10 Commandments Tablet, Rosetta Stone, Mayan Engraved Tablet), and then apply the same humor to iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab before leaving us with a tease about Motorola’s higher evolution.

Dismissing iPhone, the title says “It’s like a giant iPhone, but … it’s like a giant iPhone.” Others have made this argument, and honestly it’s one of the most brain-dead arguments there is. iPad really is a giant iPhone (minus the phone), and that’s exactly what it needs to be. Apple already had the magic combination with iOS, multi-touch and the App Store. A faster processor and bigger screen were the only missing ingredients.

The video dismisses the Galaxy Tab by saying, “Android OS, but Android OS … for a phone.” Never mind that Motorola’s tablet will run on a tablet-optimized Android OS, just as iPad runs on an iPad-optimized version of iOS. By their own logic, Motorola’s “evolved” tablet will be nothing more than a giant Android phone.

The spot ends with the Motorola logo, at which time a bee enters the picture. It’s jarring enough that a number of YouTube commenters thought the bee-buzz sounded like a certain human emission. In theory, we’ll soon find out what the bee is doing there in the first place.

Then again, maybe that bee was never intended to be there at all, like the fly that got into Seth Brundle’s teleportation machine. Be afraid. Be very afraid…

music / technology — 3 Comments
16
Dec 10

Mobile technology strikes a new chord

Danger! Something’s gone terribly wrong at The Observatory. I’ve just re-read this post four times and can’t find a single mention of a laptop, smartphone or tablet.

Well, it’s possible that we can still survive this. Today’s post is about a musical instrument — but you need no musical skills to appreciate my point. Just as the space race yielded technology that changed life on earth, the mobile race is producing technology that has impact far beyond mobile.

This is Kitara. The world’s first all-digital pro guitar. No strings. Just a standard guitar fretboard for one hand — and an eight-inch touch screen for the other. Oh, and a built-in synthesizer loaded with sounds and effects.

It’s the touch screen, having revolutionized mobile devices, that adds the real magic. You can map multiple digital effects to the screen, so that once you’ve triggered a note by touch, sliding your finger in different directions lets you dial those effects up and down as you play. This is light years beyond the whammy bar.

There’s no debate here about open vs. closed systems. Kitara is all about customizability. It’s built upon open-source Linux. Beyond the millions of sound combinations it lets you create onboard, it lets you trigger millions more via connected sound modules. Assign one sound to all six virtual strings, or assign different sounds to each.

Now I can pretty much guarantee that a good number of guitar aficionados out there are already foaming at the mouth, ready to pounce. “That’s not a guitar.” “If you can’t feel the strings, it’ll never fly.” “This monstrosity belongs in Guitar Hero, not on stage.”

Hey, chill out. Guitars will always be guitars, and guitarists will always be guitarists. Kitara is not replacing the guitar, any more than the synthesizer replaced the piano. It simply gives guitarists an option they never had before. At last they can get in on the digital fun that keyboard players have been enjoying for decades. In fact, they can now create and play a few zillion digital sounds more expressively than any keyboard ever could.

Besides, it’s not just about the music. By the time your band makes it to Madison Square Garden, you may well be able to do your email on the guitar between songs.

From the Truth In Blogging Department: I have no financial interest in Misa, but I am a creative consultant for this project. Just thought you’d be interested in seeing the impact of touch screen technology beyond the industry we usually scrutinize. If you want to know more about Kitara, visit the Misa website.


apple / apple news / observatory / technology — 4 Comments
8
Nov 10

iPhone sleeps a little late

You’ll have to forgive that disheveled guy who stumbled into the office late this morning. It was his iPhone’s fault.

He was just one of those poor unfortunates who didn’t get the message last week that the newest iPhone software is a bit time-challenged. The system recognized the end of daylight savings time, but repeating alarms did not. (iPhones in the U.K. and Australia recently had similar issues coping with local time changes.)

This is a particularly interesting bug, because (a) Apple customers aren’t used to this type of thing, and (b) Apple has a distinguished history when it comes to time-consciousness.

Remember, Macs were immune to the grand-daddy of all time-related glitches, the “Y2K bug.” Corporations agonized (expensively) for a year leading up to the year 2000, trying to protect themselves against that little glitch in Windows that threatened to cause a global meltdown when the new millennium arrived.

Apple so enjoyed the PC’s predicament, they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell the world that Macs were better designed than that. They ran the the HAL commercial in prime real estate on the 2000 Super Bowl — right after kickoff.

Douglas Adams penned the headline, the agency took it from there (click to enlarge)

Lesser known is the Y2K ad you see here. It was designed to be a full-page newspaper ad, but I believe it only appeared on the Internet. This is a personal favorite, because the headline was actually written by the late Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He thought it was worthy of sharing, and we thought it was worthy of using. I was demoted to copy-boy on this one.

In just a few words, Adams did a fantastic job of capturing the spirit of Apple. He found a way to be both boastful and self-deprecating. It was human, a trait that historically separated Apple from other technology companies.

That “we may not get everything right” part of Apple’s personality is still there today, though it isn’t nearly as cute as it once was. (It was trotted out repeatedly at the Antennagate news conference.) This, of course, is a by-product of Apple’s runaway success. It’s hard to be folksy when you’re #1.

Today’s iPhone glitch is small in the scope of things. It’ll be forgotten tomorrow. Still, one does have to wonder how it happened in the first place. It’s not like we haven’t been using our iPhones for three years without having this problem before. Somehow, that little gremlin sneaked in there unnoticed.

Maybe Apple just needs that grand stage to do their best work. They do better with centuries than they do with hours.

apple / apple news / iPad / mac / observatory / steve jobs / technology — 12 Comments
21
Oct 10

Mac’s day in the spotlight

Well, it was interesting (and refreshing) to see a little love lavished on the Mac side of things yesterday. As is the tradition around these parts, some random observations on Wednesday’s event:

FaceTime for Mac. Cool — even though we could see this one coming for miles.

Mac OS X Lion. The philosophical direction of Lion is consistent with everything we’ve heard in recent months: Mac OS X meets iPad. Expect these meetings to intensify in the future.

Mac App Store. This one is beyond huge, and exactly what Apple should be doing. In fact, I rambled on about this one here back in 2009. Imagine being able to buy your Mac apps the same way you buy your iPhone apps. Instant purchase, auto-install, auto-update. Customer reviews too. This is another gold mine for Apple, although it won’t come without controversy. Apple is injecting itself into the developer/customer relationship and demanding a cut, and surely some are going to buck. There are many open questions about how this will work, but it will happen — and it will make our lives way better.

Launchpad. Wow, convenient. I currently use third-party utility Overflow to do something similar. We may have to move them from the Happy Developer Column to the Swearing Eternal Revenge Column.

Misson Control. My secret confession: I rarely used Exposé and Spaces. I now realize that I hesitated for all the same reasons that Apple just combined both of them — along with Dashboard — into one convenient location. Thank you!

iLife ’11. Some cool additions, but the ground beneath my feet wasn’t exactly trembling. Love Movie Trailers in iMovie. Great price at $49 — but that’s just Apple’s way of saying, “Don’t expect $79 worth of upgrade.” I appreciate the honesty.

The black sheep. Poor iDVD. Nary a mention during the festivities. However, this is hardly unexpected, given Apple’s passing-over of Blu-Ray in favor of Internet delivery for video. Prepare for iDVD to be moved to hospice within a year or two. [Update: In all the excitement I glossed over the absence of iWeb — which is truly a mystery. It's not like people are less interested in making personal websites and blogs these days. This is an unfortunate omission, as it makes a statement about what Apple thinks is important, and how it allocates its software engineering manpower.]

The missing app. I had a secret wish, but it didn’t materialize. I was dreaming of new iLife app called iMagazine. It would allow mere mortals to use their Macs to create personalized, Apple-designed iPad magazines. Imagine combining your vacation photos and movies from iLife into a standalone iPad app that presents your whole story in gorgeous magazine format, as a series of articles. This could be uploaded and shared with friends and family around the world. In business, iMagazine would utterly revolutionize the idea of the “leave-behind.” iLife already empowers ordinary people to create and present all of these elements separately. Why not put them all into a Wired-quality magazine?

MacBook Air. This was needed. MacBook Air was starting to feel a bit like a hobby — a breakthrough idea that’s gone almost three years without an eye-opening update. This is looking cool enough that I’m starting to get the itchy trigger finger that often results in unbudgeted charges on my credit card. Believe Steve when he says this is the future of notebooks.

MacBook Air video. This is where I start to get cranky. It is not in Apple’s DNA to be formulaic. Yet these product videos haven’t varied in years. Same look, same feel, same cast of characters. Understood that normal consumers are not nearly as close to these things as we are, but honestly, it wouldn’t hurt to try a new format once in a while. There’s no chance they’ll drive people away — but there’s every chance they’ll make more of a stir. The product videos need to be just as creative as the products.

Missing in action. ’Scuse me, but where’s the new iWork? For every year that both iLife and iWork have existed (the last four versions), both suites were updated at the same time. This year, iLife went to the ball while iWork stayed home to scrub the floors. Curious.

Shipping dates. Wow. Either I missed something, or pretty much every product introduced today (except Lion, of course) is available immediately. Nicely played.

Last, I will note that this event shined the spotlight on a legion of Apple leaders. Probably more than we’ve ever seen in any one event. Even more interesting was the lead role given to Tim Cook at the start. Those making guesses about the secret line of succession have some good fodder to work with here…

android / blackberry / iPad / observatory / strategy / technology — 4 Comments
30
Sep 10

BlackBerry & the business user myth

BlackBerry's all-work-and-no-Playbook?

Poor RIM. They sell more smartphones than anyone else on earth, yet they can’t shake this sense of foreboding.

Maybe, possibly, it has something to do with the iPhone/Android freight train headed their way.

But no worries. RIM has a plan for BlackBerry. Not only will they plow ahead with their “#1 smartphone for business” strategy, they’re going to double-down on that one.

Now they’ve announced plans for a tablet — you guessed it — made especially for business. The BlackBerry Playbook.

This is the “thank you sir, may I have another” approach. Not content to have their share of the smartphone market savaged by iPhone and Android, they’re going to use the same strategy to do battle with iPad and the Android tablets-to-come.

Only one little flaw in this plan, fellas: the business user is a myth.

It’s based upon this antiquated notion that people who work in large corporations are unmoved by such trivial things as design, or that business and pleasure don’t mix.

It’s simply untrue today. Business people, as  some have long suspected, are human beings as well. They do care about design. They also care about simplicity. They have personal lives that intertwine with their business lives. And they’re more productive when they’re happy with their technology.

BlackBerry has had a longstanding love affair with business, meeting the rigid standards of corporate and government IT. But from the numbers, it’s pretty clear that business has a wandering eye. The groundswell from within — c-suite included — has opened the floodgates for the more people-friendly iPhones and Androids.

By their own schizoid behavior, RIM confirms that business users aren’t what they used to be.

They introduce the BlackBerry Torch with the line, “Business, meet fun. Fun, business.” Even though Torch has precious little fun to offer. The business-focused tablet they dream of building is whimsically called the Playbook, with PR images touting photos and games.

It’s like your 60-year-old uncle pulling up a seat at the kids’ table.

If the picture looks bleak for Playbook now, imagine how it will look next year when the thing finally ships. By then, there will be a second-generation iPad (or a family of them), as well as a fleet of Android tablets from a number of manufacturers.

RIM’s lifeline to the IT department is looking more and more tenuous every minute…

iPad / iPhone / observatory / technology — 2 Comments
16
Sep 10

Learning to read with Stephen Fry

Years ago, I was tied down and forced to watch several days’ worth of British comedies. Very quickly, the restraints became unnecessary and I began to eagerly devour it.

One of the biggest reasons for my transformation was Stephen Fry. Damn, he’s good. So it is with great affection that I have watched Stephen emerge as a personality in the technology world.

His tweeting skills are legendary, and he wrote a great piece for Time Magazine at the launch of iPad — in which he guides us through his adventure at Apple, including meetings with Steve Jobs and the executive team.

Now Stephen has dipped his toes into app territory with a neat little thing called MyFry. This is actually the app version of his autobiography, The Fry Chronicles. What’s interesting about it is that it isn’t just another book — it’s a whole new way of reading a book.

Stephen explains it all in this video, sounding suspiciously like the narrator for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe — which in fact he was (in the  2005 production).

The video is a sweet introduction to the idea. Stephen’s style of speech makes him hard to ignore, and there’s little time wasted  — except for that long, clicky opening that makes you wonder if your sound is working. And yes, it would have been nice to have a good zinger line at the end, as opposed to more clicking.

But my imaginary hat is off to Stephen for being (a) funny, and (b) creative. He’s just proven that writing a book is only half the fun.

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