Opinion

Read this provocative quote by Steve Jobs from Walter Isaacson's book that is coming out in the next few days. We would of course need to know the context to be able to judge the sentiment, but I think he really meant it.

I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong, I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this. — Steve Jobs

Looks like Google are trying another UI iteration at the moment. While lazily searching for dribble rather than putting the full domain into the address bar I was sent to the page shown above. It looks to have a much cleaner monotone set of icons and a nicer treatment of the search results typographically.

Why would someone invest $187,000 for single name application with ICANN plus another few hundred thousands of dollars on related costs to acquire a new gTLD domain root system? Simple, the real motivation will be to declare global-image-cyber-warfare and to create global market domination under a name identity.

Google released a really interesting new Labs service called Guru. You can chat with Guru as if it was your human friend through Google Talk or any other chat application. In the picture above I used iChat. Guru only understands certain type of questions (not unlike somer of my human friends) therefore you need to use a specific syntax to be able to extract useful information.

Once ICANN approves the new super-powered gTLD domain names, what will happen to the some 200 million strong dotcom domain name kingdom? Will the new gTLDs and their massive sub-domain traffic of unlimited brand extensions create global cyber identity chaos? Will global trademark wars erupt on several legal fronts?  Will cyber-squatting hit the fan? Relax no such things.

Surely, the sudden influx of 1000 new powerful gTLDs will create the biggest buzz, as overnight hyper-visibility and marketing coups of various old and new brands will steal the show. Currently, a regular dotcom costs USD $10, but this new gTLD about USD $500,000 each. However the markets will face some serious questions about this new style of hyper-cyber-branding poised for global market domination.

What's your take?

Jobs Today announced the new iPad 2, which on the surface seems like a boring speed bump aside from the two cameras and 3 axis gyroscope. But I think the 2x faster CPU and the 9x faster graphics chips are a very important.

The extra processing power opens up the possibility for more serious, complex, full featured and resource hungry applications, such as the newly announced iMovie and Garageband for iPad. This new tablet is is not just a mobile and media device anymore. It may soon make make the laptop redundant for more and more people.

We know it's a myth. The right/left brain theory is based on flawed research, but still it lives on in the pop culture. Even the Art Institute of Vancouver created an online test to evaluate yourself. The test is still valid, it should just be renamed to creative vs analytical brain. My score is 55/45. What's yours?

Is this me or is it just tha way things are evolving nowadays?

When I walk around the internet I see a lot of questions popping up that are basic knowledge for a graphic designer.

What is a spot colour?
Do I make a logo in Photoshop?
What's the difference between vector and pixel?
Why don't my colours print the same as on my screen?

and so on...

Hats off to The Disciples of Design site for catching one of the more egregious recent examples of identity design appropriation. You have to wonder just what was going on in the mind of the Chinese designer who lifted the original logo for the City of Melbourne and transplanted it onto something called the Fantasia MIC Plaza. I guess he thought changing a few gradients would make all the difference, although I prefer the original. Copy or plagiarism, you decide.