sangsara.net

Category: Links

Link posts, mostly old and imported from my other sites over the years (e.g. Tumblr)

  • ➟ What if Nokia went Android?

    Monday Note:
    Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia’s CEO calls his new head of mobile devices, Anssi Vanjoki in his office, hidden inside the company’s research center at 995 Page Mill Road, in Palo Alto, California. On his desk, three devices: a Nokia N900, a Motorola Droid and an iPhone.
    ‘Anssi, we’re hosed.
    […]
    We once were the kings of sleek design. Now, look at the N900 next and cry. We’re the land Marimekko and Iittala, of Finnish design. All over the world, people pay a premium for elegance, for exclusivity. We’re not doomed to a race to the bottom, we’re destined to a race for quality, for elegance.
    And look at the numbers. We spend 13.5% of revenue for R&D while Apple, doing “everything”, spends 3%. If we stop spending this doomed to failure R&D money, we can lower our percentage below Apple’s.
    Next, we only do three models: good, better and best. Three price points and we’re done. Simple message, less product managers and other corporate busybodies showing PowerPoint slides to one another over endless meetings across ten time zones.
    Anssi, look at me: are you ready for the bloodbath?’
    I enjoyed this “science fiction” exploration of an imaginary conversation at Nokia HQ. It does kind of make sense for Nokia to stop throwing its money into the bottomless well of Symbian patching and superficial fixes in favor of Android. Alas, today brought a post on the Nokia corporate blog vowing to continue on the Symbian/Meego path over Android. It’s rousingly titled “The Fightback Starts Now”. I’m sure a lot of Nokia fans wish it had started back in 2007 when the iPhone was announced.

  • ➟ Versions by Oliver Laric

    Somewhere between documentary, artwork, and essay lies this video by Oliver Laric, on interpretation and reinterpretation in modern visual culture, in particular a series of animation clips from Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons in which entire “classic” sequences are reproduced in different shows.

    Image montage from booooooom.com

  • ➟ Paul Lung’s photorealistic pencil sketches

    Here’s one example.

    Link

  • ➟ iPhone vs. HTC EVO animations

    Gruber called these “profanely funny”, and even then I was surprised at how good they were for crappy animations voiced by text-to-speech systems. How often do you see great comedy writing that’s also technologically accurate criticism? NSFW language.

    Link [LaughingSquid.com]

  • ➟ Couch Cushion Architecture: A Critical Analysis

    Build Blog:

    At first glance the composition appears unintentional and the construction shoddy. But further investigation reveals a clear delineation between indoor/outdoor space with a design focus on protection through the use of barrier. Planes are shifted off the orthogonal to accommodate function; as a side effect it relieves inhabitants from a harsh Euclidian geometry.

    Posts like this are what architectural writers train their whole lives for. Many more examples through the link.

  • ➟ Studio Ghibli’s Ni no Kuni gameplay video

    Following up on the screenshots I posted a few days ago, this gameplay video of Studio Ghibli & Level 5’s upcoming PS3 game, Ni no Kuni (The Another World), is just gorgeous in its 3D engine-powered approximation of the company’s signature animation style.

    Link (via @davechua, who notes that the battle sequences are rather Pokemon-ish)

  • Japanese traffic lights red, yellow, blue? – JapanSugoi – Everything Cool about Japan

    From JapanSugoi:

    In Japan, green traffic lights are considered “blue” and described as ao shingō (青信号). In modern Japanese although there is a word for “green” (”midori 緑”), which is a relatively new term that has only been used since the Heian Period. Even after “midori” came into use, green was still thought of as a shade of “ao” instead of an independent color and only became distinguished after World War II.

    Includes a couple other interesting examples of how culture filters even things we take for granted, like the color of the moon.

    Link

  • ➟ Studio Ghibli’s Ni no Kuni for PS3

    Studio Ghibli and Level-5 are making a videogame for the DS, and it’s just been announced that a version for the PS3 will also be released; most likely a different story in the same world rather than a straight port. The screenshot above is purportedly the actual game being rendered by a 2D/3D animation engine. Compare it to a still from an actual animated cutscene here. They are almost indistinguishable in terms of art quality. That a console game controlled in real-time by a player can look (at least when paused) just like a real Studio Ghibli movie is utterly amazing.

    Link [Joystiq.com]