Night view from the rooftop of my building.

One thing about living in the city that’s a good/bad thing is that I’m totally car-less. Parking costs and the abundance of public transit kind of necessitate that!

With that, my 2004 Mini Cooper is for sale, and if if you’re interested, you can find more details on Auto Trader, Craigslist or Kijiji.

Update: Sold!

So it’s been just about a full working week since having downloaded and installed Google Chrome, the shiny and new Web browser from the big G. I’ve been using it at work every day since, and have some thoughts about things that work, and things I’d like to see for the future of this pretty nifty browser.

Pros:

- It’s fast. Really fast. Opening a new tab, closing an existing one, reordering them, navigating and loading up Web sites and Web apps, scrolling around a page, saving a bookmark. Everything happens so quickly and in such a snappy way that it just feels incredibly responsive. The browser feels almost transparent, exactly how it should be.

- It feels natural. Open a new tab, and drag it around the tab bar. Now close it. Open another few. (Go ahead, I’ll wait) See those subtle animations as a tab floats over the other just briefly? This is a form of feedback that most well-designed applications use to convey that something has happened as a result of your action.

It gives users a good feeling about what they’re doing, and often replicates some form of kinetic movement like gravity, acceleration and momentum to simulate natural movement. You’ll see this a lot with applications for the Mac, and it’s used very strategically on the iPhone to give it a really polished feel. In fact, Apple makes special note of this in its developer Human Interface Guidelines, “Animation is a great way to provide feedback to users, as long as it’s both subtle and meaningful.”

- It’s unobtrusive. One thing I really dislike with Internet Explorer is that it has a monstrous overhead to the browser with icons, bookmarks, and navigation all competing for pixels on your screen. Let me browser the content on the Web browser, and just get out of the way! Firefox even has a comparatively large interface footprint at the top and bottom of the window. By comparison, Chrome has moved their tab bar to the top of the window, done away with menus, and has a status bar that appears and disappears depending on if anything is actually still loading on the page. Smart.

Cons:

- The blue colour of the browser window is very distracting. I can see how it would blend a little better with a Windows XP user’s default blue theme, but I use the classic theme specifically because it’s bland and devoid of any colour. When I’m doing wireframes or design work, I don’t need any flashy interface colours getting in the way or distracting me. I’m sure this can be changed somehow or in a future version making it much more customizable, though.

- Importing bookmarks from Firefox was a pain. I couldn’t manage to find if there was a bookmarks management option, so I ended up having to drag all my bookmark bar links into place manually from the imported folder, which was super tedious. I know the Google team was going for a minimal aesthetic with this browser, but some richer bookmark management abilities would be nice.

- Extensions! I’m not sure if Google has a roadmap to make the browser extensible, but seeing that it’s open source, I can’t see why it couldn’t be. Part of what makes Firefox so great to use is that you can tailor the browser to work for you by installing extensions like (my favourites), weather forecasts, browser and user agent simulations, and ad blockers. I don’t use too many, but I love the ones that I have.

Overall it’s a really solid browser, and an impressive first release. I’m really looking forward to what the Google team puts out in the future for this browser, as I can easily see it being my primary browser on the PC and (please!) the Mac.

It’s only recently when I had a data plan activated on my iPhone that I started seeing the future possibilities of mobile applications and their potential for everyday use. Reading through an interesting list of 10 futuristic user interfaces today, I was particularly taken with Mac Funamizu’s “Looking Glass” concept that utilizes location awareness, a highly capable camera and the ability to discern data from photos taken.

As shown in the example above, the concept device can discern a whole wealth of contextual information about the environment around it and present that to the user in an attractive and appropriate way.

Mac goes on to show how this concept could tell you what’s in the food you’re about to eat, provide instant, on-the-fly translations, and how it could be applied to the iPhone.

This concept is really interesting to me because, really, it’s not too far-fetched. Large screen, high resolution, highly portable, location-aware devices are a reality today. The only thing that makes this particular concept a challenge is the software and its ability to distill information that the device captures into a useful form. In other words, we just need to build the brain.

Kind of old, but feels right. Terrible quality video, but a great cover of the Carly Simon classic by Radiohead.

A couple months ago a guy from Matchstick, a ‘word of mouth’ marketing company, called me up asking if I’d be interested in reviewing an MP3 player from one of their clients. I asked which one, and he explained that it would be the Microsoft Zune.

They then went on to ask me my impressions of Microsoft as a brand on a 1-10 scale (6/10), what MP3 player I currently have (iPhone) and a few other demographic-related things. The agreement was that I’d put up my thoughts about the Zune and they’d sent me a slick little 8GB player, so without any further ado, here they are.

Packaging

Whether or not companies are willing to acknowledge it, packaging is the user’s first physical experience with their product and to me says a lot about a company, what the brand stands for, and the quality of the product. The Microsoft folks learned a lot from Cupertino in their package design, with the Zune package itself being a fairly minimal, layered construction much like today’s iPod and iPhone packages, with several exceptions. I found it really interesting that Microsoft chose to leave its name off all of the packaging. I’m not sure what this says about Microsoft – are they trying to distance themselves from the Zune, or trying to give the brand a leg of its own to stand on?

First, the package is taped shut at both ends, requiring you to wrestle with it to get it open. Second, the accessories pictured in the top photo, the AC adapter and premium headphones (neither are included with standard Zune purchase) contain a huge amount of wasteful clear plastic heat-wrap packaging which is a nightmare to get through. Major oversight in not giving the same attention to detail to the accessories as the player itself.

Design

The Zune is a nicely designed device. It’s small, is constructed from materials that feel high quality like they could take a beating, and the device feels sturdy in your hand. Despite the photo above, I’m not trying to make any comparison between the Zune and the iPhone, that’s just to give you an idea of the size. It’s thicker and taller than today’s iPod nano, which I would say is its prime competition from Apple.

Buttons on the device are quite clickly and the main way of interacting with it is the center ‘scrollpad’, which you can either swipe your finger across/up-down, or click the pad itself in any direction. I found it to be quite responsive, and was a decent way of navigating through the screens.

Accessories

Headphones included with the Zune are of average quality, but sport a major key differentiating feature over its competitors – magnetically linked earbuds. Think of all the times you’ve put your headphones away, only to later discover the wires are more intertwined than a crow’s nest. I still have no idea how this happens, but Microsoft seems to have pretty effectively solved the problem by allowing each earbud to link together magnetically when not in use. Very nice.

They also included a set of premium headphones – the rubber grommet kind that form a ‘seal’ in your ear and apparently give a higher quality sound. I’ve never been a big audiophile – the standard iPod/iPhone headphones sound great to me with just the right amount of treble and base – so these kinds of buds don’t do much for me. In fact, they sound much more tinny than I’d like them to be. Again though, they employ the magnetic clasps that the standard buds feature, and another bonus is that the headphone cord is made from this nice fibrous kind of material that has a really good quality feel to it.

User Interface and Experience

I’m not going to get into too much detail with this since I always have far too much to say due to my line of work. I will say though that the Zune sports an attractive looking interface that’s fairly easy to navigate. However, many menus are nested quite deep and it’s easy to get lost among the different configuration settings and aspects of your library.

One nice feature that I’ve never seen on any other media player is the ability to sync your music with the computer using WiFi. I set this up, but couldn’t for the life of me get the sync to work. The WiFi also gives users of the player the ability to share their music with their friends (albeit with a limited number of playbacks for each song with DRM). As others have said before, the WiFi in the Zune seems to be an afterthought, and is mostly a useless feature.

The Zune also features an FM radio which is implemented quite nicely – as an iPod/iPhone user it’s something I haven’t really thought about for years now, so I was surprised to see it at all. It’s done pretty well, showing song and station information where available, and providing crisp and clear audio. When I’m in a rental car or somewhere else, I don’t mind having CBC Radio (or NPR in the US) on, so this was nice to have.

Software

The bundled software necessary to sync the Zune with your computer was fairly well thought-out. It sports an attractive design and some slick animations and transitions, but mechanisms like synching your device and “monitoring folders” seemed overly complicated. That said, it would be great if Windows itself followed the same kind of nice fit & finish and attention to detail that you see with the Zune software.

The whole “social” thing is lost on me though. Clicking it in the software or on the device brings me to a page with a whole bunch of “friends” and their music. As Jake mentioned in his review, this was confusing as hell, and I don’t really care what people I don’t know are listening to.

Conclusion

Overall, the Zune is a well-designed product, but I would not recommend it. The quality is there, as is the care in design on both the device itself and in the software but ultimately, it’s a no-go product for me for several reasons.

First, Mac compatibility is not there. I don’t have a PC in my house, so my only way of using the Zune is on my work PC. This is going to become increasingly common as more people decide to go the Mac route, much to Microsoft’s displeasure I’m sure. The reality of the situation is that I, like many, many others are totally entrenched in the Apple camp at this point, and it’s not just blind devotion.

Products like the iPod touch are game changers – it’s a computing platform masquerading as a media player. With a minimal price difference between the two products (and even more competition from the iPod nano), the Zune is facing quite the uphill battle.

On top of that, with the recent launch of the iPhone in Canada convergence of media devices and portable phones is happening. I can’t in my right mind justify carrying around an extra device anymore. Then again, the majority of people I see around the city with headphones on are still using dedicated media players, so I’m sure there’s some people who are in the market for them – I’m just not one of them.

You might have heard one of Midnight Juggernauts’ mixes over the past year or so; That’s how I heard of them, and loved their sound enough to use their mix of Dragonette’s “I Get Around” in Dear Toronto #4 – The Atomic Cherries (NSFW). Like most electro artists, this is how they first came on to the scene, but now they’ve got an album of their own out.

Their aptly titled first album, Dystopia, made a stealthy release earlier this summer and I didn’t get a chance to check it out until just a few weeks ago. Turns out it’s full of some of the kind of music I love, especially when it comes to electro – too many times these groups put out instrumental tracks and while they might be technically superb, I find most tracks without any vocals really lacking something.

Tracks like Shadows (above) remind me a lot of the addictive beat from groups like Cut Copy, and others like Ending of an Era and Nine Lives have some spectacular moments (listen around 1:30).

Anything you’re listening to lately that you want to share? Sound off in the comments.

As seen on my mother’s cellphone (taken with crummy iPhone cam), she was trying to text my father she’d save him a plate for dinner by texting “I have a plate for you”. Can you guess what her clever Samsung Rogers Vision phone suggested instead?

I have a slave for you

How politically incorrect. Yes, Samsung I’ll give you that P-L-A-T-E and S-L-A-V-E both can be typed through the numbers 75283, but what word do you think most people are most likely trying to type? Furthermore, my mother couldn’t figure out how to use an alternate word or change the auto-correction feature, and I couldn’t either. She ended up sending the message anyway, figuring he’d get the idea. (He didn’t) When T9 doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work.

So with about three weeks to go (eek!) until my much-anticipated move to downtown Toronto, I’m making big decisions about how my “downtown lifestyle” is going to go. One of those that I made a long time ago is that I would not have a car. Originally it was due to the absurd prices for buying a downtown parking spot (which has now reached an average of about $35,000), but now with Rising Fuel Costs, it’s all the more reason for me to ditch it and go the simplicity route. There’s also a lot to be said for a car-less life. For me, my car has really just become a point of stress in my life, so while it’s a great little car and I’ll miss it a lot, I’m not really going to shed a tear when I get to ditch that expense.

That’s why I decided to go shop for a bike, which I determined would be my primary mode of getting around the city 6-7 months of the year, saving substantial public transit costs, and giving me an awesome set of legs in the process! It took me several weeks of testing a whole variety of different bikes, but I finally settled on one that, like my Mini, I just fell in love with the moment I set eyes on it.

The Trek Soho S is an “urban” bike by their classification, one that’s ideally suited for city living, and is a single-speed – meaning not gears at all. Just me, the pedals, and the road. Again, getting back to that simplicity word, there’s something so pleasant about riding a single-speed that I never really thought I’d go for. I’ve always had a mountain bike with lots of gears that could take me up a 70 degree hill if I really wanted.

Then again, I’ll be living in downtown Toronto, an area where you’d be hard-pressed to find anything more than a 20 degree incline. Surprisingly enough, through my first few weeks with the Soho S, I’ve been able to tackle big, suburban hills in and around the city with little to no issue. It takes a little more gusto on the pedals, but I appreciate the workout.

There’s no doubt that Apple’s Remote application for the iPhone is pretty nifty. It lets you control your iTunes from anywhere within your house or wherever you’re connected to the same WiFi point, giving you a really cool smart remote. (It even lets you control the playback of video, give ratings, etc.)

One thing that I think many people haven’t yet seen is that it has full support for Apple’s AirTunes technology – that is, where you have an Airport Express connected to a pair of speakers anywhere within the WiFi network, and iTunes will relay the audio through those speakers wirelessly.

So, using the Remote app, as you can see above you can choose the (truly geekily named) Airport Express to pump out your audio, disable the Computer audio output, and take a book and your iPhone to relax with your music away from the computer. Nice.