Forethink Design

A long long times ago, Application UI design is still in chaos and not united by MS Windows yet. There was good variety of UI design existed. Some are really unique but lost in history. Photo is a screen of 3D studio 4 that is the ancestor of 3D Max and has been most popular 3D authoring tool. When 3DS was introduced back in 1991, I was fascinated with its elegant UI design and advanced features. One of my favorite is "+" button on saving screen. It is simple idea to add version number when you save your project file to disc. For example, while you work on "ABCD0001", you can save it as "ABCD0002" by just pressing "+" button. It was simple but still keeps me out of trouble because I manage my working files in that way. Whenever I can give an advice to new young computer user, I often say "Save whenever you stop your mouse!” If you lost your file some guy kicked out the power plug, all responsibilities is yours because you doesn't save y...

Nameless thing is meaningless. Every body can create content but all content can't survive without name. It will perish in backup disc sooner or later. Nowadays name is given by user as ' Tag ' for digital content. Tag is one of basic concept for future Internet. But problem is laziness that may be biggest threat for all mankind. I'm not an exception. I'll never give proper file name for all images from my digital camera. It is really annoying. Yes, if it is annoying to do, it can be a seed of invention. RIYA.com is not perfect for that yet but it shows quite interesting level of tagging technology. When photos are uploaded, faces of respective photos are analyzed and user can start to give a detail for it. By given data, it can try to identify rest of faces automatically. Side or rotated angle can't be identified. What is for? For example, you may browse photo by tagged name. Select a person and get all photos that the person appears in. Ok, it is still far ...

On my iTunes, there are 2 songs which have five stars. Absolutely It is best song for my life. How about you? It seems you can see 5, 10 or whatever rating system on hotels, music and movie etc. It is clear about top rating but others seem too often ambiguous for me. Some people think 3 is mid point but others regard 2 as acceptable. If you love to watch Leonard Martin's movie critic, movie with 1 or 2 stars means it is rubbish or only few may love it. Back to my iTune, some time I found really funny song in my collection. For example, I bought a Korean idol star's album . I loved their new song "Road" but first intro track was sound of fan's yelling and cheering noise in concert. I really hate that so I decide to give CD to my young colleague. But again I found some annoying sound in my iPod. My iPod has that intro noise sound and I can't delete it. As you know, you can't delete a song in iPod (Typical PC minded users some time want it). So I have to reme...

Google Spreadsheet is just another rubbish web application only limited works can be done comparing with rich client applications in perspective of Microsoft (Zdnet podcast interview with MS's LeBond) . But it reminds me of an old revolution of VisiCalc . Picture above still shows how VisiCalc's original design of spreadsheet is still neat and elegant for today(1981 IBM PC edition). It was really easy. Without it, you need to learn Fortran or Basic to do some calculation. Any ordinary business man can use it right away after 30 minute introduction. MS Excel is just a rubbish copy product for doing every thing. In 1985 first Excel was released for Mac and Windows version win the battle with Lotus 1-2-3 finally. But it is error prone. Hard to keep track of change and follow streaming of in & out. Even it is not friendly with other MS applications such as Word and Outlook.Pasted or exported chart is often uncontrollable and ugly. Interestingly, MS Excel is a popular office...

Youtube is really hottest internet video sharing site globally. If you are not familiar with Youtube, please visit www.youtube.com at your spare time. Because it is based on interesting Flash player technology for streaming & playing video, it play well without any warning or password windows through your company firewall. Most of contents are uploaded by users.(That's Mashup! That's UCC:User Created Content) You can find many popular video clips without appropriate copyright and size limit but there are many unique and interesting amateur films. Most interesting phenomena about Youtube is that it is beloved by many young as well. It is popular among people who lives out side of US. In Japan, over 2 million Japanese internet users visited there at March 2006. It is 5.2% market penetration.(US is 5.4%). Even though there is no regional service yet, it attracts more and more people globally. Some says it is good model to explain " Long tail ". It may be not big ma...

Ok, It looks not that charming but really impressive for me. PLC : Product Life Cycle is one of 101 class item and most useful economic theory in marketing for me. I think I can understand by a new method by Google's new LAB project "Google Trend". Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms users enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. The graph is matched with major news issues. You can sort it by cities/regions and languages as well. For example, if you input "RAZR", you may see the rumor about RAZR was appearing at Q4 of 2004. And then you can see hot buzz when it is finally introduced at market. Around 2005 christmas season, the graph reached at peak point. I think it is interesting the graph has still good strength. I assume it might thanks to RAZR limited edition and other variable versions such as Gold Dolce & Gabana. Now it seems RAZR will be next ...

I hate to say but we are growing older. As we grow older, physical ability such as eyesight is getting worse. Hearing ability is so as well. Human's audible spectrum is known as 20hz~20Khz but actually old person can't hear high frequency sound such as 17KHZ. A British inventor, 39 years old Mr. Howard Stapleton invented "Kid Repellent" called Mosquito which generates high pitch tone to repell yound mischievous kid from a retail shop. It is just like a sound of Mosquito or "Headache sound". He said "It's very difficult to shoplift, when you have your fingers in your ears." It seems he share a same viewpoint of education with a Victorian man. But another brilliant people utilize it and makes a mobile phone ringtone for kid. In class, student use it without teacher's attention. SOWHAT? Test it by yourself. Most of over 30ies couldn't hear 17Khz tone including myself. It may be not great for normal ringtone but may be useful for receiving ...