Bits and pieces

After all the backlash at their logo redesign, Tropicana orange juice cartons are going to revert to their original design. In other news, apparently people can get really worked up over orange juice cartons. I personally didn’t mind the redesign–it looks so much classier now.

I wonder if it’s just PepsiCo in general trying to redesign all their products. If anything, they should roll back the Pepsi logo back to the far superior original design, rather than this new logo that’s trying to be all hip and asymmetrical.

And in other news, I had no idea Tropicana was owned by Pepsi. And with a little research, apparently Simply Orange is a Coke product. It’s good that they’ve distanced their orange juice lines from their other beverages, because now my impression of Tropicana has changed to be less of a “natural” brand.

This Wired article on some really recent research at MIT blew me away. This stuff was so good, they were invited to TED to give a talk. Basically, the device takes a bit of the interactivity and conveniently placed information so pervasive on the internet and brings it to the physical world. There’s this video of a graduate student demoing the product in a bunch of situations. For example, he’s walking around a bookstore browsing for books. When he sees one he likes, he removes it from the shelf and holds it in front of him to let the device scan the book’s title. Then when the device is done scanning, it projects a display onto the book cover with the rating the book has gotten from Amazon.com users and perhaps even some choice reviews. And then the guy flips to a random page in the book that has a portrait, and the device picks up on this and starts giving a description of who this figure is.

This kind of reminds me of the audio tours in museums. For those unfamiliar with how that works, you basically rent a headset, and as you walk around, certain exhibits will have numbers next to them. The point is that when you input these numbers into your headset, you’ll get a more thorough description of the exhibit. This is that and so much more.

Another interesting idea is bringing hand gestures into play. You can take a picture by making a picture frame with your fingers and thumbs, and then back at home, you can browse your photo collection on your wall, tweaking them at will. To be honest, this feature is similar to prior multi-touch screen features, but what makes this different is the sheer convenience of it. Instead of buying a relatively stationary surface, you can carry around a small device, and operate on any blank wall or even flat surface.

Then, what I found most impressive was being able to look at a plane ticket and having real time data on delays and gate changes pop up. I can see this being a killer feature, especially for businessmen who go where their companies tell them to. I bet this ability alone will be well worth the cost for company men and jet setters alike.

Right now, this is all enabled by a cameraphone hanging on a lanyard, along with four different colors of marker caps to help the software better distinguish between different fingers. It’s still a bit primitive and hacky, but keep in mind that they’ve only been working on this for four months. I’m excited to see what they’ll come out with in a year or two. Perhaps the technology practiced in Minority Report is not actually so far away.

I just finished reading an article in the times about the trials and travails of bankers’ girlfriends. It’s about as you’d expect. When the market goes down, the bankers are more stressed and spend less time on their girlfriends. But what makes the article worth reading is the part describing the club that these women formed, Dating a Banker Anonymous, and the blog that the support group keeps.

On the blog, the objects of their affections — and disdain — are referred to as F.B.F.’s, for Financial-Guy Boyfriends. Financial news is conveyed via a color-coded daily warning system: red, when the Dow fell 300 points on Oct. 6 (“Good night to have dinner with your girlfriends and do laundry”); yellow, when Warren Buffet invested $3 billion in General Electric (“Good night to hang out with your F.B.F.”); green on Jan. 21, in honor of President Obama’s hope.

On the whole, the entire thing is rather absurd. These women just sound like bratty teenage girls whining that their credit cards have been cancelled, and that their bankers can’t keep mistresses anymore. Big. Deal.

I always find it cool when user interface designers find ways to do things while staying away from the tried-and-true standby, the button. The mp3 player in this instead uses mere tilting and tapping on corners in order to make things happen. Apparently some Japanese engineer thought up the idea, and just whipped it up from scratch. It may actually be impractical in many cases, but it’s still a neat idea, and perhaps designers will keep these kinds of ideas in the backs of their minds when they begin work on the next round of new products.

My friend and ex-roommate had some really good examples of this idea too. First, he had (and still has) this touch desk lamp that will switch between low light, high light, and off settings every time you touch any part of its metal surface. Second, he has the JBL Creature Speakers where instead of the traditional volume knob, there was a touch volume control. It had two parts, a little metal region with a minus sign on it and another region with a plus sign, and to turn the volume up or down, you just needed to put your finger on the right symbol.

Lastly, here’s a great example of how web sites can still function even without the pervasive mouse click. The explore section is especially interesting, as you can see different examples of life without a clicker.

Looks like he’s still gotta pay tolls. I can just imagine:

*cadillac one pulls up to toll booth*
attendant: that’ll be $2.00 please.
*driver holds out empty hand*
attendant: what’s this?
obama, from the back: IT’S CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN, BETCH!
*drive off, tires squealing*

Hopefully part 1 in a multi-part series, but we’ll see what happens.

I would go and eat at the North End almost every day if 1. I could get there and back speedily, and 2. I had lots of spare cash to burn. As I currently have neither, so it’s more of an occasional treat. But it’s a damn good occasional treat.

Restaurants:
Giacomo’s (Get the calamari and the butternut squash ravioli. They’re the best in Boston. Be prepared to wait though, as they take no reservations and fit maybe 40 people, tops.)
Cafe Florentine (They’re pretty solid, with good food at average North End prices. The Fettucine Carbonara I got here was delicious, as were the Lobster Ravioli and the Ziti con Pollo my friends got)
La Summa (Highly recommended. Off the beaten path of Hanover, they have the best handmade pastas at economical prices. I’ve only eaten here once, but I’m definitely coming back.)
Massimino’s (Tasty place outside of the main area of the North End, and reasonable on the wallet)
Pomodoro (Went here on my birthday back in freshman year. Limited selection at average North End prices, but from what I remember, it was worth it. It’s a small hole-in-the-wall type place.)
Sabatino’s, R.I.P. (There was this crowd of seniors who I used to hang out with as a freshmen who would come here all the time–enough so that they knew the staff and could trust to have a good time every time they came. Unfortunately, the place closed last year, so I’ve been eagerly awaiting their reopening ever since.)

Otherwise:
Gelateria (I always consider the mark of a good gelato place to be the quality of its hazelnut. This place’s offering does not disappoint, with its rich but not grainy texture, and its scattered hazelnut chunks. It’s great gelato, but rather pricey. Be prepared to pay $5 for a medium.)
Mike’s Pastries (Great cannoli and great marzipan, but the workers here don’t have time for you cause they think they’re big shots.)
Modern Pastry (Same quality as Mike’s, but better service. If you have a choice, and don’t plan on getting marzipan, go here instead.)

I’ve been talking with a friend of mine about interview questions, which got me to looking up examples online. I stumbled across this classic, from Google.

You’re shrunk and trapped in a blender that will turn on in 60 seconds. What do you do?

Juno is a good movie that passes by like a memory from summer. It’s light, fun while it lasts, and although the details fade, its warmth stays with you. 4.5 out of 5 stars

Burn After Reading. What? I fell asleep. Multiple times. I think there was supposed to be humor in here somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. It’s got the trademark starkness of the Coen Brothers (think No Country for Old Men), but lacks the substance to fill it out. Ugh. 0.5 out of 5 stars

Back to the Future. I finally was able to watch this classic in its entirety while sitting in the nicest airport terminal I’ve ever been in. The plot’s a tad predictable, but that doesn’t detract majorly from the film. 4.5 out of 5 stars

Across the Universe. The first time I watched this, I absolutely loved it. The second time I watched it, it was trippy as hell. But in both cases, I enjoyed the music immensely, and it gave me a new appreciation for the Beatles. Although the movie itself is kind of one long music video, the soundtrack makes the movie worth watching. 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Good movie. The movie, honestly speaking, was a bit predictable, but I really enjoyed watching Benjamin deal with the philosophical quandaries of aging backwards. And on a side note, this movie had amazing makeup artists. When Benjamin comes back as a kid, he’s a dead ringer for Brad Pitt, circa 1995, and for a second, you can really empathize with Daisy as you realize that you’ve aged as well. It would surprise me if this didn’t win at least a Golden Globe or an Oscar, if not both. 4.5 out of 5 stars

Slumdog Millionaire. I have a friend who is absolutely in love with this movie–she’s seen it 3 times, and every time in theaters. She took me and another friend of mine to go watch it, hyping it up all the way, and… it mostly lived up to the hype. I just wish Jamal wasn’t so passive all the time. The ending made me crack up–I guess they had to stay true to Bollywood. 4 out of 5 stars

In Bruges. Thank you Wendy for reminding me that I watched this over break too. An amazing movie that’ll leave you confused and amused at the same time, while suppressing the urge to cry. Intrigued? You should be. I sincerely hope that this wins an Oscar or a Golden Globe for Best Comedy, because I want to keep believing that the judges have at least some modicum of taste. 5 out of 5 stars

1. Neil Patrick Harris.
2. Jason Segel.
3. Actual jokes, despite the canned laughter.
4. The concept.

It’s kinda hokey, but I’ll see how it is after a few more episodes before I decide to ditch it or not.

Being able to get up at specific times is important. On the other hand, right now I don’t have an alarm clock. So I’ve recently been resorting to using online alarm clocks instead to rouse myself from my slumber, but after testing a few of them out, I’ve found the pickings to be a bit slim.

So the ones I’ve found are onlineclock.net, klokoo.com, nakedalarmclock.com, sleep.fm, and kukuklok.com. I’ve found them all to be variations on the same theme. Pick a sound, and set it to play at a certain time, hopefully waking up whoever set it. They range from very sparse interfaces to very busy ones, but it doesn’t affect the underlying similarities. The one innovative site is sleep.fm, which allows you to wake up to a woman announcing the day’s weather (a la Iron Man), so I’ve been using that most recently.

Still, if I had my way, there’d be an option for a gradual wakeup, perhaps one that started with calmer sounds, and only slowly increasing in intensity and cacophony until I finally wake up. I imagine it wouldn’t be too difficult–in fact, I bet it’s already under development. I’m just going to be waiting for the feature to come out.