I personally haven’t found an excuse yet to wear these, without being regarded either too geeky or too childish. But is being a geeky child such a bad thing? What do you mean, they don’t have them in my size?

Superhero shoes, available at Etsy.

People in the industry, and meanwhile even outside of it, call it just the tablet. It has become the word that’s synonymous for Apple’s next big move, a new member of the growing family of ultra portable computers like the iPod Touch, the iPhone or perhaps the MacBook Air. The latter can’t decline it’s heritage, but the other members are of a new breed. It is as if Apple wanted to define computing as we know it.

This shopping window of Zurich's Apple Store on Tuesday night, one day before Apple's tablet event, doesn't show the usual arrangement of complex App-Icon bursts covering iPhones and iPods. It looks more like a setup that can be changed within 10 minutes.

And perhaps that idea isn’t so far off the truth. If you’ve followed Apple’s path not only from the stock holders perspective, or watching through the eyes of eager blogs like Engadget, even if you tried not to follow Apple’s plans at all and just used some applications or devices coming out of the rather unusual computer company, you might have gotten a touch of what is different with these new devices. They are not revolutionary new, but they offer enough innovation and improving just the right amount of user experience that makes them stand out of the crowd. Even more so, they become role models for generations to come, phones and computers made by all other companies. Without a doubt, the iPhone has set the pace for the ongoing mobile revolution and it doesn’t look like Apple is done yet with its job.

What will make its next device different, which is expected to be revealed by tomorrow, 9:00 AM in California, isn’t its form factor, which is expected to be of tablet shape. It’s also not its touch capabilities, which are said to be similar to the ones of iPhones. It’s also not the ability to play games, or surf the web, or send e-mail, listen to music and take notes. All those things can be done with computers and there are even some solid tablet computers out there who do a pretty good job at these things.

Apple took the idea of a tablet computer and asked itself, over and over for the past seven years during its development: what is it that makes us want to use such a thing? It didn’t stop there. It asked further questions, like: how will portable computing change the way we work? What do folders, windows and mouse pointers mean on a handheld touch device? Clearly, we can see some of these answers on the iPhone and iPod Touch. But these devices are well designed to cover a couple of things that fit in the palms of our hands. What if you ask the bigger question, like what is next after the desktop metaphor we’ve been using since the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984?

John Gruber made an excellent assessment of what he thinks will differentiate Apple’s new device from other handheld and ultra portable computers. Recently he’s also speculated about its name, which could be anything from iPad over Canvas to Slate. Many say it’s going to be iSlate, but personally I don’t know if Apple wants to continue with the lowercase i in front of everything.

I think the big step here isn’t going to be that thing we’ll be lusting after from tomorrow on. It’s the things that follow, the next generation of ubiquitous computing, seamlessly weaving anything we do or like in two hands holding a touch sensible screen, making it a handheld window to the world we live in.

Good bye windows, folders and desktops. You served us well, but now your time has come.

Here are my predictions for Apple’s “Creations” event on January 27, 2010:

• Apple’s new tablet computer will be called Slate, iSlate, Canvas or iPad, or a name we haven’t heard of yet, but will be crystal clear the moment we hear it (it’s only iSlate if Apple remains conservative with its naming strategy)
• A network provider independent version will be priced just under $1000, but it’s possible the tablet will be offered with a dataplan from at&t.
• It will come with Wi-Fi, bluetooth and possibly a slot for 3G SIM cards (for data plans only)
• It will have a solid state drive and an aluminum casing like the MacBook Air, probably similar in shape and haptics
• It won’t have video chat from the start (front facing camera), but Apple is working on it and this will be added to the tablet and the iPhone in later versions
• Like on the iPhone and iPod Touch, the core system will be based on Mac OS X
• The interface of Mac OS and iPhone OS were brought closer together, but metaphors like folders and windows will disappear
• It will have finger writing recognition (a derivate of the Newton days), similar like the Chinese writing recognition built into Mac OS 10.6
• It will run iPhone apps, although not all iPhone apps will be optimized for its screen from the beginning
• Except for making phone calls, it will be able to do a lot of things the iPhone does as well, but it’s uncertain wheither location awareness (GPS) and a compass are built in too
• From a marketing perspective, the tablet’s main target groups are students and consumers, so everyone in a family can use this device at home to control their Apple TV or iTunes
• In addition to the iTunes Music Store, movies, TV shows and podcasts, a new magazine and book store will be revealed
• Of course it’s optimized for games (shock vibe, motion sensors), but running on a faster processor than the iPhone, possibly with the additional graphics processor that’s also built into the MacBook Air
• iLife will get a new application called Canvas, which is a paint application that lets you create new artwork and modify photos (think how you can finger paint on a touch screen)
• There will be a new version of iWork just for this device

I have a couple of friends who live in geek sphere. Some think the holy grail of geek sphere is the ultimate media center, a box that sends images, sound and movies to a large flatscreen TV. In any format, streamed from the Internet, live or canned, from anywhere on your hard drive. (Sorry, Apple TV, we mean also outside of that iTunes cage.)

The Boxee Box front side.

It may sound like a simple task, and Microsoft fans will wrinkle their noses and roll their eyes. That is, until they need to reboot their Windows Media Center for the eleventh time, after Windows required another “critical security update”, or it showed off its infamous bluescreen of death.

The Boxee interface, currently in Beta.

What Apple carefully calls a hobby and Microsoft does, because it kind of has to, is a domain that has been silently covered by a number of Open Source projects. Among the runner ups for ultimate free media center solutions are Plex and Boxee. Boxee has been around for a while and it’s been doing a pretty good job to bring Stephen Colbert and YouTube to your HD-ready TV set. Not formatted in HD, but that’s not the point.

Boxee is no longer limited to software (there’s a new beta out). The Boxee Box, physical box made by D-Link, will soon hit the market. Designed by Astro Studios, who gave the XBox its cshape, the Boxee Box will enter a competitive market, but its features already outmatch those of competitors like Apple TV (breaking out of iTunes format limitations being just one of them).

The backside.

For the geeks among us, there are pictures of a pretty modest Beta release party thrown at the Brooklyn Music Hall of Williamsburg a little more than a week ago.

The Boxee Box is expected to be introduced at the CES in Las Vegas, in early January 2010.

(Images: Boxee TV)

When you think of bicycles, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Right: Messengers, sports fanatics and fearless families riding alongside highways like ducks walking in a row. Some guys are spending between three and six grand for a downhill bike. But many of us haven’t even had a bicycle since our school days. (Which of course depends on where you live.)

Republic builds and ships colorful, custom made fixies for under $400.

Funriki: Custom made bicycles from Japan.

I doubt it’s the global warming catastrophe we are heading for with high speed. But bicycles are currently experiencing an incomparable renaissance.

MIT’s engineers picked up on the concept, improving it with a cybernetic acceleration system that gives back energy it accumulated throughout the ride.

In Germany, newcomer Grace began producing an electric bicycle that can make up to 45 miles per hour. (Don’t hold your breath until you heard its price tag, roughly $8,760.)

But rarely are bicycles seen as a fashion statement. Let me change your mind with these awesome bicycles from Bertelli in New York, Miami based Republic and FunRiki from Japan. At the bottom you’ll see examples of the Copenhagen Wheel from MIT Senseable City Lab).

How can you not love that?

Republic, for an example, lets you custom select your combination of part colors and ships the finished bike anywhere in the US, for under $400.

Crazy, sexy, cool.

It's up to you to pick a colorful combination with a frame like "wasabi" in this model, or stick with a more classic, subdue color set.

Bertelli's bikes are new classics.

Bertelli's bicycles are unmatched in beauty and purism.

Bertelli combines wood, steel and aluminum with simplistic elegance.

The Copenhagen Wheel, a masterpeace of modern engineering.

(Pictures and video from Republic, FunRiki, Bertelli, MIT Senseable City Lab)

It’s no secret anymore that I really like the Panasonic Lumix GF1. Configured with a Micro Four Third lens system, this camera is not as heavy as a DSLR, but delivers equally stunning results.

Video on cinematic level

One of the great advantages over the mirror technology of DSLRs: you can use a lens of photographic quality to create video clips. (Thanks to a special mirror flip mode, you can record video with a Nikon D90 too, which is actually a DSLR.)

The year was 1975. The movie “Jaws” had been the first major box office hit of its kind. “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Rocky Horror Picture Show” had been released. David Bowie was squeaking “Fame” out of kitchen radios. The idea of a computer sitting on a lap, let alone one in your pocket, seemed ridiculous. Computers were big, ugly and hard to use. IBM’s idea of the future took shape in a few slides or shots from a movie for IBM’s product, Bolder.

When I first saw these pictures, I thought they were not real. I figured that someone must have done what Panic did with their fake vintage game boxes: create a realistic looking photo shoot set in the mainframe age of 1975.

But they are for real. And what’s really odd is how modern these messages seem. I don’t know exactly for what these images were used, but imagine someone in the seventies used this for a presentation about reliable and accessible data storage.

Aside of cliché gender roles and the smell of cold smoke in the clothes of these men — with those keywords and some of the graphics, the images convey messages we are hearing about the modern Web every day. You’ll find more pictures at Square America.

(Via Square America)

Panic: "The ad that ran only once".

To be honest, I had trouble putting this one in one of our three categories. Because it touches all three of them. It is so cool, I couldn’t wait to write a post on it.

Panic's vintage Atari game style box set.

Some of you may be familiar with a small software company from Oregon called Panic. They were the original creators of Audion, one of the first mp3 players available on the Mac OS. It’s a little known fact, but because of Audion, Panic was almost bought by Apple in 2000. They didn’t come to an agreement, so Apple went with SoundJam, which finally became the foundation for iTunes as we know it today. (Imagine what would have happened if Apple and Panic would have joined. iTunes would probably look different today.)

Panic makes some of the best and hottest software on the Mac platform, among them Coda, which was one of the tools that helped creating Mashido.

The Panic blog

You can order these posters from Panic.

Just recently, Panic released a blog and one of their first top stories begins like a fairy tale of a decades old software company named “Panic”. If you don’t know anything about Panic and stumble upon this post, it will take until the middle of the article until you realize this is just an elaborate hoax.

It’s an expression of love for those good old days, when software came in large 8-bit pixels, stored in cassettes, packaged in colorful boxes that sparked the imagination of every kid out there. Now you can order these fabulous illustrations as posters, or have Panic send you the collector’s set of fake vintage arcade games.

(Via Laughing Squid, pictures by Panic)

Stunning portraits, taken with the Lumix GF1 (Picture by july_w1123 on Flickr).

Panasonic is known to produce high quality compact digital cameras. The quality of their image processing engine competes with those of a Nikon P6000 or Canon G11.

Advantages of DSLR cameras

However, one thing all compact cameras suffer from—and a big advantage of DSLR cameras—is the latency of those little point-and-shooters, the time from the moment you press the trigger until the actual picture is taken. If you carry a compact camera for that reason, to point and shoot, you’ll soon feel frustrated over this latency effect.

Taken with the Lumix GF1 and a Leica 45mm lens. (Picture by digitalbear on Flickr)

Another advantage of DSLR cameras are replaceable lenses. Not only are they bigger (hence, offering a better image quality), they are also swappable, so depending on your motive, you can use a long lens, a regular view angle lens, or a wide angle lens. Compact cameras offer zoom functionality, but some of these are digital zoom, usually resulting in poor quality.

Compact, yet powerful

The Lumix GF1 and Minolta CLE in comparison (Picture by Nokton on Flickr).

Panasonic’s new model, the Lumix GF1 stands above Nikon’s and Canon’s flagship models in the compact range. The difference is a replaceable lens, much like it’s used for DSLR cameras. But the GF1 isn’t as bulky as those, it is compact like the Minolta CLE, which came out in the eighties of the last century (and which wasn’t digital, consequently).

The Micro Four Thirds lens system

If you want the most compact camera solution, go for the 20mm non zoom “pancake” lens, equivalent to 40mm in 35mm terms. It works best for portraits and close ups, due to the shallow depth of focus, an image style often desired by professional photographers.

Control the field of depth with the 20mm pancake lens. (Picture by: takuhitosotome on Flickr)

The GF1 weighs 448 gramms (with power cell) and has 12MP effective sensor resolution. Light sensitivity ranges from 100 to 3200 ISO, but noise is fairly well processed by the image engine. It can take images in RAW or JPEG format and mounts lenses like a traditional DSLR. The Lumix GF1 is based on the Micro Four Thirds system. This technology enables smaller and lighter camera bodies and lenses by simplifying the convoluted optical path required by a conventional SLR. If you want to buy the Lumix GF1 as a kit, you have the choice between a pancake 20mm lens (maximum aperture of f/1.7) or a long 14-45mm zoom lens.

Shoot HD video too

The Lumix GF1 can take 3 frames per second in continues shoot mode, but it has also video capabilities (AVCHD), creating stunningly crisp clips with cinematic style (HD video at 1280 x 720 (720p) resolution):

Within the segment of regular compact cameras, the Lumix GF1 kit stands out with a price tag of an average US$1000 in Europe and around US$850 in the US. An optional external viewfinder is priced at US$199.99. But compared to heavier DSLR models from competitors like Nikon and Canon, the GF1 comes close to an ideal choice photographers have been waiting for.

(Pictures and video clip from Flickr and Vimeo)

More resources

• Lumix Pancake Pool on Flickr
• Lumix GF1 Raw Pool on Flickr

Optimus Tactus in video mode.

Art.Lebedev Studio, the team behind the Optimus Maximus OLED Keyboard, has come up with new concept for a keyboard. Revolutionary to some, daunting to others, the Optimus Tactus doesn’t have any keys. The entire keyboard is a touchscreen.

Optimus Tactus does not have physical keys, which means there are no restrictions on their shape and size. Any part of the keyboard surface can be programmed to perform any function or to display any images.

The Optimus Tactus keyboard has a programmable touchscreen.

Gizmodo isn’t too happy about the lack of tactile feedback. But let’s face it: the iPhone has shown that tactile feedback is heavily overrated. It sure is nice, but our capability to type text is not depending on it.

Whether that is true for longer texts remains to be seen, because until today no brand has dared to introduce a no-keys keyboard to the market.

A programmable interface opens up new possibilities.

(Pictures by Art.Lebedev)

The litl, a new netbook-like device for your home and lifestyle.

There have been various attempts by computer makers to conquer your living room. As the stylish MacBook Air and Macbook are becoming lighter and more powerful, accompanying our lives everywhere we go, the distinction of working space and living room is about to go away. Laptops today are so powerful, they cover everything from writing a film script to actually editing the resulting movie. Consequently, your entertainment, formerly governed by a TV, a DVD player and a stereo system, is driven by computers too.

Still, brands like Apple are struggling to redefine your living room experience. While Apple doesn’t want to commit to TV and BlueRay, hackers are trying to close the missing gaps. TV-makers like Sony are trying to tie traditional computer functions to the TV set.

The everywhere-at-home entertainment device

Rumors about Apple coming out with a tablet device some time in 2010 are fueling wild ideas about wirelessly transmitted video signals from computer to TV.

To connect to your TV, plug in a standard HDMI cable.

What Apple may be trying to do in 2010, one small new company is heading for today. They just announced their product called Litl, a small netbook-like device that is designed to bridge the gap of a traditional computer and an “everywhere-at-home entertainment device”.

The Litl was designed with the help of Pentagram, a traditional design company who doesn’t always have a lucky hand when it comes to interaction-design. However, from the pictures the Litl’s interface looks nice, straight forward and pleasing the eye.

Robust enough to carry around and place anywhere.

Litl describes its user experience like this:

We built litl to enjoy the web at home. When you see our main navigation screen, you’ll immediately know how to use it. Just point and click. Litl eliminates menus, icons, and folders. In fact, we’ve removed all computer administrative debris between you and the web.

Breaking paradigms, introducing new ones

The company Litl claims the device is maintenance free, so you can just focus on using it for your pleasure. Its makers may have had simplicity for users in mind, but they weren’t shy introducing new interface ideas, like a wheel that replaces a touch screen, touch pad, stylus or mouse. All in all the litl tries to limit everything you do to a few established forms of entertainment and communication, such as news reading with RSS, watching movies or photo slide shows, or listening to music. Other than that, there is only so litl you can do with this thing, and for $300 more you might get as well a Macbook with better graphics, including programs to edit and enjoy sound and video, and everything else you’d expect from a robust operating system today.

(Pictures by Litl)