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iTunes 10 UI changes.
Apple announced iTunes 10 today, and after an unusual delay in actually releasing the application, we are now able to download it and examine what UI changes they’ve implemented this time round. It seems they are forever changing the style of iTunes – perhaps it is their testing bed for new designs; either way, it can often cause annoyance and frustration.
The biggest difference seems to be that they’ve removed almost all traces of color – not sure about that, it seems very bland now…
The new iTunes 10 icon.
New vertical traffic light buttons for expand/close/minimize
All icons have been grayed out… looks quite boring
New PING icon for iTunes Social side
The new AirPlay icon – replacing AirTunes
Even the iTunes Preferences have been desaturated.
What do you think of the new iTunes 10?
Facebook and Skittles
So today Facebook celebrates six years of booking faces!
Six years since Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes huddled together around some computers in Harvard University and created a fun college website for their friends.
And now, six years in the making, Facebook has literally exploded into a thriving, opinionated, and interconnected network of 400 million users – making it the 3rd largest ‘country’ on the planet!
What’s more impressive is that Facebook’s population growth is actually accelerating. It took 3 months to grow from 300>350 million and a mere 2 months to then reach 400 million.
I spent a few minutes breaking the 62 days of growth down to more manageable numbers, and converting them into packets of Skittles. I like Skittles.
- 806,451 Skittles eaten per day
- 33,602 Skittles eaten per hour
- 560 Skittles eaten per minute
- 9 Skittles eaten per second
9 Skittles eaten (sign-ups) every single second of the day, and that number is still increasing! Could you keep that up?
This post should have only taken you about 1 minute to read so far… during that time, 560 people joined Facebook. In my world, that’s 10 packets of Skittles eaten. Wow.
Have you joined Facebook? What’s your favorite Skittles color?
The Internet is Boring.
I read an interesting article this morning in The Australian Online Newspaper titled, Everything old is new again to nostalgic, internet-weary young adults, which discussed the growing trend that 16-30 year olds are losing their internet drive and are beginning to return to old-school cultures. Have a read through and gather your own thoughts, but one sentence in particular absolutely jumped out at me as I was reading;
“They [16-30's] want technology to assist rather than dominate the way they communicate.”
This is exactly where I stand right now… I am getting pretty bored with Facebook, it doesn’t entertain me at all, I’m only hanging around so that I can stay in touch with people/photos… that’s all there is left to do on it, besides those annoying quizzes. The only real reasons I use the internet right now are for social networking/connecting/blogs or researching etc for work purposes. If I’m ever using the internet for any other reason, I can now see that I am looking for ways it can ‘assist’ my everyday life.
The internet isn’t a feature anymore… it’s a tool to be used.
How do you use the internet?
I Live Here.
I live in America.
That is something I still tell myself nearly every day, it seems crazy.
If you had told me at the start of last year, my final year of University Study, that I would be traveling to America only 3 days after finishing my course… I couldn’t have imagined how that would happen. Yet here I am, sitting on my Ikea couch in Parsippany, only 45mins from New York city, writing this blog entry as the Liquid Church Media Designer..
While it no longer feels strange to drive on the wrong side of the road, ask for a soda or take out the trash; I still have no idea regarding farenheit, inches or the various American coins… and my Australian accent is still causing frequent communication trouble.
Speaking of New York, I’m heading into the Big Apple tomorrow to attend a Hillsong United concert. Ironic that I am off to see an Australian band play in New York, but I am sure the experience will be one I won’t forget for a long while to come.
This city is absolutely amazing.
A Healthy Reminder.
I recently read a challenging, albeit long, blog post by Joel Houston of Hillsong United discussing ‘The art of visual semantics‘ and the varying degrees of difficulty surrounding the creation of their yearly album artwork. He vents quite candidly about how they have tried so hard to capture the genuine heart and intent of the United band within their designs, only to be knocked back time and time again by fickle complaints and crazy mis-interpretations.
You’ll have to read the full post to realise how much they seem to be banging their heads against the wall… yet for all the venting, Joel concludes with this statement:
“…and at the end of the day, our art is simply a donkey.. Just like the one that carried Jesus.. just a donkey, who’s purpose was to carry the Savior.. The same goes for all our creative expression; our music; our photography; our design; our talents and gifts etc. whatever it is, our challenge above all else is to make sure it carries HIM. That it serves to carry the life giving message of Christ. We get that right, and it’ll do the job.”
That really hit home for me.
It is healthy to be reminded of why we do what we do… why I moved to New Jersey, why I am working for Liquid Church. It isn’t to create works that can further my own portfolio, or gain me applause and encouraging feedback – as nice as that is; my role is ‘to carry the life giving message of Christ’ through everything I do and create.
Thanks for the reminder, Joel.