A SIMPLE, INGENIOUS SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF HOW ISOLATED MUSIC-LISTENING HAS BECOME.
The biggest problem in social media right now isn’t getting people engaged online, it’s getting people engaged in person. Check-in apps like Foursquare and photo apps like Instagram definitely interact with the real world, but they tend to appeal to friends online more than the friends you’re actually, physically hanging out with.
Jukey hardware and controls (Click Image To Enlarge)
Vim & Vigor Design, who you’d best know for creating the accessories and finish of the Nook, has developed a concept that addresses this problem of (anti)social network behavior. It’s called Jukey, and it’s a new take on the jukebox, networked to accept requests from in-person smartphone users. The idea is that people at a party can pool their music collections, and the device’s intelligence will automatically create smart playlists composed of the favorite songs of everyone who contributed. No more being a slave to one person’s tastes; no more violent lurches in the music as different would-be DJs commandeer the laptop.
Partner Irina Kozlovskaya explains to Co.Design.
"Our team noticed that more and more music listening is becoming a solitary experience. This is part of a larger trend of minimizing social interaction in lieu of digital experiences, especially for younger generations. We set out to create a device that would combine all the best elements of services like Spotify and Last.fm, but in a real-world environment.”
The idea has actually been done before to a limited capacity. Services like Grooveshark have long supported custom APIs for code junkies that would allow party participants to vote on playlists.
What Vim & Vigor does differently is that they’ve taken an idea we all know can be possible and they’ve packaged it in an enticing consumer product. Jukey itself is a very neat little music player. The simple Wi-Fi- and Bluetooth-connected speaker has no buttons. To turn the device on, you simply lay Jukey on its side. To change the volume, you swipe left or right on Jukey’s case. And you can even rewind and fast forward by rotating Jukey like a big jog wheel.
Jukey sound cones (Click Image To Enlarge)
Everything else is digital. An auto mode can play music by filters like genre, or DJs can trade off tracks in a voting-based arena (much like Turntable.fm). And what’s exceptionally neat is that, even those who can’t make the physical party can join in digitally online, sharing their tracks and voting with everyone else.
So rather than losing party-goers to their musings on Facebook, Jukey constantly pulls the cloud back to the real world--in fact, Jukey pulls anyone on a social network into a good old fashioned analog celebration.
As of right now, Jukey is purely a concept. But Vim & Vigor is open to partnering with a company interested in producing it. To me, it seems like, not a necessary replacement for, but a killer extension to an existing social network. Why not have Spotify jukeboxes pumping at every party? It’d sure beat the awkward, fumbling silence of swapping users on an iPod dock.
COMMENTARY: The problem that I see is with Jukey is that it is too dependent on a single device for social networking crowd music listening. Jukey has a cool design, but the concept should've consisted of an app that runs on your desktop or laptop and interfaces with your social network crowd that could then be connected to your home entertainment system to playback the music.
IT’S HARD TO GET PRECISE ABOUT THE DIFFERING WAYS THE NORTH AND SOUTH MYTHOLOGIZE THEMSELVES. BUT THESE INFOGRAPHICS GET CLOSE.
In my northerner mind, country songs are all about heartbreak. Or drinking. Or God. Or trucks. Or the South itself. Likewise, it wouldn’t be hard to find a southerner who looks at the north as Godless, Frenchified dandies hell-bent on socialism. As it ends up, the stereotypes are somewhat true: There really is a divide in the way the regions view themselves, and you can get a fascinating insight into culture by analyzing country music versus pop music.
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This duo of infographics from Very Small Array charts out locations mentioned in the song titles of Billboard #1 hits. The first map shows the places mentioned across any genre of top hit. The second is just for country music hits:
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Now maybe it’s fair to say that we’re all a bit obsessed with the South, but I’m guessing most of you could spot which map is which, solely by the dots. (And you could also spot which songs on the general map are on the country hits map, too.)
It’s clear, country musicians love singing about the South, and they’re particularly precise in their geography of Texas--El Paso, Abilene, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Galveston, and Luckenbach each make between one and 14 appearances over the last 60 years.
Meanwhile, pop hits frequently dream of other shores, including Paris and London but also, mysteriously, the Volga river. Moreover, country hits are obsessed with teeny tiny towns--seemingly, the more obscure, the better and more authentic? Meanwhile, pop hits focus almost solely on the big cities. (And we’ll bet the one mention of El Paso was a cross-over country hit.)
Political scientists often talk about the city/country divide--about how those in urban areas vote differently than those in rural areas. But charts like these start to get at the very different aspirations and reference points that make that divide so pronounced.
Another fun and fascinating part of these graphics is the Country Hits’ breakdown of the 12 most common words used across all of the genre’s songs titles. Romantic tropes like “love,” “heart,” “man,” and “woman” all make an appearance, sure, but “angels” and, the absolute best, “wheel” (which I think should totally count for “truck”) sneak in the list as well.
So while this northerner may have been wrong about drinking, I did hit the nail on the head with the South’s obsession with heartbreak, religion, trucks, and the South itself. And I think four out of five really isn’t that bad, at least for a rude, fast-talking, city-dwelling Yank such as myself.
COMMENTARY: I don't listen to country & western music at all, even though I will admit to wearing cowboy boots, country shirt and hat during the "urban cowboy" era that hit the national sceen in the late 70's and early 80's. I also did some line dancing, and thought I really had the moves down, if I may say so. Heeehaaawww!!
Google is developing its own branded wireless music streaming home entertainment system, will compete with Apple
Google Inc. is developing a home-entertainment system that streams music wirelessly throughout the home and would be marketed under the company's own brand, according to people briefed on the company's plans.
The effort marks a sharp shift in strategy for Google, which for the first would time would design and market consumer electronic devices under its name. The company has mainly focused on developing the Android operating system that powers devices such as smartphones, tablets and televisions. It has also allowed other companies to build and brand the hardware that uses it.
Google plans to make a branded home-entertainment system, steps up the company's rivalry with Apple by adding a new platform for competition, George Stahl reports on Markets Hub. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The new Android device, along with Google's pending purchase of device maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., also ups the ante in its ongoing tussle with rival Apple Inc., which also controls both the software and hardware process.
Google competes with Apple in the mobile market where the share of Android-powered phones grew rapidly to overtake that of iPhones last year, according to some estimates. Apple recently stepped onto Google's Web search turf by launching Siri, a voice-activated search feature on its latest iPhone. And Google over the past year has worked to try to catch up to Apple in other areas such as selling digital music, movies and e-books directly to consumers.
Google's entertainment device, in development for several years, is expected to be unveiled later this year, people familiar with the matter said.
It's unclear which retailers would sell the entertainment device, which would stream music from Google's online music-storage service and pipe it wirelessly to Google-designed speakers or other Web-connected devices in people's homes, according to these people. In the future, such a device could potentially stream other forms of digital media such as video, one of these people said.
Consumers would operate the Google system using a smartphone or tablet, they said. It's unclear whether the devices would have to be powered by Android.
A Google spokesman declined to comment.
Google currently offers and other digital media for sale online through Android Market, which rivals Apple's iTunes store.
Google has already been moving to take Android from mobile devices into people's living rooms. The company has worked with television makers to incorporate the operating system under the moniker Google TV, which lets people use their TVs to browse the Web for video content, among other things. But the technology, which has been adopted by companies such as Samsung Electronics Co. and Sony Corp., has been slow to gain traction with consumers.
One person familiar with the matter said Google was hoping to offer the entertainment system, which would bring a new revenue stream to the company, at more-affordable prices than a similar device made by Sonos Inc., which focuses exclusively on music.
The market for home-audio hardware, including basics like stereos and more advanced gadgets like the Sonos music-streaming system is worth around $8 billion a year, world-wide, according to an estimate from Sonos co-founder Tom Cullen, who adds that his company's annual sales last year totaled about $200 million.Mr. Cullen said.
"I'd be stunned if they actually thought it was worth it, because it's peanuts for them."
Google generated about $38 billion in revenue last year.
One person familiar with Google's plans said the company hopes to increase the size of that market by selling products at lower price points.
The initiative, however, could bring Google closer to being in competition with hardware companies that use Android and are commonly seen as partners for the company.
Partnerships between Google and device makers have made Android the No.1 operating system in smartphones in the U.S. and helped Google to extend its Web-search engine and other applications into devices beyond PCs. Google doesn't generate any revenue from sales of the devices.
Google's Android unit is led by Andy Rubin, who once ran a company called Danger that designed handsets, including the Sidekick, which Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have said they admired. Over the past year or so Mr. Rubin hired some of his former colleagues at Danger, including Matt Hershenson and Joe Britt, to lead Android's hardware unit.
Anand Agarawala, left, and Joe Britt demonstrate new features for the Android@Home program at the Google IO Developers Conference in San Francisco in May.
At a conference last year, Mr. Britt previewed two home-entertainment devices that are related to the product Google is expected to sell this year. Mr. Britt called them "Tungsten" devices and said one of them could be controlled by an Android tablet and used to stream music and to act as a "bridge" to connect with other home appliances and devices.
Mr. Britt said at the conference.
"Think about your home as a network of accessories and think of Android as the operating system for your home, a vision called 'Android @Home'"
He didn't say the company would sell the device.
The company continues to work closely with device makers. For every updated release of its Android operating system, for example, Google chooses one hardware partner and helps it design a "Nexus" device to showcase the operating system's newest capabilities. Most recently, Google launched the Galaxy Nexus smartphone, made by Samsung.
Google in 2010 tried to sell the first Nexus device, called Nexus One and built by HTC Corp., directly to consumers through its website. The company discontinued the effort several months later.
Google's new device would mark the first time it has directly overseen the manufacturing process, working with overseas hardware suppliers and selling devices to consumers.
Google has increasingly expressed interest in allowing Android devices such as a smartphone to control appliances and other home devices, including lights or heating systems.
COMMENTARY: I wonder if Google founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin asked themselves, "What would Steve do?" I don't like the idea of Google competing on the basis of price. This runs counter to Apple's strategy. We have already seen that offering lower-priced alternatives to the iPhone and iPad has had very little effect on Apple's market shares. Apple is now No 1 in both smartphones and tablets and predicted to stay No 1 for quite some time.
With Apple it has always been about designing products that their own engineers would love using, that are not only well engineered and designed, but are simple, beautiful and that "people will lust for," using former founder Steve Jobs' own words. Will Google be able to put a "dent in the universe?"
Apple has always been able to maintain the highest industry margins by offering products that are are well engineered and designed, outsourcing production, and continuing the total product experience through its own Apple Stores and great post-sale customer service. The exceptions being the distribution of iPhone and iPad. The iPhone was originally exclusively distributed through AT&T, but both the iPhone and iPad are now distributed by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint, and a few big box retailers like WalMart and Target.
The Google brand conveys an image of a company with the No 1 online search engine, which has also gained notoriety with the Android OS and its ecosystem of apps. Whether it can position itself as a hardware maker in the home entertainment market remains to be seen, and is very risky endeavor. Apple was able to do this with smartphones, portable music players and tablets, but they did it with "magical" products that disrupted entire market segments. I am not entirely convinced that Google can successfully carry out this new branded hardware strategy to fruition.
Here’s the trouble with touch screens: the screens. Not everything that could usefully benefit from a touch interface can accommodate a fragile, expensive glass-plus-capacitive-electronics display. Which is why Mogees , an experimental interface design by Bruno Zamborlin, will blow your mind: it uses a microphone to create a gestural interface out of any hard surface. Watch and be amazed:
The system works via something Zamborlin calls "concatenative synthesis," which even Zamborlin himself can’t explain very well. And it’s telling that the demo video never shows what, exactly, that tiny microphone is hooked up to. Obviously it’s a portable computer system of some kind, but whether it’s a heavy, modded-out custom rig in a backpack or an iPad with a simple app running on it isn’t clear. But who cares: the implications for interface and interaction design--not to mention live music or multimedia performance art--are mind-warpingly awesome. Here’s another, earlier demo:
Here's how Mogees works:
Mogees is an interactive gestural-based surface for realtime audio mosaicing.
When the performer touches the surface, Mogees analyses the incoming audio signal and continuously looks for its closest segment within the sound database. These segments are played one after the other over time: this technique is called concatenative synthesis. For instance, loaded a series of voice samples, a graze in the surface could corresponds to a whispering while a scratch would trigger more shouted sounds.
The wooden surface can be "played" with any tool such as hands and Mogees will always try to find a correspondent sound to it. It can also be applied to other sound sources such as voice or acoustic/electric instruments.
Mooges has been developed in collaboration with Norbert Schnell and takes full advantage of the MuBu environment for MaxMSP. It is currently used in the Airplay project by the IRCAM composer Lorenzo Pagliei.
Mogees has been exposed at the Beam festival at Brunel University in London on the 24/25/26 of June 2011.
Zamborlin set up Mogees in these videos to act like a musical instrument, so imagine a live DJ equipped with this system: he or she could act like a digital-audio graffiti artist, walking into any situation, sticking the Mogees mic onto any hard surface (or even another person), and start wiggling and twitching their hands and fingers as if they were scratching a record to create a live performance on the fly. Beats the hell out of most subway musicians.
But Zamborlin’s video hints that the system can let a user design and define whatever interactions (and the computer functions they activate/control) that they like. So a system like Mogees could be deployed in rugged field situations by scientists, soldiers, doctors--anyone who wants or needs to get a tactile gestural interface up and running quickly in unpredictable terrain. Mogees feels as breathtakingly innovative as the vaunted Minority Report gestural interface, except more grounded, more DIY in its design, more flexible in its potential applications. The Minority Report UI was supposed to be the future, and it still hasn’t arrived. Maybe something like Mogees has a better shot.
COMMENTARY: Bruno Zamborlin has either invented a new form of art or self-expression, a new touch user-interface, or new musical instrument, or a combination of all three. Whatever makes his Mogees interactive gestural-based service for realtime audio mosaicing (a mouthful, if there ever was) work could be quite an invention. Imagine turning your house into a living, breathing musical instrument. Apple's SIRI voice-command app has nothing on Mogees.
Whatever Mogees is, or the technology that makes it work, and belch out such beautiful sounds of the real world, is definitely a new paradigm in sound acoustics, if not music making. In the hands of a real musician, Mogees could become the next musical instrument accompament.
Will there be a School for Mogees Musicians? It would certainly differentiate you from other musicians. When people ask, "So you're a Mogees musician? What the hell is Mogees musician?" Do you see where I am going with this.
Courtesy of an article dated January 5, 2012 appearing in Fast Company
Facebook on Thursday began rolling out a new feature aimed at ramping up the social experience of listening to music online.
The feature, called “Listen With Friends"—lets users listen along with any friend that playing music.
Alexandre Roche, product designer at Facebook, wrote in a blog post Thursday.
“You can listen to the same song, at the exact same time—so when your favorite vocal part comes in you can experience it together, just like when you're jamming out at a performance or dance club.”
When a Facebook user is listening to a song, a music note will appear next to their name in the chat sidebar and the real-time news ticker. To listen in, users can simply hover over that friend’s name, then click the “Listen With” button.
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To listen in with a friend, both parties will need the same music service, a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to ZDNet. Currently, Spotify and Rdio are the only two music players that support Listen With Friends. If a user attempts to listen in with a friend but does not have the compatible player, they will be prompted to install it.
The feature is part of Facebook chat, so users can chat online about what they are listening to. Users can also listen in as a group while one friend acts as a deejay. Up to 50 friends can listen to the same song at the same time, and chat about it.
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When a user begins listening to music with a friend, Facebook will post a story to friends’ tickers and/or news feeds. Users will be able to control who will be able to see when they are listening with a friend through their App Settings page after installing the compatible music app.
“Only the people you've shared your listening activity with can see when you're listening with a friend,” Facebook said in a Help Center post. Users will also be able to remove songs they have listened to from their timelines.
The service will roll out to all Facebook users over the next few weeks.
COMMENTARY: Facebook's has done to music sharing what Google+ did with Hangouts with its new social music sharing "listen with friends" feature. I have a feeling it's going to be popular.
Courtesy of an article dated January 12, 2012 appearing in PC Magazine
Jeriël Bobbe cures the boredom of monotonous walkways.
Walking through the endless airports halls to your departure gate can bring on terminal ennui. Shouldn’t there be something more fun to do along the way besides shopping the duty-free? Design to the rescue! Jeriël Bobbe, a recent Eindhoven grad, has devised a musical floor that you play by dragging your suitcase across it.
Bobbe was inspired by something he noticed during his weekly train trips from Eindhoven to Amsterdam. The Dutch designer writes.
“Whether they are stone slabs, tactile paving for the blind, or a grid for wheelchairs, there is music in everything.”
So he decided to formalize the music-making, by creating pieces of ribbed wood that can be arranged like musical notes. The distance between the grooves corresponds to pitch, while the depth of the ruts determines volume.
Before debuting the Me-lo-dy at Dutch Design Week last October, Bobbe experimented with various patterns--engineering the pieces so that one suitcase wheel generated the tune, the other wheel the rhythm--as well as different materials.
He tells Co.Design.
“I made an aluminum stone that sounds more like hard-rock music.”
In the end, he opted for the warm tones of American walnut and for modular pavers that can be arranged any which way:
“If you want, you can play the American anthem with your trolley suitcase when you are landed on J.F.K.”
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There are no immediate plans to install the Me-lo-dy in an airport, although Bobbe says that Amsterdam’s Schiphol has expressed interest, and the designer has fielded many calls of interest from companies wishing to produce the design for commercial purposes. Bobbe writes.
“These tiles add some life to the cold, sterile spaces at airports. Me-lo-dy is a serious competitor for the moving walkways: Will the travelers choose the easy way, or the melodious way?”
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COMMENTARY: I can hardly wait to hear Me-lo-dy perform its musical magic as I pull my carry-on luggage through the airport to board a flight to whereever I may be travelling. It should be quite a lot of fun don't you think. The kids will definitely love it. Let's hope that Bobbe can convince the airports to install his new art piece musical invention.
Courtesy of an article dated January 9, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design
Last May at Google I/O, we launched Music Beta by Google with a clear ambition: to help people access their music collections easily from any device. Music Beta enabled you to upload your personal music collection (up to 20,000 songs) for free to the cloud so you could stream it anywhere, any time. Today, the beta service evolves into a broader platform: Google Music. Google Music is about discovering, purchasing, sharing and enjoying digital music in new, innovative and personalized ways.
There's another way to buy, share and listen to music. Try it now athttp://music.google.com.
Google Music helps you spend more time listening to your collection and less time managing it. We automatically sync your entire music library—both purchases and uploads—across all your devices so you don't have to worry about cables, file transfers or running out of storage space. We’ll keep your playlists in tact, too, so your “Chill” playlist is always your “Chill” playlist, whether you’re on your laptop, tablet or phone. You can even select the specific artists, albums and playlists you want to listen to when you're offline.
Purchase and Share
We also want to make it easy and seamless for you to grow your music collection. Today, we added a new music store in Android Market, fully integrated with Google Music.
The store offers more than 13 million tracks from artists on Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and the global independent rights agency Merlin as well as over 1,000 prominent independent labels including Merge Records, Warp Records, Matador Records, XL Recordings and Naxos. We’ve also partnered with the world's largest digital distributors of independent music including IODA, INgrooves, The Orchard and Believe Digital.
You can purchase individual songs or entire albums right from your computer or your Android device and they’ll be added instantly to your Google Music library, and accessible anywhere.
Good music makes you want to turn up the volume, but great music makes you want to roll down the windows and blast it for everyone. We captured this sentiment by giving you the ability to share a free full play of a purchased song with your friends on Google+.
Exclusively on Google Music
We’re celebrating our launch with a variety of music that you won’t find anywhere else, much of it free. There’s something for everyone, with a variety of free tracks to choose from:
The Rolling Stones are offering an exclusive, never-before-released live concert album, Brussels Affair (Live, 1973), including a free single, “Dancing with Mr. D.” This is the first of six in an unreleased concert series that will be made available exclusively through Google Music over the coming months.
Coldplay fans will find some original music that’s not available anywhere else: a free, live recording of “Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall”, a five-track live EP from their recentconcert in Madrid and a remix of “Paradise” by Tiësto.
Whether you’re on a label or the do-it-yourself variety, artists are at the heart of Google Music. With the Google Music artist hub, any artist who has all the necessary rights can distribute his or her own music on our platform, and use the artist hub interface to build an artist page, upload original tracks, set prices and sell content directly to fans—essentially becoming the manager of their own far-reaching music store. This goes for new artists as well as established independent artists, like Tiesto, who debuts a new single on Google Music today.
Starting today, Google Music is open in the U.S. at market.android.com, and over the next few days, we will roll out the music store to Android Market on devices running Android 2.2 and above. You can also pick up the new music app from Android Market and start listening to your music on your phone or tablet today. And don’t forget to turn your speakers up to eleven.
COMMENTARY: That's music to my ears. It's about time that Google offered an alternative to Apple iTunes. I like the fact that your music files, purchased and uploaded are stored in the cloud, and are automatically synchronized to all of your devices. I assume this is similar to Apple's iCloud. How much does the service cost? Apple charges for music you upload into iCloud. I like the list of exclusive songs from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Shakira, etc. Great way to get some buzz. Just as soon as I have had time to test drive Google Music, I will provide some feedback for my readers.
Google worked for a long time to get a music store/service up and running with the blessing of the big music labels. Last spring, all of that broke down, so Google launchaed a cloud-based music locker on its own.
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But Google is finally close to launching a music service with help from the labels, Andy Rubin, Senior Vice-President of Mobile at Google said today, confirming earlier reports for the first time. When?
“I think we’re close.”
Rubin said onstage at the AsiaD conference in Hong Kong.
Both Amazon and Apple already sell music and offer cloud lockers, but Rubin promised that Google’s version “will have a little twist – it will have a little Google in it. It won’t just be selling 99-cent tracks.”
Still, Google needs all of the big labels on board, and the most recent reports said only EMI Music was close to a final deal. So, “close” could be a relative term.
Rather than accuse the labels of taking an unreasonable stance, as Google executives have previously done, Rubin takes a new tack — he says media companies in general haven’t been able to figure out what Google is up to. Just like Steve Jobs’s company used to be called “Apple Computer” and evolved into “Apple,” he says, Google is morphing, as well.
He said.
“Google is in the very, very early phases of adding consumer products to our portfolio. The media industry didn’t see us as that. They saw us a search company.”
You can connect some dots here and make an educated guess: Rubin is probably referencing media companies’ insistence that Google help them fight piracy by making some sites harder to find. And the search giant has complied, to some degree. But there’s likely more to the story than that.
COMMENTARY: I blame Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO for not having the skills to properly communicate the vision of Google as a company. This created confusion and possibly mistrust among not only music company executives, but the same thing happened with film and television producers. The latter was the biggest reason why Google TV has been such a dismal failure. Besides the lack of support from the film and TV studios, Google TV's controller was also poorly designed and not very user-friendly.
Let's hope that Google is able to create a great music user experience with the applications software that will make it easy for Google users to store and download music files easily and seamlessly throughout a broad spectrum of mobile and desktop devices. Apple's iCloud and iTunes work in harmony and music is synchronized among devices simultaneously. If Google Music Store can do the same thing, then they might have an albeit, very slight chance of succeeding.
With the possible exception of Android OS for mobile devices and the new Google+ social network, Google is known for a "lot of fast talking", but very poor execution and under-delivering. When Rubin says that the Google Music Store in the cloud will have a "Google twist" what precisely is he talking about. Will it work within the Google search engine, perhaps? That might definitely work to its advantage, like YouTube has.
Courtesy of an article dated October 19, 2011 appearing in All Things Digital
Launching in the U.S. next month, Live and Lounge speakers marry Scandinavian design with primo sound technology.
With audio speakers, a good rule of thumb is this: The better they sound, the more ugly and massive they get. (A quick Google image search serves as Exhibit A.) That needn’t be the case, according toLibratone, a Copenhagen-based audio company that produces speakers whose Italian upholstery and Scandinavian minimalism could put the rest of your furniture to shame. What’s more, they’re wireless, able to stream your entire iTunes library directly from Airplay.
In fact, the company claims that its “FullRoom” sound trumps traditional speaker systems, which push sounds waves in one direction--forward--and require two speakers pointed in the middle of the room to create that so-called sweet spot. Libratone’s Live (for music) and Lounge (for TV), however, play like acoustic instruments, dispersing sound waves in multiple directions to give a surround-sound experience. To get tech-geeky: One cabinet contains five units, each driven by a dedicated amplifier and dedicated to dispersing sound in a single direction. The company asserts that even “golden ear” listeners can’t tell the difference between the quality of its wireless audio and that of uncompressed wired systems.
Live and Lounge come in stylish hues of fine wool from Florence and with a price tags to match: $1,299 for gray, black, or beige wool; $1,399 for red or green cashmere. They’re launching at select Apple stores next month.
COMMENTARY: Libratone speakers can also hookup to your Apple iPad, and voila, you have great sound system for your iTunes music, TV program or movie downloads or streams.
If you can afford to ponyup $499 to $699 for your iPad, you shouldn't bitch about the $1,299 to $1,399 price for these Libratone speakers.
Courtesy of an article dated October 5, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design
In this excerpt from The Orange Revolution: How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization, authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton look at the team that created the iPod, and how the vision of a revolutionary music player motivated them to innovate.
Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter, had been offered a new assignment. He was working with a client who had a reputation for superior results--and this client was about to reveal a new product to the market that would create an impact of massive proportion. Chieco was tasked with giving it a name. When he was sent a prototype, it didn't resemble anything on the market; it was like something from a sci-fi movie. Naming such a radical device would surely be difficult. He needed to communicate both simplicity and revolutionary technology in a single thought. The smooth edges, seemingly button-less device reminded Chieco of a famous line from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey where the character Dr. Dave Bowman says, "Open the pod bay door, HAL!" In the film, HAL is the computer that could control the ship. The "pod," in the movie is a spacecraft used for extravehicular activity. Somehow, the word "pod" resonated with Chieco. It seemed to be a perfect fit for Apple's out-of-this-world travel into the future of music.
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The release of the iPod has famously revolutionized the music business, and that was exactly what Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the iPod team set out to do; they are an ideal example of a team with a big dream. But it's interesting to note that their dream wasn't entirely original, which in some ways made it even more ambitious. MP3 players had already been on the market from other manufacturers. But Apple dreamed of making a player that would be transformative, that would be world class.
Much like the team assembled by Edison to create a better, long-burning, and safe light bulb, the iPod team was focused on reinvention--building something that would not only outperform all competing products, but would entirely own the market space. And this dream was explicit; during the unveiling, Steve Jobs clearly expressed the team's vision to the media: "It will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry," said Jobs at the time. ". . . landmark stuff."
Let's not get confused at the difference between a goal and a dream. A goal is something measurable, trackable, and is built on analytics. Goals have realistic timelines, are measured by weighing the data, the risks, and the current assets. They are essential to success, but they follow dreams. A dream is bigger--it has no boundaries, rules, or past history. It's focused on transforming business as we know it, and approaching from a direction never pursued--or at least never attained. In dreams, we seek the outstanding change--not just within the products we create but in the results those products inspire. For Apple, the dream was to change and dominate the music industry. And the product (in this case, the iPod) enabled that dream to become a reality--shaking the world with results. It wasn't just the contours of the device. It wasn't just the technology. It wasn't the simplicity of buttons. Apple's dream was so vast that it changed how music was heard, sold, purchased, and consumed. The iPod launched the platform of iTunes. And with such a massive public and music industry shift, the PC world shifted to accommodate as well. This was a dream that defined world-class results.
Obviously, the iPod team succeeded. On January 27, 2010, just nine years after its launch, Apple announced that the 250 millionth iPod had been sold--making it the fastest- selling music player in history.
Given its breakout success, it might seem obvious that the iPod was a great idea, but it really did take dreaming big in order to pull it off.
Consider this: The initiative was launched in 1997, on the heels of a year in which Apple lost$816 million. That alone leads to an interesting question for all of us: would your organization, on the heels of its worst year ever, take their best people and put them on a team to design a product so far outside your current business model? Oh, and there's more. Apple at the time didn't have a pipeline of new talent to back up these stars. The company's creative reputation was waning, as were profits, so industry insiders hardly considered working for Apple a desirable career move. Next there were equipment challenges. Apple wanted to offer consumers ten hours of continuous play before needing to recharge the device, but a spinning hard drive--the 1.8-inch hard-disk drive where the music is stored and was the iPod's key technology--requires a lot of battery power, and on top of that it was new in the MP3 space. From an engineering standpoint alone the iPod was a huge dream.
Obviously the iPod team needed to overcome a number of hurdles.
COMMENTARY: The Apple iPod sure has come a long way. I can remember the very first iPod. SONY must've cringed.
Courtesy of an article dated October 4, 2010 appearing in Fast Company
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