Posts Tagged: portable


27
Nov 06

Design for fiddling

Paul Golding asks whether mobile phones are designed to support people desire to fiddle with them. This is an excellent question, and in most situations phones only provide poor support for this kind of use.

“However, on close inspection (i.e peeking) at what some people do with their phones, the fiddling is a kind of mindless playing around – poking, changing, reverting back, going up and down menus, swapping settings back and forth, and so on – plain fiddling about. We like to tell kids not to fiddle with things – the remote control, the car controls, the radio, the computer. We often then go and do it ourselves…I wonder, have we fully embraced this fiddling-thingy within mobile design, or are we treating it as an exception?”

Link: Mobile fiddling… (wirelesswonders.blogspot.com)


12
Nov 06

The Walkman story

How the Sony Walkman came to be.

“There were some cassette recorders available at the time, although they were not designed for the general public. Sony called theirs Pressman and marketed it exclusively to reporters. These recorders lacked stereo sound and were very expensive. They also used (typically) microcassettes, which had no support from record companies (and were expensive to boot).”

Link: The Story Behind the Sony Walkman (lowendmac.com, via)


12
Dec 05

Portable DJ

“The HP DJammer portable appliance could be the next generation of MP3 players. Building on top of current MP3 players, the HP DJammer has the following two additional functionalities: a personal DJ User Interface (UI), and a live digital session with one (or more) similar HP DJammer appliance enabling listeners to create music and digitally mix in real-time together (hence the term jamming).”

Link: DJammer (hp.com)