Archive for the 'in English' Category

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Al Burj Planned to Reach 1.2 km

Published on March 20, 2007 in Design and in English. 74 Comments

Last Friday (March 19, 2007) there was a news report that Al Burj, a high-rise planned in Dubai by Nakheel, will reach 1,200 meters. According to some rumors the initial height was 1,600 meters, but was scaled back.

Apparently two other similar projects exist in the Gulf region: Mubarak al-Kabeer Tower (Kuwait, 1,001 m) and Murjan Tower (Bahrain, 1,022 m).


This is huge. Even Burj Dubai looks small. Gherkin in London on the right.

Al Burj is enormous and impressive, but not beautiful. Skyscrapers should be like sculptures. Modern art with natural forms. However combining these complex structures with engineering is not an easy task and therefore radical designs can be found from smaller scale projects.

PS3 Home Announced

Published on March 9, 2007 in in English and IT. 0 Comments

Sony has announced official details of PS3 Home, a customisable, networked community for PlayStation 3 at GDC 2007. This is Sony’s answer to Xbox Live, WiiConnect24 & Second Life. Currently PS3 Home is scheduled to be beta tested in April with the full service to roll out this fall.

Watch the HD trailer or the regular version below:

Private Spaceflight Taking Off

Published on February 28, 2007 in Design and in English. 2 Comments

Private Spaceflight is defined as a flight above 100km conducted by an entity other than a government. Government organizations have driven the industry but the major problem with spaceflight is funding. NASA is funded by taxpayers and makes no profit. Imagine the endless possibilities of commercialized spaceflight. Cash flows would enable more R&D, materializing as new innovations and industry growth.

This is one of the key points of Burt Rutan’s presentation (Feb 2006, Monterrey, CA). Rutan is a legendary spacecraft designer who won the $10M Ansari X-Prize for SpaceShipOne and is now collaborating with Virgin Galactic to build the first rocket-ship for space.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic (check out the promo video) is among the leading players. The company’s SpaceShipTwo is expected to start launching in late 2007 and commercial operations should start by 2009 with a price tag of $200,000 per passenger. Time Magazine published an extensive article about Branson and Virgin Galactic last week (really good overview of the renaissance period of space exploration).


Conceptual SpaceShipTwo flight


SpaceShipTwo interior mockup

The field is quite crowded with most of the companies operating in the US. Unlike Virgin Galactic’s two-stage launch system, Benson Space Company’s Dream Chaser is based on simple vertical takeoff and is targeted to launch by the end of 2008. Other major players include Blue Origin (financed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos), Rocketplane Kistler, Armadillo Aerospace & XCOR Aerospace to name a few.


New Shepard’s (Blue Origin) test flight on November 13, 2006

If interested in the latest private spaceflight news Space Liberates Us! forum is a nice one to follow (only a couple updates per week).

Dubai Taking Shape

Published on February 18, 2007 in Design and in English. 4 Comments

A desert city with superb infrastructure only 6 hours from Finland. Dubai is definitely on of the best places to visit during winter for shopping, sunbathing and fine dining.

40 years ago there was nothing else than the Dubai Creek and H H Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum. Oil was discovered in 1966 and the change has been rapid since then.


Dubai Aerials 1973-2006

The present ruling emir of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is maintaining the same effort and the current aerial master plan looks like following:


Dubai Master Plan

The Palm islands and Dubai Waterfront can be clearly seen in the picture. The scale is huge: for example the Palm Jebel Ali (the first palm island from the left) measures 7.5km by 7.5km. The projects go on. World’s largest airport, the longest fully automated rail system with a women and children only section (70km in total), tallest building…

So who are the players behind this? Government owned Dubai World is a holding company that manages and supervises the portfolio of businesses and projects for Dubai Government. Nakheel Properties is a real estate developer owned by Dubai World and its main competitor in residential development in Dubai is Emaar Properties which is a Dubai-based Public Joint Stock Company and one of the world’s largest real estate companies.


Nakheel Promotionvideo of Dubai Waterfront

And finally a few words about Burj Dubai, soon to become the tallest building in the world. The final height is kept secret due to competition but initially it was planned to be around 800 meters. However a more recent articles have stated a final height over 940 meters i.e. 195 floors. Up to date information can be found from a site, which is following the construction almost daily.

If you are interested in skyscrapers in general a good place to start is SkyscraperCity, a forum full of photos and discussion what is happening all around the world.


Burj Dubai Concept

I visited Dubai in 2000 and fortunately I had to possibility to refresh the experience this January. Next I’ll write a few lines about places worth visiting but this time only in Finnish.

Finally Winter

Published on February 7, 2007 in in English and Personal. 1 Comment

I just got home from playing squash (twice per week from November). It’s freezing. Earlier the sun was shining and the weather looked really beautiful, however as the picture below shows it was a little cold:

During the first days of November it seemed that the winter might be a good one this year as the photo shows: the sea was already covered with ice. However after that it was continuously +7°C – every single day for two months.


Helsinki 4th of November, 2006

But a positive thing is that the dark and short days are once again behind: over 2 and a half hours more light today than a month ago!


Helsinki 23th of November, 2006

The Future of Symbian

Published on February 7, 2007 in in English and Mobile. 0 Comments

Back to mobile. Anyone using Nokia S60 device probably agree that there is something wrong with the software. There has been some speculation in the mobile industry that Nokia would abandon Symbian and move to another OS like Linux. Now there is some more evidence as “Sources close to Nokia say that Symbian is secretly regarded inside the company – even among high level senior executives – as a “peace-of-shit-OS” in an article titled: Readers Write About Symbian, OS X and the iPhone.

While speculating on this I found an article from All About Symbian including interesting facts about what went wrong with N-Gage and what is different in Nokia’s second attempt with Next Gen gaming platform: Nokia Next Gen: Learning the lessons from N-Gage.

Enough of mobile and IT; the next few posts will be about marketing, space and Dubai.

Jobs on Music Distribution & DRM

Published on February 7, 2007 in in English and IT. 0 Comments

Apple posted Steve Jobs’ open letter entitled “Thoughts on Music” on apple.com. Public statements from Jobs are very rare and in this he places the blame for the existence and continuing reliance on DRM squarely on the music companies.

Timing is right as Apple is being challenged once again to open up its DRM by consumer organizations in Europe (Finland, Norway, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands). Basically the countries are asking Apple to allow the protected songs purchased from the iTunes Store to be played on other music players besides the iPod. Jobs answers this requests with stating the difficulties when trying to maintain a working Digital Rights Management.

In this very clearly built letter Jobs examine the current situation and look at three possible alternatives for the future:

1. The first alternative is to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music.

2. The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores.

3. The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely.

Protecting intellectual property is a hard task and the legistaltion is always behind. Oh, and the Apple hype has finally reached Finland as all the major Finnish news agencies have already quoted the article (like HS).

Nokia’s Future Mobile Concepts

Published on January 19, 2007 in Design, in English and Mobile. 0 Comments

Nokia World was held in Amsterdam November 2006. Nokia’s Chief Designer Alastair Curtis, who joined the company in 1993, shared some of the concepts behind the Nokia Design philosophy. He also showed some concept videos about where the mobile communication might head in the forthcoming years:

Check out the other three videos from YouTube (posted by NokiaDesign). I actually was watching Kurtis’ presentation last summer at Aula 2006 – Movement (Kinopalatsi, Helsinki).

iPhone – Software Replaces Hardware

Published on January 12, 2007 in Design, in English, IT and Mobile. 0 Comments

Apple Inc. (former Apple Computers Inc.) introduced iPhone this Tuesday at Macworld San Fransisco. As the extreme buzz around the device continues I’m making my own contribution as a blog is not really a blog without an iPhone story. The question remains what is there to say that hasn’t been said already everywhere else on the web? Well probably nothing but hopefully you’ll find some inspiring links and analysis. To start with, Time has an interesting article covering the development of the Apple iPhone.


Apple Inc. – iPhone

Before
The general consensus was that iPhone is to be released at Macworld but majority was waiting for a more traditional device. At least for me the new interface was something not expected; only wished. Concepts around touch screen interfaces have been around for a while like the Black Box concept by BenQ-Siemens & Onyx Concept by Synaptics. The electronic touch interface was invented in 1971 and after that touch screens have been widely used. However they often feel clumsy and slow as one finger can be used at a time. Touch interfaces might be not very suitable for large surfaces other than sketching boards but for handhelds they are definitely the way to go (some problems probably arise when trying to use in winter with gloves). With the latest mobile phones (like S60 devices) navigating is a long process: searching with eyes, locating it with cursor and finally entering the function. When using a touch screen it is possible immediately choose the right operation.

Software Replaces Hardware
The innovation of the iPhone is its incredible multi touch interface and fantastic integration with iTunes. Probably the best working demonstration of an interface-free, touch-driven computer screen is made by Jeff Han (Ted Talks, February 2006) – highly recommended! As Jeff’s presentation show, big about multi touch is gestures – no more of that one finger pushing. It becomes all about feeling. I’m eagerly looking forward to test the Apple’s device. If it works it’s going to revolutionize the mobile industry. Not by sales figures but new ideas and creative thinking. Also updating new programs with unique interfaces is possible when there is no hardware tied to.

Closed System
Jobs quote from New York Times article makes it quite clear why the environment is a closed system (no 3rd party apps): “We define everything that is on the phone. You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.”. This is also interesting as Nokia has renamed their N-series to multimedia computers and Jobs says he don’t want people to think of iPhone as a computer. Nokia’s strategy is to be the center when Apple’s is computer centric – Mac(/PC) acting as a hub. Back to the issue. In the long run I believe that the platform is being opened at least for some widgets. Now it’s too early as the system is not user tested. In future I would like to see some new input methods as well – QWERTY keyboard is not the way to go.

Remaining Questions
iPhone is not about technology but usability. However a few vital questions remain as the first model of the phone is a gadget; not a mass market device mainly because of the cost. To be perfect for my personal everyday use at least the following should be verified:

  • Does the Web browser support Flash or Java? – No. Likely to be added.
  • Can it open Word and Excel documents? – No. (Can open PDF files, though).
  • Does the camera record video? – No. Apple may add this feature by June.
  • iTunes songs as ringtones? – No. Definitely going to change.
  • Voice over IP support? – No, Can be enabled but Cingular is the problem here.
  • Voice recognition/dialing/memos? – No. Could change by June when the phone ships.

At least it connects to standard iPod accessories like car docks and speaker systems. And when GPS and 3G for video calls are added then what more can you ask for?

Nokia
What does all of this mean to Nokia. In short term not much for Mobiles and E-series but Nseries is a different matter. Kallasvuo was stating in his CES keynote only a day before Jobs announcement that Nseries phones are “well designed and easy to use”. For example Nokia’s N95 (coming in March) is truly state of the art device – technologically. Mr. Vanjoki’s, EVP of Nokia Multimedia, last sentence in commentary on the just released iPhone was that “it is missing 3G, a crucial function”. 3G is not a function it is a technology (and it’s good to remember that the 3G coverage in US is limited and Jobs mentioned in his keynote that 3G is coming). I have always used Nokia phones (Nokia 3110, 6210, 3510i, 6230 and E50). My E50 has no 3G or WiFi as there is no real use for them at the moment. Later this is to be changed and maybe it is time to try out something else – maybe an iPhone?


Nokia N95