Science and Industry

I happened to be reading Aamulehti, a Finnish newspaper, and their story of junior sport and it’s issues of creating top talent like Koivu and Ruutu. Actually the first thing which is rather usual is that the discourse is around sports — in rear cases it extends to arts and when speaking of talented students in school environment there’s huge opposition of activities aimed just for them. Maybe it’s more ok to be talented in sports but when you do well in school it’s just hard working…

But the article was rather interesting even in the point of special talents in school enviroment as it seems that the arguments, or maybe more notes, are similar in both cases. First the most important topic; equality. The definition of this term is interesting((Actually, in some context this always points to gender relations which is interesting point of view; I remeber reading a study that stated that even basic questions about equality are most likely answared in gender view. In this text I mean equality in a boarder sense.)) and it was several times stated that equality doesn’t mean that everyone should do the same thing, rather it means that the same kind of possibilities have to be given.

Secondly, they speak of inner spirit. The top talend is not developed just in the trainings but one needs to invest own time there also. And the motivation needs to be in place also, it can’t be (or maybe it should state the right kind of motivation) created via external preassure. But at the same time the bee should not be killed by adults…

Thirdly, one needs to repeat, repeat and repeat. The importance of this was highlighted troughout the article. Fourthly the article supports streaming; it’s said that the youngs actually do know where they stand and so do the coaches. And streams allow smaller groups and more focused exercises.

Fifth and most interesting argument is that we actually need to expect something. They mention feedback as a guidance tool… And also that it’s not fair to expect that everyone do everything in the same way. This reminds me of Jonathan Livingston Seagull:

Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight – how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else. Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.

New year and a new try with this blog. This time I could try to keep it really alive.

So, as you might guess from the topic, I’m speaking of the iPhone. I actually hit an argument whether iPhone is revolutionary or just evolutionary in Jaiku, but actually the topic comes from older news in Digitoday: “Nokia has missed the touch screens”

It’s true, Nokia doesn’t have touch screen as many of the rival devices; iPhone and G1 to mention some. Especially the iPhone discussion is interesting to follow here, as the user experience is said to be extreamly good.

So, all those who want to speak about touch screens and Nokia: I doubt if the touch component itself can make everything better. There’s more than just the technology: intuitiveness and easy to use. These can be done with old fashioned buttons too – try out some early 90’s phones here. It’s a lot in the mind set of application developers; do they want to make software beautiful to use.

What’s usually forgot in the Nokia vs. Apple touchscreen discussion is the fact that many other manufactures have had touch screen already way before Apple. Still, Apple is now seen as the rising star of mobile industry — and too often I hear that it’s due to the touch screen. But easy and fun to use user interface can be done with buttons too. The touch element is cool, but not critical. I think the main issue is user experience and how to simplify the technology. Waiting to try out the N97 and see what kind of approach they use there.

Actually, touch ui and thus touch screen allows many new interaction ways that are worth of investigating; but it’s not the only thing we should be looking for.

Author has used the original iPhone for some days to check it out and is looking forward to trial G1 also. What comes to my iPhone experiences — I don’t want to compare as the 3G version has e.g. official SDK for developing the apps, so one doesn’t need to use them over 2G like I did