You’re So Vain

As you may or may not know, I work for CGE TV, a channel under the ABS-CBN group of stations which focuses on showing videos uploaded by users to the video hosting site that the network launched around 2010. Quite simply, it’s YouTube with Filipinos as the principal members of its community. Part of my job description is to watch the videos that are going to be shown for the week. As of this writing, I have been doing this job for a year and a half and it’s funny how I have only come to realize recently how the site is reflective of the vanity of Filipinos.

Just make a quick search for cats and you’ll see how there aren’t that much cat videos in the site. Then again, maybe Filipinos aren’t keen on cats, so how about dogs? The numbers are still way too few compared to videos of people singing to any song by Bruno Mars or Katy Perry. Yes, my dear friends. I have listened to “Just The Way You Are” more than I would want to.

Not everyone can sing, so some lip sync, others dance. In a lot of ways, singing in front of the webcam has replaced singing in front of a mirror. What about replacing singing in the shower? Well, no. That would be hard to replace. That doesn’t mean you can’t take a video of that.

Of course, Filipinos aren’t just about feeding their own egos, but others’ as well. There are these slideshows of a user’s tropa or barkada, complete with a name for the said social circle. Still some, provide slideshows featuring their celebrity idols as a means to show support.

Get Real Philippines had a post criticizing the Filipino ego, that it gets in the way of the country’s progress. The points raised do coincide with my observations of Filipinos.

“The Filipino mind is full of convolution and contradiction, which is the reason why we remain who we are today, a nation of braggarts and show-offs”

And we love it. We love the praise, the adulation. Then again, who wouldn’t? But it goes beyond that, because the real downside to the narcissism is the inability to handle negativity properly.

“Most Filipinos get offended so easily from a perceived indiscretion and are often unable to move on to something bigger or higher than such trivial pursuits”

I find it rather ironic that Filipinos have fully embraced the realm of Web 2.0 and beyond, because, just as much as it provides ways for people to present themselves in the vainest possible way, the internet allows people a platform to dish out criticisms, sometimes in the most offensive and degrading manner possible. And I’m not just talking about videos. Blogs, pictures, social media in general. In the Filipino community, people tend to be supportive of another person’s talents, regardless if such talents were drowning in a pool of obvious mediocrity.

My friend told me a story of a celebrity who was refusing to appear on a magazine, stating that she was slighted by one the magazine’s editors over at Twitter regarding her cover in another magazine. Now, I could go into detail, but this is not a gossip blog. What I can tell you that the said tweets were intended for humor, but the local celebrity didn’t really get it and couldn’t seem to let it go. Like an onion, really.

Also, see what I did there? Blind item so as to avoid hurting more egos.

Of course, there is a flipside to it. Filipinos enjoy dishing out insults and criticisms. I do find it annoying when people can’t handle being insulted but have so much to say about others. Alas that is the reality of Filipinos in the web. And it’s a vicious cycle, because Filipinos can’t stand being one-upped. There is this constant need to retaliate as opposed to just letting things be and moving on.

Maybe I’m generalizing. Or maybe what I have just said shouldn’t really matter.

Mr. Personality

I remember having a large collection during my college years. Well, okay, 10 pairs of shoes isn’t large, but it seemed a lot to me. I chose which pair to wear based on what I was wearing or the weather or the occasion. The point is, I started having this feeling that I was neglecting some of them. Just as Andy’s toys in Toy Story would talk to each other when there was no one around, I would imagine my shoes doing the same. Some of my decisions of which to wear was decided on which shoe I hadn’t worn in a while and was starting to feel envious of his other footwear companions. I became attached to them. Shoes. Inanimate objects.

The crazy thing about us humans is that we become attached to our things, going so far as to giving them names and showering them with love (a common practice amongst the owners of Apple Products). The moment we assign these affections to a gadget (or just about anything, really), we are recognizing that it has a personality.

How many of us have gone to a mall and ended up listening to salesperson’s pitch just because something attracted you to him or her? Aarron Walter, author of Designing for Emotions, said that personality is a great tool in design because it influences our decisions. The author gave Volkswagen’s Beetle as a great example. Have you ever looked at a Bettle and thought that it had an actual face? Its headlights represented eyes while the bumper suggested that it had a smile on its face?

Smiles are friendly and inviting, which may very well be the reason for its success over the course of several decades.

Design and personality in design applies to lines of code as well. Most of us love Google, not only because it does search well, but also because of the personality their page and the people who work on it as a whole. I certainly find the Google Doodles enjoyable. My current favorite website design is Jesse Schell’s page. I love how it feels like an extension of his personality without doing too much. Yes, I like simplicity.

Even operating systems have their own personas, which is really the point of this entry. The current crop of popular mobile OS’s have their own stories to tell, and yes, I have created my way of telling that story.

The setting: corporate. The company: Smart Fonetix (Could be any name, really)

Apple iOS came in a few years ago and quickly climbed through the ranks, eventually becoming CEO of the company. And he did so with swagger but not being too abrasive with his methods. His ideas ushered in changes within the company’s culture and provided new solutions for the company to adopt. iOS had just updated some company initiatives and hired a a young, new secretary, Siri, who has quickly become the talk of the town.

Smart Fonetix CTO/COO is Android OS. People at the marketing department perceive him to be a boring guy, with ‘unfavorable’ fashion sense. The people in the IT department, however, know just how brilliant he is. He can even crack a joke or two. Still, he has been recently trying to improve his image. Maybe then the people at marketing might take a second look.

Windows Phone 7 is the newly hired manager already making noise with her fresh new ideas. She came from a company that began successfully, but was unable to make the necessary adjustments to be competitive. Marketing loves WP7 with her designer duds and trendy style. Those close to her a lot say her mango kani salad is to die for. 

Then there’s Smart Fonteix’s Blackberry OS, the company’s executive vice president. He has been around for quite some time and working his last few months before retirement. He’s been trying to keep himself relevant but his methods seem to be stuck in a previous generation. Upon his exit, his protege is expected to take his place.

There are others like WebOS, the HR director who tried to shake things up, but no one really listened to. He ended with a nervous breakdown. Then there’s Symbian. He used to be CEO but was voted out by the board of directors. That separation pay was pretty sizable though.

Yeah. This would have been much better with some graphics, but I really have no art skills. Anyone want to help me on that?

Do you like my sense of style?

It’s funny. I used to not care so much about how about laptops looked as long as they had the internal specs I wanted. But here I was, in a mall, staring at all these computers and I kept thinking just how ugly most of them were: the angles and edges were boring; screens were glossy (Matte for the win! Especially on a sunny day.);  a lot of them seemed to weigh like a block of cement and I certainly, thanks to my frail figure, cannot lug them around on a daily basis. And what’s with all that shiny plastic? Do these companies actually care about what their products look like? Do they actually think that we don’t care?

Design in consumer electronics (and I could be wrong because, as I am not a pundit in this field), adopts a different philosophy as opposed to design applications in other fields. While some schools of thought use design as a way of conveying a message such as “The existentialist crises of a female vagina and its relationship with a higher being that watches over our souls as we struggle through a world riddled with war, poverty and, ultimately, chaos”, creations in consumer electronics require a large focus on functionality.

Great device designers are often the ones who are able to marry both function and form in perfect harmony with no room for divorce. The obvious example is, of course, Apple who have been largely successful with their devices, not only because they work well, but also due to the high regard that both the punditocracy and the average consumer give to their products. Design curator Paola Antonelli stated in her March 2007 TED talk “The best way to design a successful object – and also, an object that we were missing before – is to pretend that it never existed or that people will have a new behavior to it with it” and a lot of their devices, the iPod, iPhone and iPad most especially, were successful because they were created with this philosophy in mind.

Hardware design is just part of the story. In consumer electronics, with computing devices most especially, software and how it interacts with the hardware play a major role. In fact, good hardware may be hampered by poor software. Just ask Nokia, whose recent smartphones have great hardware designs but held back by the aging, and now dead, Symbian OS. Software matters. I purchased my HTC HD7 mainly because I loved the look and feel of Windows Phone 7′s Metro UI and that it worked well with HTC’s hardware (my only caveat being the phone’s battery life). Microsoft’s decision to set the minimum hardware specs seems to be a good decision and avoids the sort of fragmentation that we’re seeing in Android devices. Hopefully though, Google will fulfill its promise of putting an end to their platform’s fragmentation via the next version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich.

I’m pretty sure that a lot of you already are aware of all these points that I’ve just mentioned. But why does it feel like some of these manufacturers don’t? Perhaps there are just some things that bear repeating.

It’s not easy being green

By 2008, when it reached the 1-million-units-sold mark, Toyota’s Prius became a huge slap on the face for the Big Three’s (GM, Ford, Chrysler) gas guzzling vehicles. The hybrid car had finally made its mark. People walked in Toyota showrooms looking for a Prius. Meanwhile, other manufacturers sought for the same consumer attention and produced hybrid versions of their popular lines. These days, everyone wants to be eco-friendly!

If you are a recent owner of a hybrid vehicle, you’re probably patting yourself on the back saying”Good job, self! You have reduced your carbon footprint!”. I guess that’s true, if reducing carbon footprint means decreasing one’s gas consumption.

Here’s the thing: you may not necessarily be reducing said footprint. There’s a bit of a problem regarding the production of your “eco-friendly” cars. And your solar panels. And your wind turbines. And your cellphones. And your laptops. And a lot of your things, really.

They require rare earth metals.

Notice the word rare? Yeah. That right there should give you an idea where this is going. They’re not very abundant (duh!). Also, the biggest supplier: China. While the may not be evil, depending on who you to talk to, they can be very controlling of their resources. But that’s not the bigger problem. You see that next paragraph? Go read it.

Processing rare earth minerals involves a lot of toxic chemicals, acids, radiation, waste. While China is more than willing to be the number one supplier, it does come at a cost to the people working at these sites and, obviously, to the environment. And in case you haven’t heard, China doesn’t exactly have a sterling reputation when it comes to producing almost anything and mining isn’t that much different.

We have to ask ourselves ‘Just how green is green?’. We veer away from our dependence from oil, fine. But we end up being dependent on something else. Perhaps, the better question is ‘What does it mean to be green?’. Ultimately, it’s not just about the materials that we use, but also how much we control our usage of anything. When have we ever been rewarded for consuming something too much? Yes. If you have an answer, do let me know.

Our avaricious nature has prompted us humans to invade, encroach, devour, consume almost thoughtlessly. Thank goodness for ‘almost’. Luckily, we are still capable of thought.

Also, I am aware that this is a blog that indulges consumption. HA!

The iPhone 4S is not the next OK Computer. So what?

Hours between post-iPhone 4S announcement and the passing of Steve Jobs, people across the interwebs, from pundits to fanboys to your next door neighbor, resounded a common sentiment: disappointment. Everyone was expecting the iPhone 5,  constantly waiting for that “one more thing”. But it never came. It ended with the announcement that the iPhone would be coming to Sprint, which people outside of the US care little for. Where was the teardrop-shaped, larger-screen iPhone 5? Rumors suggested that there were last minute changes. Speculations inferred that the iPhone 5 leaks were all a ploy by Apple to confuse the general public. In the end, we got the 4S.

So why the disappointment? It has a faster processor.

It’s not the iPhone 5

It still has that amazing retina display

It’s not the iPhone 5

It has a better camera

It’s not the iPhone 5

It’s the only Apple device that currently runs Siri (which, to me, is the best new feature of the iPhone)

It’s not the iPhone 5

But why is everyone so disappointed? The 4S, and I’m basing this with what has been written since I have yet to use or even hold it, is the best iPhone now. Okay, perhaps drawing that conclusion without firsthand experience is stupid, but can’t the 4S be appreciated for what it is on its own? On paper, it clearly looks like a better phone than the previous model.

Honestly, if you take away the context of the iPhone 5 and that the differences between the 4 and the 4S are very subtle, on its own, the 4S is a great device. If you were looking to buy a new smartphone, chances are you’d be looking at the 4S and you won’t be complaining about it not being the 5 once you have it in your hands. Quite frankly, if I was an iPhone 4 user, I’d be grateful because I would not be compelled to make the upgrade a year into my iPhone 4 ownership (A general rule of mine: when you buy a cellphone, it should last you at least 2 years). If you are a 3GS user, go for it. Make the upgrade. I do think that this was rolled out with you in mind.

The iPhone 4S is a great device. So why the disappointment?