Julius Mattsson

I’ve been a long time user of Gmail and always loved every second of it. It has always beat the crap out of any other email service I’ve tried. I have had one slight pet peeve though, and it was something I ran into as soon as I got my iPhone. Before then, I only ever used desktops and so the problem was non existent. I have used Gmail’s feature of connecting other email accounts to my main Gmail one, therefore having a unified inbox (no need to log on to several different accounts) yet still being able to send messages from different addresses.

Up until now I have been unable to do this on my iPhone, and my new iPad. That is, until just now when I stumbled upon Nick Cernis’s excellent guide, the aptly named Solved: Gmail, iPad, iPhone, and multiple from addresses. It works like a charm.

To help me discover new music, I usually star items in Spotify. This then gets synced to my iPhone so I have it on the go. On the iPhone client, the star functionality works incredibly well. If you — like I frequently do — realize after twenty seconds that this track might not be for you, all you need to do is simply tap the star. This will unstar the track, and move you to the next track in the list. So it’s effectively doing two tasks in one, which fits my use case perfectly.

On the desktop clients, on the other hand, unstarring an item simply unstars it. I usually have Spotify running in the background lurking behind a bunch of other windows, so I need to bring it up, find the current track in the playlist, unstar it, and then hit next.

This is how I would like it to work: I want that same star/unstar functionality from the mobile client but embedded in the contextual menu in Mac OS X. This way, if I hear a track I don’t like, I can just right click on the Spotify icon and select Unstar. This would unstar it and move on to the next track.

The most fun part of the Samsung Galaxy Tab experience was opening the package, wondering what it would be like. What followed was, undoubtedly, an exact representation of my (admittedly, slightly skeptical) preconceptions.

In one regard, I find myself thinking that it’s pretty neat I can do all this stuff with this incredibly small, thin device. The smaller screen area actually works pretty well for surfing. It also makes the device rather nice to hold in one hand. Surfing the web works. Doing e-mail works. I realized that, had the iPad never shipped, I probably would’ve loved to own one of these.

I’ve read a lot about the Galaxy Tab. Some claim that it’s a worthy iPad competitor, but I just can’t see it. The overall experience is substandard. Everything looks — and more importantly, feels — sloppy.

I got my alpha invite for Qwiki today and decided to try it out for real to see what all the hype was about. As it happens the Creative Director Rasmus Knutsson is an acquaintance, and has been involved with the project from the start. Qwiki is a service which aims to quickly give you a birds eye overview of a topic of your choice. You enter a city, famous person, company or anything else that you can think of (Qwiki helpfully displays a drop down list as you type, which means you can quickly find what you’re looking for).

This is when it gets good. You can just kick back and watch a presentation generated on-the-fly about the subject. The data for the two or so million topics is coming from Wikipedia articles and is mixed with infographics and images.

The voice which reads out the text is actually pretty good, and only occasionally slips up. I would however have preferred an open standards version of the site instead of relying on Flash. I guess you can’t get everything — bummer.

It’s hard to know where Qwiki is going. There’s plenty of ways it could (and most probably will) be improved, but seeing as it is an alpha release that is to be expected. If it was me, I’d be aiming for the mobile platforms first. It just feels like one of those things that would be excellent on your phone, trying to prove a few mates wrong at the pub.

My gut feeling is that I like it.

Welcome to the smoother and more refined design. It’s something I have been working on and off with for the last half year or so, constantly tinkering with the layout and letting it mature with time. As with all things, the maturity process is far from over and you will most probably see little changes appearing here and there over the coming weeks and even months as I have a long todo list to implement.

The new approach is based upon a simplified, easily digestible front page with the latest blog entries from top to bottom. The difference between the Bits & Pieces and normal posts have been toned down. The categories have been removed. The aim, though, is the same as it always has been: to present interesting tidbits of online finds and dishing out some thoughts and ramblings from time to time.

As you might have seen, I’ve been having some (read: tons) WordPress issues with databases crashing and broken post imports but I’m hoping we’re passed that. So without further ado, welcome to the new approach.

For me, there’s one thing missing when it comes to the conceptual design behind Apple’s iOS. That for devices which are clearly made for media consumption (although certainly not exclusively), there’s still no simple way of actually getting the media onto the device.

Say I have a tube map in PDF format for example. Shouldn’t I just be able to easily copy over this file from my computer? It bugs me that there’s still no easily accessible file system structure in the OS. I’m not saying I need root access, I just want to be able to save stuff. It’s equally (if not more) frustrating that you can’t save a file (for example a video) from Mobile Safari straight to the device.

I’m one of the hundred of thousands who tuned in to the WWDC keynote and watched Steve Jobs once again bathe in the spotlight and smile in that way that only Steve can. It’s a smile that seems to say “Yes, I know this is the shit.”

When I first saw the Gizmodo images that circulated, I didn’t feel that instant connection that I normally do when Apple reveals new products. It looked alright, I remember thinking, but it wasn’t what I was used to. It wasn’t that kind of design when you just want to press your tongue against the screen because it looks so damn good. In short, it just didn’t feel like Apple. It has started to grow on me now though, I must say. People are talking about unparalleled build quality, as John Gruber mentions in his post iPhone 4 Impressions and Observations. Pondering, I find it strange that Apple seems to be the only company who really seem to inherently believe in these sorts of things.

The camera on the new model feels like a step in the right direction, and I really hope someone in the office rush to buy it new so I can play with it and see the picture quality. The camera in a mobile has always been something I liked.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, watch the ever enthusiastic, glossy promo video.

Oh, and what about Forstall’s eyes? Not so crazy anymore, right! I bet some PR person at Apple told him to tone his excitement down a notch. Too bad, I liked his enthusiasm

I switched from using Xmarks (n

When I first heard about Spotify I didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about. I had just heard its name being whispered here and there in the dark and gloomy cells of Hyper Island. When I got my invite, however, it all went pretty fast. Within a week I had a nice and well mixed playlist setup which I played over and over again. It was a liberating feeling knowing that I could reach (almost) any kind of music I desired by just a few keystrokes. Think of the possibilities with all that music in the palm of my hand.

Today, one and a half year later it’s still going strong. I’m writing this piece listening to the chilled down tunes coming from my Spotify account. I even pay for it now, so it’s safe to say it has more or less completely taken over the way in which I listen to and enjoy music.

I’m asking myself though, what happened with all those possibilities? What happened to all that new music I was going to listen to? After all, that’s why I signed up for the service in the first place. It was supposed to broaden my musical taste and collection. Truth is, after one and half year of using Spotify on a daily basis I have hardly discovered that much new music at all. In fact, I might actually have listened to less varied music since I have effectively given up my old iTunes music library. I find myself listening to the same playlists over and over again.

I guess discovering new music isn’t that easy and hassle free after all.

Here’s something nerdy, but fun. David Desandro one day wondered if it would be possible to create a typeface using only CSS. And then he did it. It’s a nice mixture of span’s that create the inner workings of the typeface using border-radius and other goodies to perform this magic. It also looks pretty cool, in a chic kind of way. If the thought of this gives you a weird smirk on your face (like, you know, the kind of smirk I’ve got right now) I suggest you head over to his site and inspect the hell out of that code.

Update: Perhaps even cooler, how about The Opera Logo?

I have a complex relationship to organizing my life and all the to-do items that inevitably follow. The problem, I think, is that I haven’t yet found the “ultimate” To-Do interface to work with. And if it isn’t perfect, I just end up not using it. Currently I have notes spread out all over the place – with some stuff written down on my Sony Ericsson’s Notes application, random text documents, scribbled notes in the Dashboard, Gmail’s To-Do and also saved drafts in Gmail.

I need to gather these under one umbrella. I signed up for TeuxDeux and thought I’d give it a go. There’s always the risk of servers going down, or something similar, rendering you unable to access your account. But I guess that comes with the territory.

I guess I should just get myself an iPhone and I would be pretty much sorted with the mobility as well.

Just wanted to drop a quick note to tell you to check out the new Hamel site! I’ve also added the project to my portfolio.

Pfizer has got the help of Siegel+Gale to provide a face lift for the company, and it works pretty well. I think this reworking fits perfectly in between a minor, “unnecessary” change and an overworked make over. It’s different, but at the same time, most people won’t notice. And that’s the beauty. It’s not something that people will have to re-familiarize themselves with. They already know what it is, but the change that Pfizer wants to show is subtly put into their conscience at the same time. Brilliant. The tilt of the oval, together with the new typography, are small changes but together they create a new, much needed depth to the company. I’d say this is a first class example of good re-branding, anno 2009.

Brand new has, as always, more on this.

Pretty cool video clip which I found through KokoKaka. TouchMe, together with KokoKaka, Forsman & Bodenfors and V