Midnight Cheese

Steve Jobs called Adobe “lazy.” He was referring to Flash, but it’s also spot-on for Adobe’s Creative Suite line of software most often used by Graphic Designers. With multi-touch software interaction bearing down on us like a freight train, Adobe is about to be obliterated at the crossing. With their Creative Suite stagnating, Adobe is one clever competitor away from becoming obsolete.

Here are 5 things Adobe can do to save itself and rekindle the excitement Designers once had when sitting down to use Adobe software.

1. Go Multi-touch
Multi-touch and gesturing is so much more natural than wrangling a mouse, keyboard, or pen tablet. This new way of interacting between human and machine gets us back to the way fine artists interact with pen and paper, paint and canvas, even ad layout before the age of computers.

Multi-touch page layout with iWork.

What if I could start drawing shapes in Illustrator with my hands like I would on paper? Precisely laying out a magazine in InDesign with my finger tips, carefully gauging spacing with my eyes? How about burning and dodging photos in Photoshop with the flick of my wrist like I did in the darkroom? This would be a dream come true for all artists using a computer to output their work.

2. Give us a Designer’s UI
Adobe’s user interface is over 20 years old. I’m stuck using these bland controls from the 1988 era while companies like Apple and guys like this give us beautiful controls that are masterfully crafted.

An example of a tired old Adobe control element.

An example of a UI control from Brushes. Take note, Adobe.

3. Hire some Graphic Designers
Since the Macromedia merger it’s clear there’s been zero consulting with people who actually use Adobe’s creative software. Adobe UI Gripes points this out ad nauseam. Cryptic messages, inadequate type lists, abysmal handling of typography… Adobe needs to learn from its users.

4. Start Over. From Scratch.
Obviously, to implement any of these changes, you have to start over. All your software has to be rewritten to take advantage of today’s and future technology. This is tough when you’re sitting on a 20+ year-old code base, but look what’s happened to Windows. Bloated, slow, unintuitive, unfriendly. Sound familiar?

5. Lead.
When Apple announced the iPad, they invited some big names up on stage to demo their apps and show off their innovative approach to multi-touch software interaction. EA showed us a whole new way to play games. MLB showed us a new way to interact with sports. Apple showed us a new way to interact with spreadsheets. Then someone showed us a new way to approach creative arts. But it wasn’t Adobe on stage. It was Steve Sprang, a single developer who came up and showed us his Brushes app. This app is what Adobe should have been demoing and it should have been called Photoshop Touch. But instead, a multi-billion dollar company was trumped by one guy.

Leading will come naturally once Adobe gets its heart back in it and starts implementing the above ideas. It’s tough to lead, especially since Adobe has no competition in the Graphic Design field of software.

Adobe can be Great Again
In the 1990s, Apple and Adobe pioneered the great digital transition in the world of Graphic Design. We’re about to enter a new era with multi-touch interaction becoming more mainstream and I want to see Adobe at the forefront of this movement. I want to create with my hands, again, not using a mouse or stylus pen as a proxy. Adobe has the history to make it happen. I hope they do it before Apple, or someone else does. I hope Adobe is listening.

A few photos from Nashville’s biggest snow since 2003.

Nissan was showing off the Leaf this evening. I snapped a few photos below. I like the prospect of driving an all-electric vehicle. The price needs to come down a bit, but for around-town applications, the Leaf sounds promising.

Unfortunately, Nissan wasn’t showing off the motor or the battery pack tonight. That will have to remain a mystery for the time being.

A few photos from the beach at midnight.

With Operation Chokehold just around the corner, I’ve been pondering Just how many users it takes to hose AT&T’s cellular data network. My guess: It could take as few as 550 concurrent users at one cell site.

This is very unscientific, but using some educated guessing and some “solid” numbers from the internet, I’ve attempted to calculate just how weak AT&T’s network is when too many users try to use their phones for data purposes all at the same time.

Last month I attended the CMAs in downtown Nashville. From arriving about 40 minutes before the show started, until the crowd dispersed, AT&T’s data network was totally hosed. I had zero data access. It was abysmal. At one point I couldn’t even send text messages. I kept getting ‘Timeout’ errors.

So that got me thinking. Just how many people were concurrently trying to access the network that caused such a large interruption in service?

Luckily, being at the CMAs, we have some good numbers to start with. The Sommet center holds approximately 20,000 people in that particular configuration. Let’s add on another 5,000 people to include staff, and population immediately surrounding the affected cellular area (tourists, people working late, etc.).

Of 25,000 people, assuming each one has a cellular phone, AT&T commands around 30% of the market according to USA Today. That’s 7,500 of our 25,000. Now, how many of those customers have smart phones that would be more likely to access the data network? According to CNET, about 15% or 1,125 of our group of 7,500 AT&T customers.

From our number of 1,125 AT&T smart phone users, let’s be very generous and say half those people were all trying to use their phones at the exact same time. That number comes to 563 users accessing the data network all at the same time.

Does that number seem low? Well, I’ve written before about attending crowded events like Petit le Mans and Concours d’Elegance and experienced the same poor data performance. Something else to ponder: I had good data access during a Predators game at the same location with roughly the same size crowd. But, the big difference was the network access. At the CMAs you have thousands of people desperate to snap and share photos and text of A-list celebrities while at a hockey game, most people are focused on the game, not their phones.

There are a lot of unknowns, still. How many “cell sites” service that downtown area of Nashville vs. an area like Road Atlanta and the rural beach of Florida. What’s really causing the network to stall? Is AT&T’s internet connection at their towers too narrow, or do they not have enough radio bandwidth to handle that number of phones concurrently?

Regardless of the choke point, AT&T has some work to do to get their network in order. Especially when you consider the high monthly price point they command. Hopefully Operation Chokehold will open AT&T’s eyes.

We’ve been fighting the speeding problem on our street for several years now. Trying to get the city of La Vergne to attempt a solution has been a major part of our effort.

Our street is about a mile long, straight as an arrow, and the gateway for the larger section of our neighborhood. Naturally, people tend to go faster than the posted 25mph speed limit while trying to get deeper into the subdivision.

Protect the Cars
Being a residential area, we’ve proposed speed bumps, but the city doesn’t like that. In addition to impeding emergency personnel vehicles, they’re afraid drivers of “souped-up Honda Civics” will damage their cars while taking the bumps at speed. (Pg.2 Paragraph 5. This is the kind of stuff you can’t make up.) In other words, speed bumps hurt cars that go over them at a high rate of speed. Let’s protect the cars by eliminating the speed bumps.

What the city is trying to say is, when driven over improperly, speed bumps can cause cars to run out of control, threatening the lives of pedestrians. But protecting pedestrians by nixing speed bumps all together leaves greater risks for kids playing outside who have to dodge speeding cars, unimpeded by speed bumps at all.

It’d be like building houses without door locks because someone might accidentally lock themselves out.

Unneeded Stop Signs
This past week, the city announced it’s finally making a move. We’re about to have two new sets of stop signs on our section of the street. One set at each end, just a few feet from the existing stop signs. (Clicking the map above will help as a visual aid.)

And this is where I need help because the reasoning for these new stop signs is completely beyond me, as well as other residents we’ve spoken with. This plan leaves a good half mile of uninterrupted pavement, straight as can be, just begging to have some rubber put down by our less than considerate neighbors who live deeper in the neighborhood.

Does this make sense to anyone? Am I missing something obvious? How do these stop signs prevent people from speeding down a half mile stretch of road? Is this a waste of tax money, resources, and time? Or am I missing the genius of it all?

Our dog Belki passed away this weekend. She was a good dog. Her favorite thing to do was chase motorcycles. From a distance she could always tell the difference between a motorcycle engine and a loud truck. Belki will be missed.