1. Good design is innovative
  2. Good design makes a product useful
  3. Good design is aesthetic
  4. Good design helps us to understand a product
  5. Good design is unobtrusive
  6. Good design is honest
  7. Good design is durable
  8. Good design is consequent to the last detail
  9. Good design is concerned with the environment
  10. Good design is as little design as possible

Dieter Ram’s ten commandments of good design, via Brain Pickings

Are Smart Phones Spreading Faster than Any Technology in Human History? - Michael DeGusta via Technology Review

Michael DeGusta via Technology Review

[…] smart phones, after a relatively fast start, have also outpaced nearly any comparable technology in the leap to mainstream use. It took landline telephones about 45 years to get from 5 percent to 50 percent penetration among U.S. households, and mobile phones took around seven years to reach a similar proportion of consumers. Smart phones have gone from 5 percent to 40 percent in about four years, despite a recession. In the comparison shown, the only technology that moved as quickly to the U.S. mainstream was television between 1950 and 1953.

Almost as fast as TV, which was artificially delayed by WWII.

(Source: underpaidgenius)

The Social Operating System: A Reader

For the sake of my pal Valdis Krebs, I am collating a list of posts I’ve made in recent years on the idea of a social operating system. The basic notion:

Stowe Boyd, Rockmelt: Why The Social Browser Won’t Matter

The next generation of operating systems will be social at the core.We won’t be fooling with files and folders. We will be connecting with others, reading streams from our friends, and tossing observations and hopes and insights into the wake we leave behind, spreading out to all that think we matter.

So here’s some links to pieces I’ve written mentioning the idea:

Please send along any references to other people writing on the subject.