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Beta release.  It has been talked about over the last few years almost exclusively in relation to software.  A company designs a piece of software, sends out a ‘release candidate’, then later, releases a patch to finalize the product.  Or in the more modern case, they just never release the final product.  Only never ending patches, upgrades and versions.  This does offer them the ability to not have to have accountability for a faulty, unfinished product… “It’s a Beta.  It’s not finished yet.” or, “We are doing on going ‘in the wild testing’” all of which are well used terms.

We do find that there are two main kinds of Beta releases.  The first, has a set of features, which get subsequent upgrades with new features added and/or patches for the existing features.  The second, that has all the features included, but has certain features which have their abilities turned on at a later time.  We tend to see this type more often as a ‘trial version’ or ‘limited functionality trial’.   This you see in a basic version of Apple Quicktime, where ‘Pro’ upgrade is needed to access certain abilities.  Sometimes, these features are just hidden completely from the interface but if you could run them, they would work just fine.  This was the case with the ‘hidden’ flight simulator in Google Earth.  It was fully there, but you couldn’t access it’s functionality from the drop downs.

This Beta release business model has managed to quickly move from the confines of pure software to that grey area between software and hardware.  That place where the software which is Beta is responsible for the actual functionality of your hardware.  The drivers.  Firmware updates which increase, or expand, hardware’s features.  We see this all the time in computer hardware.  Mostly in processors, or graphic cards.  Through your computers BIOS you can overclock your CPU, make the hardware run faster.  You do tend to see it more overtly in graphic cards where the supplier actually releases an OC video card, or over clocked version.  In the hardware, there is nothing different between the OC video card and the regular version except that the instruction set tells it to run faster.

Now it is interesting to think what happens when we transpose this to mechanical products.  When we start to purposely under perform our offerings in order that we can boost performance later with a simple BIOS style upgrade.  I’m not talking about playing it safe and leaving room for wear and tear, or out of specification misuse from a safety stand point.  I’m talking about designing and building a product where we make it to perform at 110% but only allow it to perform at 90%, and then upgrade it to 100% later.  This psychologically goes to make the customer feel like they are getting something for free.  Makes them feel like the company is giving their old purchase a new lease on life.

Imagine if you buy a new car that has the actual ability to get 4L/100km and do 0~100km in 5.1 seconds with 250HP.   The thing is, they tell you that it only gets 5L/100km and does 0~100 in 6.1 seconds with 200HP.  So here you are with a detuned car and no clue that this is the case.  Now what if the company manufacturing the car releases a patch, or an upgrade that improves your vehicles fuel consumption and acceleration?  Well if you paid for the technology up front but didn’t know the real capabilities, then there is no cost to the manufacturer only a benefit of customer satisfaction.

This could become an interesting trend with lots of new questions to be asked.

Is it ethical for a company to do this?  What would be the backlash should one be found out?  Would it adversely effect a company’s brand image?  Do we as designers and strategists start to design overall solutions to this line of thinking?  Or, do we stand fast and oppose it should it be raised by other departments as a business model?  On one hand we could just play the Beta card.  “It was detuned to fit within ‘at the time engineering and testing parameters’, but after further testing, we found we could safely change the parameters within the current hardware configuration”.  On the other hand, as designers, we aim to make things usable and therefore beautiful, so retarding usefulness detracts from the beauty of our art.

Remember way back when in your English class, your teacher gave you a simple yet effective outline for writing a one page report.  Intro, body, summary.  Using a story to impart information creates a form which makes it more memorable, more impactful and clear.  Story telling requires the ability to explain and persuade not only with logic but with emotion as well.

Now, you’re wiser, more educated perhaps, even a bit older, but you forgot hat simple outline when crafting your cover letter.  Take a look at the cover letter that got you the position you hold now, I’ll wait.  How does it measure up?  Does it give a nice little three or four point intro?  Do you expand and example with titbits of personal experience for each in the body paragraphs?  Do you tie it together in your summary? If not, you may want to spend a bit of time each month doing one for practice.

This will give you a couple of great benefits.  One, you will have an up to date cover letter, and you never know when you may need it.  Two, you get practice writing in a style you probably don’t get to use in your career.  Third, by putting down what you do, and refining it, you may actually find out what you would like to do in the future.  Which areas do you enjoy talking about because you really like them?  Which ones do you constantly want to omit but only put in hesitantly because you know they look good on paper?

But wait you say.  A computer running some form of word scanning, term searching engineered algorithm, or worse yet, a Human resources specialist, is going to be the one to look at it.  So?  What should that matter?  If you’re a designer, design your cover letter and resume the same way you would design a product or an interface.  You have the technical specifications, the marketing materials and key messages so make them engaging, memorable and fun.  The computer or scanning eyes will still pick out the key words.  In order to effectively communicate meaningful stories, you need to manage the prioritization and relationship of visual elements.  In this case the elements are paragraphs composed of words.  When it does get to the “man”, or “woman” as the case may be, it floats to the top of the pile, stands out and in of it’s self shows your attention to detail and design skills in everything you do.

But where does this leave your resume?  Again, design it.  Use kerning.  Use formatting.  Treat blocks of text as form and balance them on the page.  Here you have so much room to play.  Treat your resume as free form poetry and make their eyes dance across the page to your tune.  Again, you have the technical specifications and textural requirement in the form of sections.  You have the marketing and public relations in the form of text.  You have a blank page to design your resume.

What is the worst that can happen?  They don’t call you… Would you want to work as a designer in a company that didn’t understand your resume?  That overlooked your work of design because it didn’t fit into the little box they provided as a template?  Would you really be able to grow in an environment like that?  It may take you longer to get an interview, but when you do, you will already be the front runner and at a place you might actually enjoy working because everyone from HR to the person you would be reporting to understands the value of design as more than just making things look good.

Spend a bit of time practicing your core design competancies at more than just form development and you may find a new world opens up to you.  Hope this helps.

For all you Popeye(c) fans out there, copyright on the image of the character Popeye expired in the EU as the year began, 70 years since the death of its creator Elzie Segar.  Popeye made his first appearance in a comic strip in 1929 and became hugely popular in the 1930s. The Times claims that Popeye now moves $2.8B of merchandise per year.  Wimpy’s restaurants were not available for comment.  So, how does this help us here in Canada?  Well, you could save your images of Popeye(c) on a web server in the UK and just link to them.  Or you could just link to someone else’s images.  Or better yet stop riding on the back of popular culture… or not so popular culture… and create your own art.

Either way, it is nice to see something finally go into the public domain.  For more public domain stuff check here for jazz, here for movies and here for images.

Ecofont has a free font that is supposed to use 20% less ink than your traditional font.  It does this by leaving small holes in the colour within the font without losing readability.  Not a bad idea.  It would be cool to have a plug-in or something that allowed you to get this feature from all your fonts… I doubt that the printer manufacturers would like this, considering that they pretty much give away the printers and have you locked in to ink purchases… But who knows, perhaps all it takes is one upstart printer manufacturer to do it as a marketing ploy and everyone will have to hop on the band wagon.  I for one will be using this font for all my printing needs where Times, courier or ariel are the norm.

[slashdot, Ecofont]

The Parisians - Wide range of facial expressions on children at puppet show - The moment the dragon is slain, Guignol puppet show, Parc de Montsouris, Paris, 1963. Location: Paris, France Date taken: 1963 Photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt

According to The Official Google Blog, Life magazines photo archive will be available on Google image search.

“Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos.”

The Archive can be viewed at Life Magazine Image Archive.  As of the writing of this post images from the 1860’s to the 1970’s have been posted in 10 year groupings.  There is also, as expected from Google, a search box and basic links of interest, such as people, places, sports etc, available on the main page.  As to search terms, I guess standard Google practice applies.

As a design resource, this is amazing.  with a bit of time and a few button clicks you can get a visual history of how people truely lived, what they used and how the looked.  I know I for one will be scowering the images for design ideas, looks and themes.  The subject matter of the image is only half the story.  What is behind, under, around and near them is just as interesting to me.