When I’m not writing, I’m designing websites. For me, usability is key, coming above most other considerations, and is a core element of good design. Clearly, whoever’s making the decisions regarding the pocket Tube map needs to understand such things.

An example of the new map is on Flickr, and two particular gems stand out. First, the map removes the Thames, thereby omitting the single biggest navigation aid the city has to offer; secondly, it doesn’t show the zone structure, so you’ve no way of knowing from the map whether another stop will stray outside of the zone you bought a ticket for. To have to look at another map for this information shows what a disaster this pocket map is.

Various other changes have happened, including the removal of East London line buses, multiples of stations, and icons that indicated stations that served airports. Clearly, someone was on a major minimalism kick, in order to ‘declutter’ the map. However, minimalism—while often beneficial—doesn’t equate to usability. The rule is to keep taking things away until the point where removing anything further would be detrimental; sadly, it looks like whoever designed this Tube map didn’t know when to stop.

Cnet reports that yesterday’s iPhone OS 3.1 update reverses ‘jailbroken’ devices. Services and apps installed by Cydia (and Cydia itself) will vanish if you update your device. Already, people are bitching about Apple being ‘invasive’, ‘closed’ and a little bit like an evil dictator that goes MWAHAHAHAHA a bit too much. So here are three helpful hints to anyone with a jailbroken device:

1. Last I heard, Jobs wasn’t traveling the world, forcing you to upgrade. Just wait until the hacking software is updated or update now, lose your hacks and quit your moaning.
2. Every single Apple update prior to now has reversed/wrecked unofficial hacks—why did you think this one would be any different? Apple’s remarkably consistent in this area.
3. Apple owes you nothing. Seriously. Why people think Apple should support a hack is beyond me.

That third point is especially obvious when you look at Apple’s desktop OS. Every time a major bump to Mac OS X happens (and, sometimes, a minor bump) a bunch of add-on hacks keel over and die. With Snow Leopard, every Safari add-on bit the big one. But these were essentially hacks to the system potentially affecting security, and certainly doing things over and above what typical apps do. Supporting such things simply wouldn’t be feasible for Apple, and so it is also with iPhone and iPod touch hacking.

Yesterday’s Apple event didn’t draw gasps of amazement of the good kind. Some great announcements were made (app management in iTunes 9, a cheaper iPod touch, a camera in the iPod nano), but the biggest surprise was the lack of a camera in the iPod touch.

This strikes a lot of people as crazy, but from yesterday’s event it’s pretty clear that Apple is aiming to differentiate each of its devices in a very clear way, rather than in the old days where everything played music and perhaps did a couple of extra things not particularly well.

The iPod shuffle is the truly mobile device, aimed at people who don’t care what they’re listening to, and don’t want any weight to carry around.

The iPod nano has been repositioned as a device to smack Flip with, due to bundling a VGA camcorder, but in a device much thinner than its rival.

The iPod touch, judging by the fact a quarter of yesterday’s announcement was about gaming, is now positioned as a handheld videogames device—Apple’s answer to the DSi and PSP Go. I still feel that the device’s name is a massive hindrance to true mass-market acceptance, but with 21,000+ games on the App Store, it’s clear where developers think the money is.

The iPod classic remains the player for people who must have every tune available at all times, under pain of death.

The iPhone is the device that mashes everything together in a profitable package for Apple.

Despite this desire to differentiate individual devices (presumably to encourage people to buy more of them rather than concentrate on convergence), it still seems odd that iPod touches lack a camera. Jobs argues in an interview with David Pogue that iPod touch is “the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw”. He says Apple was focused on “just reducing the price to $199 […] to get the price down where everyone can afford it”.

I suspect in the medium term, there will be an about-face on the camera decision, not least when you consider Jobs goes on to say in response to Amazon’s Kindle: “General-purpose devices will win the day [because] people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.” Right now, iPhone is the only truly general-purpose device; iPod touch is close, but really needs that camera to have the widest appeal and scope.

But next year will see flash memory reduce in price to the point that the iPod classic becomes irrelevant next to a 128 GB iPod touch. At that point, it’ll be a no-brainer to add a camera at least to the more expensive models in the iPod touch range, perhaps leaving the low-end without a camera, intended as a cheap gaming device to continue attacking Apple’s newfound handheld-oriented rivals.

LA Times reports that Norwegian lamp maker Luxo is suing Disney. Its reasoning is that Disney has moved from a purely animated Luxo to a physical animatronic in a theme park and actual lamps, bundled with the Blu-ray release of Up.

On the face of it, one might have sympathy for Luxo, because the company showed goodwill in letting Pixar/Disney ‘get away with things’ for so long, and it’s easily to argue that Disney’s current lamps are a clear breach of IP rights.

Despite this, one phrase is curious from the Norweigian company: it states Pixar lamps would “cause devastating damage to Luxo and dilute the goodwill which Luxo has built up”. Right. Perhaps the Luxos in the Up package will be relatively shoddy and potentially cause problems, but it’s surely undeniable that Luxo the character has added a hell of a lot of value to Luxo the company. But then again, lawsuits are also a fantastic way to get lots of press and added value.

This blog’s mostly tech and gaming oriented, not political, but this once I’ll make an exception, so apologies for possibly nonplussing regular readers.

I just heard that PRUPIM and ProLogis won their battle last week to develop near our town what can only be described as an 860,000 sq ft shed of astonishing ugliness. Said shed will be one of the biggest buildings in the country, the core of a 24/7 Tesco distribution centre.

Throughout the process, the developers lied through their teeth to local residents, bent the truth to the relevant inspectors, moved the goalposts regularly, and yet still tried to suggest that the development would be beneficial to the local area. In reality, it’s going to—at best—cause massive noise pollution and traffic congestion (in an area that already has hugely dangerous roads), utterly wreck a local wildlife reserve, and demolish the strategic gap between the towns of Farnborough and Fleet (in Hampshire).

Local residents will, apparently, ‘benefit’ from redesigned road layouts near Farnborough (which will only need redesigning due to the number of HGVs travelling along local roads rising from ‘bugger all’ to ‘two per minute, 24/7’), 1600 jobs (near a constituency with, er, the 625th highest unemployment count in the UK, and whose residents generally won’t be suited to the types of jobs available at the warehouse site), and the site being ‘cleaned up’ (something any development would have done).

What’s worse is this shows how little Labour cares about democratic process. This development had 10,000 local complaints against it (a local record by a huge distance) and the planning inspector, after immersing herself in the local area and seeing the facts, agreed with the opinion of locals and decision of local councils to reject the scheme. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (whose department issued the white paper Communities in control: real people, real power) essentially said “fuck you all” and backed the developers. His reasoning? Jobs.

Never mind local opinion. Never mind the local SPA being ruined. Never mind the fact the increase in traffic will almost lead to deaths on the roads. Never mind that the jobs won’t be relevant to the area, meaning people will commute in (more congestion, more strain on public services). Never mind the fact myriad superior locations exist in the UK for this development. Never mind the development being two nearly miles from the motorway (or, if you’re the developer, “under a mile”), along small, local roads. And never mind that the inspector ruled against the development. This is Labour, and “communities in control” clearly means “we’re in control, fuck the communities”.

As a parting shot, I’m absolutely sure that Hart and Rushmoor councils being Conservative, the local MPs being Conservative and the majority of locals being Conservative supporters (with most of the rest backing the Lib Dems) had absolutely nothing to do with the Labour Secretary of State’s decision to back developers with lots of money over the wants of the community, the decisions of the local council, the wishes of the MPs, and the decision of the inspector.