The Vostok blog

Bruno Teixidor brought me a wall map of the Moscow’s metro network some time ago. I have it hanging on a wall to remind me this exact quote:

The structure of a system reflects the structure of the organization that built it.

Richard Fairley

Now check the metro map:

How much information about the city and the country who build it, right? You can tell it has a strong, centralized and authoritarian political power just by looking at how the lines converge at the very center. Their concept of traffic transversality isn’t lines that doesn’t cross the center but a circular line that reinforces this idea.

But is the metro network what shapes that reality or was it there before? Let’s check a regular roadmap of the city:

Very much the same: strongly centralized, everything that needs to go from A to B needs to pass through the center first. Everyone, every matter.

If you check New York or Barcelona, for instance, you’ll se something different. Everything seems more rational and decentralized. Both cities have a strong grid shape reflecting that interactions between people (being social or business) are more important than political power.

The funny thing about this quote is that it was said regarding software and programming, not urbanism. Do you thing it applies to the design of interactive systems as well? Do we end up shaping structures that reflect the organisation behind. Is that good or bad? Are there powerful examples?

Gabriela and I will be at Ficod this thursday, you may see us around checking on what’s going on in the Spanish digital content scene or partnering with our friends from Filmin who will host a talk on their product which has the best catalog of indie movies you can find available for Spain.

Are you attending it? Any very good recommendation on who to watch there?

I’ve started to use dribbble with some of our most recent designs. Not much for now but enough to get an overview of the kind of stuff we are doing now.

For those who don’t know it yet, dribbble is one of my top 5 favorite things of 2010, along with fffffound, Salsa Valentina, the Tokyo real-sized Gundam and a yet-empty spot.

This is what’s wrong with flickr and why we made BlackVostok (among other reasons).

We’ve updated BlackVostok Theme fixing some bugs related to IE7 and Safari 4. It should work a bit smoother now.

Those who already purchased it will receive the updated file by email.

I just discovered that Thai toothpaste tastes salty. I guess it has to do with the fact that Thais don’t have sugar flavored breakfasts but salty ones (soups, noodles, etc.). I wonder if it works the same way for other Asian cultures. And… Is that a Colgate thing or is it a common practice among toothpaste brands?

Rock Band (brilliant):

Today it was Spaghetti with fresh sea urchins (Salvatore showed me the urchins alive before boiling them) and Sicilian cannolo for desert. Yumm!

We have always wanted to tell stories with images but it has always been either too difficult or too expensive…

FIRST, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH PIGMENTS

Man has always wanted to tell stories through images. It all started with cavemen and their paintings. Their language was probably not very rich in vocabulary but they knew they wanted to show others what their memories held and what populated their imagination. So they painted it. But access to pigments and the ability to paint on stone was limited to only a few.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH STONE

Sculpture, along with wall paintings (or glass) paintings were the way advanced civilizations (from mesopotamic to christian) represented visually the characters in their stories. Stories were told and not read for many centuries and sculptures would help people visualize their heroes, saints or divinities. Think of sculptures in palaces and churches where generals and saints were displayed in their epic endeavors. Also painted glass windows and mosaics of those who were powerful and where their power lied. Only the “official” artists had access to such expensive means and their stories were limited to what was the official version of the official story.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH PAPER

Paper was a very expensive technology until just a few centuries ago. It was difficult to manufacture and only a few lettered people had access to it: mostly scholars and monks, some of whom were specialized in miniature paintings illustrating the concepts explained in the books.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH INK

Newspapers slowly started to incorporate pictures in their stories but they tended to be small: sending them was techically complex and the ink was expensive. Stories had be told textually or with a few small photographs. Or at least until the 60s when photography became a commodity for magazines.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH CAMERAS

Photography allowed memories to last forever but, again, it was limited and expensive at the beginning. It took 100 years for that industry to make photography available to everyone. In the 70s people could only afford to have one camera per household. Then they were able to have relatively cheap photoalbums where the stories that mattered to them the most were stored: new born babies, marriages, adventures, trips… they were all narrations composed of visual memories. But still, you couldn’t share them easily.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH BANDWIDTH

Photos and images have always been part of the Internet, especially of the Word Wide Web, but the first modems were very very slow. You had to scan a picture (no digital cameras yet), you had to compress it, reduce its size and expect visitors to wait several minutes for the image to load. The standard was around 200 pixels wide for a rectangular picture. So, we had a medium that allowed us to share our messages with the world but the use of images was still scarce. Text was the only way to go.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH RESOLUTION

Digital images became widely available, everyone could create and share them. Bandwidth grew fast: size was no longer an issue. But… Monitors still didn’t have enough resolution to show pictures in all their glory. Remember when 800×600 was the reference when it came to website matters? Nothing bigger than that was allowed. It took us 10 years to start moving to 1024 pixels wide and even then there was some fear of using big format images. Powerpoint was there and allowed some to tell stories visually (most just used it for bulletpointed BS) but images were still just there to dress a good text.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE THE SOFTWARE

Sure there is flickr now, and many others, but until not so long ago there was not a single piece of cheap software that allowed people to tell visual stories in a sequence of images. Just as we could do in a photoalbum, or a Powerpoint in fullscreen mode, attracting the viewer’s full attention. Images that ARE the message and not just the accompaniment. The Big Picture, at Boston.com got it but they didn’t make it sequential. The iPad did it with its image galleries but they weren’t shareable on the internet. We were almost there…

AND NOW…

We now have the bandwidth, the cameras, the screen size and the Internet. We all need to tell our stories, to show our projects, to be able to share our memories with pictures and videos. And we cannot pay a high price for it.

So we, at Vostok, have made it possible. It had to be done.

We created a tool that allows people to tell stories visually and to share them with the rest of the world. We also made it affordable. It’s a WordPress theme, it’s called BlackVostok – www.blackvostok.com and it’s just $16.

Now tell your story, take over the full browser window with your images and share them with the world.

BlackVostok
Here’s the website: www.blackvostok.com
Here’s the theme in action: www.blackvostok.com/test