Samsung seeks killer design to shed "copycat" image

When Samsung Electronics rushed its first smartphone to market in a panicky response to the smash-hit debut of the Apple iPhone, some customers burned the product on the streets or hammered it to bits in public displays of disaffection.

Complaints ranged from dropped calls and a clunky touchscreen to frequent auto rebooting and a dearth of applications.

"It was just awful," said Kim Sang-uk, 27, who bought the Omnia in late-2009 just before starting his first job. "I just wanted to throw it away, but couldn't because I was on a 2-year contract. It was the kind of phone where you'd say 'no', even if someone gave it to you for free."

Samsung Mobile President JK Shin admitted it was a tough time. The company had seen a 1 trillion won profit in its telecom sector in the first quarter of 2010 halved in the following quarter after Apple Inc's latest iPhone took the market by storm.

"We were facing a really serious crisis," Shin said later.

Soap vs. perfume
Yet on the 9th floor of Samsung Electronics headquarters in Seoul housing the mobile division's design center, Lee Minhyouk said he was not feeling the heat. Samsung Mobile's vice president for design and his team were already working on its next smartphone, the Galaxy, and this would be truly a worthy opponent to the iPhone.

Samsung has sold 44 million Galaxy units since its launch in June 2010 on its way to displacing Apple last year as the world's top-selling smartphone maker. Its success evolved from the Omnia, said Lee, who at 40 is the company's youngest senior executive.

"Without Omnia and Samsung's previous models, there would have been no Galaxys. There's a design link among these products," he said in an interview at his office. "They shouldn't be viewed as fragmental design. They share our deep deliberation on technology, colour and design language."

Samsung's chequered entry into the smartphone market is emblematic of the South Korean conglomerate's strengths and weaknesses.

Its strategy has always been to be the "fast executioner", the first in the market with a copycat product when a new opportunity is presented. But it is not known as a great innovator or a company like Apple that can literally create a new market with an iconic product.

To become a truly innovative company, Samsung needs to explore the art, as well as the science, of what it does, critics say.

"Samsung is like a fantastic soap maker," said Christian Lindholm, chief innovation officer of service design consultancy Fjord based in Finland. "Their products get you clean, lathers well. However, they do not know how to make perfumes, an industry where margins are significantly higher. Perfume is an experience. Perfume is meant to seduce, make you attractive and feel good. You love your perfume, but you like your soap."

Designing something people can love is an art, which requires risk taking and is based more on experience than data. "Samsung needs to learn to lead more. They analyze all creativity to death, they lack self confidence," Lindholm said.

"Korea has to leap into the experience industry," she added. "I think they have only five years before they are the new Japan, outmaneuvered by the Chinese who are quickly learning the soap business."

Evolution vs. creation
Lee's office atmosphere and his comments seem to reinforce an image of a company whose culture leans more to evolution than big-bang creationism.

His design sanctum looks much like any other Samsung department, a Dilbert sprawl of desks and cubicles with framed aphorisms from the founding family on the walls: "Be with Customers" and "Create Products that Contribute to Humanity" and also this one: "Challenge the World, Create the Future".

The office may lack the exotic art, exercise balls and creative toys of Silicon Valley decor, but Lee and his team are borrowing some start-up techniques for tapping the design muses.

Lee, who has acquired the moniker of "Midas" for his golden touch with the Galaxy series, h as travelled to Brazil's Iguazu Falls and the ancient city of Cuzco in Peru for inspiration. Samsung sends the design team on such trips across the world to stoke their imaginary fires.

Images or emotions they pick up on these trips can be "naturally expressed in design languages or lines and colours", said Lee, who started out designing cars for Samsung's failed auto joint venture with Renault in the 1990s.

The design process can also be more mundane, he adds.

"Designing is just part of your life. You study, do some research on future trends and experience stuff you haven't done before. All this stuff interacts to create a new design."

If money was the answer to innovation then Samsung Electronics would certainly rank among the best in the world. Samsung spent 10 trillion won on research and development in 2011.

Indeed, the annual Bloomberg BusinessWeek survey of most innovative companies ranks Samsung 11th on its list of top-50 most innovative companies, though it trails local rival LG Electronics in 7th and Sony in 10th.

Part of Samsung's design philosophy is to leverage the conglomerate's ability to manufacture inhouse the components in its products, including microchips and flat screens - an advantage over Apple for instance, which has to outsource most of that.

Samsung readily acknowledges it has yet to attain Apple's innovative spark. And Lee concedes he is no match - yet - for Jonathan Ive, the genius designer behind the distinctive look and feel of Apple's range of phones, tablets and other must-have consumer gadgets.

By most accounts, Ive's success at Apple stemmed from his close personal relationship with Steve Jobs - a classic marriage between gizmo-maker and entrepreneur.

Lee, who said he has never met Ive, has a more corporate relationship with top managers at Samsung. He believes, however, that paradigmatic breakthroughs are a matter of the right product coming at the right time.

"I might not be at (Ive's) level yet, but I believe Samsung will produce such iconic products one day. It's not just effort that makes it possible for a new product to be a massive hit. It also has to be timely, and technology should be ready to make a certain design a reality."

Apple aptitude
That Samsung might eventually wind up with some Apple aptitude has to worry company executives at its Cupertino, California headquarters.

Samsung and Apple are locked in an escalating global patent battle, as they jostle for top position in the booming smartphone and tablet markets. Apple fired the first salvo in April last year, arguing Samsung had "slavishly" copied its iPad and iPhone. Since then both have taken legal action against each other in several countries claiming patent infringements.

Lee takes personal affront at the copycat charge.

"I've made thousands of sketches and hundreds of prototype products (for the Galaxy). Does that mean I was putting on a mock show for so long, pretending to be designing?"

"As a designer, there's an issue of dignity. (The Galaxy) is original from the beginning, and I'm the one who made it. It's a totally different product with a different design language and different technology infused."

And a different marketing approach. While Apple has a simple product line-up for the iPhone and iPad, Samsung has bombarded the market with varieties of the Galaxy, the Wave phone, which uses Samsung's own 'bada' platform, and most recently with a phone-tablet.

Lee sees no harm in this tweaking-rather-than-innovating approach, saying it plays to the company's corporate strengths.

Samsung's vertically integrated structure allows it to use prototype components and new technology developed elsewhere in the company in the design lab. The company has overseas design labs to help uncover consumer trends in the various global markets in which it competes.

Designers have to be integrators, researching user behaviour, discovering what's happening in the market, as well as searching for a unique aesthetic, Lee says.

"As a designer, my job is to blend new functions and technology with aesthetic beauty, as far as possible."

"There are different teams studying new technology trends, working on future design trends and Samsung's own design identity, and they're all regularly exchanging ideas with designers."

Fab-let?
Lee's latest project - a follow-up to the Galaxy model called the Note - is a mini-tablet and phone, with a throwback stylus. Although it looks huge compared with a standard phone, its pinpoint apps and high definition screen should please those using it for video and gaming.

The phone-tablet - or phablet - has sold more than 2 million units since its October launch, and was a crowd pleaser at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.

Lee said the design risk with the note was "breaking a taboo" about keeping handsets small enough to fit easily in your hand.

"But smartphones are more about entertainment. The Note was created by simply breaking that taboo and focusing more on the new functions that smartphones require."

Handsets are now Samsung's biggest earner - bringing in 8.3 trillion won in operating profit last year - and the group's confidence has grown in tandem with its fattening patent book - it registered over 5,000 patents last year alone.

"We were told so many times until the early part of last year that Samsung is not good at software. We're not hearing that as often any more," Samsung Chief Executive Choi Gee-sung said at the CES event in Las Vegas.

Late last month, Choi went further and told reporters at the world's biggest annual mobile show in Barcelona that Samsung would not unveil its new Galaxy model at the Mobile World Congress for fear of rivals copying it.

Yet there's not one software engineer or designer among the 17 Samsung Fellows, Samsung Group's inhouse equivalent of the Nobel prize winners to reward those making a significant contribution to its success. Lee hopes his time will come.

London's iconic buses are back

London's iconic double-decker buses have gotten an update that looks uncannily like the past.
Seven buses with an open hop-on hop-off platform at the rear hit downtown streets on 20 February, running on route 38, between Victoria Station and Hackney, an east London neighbourhood.
Between the 1950s and 2000s, royal red double deckers sported distinctive open platforms in the rear. But in 2005, authorities took that Routemaster model out of service, replacing it with versions that only have an entrance at the front.
The city also added so-called “bendy", or articulated, buses, because they could carry more passengers, thanks to hinged midsections. But locals loathed the replacement vehicles. A common complaint was that the extended length of the buses snarled traffic on many narrow, twisting streets. So the city pulled that design off the streets in 2011, leaving regular double-decker buses in service and shipping the bendys off to other cities in the United Kingdom that have more spacious streets. Officials then ran a design competition to see if a better bus could be invented. The design that won, by Thomas Heatherwick and Wrightbus, restored the open rear platform.
The revived Routemaster design adds a second staircase to speed up passenger movement. It also claims to get a low 12 miles to gallon thanks to energy efficient engines and interior-heating systems. That efficiency means it produces 40% fewer emissions than the current double deckers, which run on diesel.
The success of this design depends on the outcome of this spring's mayoral election. If candidate Ken Livingstone defeats current mayor Boris Johnson, he may kill the new Routemasters, which are Johnson's pet project and cost about £1.3 million each, significantly higher than more prosaic models. A Johnson victory, on the other hand, may mean that hundreds of the buses are put into services within the next few years.
In the meantime, original 1950s buses with the open platform in the rear are still in service on parts of route 9, running between Trafalgar Square and Kensington, and route 15, running between Trafalgar Square and Tower Hill. Check the Transport for London website for route maps and schedules that say "heritage".

The other New Orleans soundtrack

While some tourists worry that the “real” New Orleans music-scene is made up of only never-ending jazz venues, in reality, the musical city’s voice and beat manifest in a staggeringly diverse set of genres. Indeed, New Orleans would not be the birthplace of jazz if it had not blended the other musical traditions that already had deep roots here.
Related article: Living in New Orleans
Many people seem to think that jazz is moody music played with brass instruments. But in New Orleans, “brass” is a genre in and of itself, a rocking, danceable sound that is definitely not what you listen to while reading Albert Camus in a coffee shop. New Orleans brass is dynamic; older bands may sound like the Dixieland-style Big Band orchestras from the early 20th Century, while younger bands frequently blend in hip hop and R&B.
Check out the Soul Rebels at Les Bons Temps Roule (4801 Magazine Street; 504-895-8117) on Thursday nights, and Rebirth brass band at the Maple Leaf on Tuesdays, to have all your preconceptions about brass music blown out of the water. Both of these bars are relatively near Tulane University, in leafy, lovely neighbourhoods. Other venues in this area include Neutral Ground, a coffee shop that doubles as a singer-songwriter stage, and Carrollton Station, a bar that features similar sounds plus plenty of college rock.
In downtown New Orleans, near the city’s emerging arts and warehouse district, seeing a band at the Circle Bar (1032 St Charles Avenue; 504-588-2616) is like watching a show played in your living room. But because it is so small, the Circle regularly books singer-songwriters and indie talent that the bigger clubs pass up. Chickie Wah Wah, near the Mid-City neighbourhood, offers a similar-sized venue and similar line-up of independent talent that is much beloved by local music connoisseurs.
If you intend to stay in the French Quarter, check out One-Eyed Jacks, consistently one of the best rock music venues in the American South. Local and international talent regularly take the stage, and it also hosts a fantastic regular burlesque revue. Walk 10 minutes from Bourbon Street towards Frenchmen Street (arguably the best place in the world to listen to jazz music) and you will find the Dragon’s Den, which usually looks (and sounds) like the set of a Metallica video. The Den always has a crazy line-up, and regularly hosts all styles of metal and dubstep nights. Just across the street is Maison, where the jazz line up is supplemented by plenty of local dance DJs and indie rock talent. Nearby, d.b.a serves up some of the most diverse musical offerings in town and has a great beer menu to boot.
Head north of here to St Claude Avenue in the Bywater neighbourhood, an emerging part of town where artists have been drawn by cheap rent. The Bywater is packed full of music venues: the Saturn Bar (3067 St Claude Avenue; 504-949-7532) regularly hosts punk shows; the Hi Ho lounge (2239 St Claude Avenue; 504-945-4446) has Monday bluegrass jam sessions and bluegrass, folk, country and rock concerts throughout the week; and at BJs (4301 Burgundy; 504-945-9256) you can catch the blues-y rock tunes of King James and the Special Men on Monday nights. Just around the corner is Vaughan’s (4229 Dauphine Street; 504-947-5562), where local legend Kermit Ruffins tears up some trumpet-funk-brass fusion sounds on Thursday nights.
For a unique New Orleans evening, head to Club Fusion on AP Tureaud Avenue to hear bounce – a New Orleans-born style of dance music that mixes hip-hop, call-and-response and a high dose of synchronized dancing.
Do not forget large venues like Tipitina’s (go to the Uptown location, not the more touristy version in the French Quarter), a New Orleans classic hotspot, and of course, the Rock ‘N’ Bowl, where you can get in some time on the lanes before catching regular zydeco shows, rock, rap and yes, jazz – because seriously, do not come to New Orleans without hearing some jazz.

Mail containing suspicious powder sent to US Congress

Two officials of the US Congress have received letters that contained a "suspicious powdery substance", following which officials sent out a warning cautioning other staffers to be on the lookout.

In an email to Congressional offices, Senate Sergeant at Arms Terry Gainer warned staffers to be on the lookout for letters containing "a suspicious powdery substance", Xinhua reported citing the Hill newspaper, which specialises in reporting the Congress.

The email said a Senate state office and a house district office received threatening mail on Tuesday that contained the substance.

The names of the lawmakers whose offices were targeted were not disclosed.

Gainer said the letters were tested and the enclosed substance found to be harmless.

But there were threats of more letters to come, the report said.

Gainer said his office was working closely with both federal and local law enforcement officials in an investigation into the incident.

Recently, a Moroccan terror suspect was arrested for plotting an attack near the Capitol.

Sachin Tendulkar must quit ODIs, say 57% in TOI poll

After former Australian captain Ricky Ponting, is it time for the world's greatest run-maker to bid adieu to one-day cricket? As many as 57% of respondents in a TOI online poll have answered with a 'yes', indicating that the public anger over Team India's dismal performances Down Under also extends to Sachin Tendulkar's poor ODI form.

The poll went online on TOI's website on Tuesday afternoon and by 9.30 pm on Wednesday, almost 47,000 people had responded. The question asked was, 'Should Sachin retire from ODIs?' While 19,127 voted 'no' (41%), as many as 26,813 votes were polled in favour of the question. Around 2% (817) people were undecided.

The surprising results came a day after Sachin's former opening partner Sourav Ganguly had hinted that the maestro should reconsider his ODI future and concentrate on Test cricket.

Ganguly said it was up to Tendulkar to decide if "he's still good enough to play in the ODIs". The former Indian skipper said, "I think Sachin deserves to decide on his own if and when to leave international cricket or one-day cricket... I don't think the selectors have got the right to ask him to go."

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz's 155th birth anniversary: Google pays tribute with a doodle

Wondering what is that electromagnetic wave that greets you on opening the Google home page? It is Google's doodle marking 155th birth anniversary of German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.

Hertz through his experiments proved that electricity can be transmitted via electromagnetic waves. It was this discovery that later paved the way toward development of wireless telegraph and radio. In fact, the unit of frequency of a radio wave is called hertz in honour of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.

Hertz's findings expanded on theory of light put forth by British physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1884. Hertz measured Maxwell's waves and showed how the velocity of radio waves is equal to the velocity of light. He also calculated the electric field intensity and polarity.

Through his experiments, Hertz expanded the field of electromagnetic transmission. He proved how radio waves can travel through different types of media, which later helped in the development of radar technology.

Hertz was born in Hamburg, then a sovereign state of the German Confederation, into a prosperous Hanseatic family. He studied science and engineering in the German cities of Dresden, Munich and Berlin. In 1880, Hertz completed his PhD from the University of Berlin.

Google doodles are the decorative changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists and scientists. The first Google doodle was created by Larry Page and Sergy Brin in the year 1998 to mark the celebrations of the Burning Man Festival. Google currently has over 1000 doodles.

Indian school in Bahrain to get 600 Aakash tablets

Students of an Indian school in Bahrain will soon get the world's cheapest tablet computer 'Aakash', developed by India's Human Resources Development Ministry.

Class 12 students of the Indian School Bahrain will get a tablet each soon, executive committee chairman of the school Abraham John has said.

He said that about 600 Aakash laptops will be made available to the students.

"Students will be able to enhance their knowledge, improve their projects and correspond with teachers and experts as they learn and expand their vision," John told Bahrain's Gulf Daily News.

"The laptops will help in more positive output in examinations and help students make informed decisions, especially in their careers," he said.

He said that the first consignment will be distributed to class 12 students and followed by class 11. "The distribution is in line with Indian government's directives," he said.

The Aakash is a low-cost tablet computer with a 7-inch touch screen priced around USD 35. It was launched in New Delhi on October 5, 2011.

The device was developed as part of the HRD ministry's aim to link 25,000 colleges and 400 universities in an e-learning programme.

Aakash was developed in two versions by British-Indian company Datawind. The advanced model is Akash Ubislate 7, while the less advanced version is for lower level students.