Riding the DLR through London’s east last week, through the converted warehouses that are now trendy modern apartments or design studios, I began to wonder what happened to all the jobs that used to exist here. I could have just as easily been back in Melbourne too, or probably any developed western city with a design industry, it seems a common trend.

Most of these warehouses were once used for some sort of manufacturing — where things were made (designed) for construction or fashion. I guess most, if not all, of the jobs have been shifted to countries like China or India or to larger premises farther out of the city where labour is cheaper. While it’s not that important to recognise the exact original role of each of these warehouses, it creates an interesting starting place to compare the type of work popular now in these districts — design — to the sort of work that was originally being produced here.

The warehouses are still used for manufacturing by the design studio, though the outcome is very different. Rather than helping to build and shape the real world these warehouses are occupied by (digital) design studios that are constructing and shaping the virtual landscape. It’s almost like these districts were originally used to create the physical city and are now used for building the digital virtual version.

Something that began to bother me as I thought more about the differences was that the people that worked in these warehouses 50 years ago could walk through the district now and probably still see buildings they had helped to construct. In 50 years time can I wander through the virtual world and be able to see anything I built? Doubtful. Every website I’ve built can be deleted with the press of a button, there’s no need for cranes or explosives. In fact over the 10 years I’ve been designing websites I’d say most of them don’t exists anywhere except maybe on an old CD somewhere in my parent’s house.

While my websites probably won’t exist at all in 50 years time I think the one thing I will be able to get satisfaction from is the fact that maybe my design work helped to shape the culture of the Internet. Maybe I can look back at old photos, or read a history book, and remember the time I used a glassy beveled pink button and how it helped to shape and evolve the web 2.0 culture.

I‘ve discovered a collection of short documentaries created by New York designer Hillman Curtis on some intriguing designers, artists and studios (he’s also created a number of other short films and documentaries on a variety of other topics too).

What got me most excited was the two on Sagmeister, one which was even filmed this year. While I think this later documentary conveys a slightly pretentious message (which I think Sagmeister isn’t at all) and is also based on the quotes he wrote that summarise things he’s learnt in his life (which seems to be the only information you can get on his current work), it’s still worth watching for any fan. The other Sagmeister documentary should appeal to any designer who’s interested in how a small studio operates and an alternative, interesting approach to the design process.

Some other films worth watching for anyone interested in ways other successful people approach their work are: David Carson, Pentagram, and a more recent one too (though best to skip the first half where they maniacally try to explain the history of the company!) and Joshua Davis. I’m sure there are more in there too!

I bought a new external hard drive (my 3rd) as I seem to constantly be running out of room. This time I went for something a little more pretty and also something that may encourage me to buy a Mac Mini. I got an Iomega Minimax 750GB. At first the quality seemed a little rough then I noticed it comes with a very thin clear film plastic protector stuck on the top. Once you remove that I realised the marks are caused by that and the actual plastic isn’t damaged! I had no problems setting it up and partitioning it so I could leave 200GB devoted to TimeMachine. No eSata or FW800 but I’m not using it to work on, just as a backup device, so speed wasn’t as important as looks :p

So being able to instantly backup my whole computer I decided to re-install OSX, this time not enabling the annoying encryption that doesn’t work with TimeMachine anyway. Having re-installed OSX on my Macbook pro and therefore un-pairing it with my 8GB iPod touch of course it meant I could no longer sync them. The solution was to delete all the music on the iPod (which is fine as I have a copy of the mp3s on the external hard drive) but some strange iTunes programming means you can’t delete podcasts! I had about 2GB of podcasts I could no longer access through iTunes so the quickest and easiest solution I could think of was to restore the iPod, reformatting it and removing everything. This meant the firmware was reset to 1.1.4 but without my £12 software upgrade that I purchased through iTunes in January. Because I was using a re-installed version of OSX and iPod firmware iTunes kept hassling me to buy the upgrade — the software I had already purchased! I logged in to my iTunes account to try and download it again only to find you can’t. iTunes wouldn’t even let me purchase it again!

So I thought I’d take the opportunity to try jail-breaking the iPod so I could add the applications I had already bought as well as other 3rd party applications and themes. I looked at this option a few months ago but it looked far more complicated and risky. The other day I applied the jailbreak and have since been installing loads of themes and applications on it. It really is a simple and easy process and gives your iPod a lot more functionality. I’ll outline the process I took, which you can follow (of course at your own risk).

1) Restore the iPod using iTunes to 1.1.4 firmware then close iTunes before configuring the iPod or transferring anything to it (it can take a while to download the new firmware from Apple as I think it’s about 160MB).

2) Download ZiPhone and press the jailbreak button. The process is now complete but you will now want to add applications and custom themes.

How to add applications
Connect to wifi and run the installer application. It will refresh it’s list of default sources (you can add more sources for even more apps). Once complete you can add the Apple software upgrade (mail, weather, maps etc) by clicking the ‘install’ button on the bottom and go to the ‘all packages’ folder and search for and install: 1.1.3/4 iPod Full Features. Other applications I’ve added so far (you can add them from the default sources by just searching for them in the ‘all packages’ folder in the installer app) and found quite useful are:

• BossTool — for moving your fonts to another partition to free up space for applications
• Converter — for translating Australian measurements to the old fashioned English ones
• RainbowLight — for pretty colours
• SummerBoard — for applying themes, I’m currently using Katamari (pictured above), though not very useable it’s pretty
• weDict — for language translation
• Apollo — instant messaging, MSN and iChat etc
• Wallpaper — for browsing and downloading other people’s wallpaper images
• MobileFinder — for file management
• TapTap Revolution — guitar hero for the iPod/iPhone
• snes4iphone — SNES emulator
• iSolitaire
• Chess
• Raging Thunder — driving game using accelerometer
• MxTube — for downloading YouTube videos
• Sysinfo — for checking out running processes

How to access any file on the iPod from OSX
In order to transfer anything to and from the iPod (handy for installing ROMs for game console emulators) install the BSD sub system and OpenSSH application using the same method outlined above. Then follow these instructions on the MacRumors forum to install and configure the OSX application.