As many of you know, Rachel and I have been keeping a photoblog for several months documenting our expedition in Antarctica, and once in a long while I point to new chapters from here on Fury.

We just posted our 36th chapter: Birthday Whales, and it’s one we’ve been looking forward to posting ever since we started the photoblog in January.

We’d boarded the zodiacs to make a landing where we’d be seeing penguins and elephant seals, but got an unexpected surprise when we wandered into a pod of humpback whales feeding on surface krill.

The photos speak for themselves, but even they can’t do justice to the sensation of being less than 20 feet away from such behemoths going about their lives, occasionally checking you out with a giant eye.

Also: Baby whale!

So go check it out, and tell your friends!

This isn’t strictly a WWDC post. I don’t presume to know what’s on Steve’s (or anyone’s) Keynote slides for this morning, but I can make a fair guess what strategies they’re working on, and can only speculate on which will be appropriate and mature enough for pre-announcement (see what I did there?) or outright release at this week’s WWDC.

iPhone 3.0 OS - This one’s a gimmie for release on Monday. Three rounds of developer betas have made the rounds in recent months, and last week Apple started pushing iTunes 8.2, which lists support for iPhone OS 3.0 in its release notes.

iPhone 3GS - I’m not as enamored of the ‘3GS’ name as some, since it feels like a throwback to the Apple IIgs, a rev of the Apple II with enhanced graphics and sound (’GS’) capability. At any rate, people who are reaching the end of their 2 year iPhone contracts with AT&T are probably eyeing the Palm Pre and the Android G2 phones with interest right about now and Apple needs to lock them in to a new contract to maintain their subscription revenue. Expect a compass, video, probably a faster processor, and if rumors are to believed, anything from a rubberized back to a glowing back logo to an OLED display to a second, front-facing camera.

iPhone data tethering and MiFi-enabled Macbooks - I don’t think we’ll see this one at WWDC but will see it within the next month or two, as a part of a Macbook event. Apple’s quickly realizing that subscription revenue is where it’s at, and has long known that the current state of the art of data roaming via WiFi hotspots or ExpressCard cell network adapters are both sucky and niche. A lot of geeks want the ability to use their iPhone’s 3G connection to the network and their Bluetooth connection to their laptop to get laptop network access wherever they get a cell signal, but for the majority of non-geeks, actually making this happen is just too complicated.

Apple pioneered wireless laptop connectivity, first with IRDA and later with 802.11a WiFi. I think it’s likely that they’ll be the first major laptop manufacturer to put a 3G card into every laptop they sell (except the $999 white Macbook) and let people activate it at any time either by signing up for a recurring monthly service with AT&T (no annual contract required) or on a ‘pay as you go’ plan.

Imagine if you pull down the Airport menu and beneath the list of locked networks there’s a “Purchase day pass” option that will automatically activate your internal 3G card and charge the $6 ($4? $10? Who knows?) to your Apple iTunes account. That would be the way I’d expect Apple to implement this. Don’t make the user sign up for anything. Heck, they wouldn’t even have to know the capability was there until the day they needed it and found the option ‘just in time’.

For all those users who have non-apple laptops, or laptops purchased before the near future, Apple will likely introduce the same functionality for iPhone owners. Data tethering could either be a day-pass add-on or a small add-on to their monthly bill. Heck, Apple might even forgo bluetooth tethering and just turn your iPhone into a portable WiFi node, though that might drain power faster than would be acceptable.

I don’t expect Apple to announce this at WWDC for two reasons. First: It’s too big. At WWDC this feature would get lost in the shuffle of other announcements. this feature’s story is a little too complicated to survive in a list of announcement bullet-points. The second reason is that this is a consumer feature more than a developer feature. Implemented correctly, this feature would have very little if any impact to software applications, so there would be little point in pushing it at WWDC. Expect a ’special event’ in mid-July, coinciding with a minor refresh of the Macbook and Macbook Pro line (and likely migration of the ‘Macbook’ name to ‘Macbook Pro’).

iPhone-based tablet device - I thoroughly believe this is in the works, and I’m pretty sure that while the product won’t be announced at WWDC, the groundwork for it will start to be laid out for developers. A sub-sub-notebook device makes sense for Apple. They have a real opportunity to be the premier portable video player platform, but the iPhone’s small screen just won’t compete with larger PMPs coming out from Archos and a dozen others. Apple’s already demonstrated their ability to make a high-capability net interface using only a touchscreen, so expect them to push this into a larger, Kindle2-sized device that can be a true notebook replacement for light-duty work and heavy-duty entertainment.

Apple has a long way to go with their developers to make this product work though. When Apple was guiding Newton developers (gak, 16 years ago!) they were very vocal in saying that Newton developers should design their applications to work well on a device of any size, from a post-it note to a whiteboard. Make your interface degrade well if it has a limited screen available to it, and let it max out at a certain resolution to become a window if there’s more screen available than it needs. Apple planned for a wide range of Newton devices, and wanted to make sure that the thousands of apps being written for the platform were ready for products that didn’t even exist yet.

This has not been the case with the iPhone. iPhone and iTouch apps have been written with a very specific screen resolution in mind (okay, portrait and landscape) and a device with 4-9 times the resolution just wouldn’t work at the present time unless every app were given an iPhone-sized window to run in. Even in that scenario, iPhone apps expect to live in a modal world that until later today doesn’t even have cut-and-paste. These apps are, at present, unsuitable for a tablet-sized iPhone OS device.

If Apple is working on an iTouch tablet, expect them to start laying serious groundwork and guidelines for resolution independent app development at this year’s WWDC. If they don’t the next chance they’ll have to really reach out to their developers is this time next year, which would mean tablet-optimized apps would start to emerge in force no earlier than August 2010, and I can’t believe that Apple intends to wait that long for a tablet, nor that they would launch one that gave a poor performance running the current library of third-party iPhone apps.

So, a focus on designing iPhone apps for environments beyond the iPhone at this week’s WWDC, but no formal iTouch tablet product releases until at least September or October.

Snow Leopard - MacOS 10.6 - Expect a developer release candidate disk in everyone’s welcome bag, but another month or so before the public release, in case the widespread developer release finds any major issues that need repairing prior to golden master.

MacOS App Store - With the success of the iPhone App Store in creating a market for $1-$20 apps, it’s only a matter of time before Apple opens up the App Store to MacOS applications. Single-account, guaranteed downloads, reviews, easy re-downloads and seamless updates (using an expanded version of System Update) make this an extremely appealing distribution channel for Mac developers, and a 30% slice off the top for a framework that’s already in place is a no-brainer for Apple. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple push this to developers this week, with a goal of actual shipping (and updating) applications within 3-4 months.

So that’s what I expect out of Apple for the next 24 hours and 4-8 months. I’m sure there will be other miscellaneous product refreshes, possibly new iPods with cameras and probably more DisplayPort-capable monitors and other miscellaneous goodies – maybe even an iPhone lite – but those might come or go on a corporate whim. The items I’ve outlined above feel likely to me because they’re somewhat inevitable, and the dominoes laid down thus far imply they’ll be played in the next few turns. I haven’t read any rumors you haven’t read, and I don’t have any inside knowledge or tips. This just makes sense to me. I guess we’ll see!

When I was 11 years old my mom, sister and I went to Europe during Summer vacation. During the days we’d see the most amazing things: the canals at Venice, the Colosseum, Pompeii, the leaning tower of Pisa. As amazing as the daytime sights were, sleeping in a different and very foreign place each night had quite an effect on my dreams. Some of the dreams I had while on this three week trip were some of the strangest and most vivid of my life.

Two dreams in particular stuck in my memory past the break of day, and indeed stay with me even now.

The first was easily understood and relevant. Two nights before we were to travel to Pisa, I dreamt that my sister Susie and I were climbing the stairs inside the tower and, about halfway up, she ventured outside of the inner spiral to the columns that line the perimeter of each story. I dreamt that while perched on the slanted surface she slipped and fell the long and uninterrupted distance to the ground below. Sure that she was critically injured, I ran to the edge and peeked over, to find that somehow she had only broken her arm.

Actually visiting the leaning tower of Pisa two days later, she and I were walking up the stairs that looked exactly as I had pictured them, and about halfway up she wanted to venture outside the spiral staircase, just as she did in my dream. Though Susie was two years my elder, and not in the habit of taking direction from me, I begged her not to go out to the edge, even as I didn’t tell her why, worried that I would sound silly or would be ignored. I asked her to trust me and not go out at that point, and we went to the top and looked out from the top railing. We even climbed the ladder to the higher inner ledge and, while I was naturally scared and cautious, I didn’t have any portents about this part, so it was just normal everyday terror.

This episode (and Pisa) past, we journeyed on to Florence. Another city, another hotel, another bed, and another portentous dream, just as vivid but entirely different than the last.

Unlike the Pisa falling dream, which had a narrative, a clear position in time and space, an action and a consequence, this dream was much more a simple moment floating outside of any time I could define. Maybe it was tomorrow, maybe decades later.

The dream was this: I was someplace (I don’t have any recollection where) and I was eating a few Nilla wafers. While I was in the middle of eating one, someone rushed up to me and told me that my sister had died. That’s it. The dream lasted all of 10 seconds and had only two salient details: My Nilla wafers and my sister’s passing. I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night in the room that the three of us were sharing, and I could see that she was fine, sleeping peacefully.

I have a hard time breaking habits or curbing desires. It took me years to stop sucking my thumb as a young child, and I still have poor willpower when it comes to desserts, but to this day, and forevermore, I have not and will not eat a Nilla wafer.

My sister doesn’t know about this. I’ve never told her. She doesn’t regularly read my blog, so I don’t know whether she’ll hear the story due to my sharing it here, but who knows. It’s something I do for her because I love her.

It’s not really the kind of thing you talk about. It doesn’t really come up in conversation. To my recollection the only people who knew before this post were my ex-girlfriends Karen and Emily, and my wife Rachel. They’ve all watched out for me, knowing not to bring any into our home, and helping me steer clear from desserts that happen to have Nilla wafers, crumbled or otherwise, in them. A Japanese restaurant in Jack London Square with an amazing Bananas Foster comes to mind. I always order it specifically without the Nilla wafers that are otherwise added in.

I won’t eat generic knock-offs. I can still picture the taste of them, and there’s nothing quite like them, but I feel pretty much nothing as I walk by them in the supermarket. We had shared good times together, but me and Nilla wafers have taken different paths, and will not cross again, because I love my sister too much to chance it, no matter how ridiculous that may sound.

Oh, and if you read this and ever try to slip me one as a joke, don’t even think about it.

So there’s a meme that went around a few months ago that’s pretty much played out. You make a list of 25 things about yourself that people might not know about you, and encourage others to do the same.

I didn’t think I could come up with 25 things in one sitting, and I was pretty sure that a few words per thing wouldn’t do it justice, so instead I’ve been collecting a thing here, a thing there, plucking out interesting bits from my past, compiling a list of things that could each be a story. And so over the next several weeks I’ll be writing stories, sharing some things that only my closest friends know and some things I wrongly assume is common knowledge.

Consider it the Cliffs Notes for those who haven’t been following my blog for the last 10 years. I hope you enjoy it.

Oh, and ‘25′ is just a benchmark. It might take me a while to get there, or I might keep going strong at 200.

We just posted the latest installment of Antarctic Fox, where we visit Port Lockroy.

I haven’t been posting regularly on Fury when we update the Antarctic blog, but we’re up to 33 chapters now and they’re well worth a peek!

(54 photos) “Originally discovered in 1903 by a French Antarctic expedition, the port was named ‘Port LaCroix’ after Edouard LaCroix who helped finance the expedition. Over the years Port Lockroy found use as an anchorage by whalers and in 1944 became ‘British Base A’, the first of the more than 20 eventual British bases established in Antarctica. This base is now restored as a historic site which has a gift shop and the only public post office on the Antarctic peninula. Base A was part of a secret wartime project to monitor German shipping movements. After the close of World War II it functioned as a civilian research outpost and was eventually shut down in 1962. It sat abandoned until a British team renovated the historical site and opened it as a monument and museum in 1996.”

Click through to see the rest!

What started out as a general love of Halloween has, over the last five years, grown into an obsession. Each year we would make our yard haunt more ornate, more interactive, more haunted. This year Rachel and I are taking the next logical step and attending HAuNTcon in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Catering to those who run professional haunted houses all over North America, HAuNTcon (like our own haunt) originated five years ago, moving to a new city every year. We had ideas of going last year in Austin, but wedding planning took precedence. But there’s no stopping us this year, and as I type this we’re sitting in the Denver International Airport waiting for our connecting flight.

Over the next three days we can expect to learn more about designing and running a haunt than anyone running a home yard haunt should ever need to know, and we’re looking forward to sharing the experience with you. We’re completely out of our league, but last month we gave our haunt a logo, business cards, and a website, so check out Haunted Fox Hollow to see photos from our past years haunts, and to keep up with new info for this year’s haunt as it… materializes (pun-groan) (recursive pun-groan).

Time to catch our next flight, and we’re looking forward to sharing the spook with you this weekend!

Visual Designer extraordinaire Doug Bowman is leaving Google, and on his way out he wrote a passionate post on his blog detailing the core differences that lead to his departure, focusing heavily on the Google design process which, as he puts it, frequently puts data-driven design ahead of expert opinion.

I respect Doug a great deal (we worked together on Google Calendar and other projects), but I think his indictment of data-driven design doesn’t tell the whole story. Last night I wrote 1,500 words on the subject, but in the end the post was more about abstract design philosophy and practices, and less about Google and the matters at hand. So I started over from scratch but don’t worry, I’ll be sure to put those 1,500 words to use later on in a more instructional post about the dos and don’ts of data vs creative design.

Instead, I’ve written a few letters:

Dear Doug: Congrats on your move from Google to (presumably) Twitter. I’m sorry that your stint at Google was rougher than most’s. While I take exception with your view that visual design didn’t exist at Google until you came along in 2006, I acknowledge that you were the first person brought on exclusively as a visual designer, compared to the two dozen or so interaction designers, several with MFAs in ‘classical design’ and several more with ample coursework in visual design acquired as part of their interdisciplinary HCI or InfoVis masters programs.

I don’t think Google had to be a bad fit for you, but that you were put in to the wrong role. Back when Irene Au was building the User Experience team at Yahoo, visual designers (VisDes) were often paired with interaction designers (Gooeys) and usability researchers (UER) and together they would tackle design problems at the product level. This kind of arrangement would have probably been more effective at Google as well. Hiring visual designers only to silo them together means the visual design team lacks the benefit of sufficient inroads in to the product teams the interaction designers have been working with for years. This makes your job impossibly hard, because what product team welcomes a design that is handed to them without their involvement?

I know you’ll do fantastically well at (presumably) Twitter. Like you, I found the appeal of working without overhead with a very focused and nimble team too much to resist. I know you won’t look back.

Dear Google UX team: I miss you guys and the amazing things you’re working on. I know as well as you do that every product team is different and I’m thrilled that on most teams UX involvement, respect, and leadership is really hitting its stride.

Dear Google Founders and VPs: The User Experience Design team at Google has had a glass ceiling from the very beginning. You need to fix this if you want to continue attracting world-class talent. Seriously.

Dear Google engineers and PMs: I don’t envy you the balancing act of respecting the designer’s craft while still contributing to the design and evolution of the product. When there are no clear distinctions between product strategy, feature prioritization and interaction design, negotiating progress can be a challenging process. While this advice only applies to a small subset, it’s important to give: Data-driven design is a vital tool for hill-climbing iteration of a site, but you should take great care not to use it as an appeals process whenever you and your designer reach an impasse. It sidelines the designer into being no more than a brainstormer, devoid of design ownership. I realize this is not the usual case, so just treat it as a cautionary tale. Also please keep in mind that everyone has opinions on design, and that your UX professional has devoted years of their life to learning to separate their subjective opinions from their objective understanding about how the larger audience will interpret an interface. It’s not as demonstrable as code that passes unit-tests, but trust in it anyhow.

Dear Blogosphere: Resist the urge to take what few ‘inside baseball’ tidbits come from folks departing Google (or anywhere else, for that matter) and extrapolate the interior nature of the company from those small gleanings. On a numbers basis we don’t comprise statistical significance and our choice to depart is clearly a confounding factor. You’re trying to judge a group by their least satisfied (and most vocal) 5%. The data you need just isn’t there.

Dear Google users: Everyone’s doing what they do for you. Design negotiation exists whenever more than one person works on a product. After working at a half-dozen web companies (including Yahoo and Google) what I’ve found to be unique about Google is that when there’s a difference of opinion on a design, the disagreement is on which path serves you-the-user better. Compare that to companies where the disagreement is often between a sales rep (who works on commission) and a designer on the need to integrate a flash skyscraper and a banner ad onto every page of a site. Even when data-driven analysis is used to determine which design will be more profitable, at Google this is highly tempered against the impact to the user. Google could easily increase their revenue in the short term with just a few poor decisions, but they don’t. This philosophy of ‘put the user first and the money will follow’ is so ingrained into the Google culture that many designers and engineers for whom this is their first corporate job don’t even realize that this is unusual, and that is awesome.

For those still interested in what makes Google design tick, I encourage you to read Google’s Design Principles. It was one of the last things I worked on before leaving Google, and one of the things I’m most proud of.

There have been a few chapters posted since my last update on Fury. I’ll try to update here each time we post a new chapter, but I wanted to make sure you saw this one. It’s one of the best.

(17 photos) WARNING - Some of the photos in this post are very graphic. If you would rather not see the Antarctic Food Chain in action we suggest you skip this post.

Excerpt: “As we waited, we watched the penguins on the shore. A big survival mechanism most penguins share is to approach the water in a group and jump in together, to provide a more confusing target for predators, and to not be isolated. We watched a group of about ten gentoo penguins approach the water’s edge, hovering on the brink, nobody wanting to be first because of the possibility that they’ll be the only one to jump. After several false starts by the ones on the edge, a few dive in at once, and several more quickly follow…”

Click on over to Antarctic Fox to see the rest!

In his ‘Little Green Book‘, poker great Phil Gordon outlines a basic principle of poker play: At each turn to act, ask yourself: “Can I fold this? Can I fold this? Can I fold this?” If the answer is yes, then fold. If not, then ask “Can I raise this? Can I raise this? Can I raise this?” If the answer is yes, then raise. If the answer is no to both questions, then and only then should you call.

To a reasonable degree, I adhere to the same philosophy when iterating on a design. First, for each functional or aesthetic element, ask “Can I cut this? Can I cut this? Can I cut this?” and if you can, if the functionality isn’t vital on the main page (or sometimes, at all), then cut, cut, cut. If you can’t, then ask “Can I improve this? Can I improve this? Can I improve this?” If you can (and ‘improve’ here takes a meaning more nuanced than ‘add to’ or ‘make more complex’) then do it. If you can’t cut it and you can’t improve it, then leave it alone for this iteration and move to the next bit.

Cutting is really hard, and often inspires users to pen ‘if you don’t put it back then I’m leaving you’ ultimatums, but be liberal in cutting within the privacy of your own development box and then step back and look at the whole canvas. Cutting one thing may make you miss the thing, but cutting several things can give you a whole new design that’s worth getting to know.

Rachel and I have posted three more Antarctica chapters in the last few days over at Antarctic Fox. If you like the images below then you should click through to the rest!

I’ll be posting updates here periodically, but if you’re interested in finding out about Antarctica updates as they come out, I encourage you to visit the Antarctic Fox feed, where you can add it to your iGoogle page or feed reader, or subscribe to email notifications.