I think the Apple TV will:

1. be controlled by an iPhone / iPad app (as a remote)
2. be a brand new hardware device – so it won’t be an iMac with TV abilities
3. be connected to the internet and run on iOS or an OS based on OS X. (email, pictures, music, etc)
4. have TV as an app, and allow for apps to be purchased / built for  it (App Store)
5. be social and interactive – as in, you can share tv shows, save them for later, watch schedules and so forth
6. have a camera and possibly facetime integration

I believe it will change the way we think about television, and do to Samsung / Sony / others what it did to Nokia.

I have seen so many bad designers lately, that my eyes hurts.

On the other hand, I can easily imagine new concepts that are fresh, interactive and playful, and can sketch them on paper, but I’m missing the tools part. So I’m a bad tools person. :-)

I’ll get good at this, as soon as Mobile is checked on my list as well. I’m not very good with time, got too much on my hands, but that is always a good thing.

At Vuzum we’re trying to remix our skills this year, so Flash devs will play a bit with iOS, Web devs will do the same with Android, and myself will try a bit of each + some design.

BTW, that position for an excellent designer is still open. But if you apply, please be excellent, otherwise you will waste my time, your time, and everybody else’s time in between.

In other words Photoshop, Illustrator and front-end development are things of passion to you, while theory, sketching and creative thinking are things of hard work.

[Updated]: I think it makes a little bit of justice to post a sample. Although the design is not impossible to achieve, the way you can interact with it is fresh, and if you ask me, unique – how many times have you seen this concept before? This is where the actual work is, and then the execution.

So we plan to purchase a small car, for girls. Something she can use daily in the city. Romania is really bad with parking places, roads and highways, so we take that into consideration.

The buddies at Vuzum shared with me some of the cars which would suit a girl’s needs, so what I must do now is choose which car to buy. They all drive for several years, they all purchased a car in the past three years (I did as well, but not for me), they know what they’re talking about.

So, for one that had nothing to do with cars, what did brands to attract me into purchasing from them? I spend a lot of time online, and from all the car brands that I know, only 3 or 4 have excellent online presence. And when I think about a small car, only two come to mind: Mini and Smart. Both of them have excellent names, and Mini is kind of my preferred choice, as I’ve been really engaged whenever I experienced a mini website or advertising banner.

It’s the smart and continuous use of interactive Flash elements, which made an impression on me, and the brand that’s on my brain when I think about small cars, is Mini. I don’t even know which company makes them, or if the name of the company is really Mini. I don’t even know what specs the car has. All I know before starting to research is that the car is really popular, looks nice and it’s very small.

On the other hand, I know about Smart that it’s a green car, and it’s built my Mercedes (if I were to listen to the guys).

The third choice is the other car manufacturers. I don’t know what I’ll choose after researching, but one thing is clear: I start with a Mini car in mind, because of the smart (the irony) advertising they did. What I’ll end up choosing, I don’t know, but I’ll keep you posted. :-)

I have noticed a sad thing over the past years of online being, and that is.. websites disappear. They disappear either when a campaign is over, or when the content isn’t relevant to the present anymore (like Norelco’s Philips website which made me purchase their hair cutting device). I have in my mind websites such as mjau-mjau.com (amazing animations for their time), an UNIQLO website that had nice transitions between a cloth’s colors and the next set of images, a Canon website which had a nice 3D effect, where images were stocked on top of each other, another website, which I don’t even remember who it was built for, where browser’s windows were part of the browsing experience, and I could go on and on.

Such amazing ideas and implementations are gone, never to be seen again. So this section, my interactive section, will focus on keeping such websites alive in my mind. Either by recording them, by speaking about them, by taking pictures of them, or doing all these things at once. All through our Blogvio platform, which is my main goal for 2010.

That being said, I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and may all of you have a better new year! Here’s for 2010! :-)