Boy Meets Blog

Building the Bird Nest

2009-04-27T17:32:00.003-04:00

I came across this and thought that it was pretty great...

South By Southwest: A Little Late, But a Wrap-up

2008-03-20T23:09:00.000-04:00

Attending SXSW for the first time is just as overwhelming as everyone says it will be. The number of sessions, people, and taking in Austin is really a lot to do. It’s also great. Experiencing the community that is defining some of the most successful areas of the web is a wonderful thing. It’s sheer size is quite overwhelming, though. Most conferences I’ve attended have been easy to meet people and see them again just by happenstance. At SXSW, if you meet someone interesting, you need to plan to meet them again or chances are, you might not see them again.

The sessions were really great, for the most part. There were sessions of higher and lower quality, but that’s to be expected. It’s of course much different attending the event than only listening to the podcasts. (Side note: the podcasts for SXSW 2008 will be posted here.)

Apart from the session notes and stack of business cards from the show, I now want to order a stack of Bloxes and I’m not even sure what they’d be for. Seeing the “sketchnotes” from Mike Rohde makes me wish I would have taken my notes in a similar fashion :-D

Notes by Southwest: Notes from 3/11/08

2008-03-20T23:07:00.003-04:00

Notes from sessions attended on 3/11/08 at South by Southwest.

“Content Management System Roundup”

Just the Gist

Comparison between:

George DeMet,
Owner,
Palantir.net

Jeff Eaton,
Lullabot

Tiffany Farriss,
President,
Palantir.net

Mike Essl,
Owner/Operator,
mike.essl.com

Matthew McDermott,
Principal Consultant,
Catapult Systems

View Notes

Sharepoint (George DeMet - MS Sharepoint MVP)

Full office suite allows for intranet and internet connection
“Master page” + “Page layouts”
Sharepoint designer
Authoring view - DHMTL menus with options (when viewing pages)
Workflow process and approvals built into system
Branching built in for design variations and future changes (also versioning)
Searching is included into the system
Thesaurus and relevance ranking
XSL + XML compliant
“variations” - usually for multilingual sites
“My Site” for intranet users
Nav + breadcrumb

Drupal - Jeff Eaton

Built by the people who use it
Hobbyists, businesses, volunteers, Belgians
Fast Company, many other major companies
Blogs, magazine sites, Terminus 1525 (artists community),
LifeTime TV
Pete Droge - all Flash content, mtv.co.uk, The Onion
End Poverty, Inc. Magazine, U.S. Magazine, DC Comics “Zuda”, Pop Sugar, Interfacultair, Sony Music Box
Around 3,000 plugins
Theme > Views of Content > Content > Users > Modules and Drupal Core
Users all have roles - designed to accommodate a large number of users
Blog post - can filter by user
Theme layer - generates all xml, html, mobile
Can have all mobile pages
Default Drupal site is very basic, functionality is added on via customization and plugin installation
Great at:

user-generated content
Many kinds of content
Communication
Versioned content

Other sites:

Daughtry (Sony BMG)
Artist interaction with community
Multiple sites can be run from the same core
Sony contributing back to project

Expression Engine - Mike Essl

“Me and Mr. T” - no custom PHP
Archive, error, xhtml, css-compliant
All fields on site
Invisible NYC
Material research - site coded in one day

Evolution of CMS choices - Art Institute, Chicago

Museum side and school side (2 sides to site)
Round 1 (Custom PHP)

Dreamweaver + CMS
Good: quickly created and running, discrete scope, targeted, simple
Bad: Navigation, difficult to extend, support (interim solution - rarely interim)

Round 2 (Serena Collage)

Nice master page structure
Breadcrumbs
“Contribution layouts”
Good: Master pages, workflow, version control, training contributors, breadcrumbs, links as assets, deployment
Bad: Expensive, slow performance, not mac friendly, navigation, training devs, interdepartmental, no support - dynamic, end-of-life product

Rounds 3 (Drupal)

Indianapolis Museum of Art
Drupal - JQuery integration
Can customize skin through interface
Powerful templating
Remote data
User management
JQuery integration

Q+A

Drupal - created an install profile to make new installs easier
Actions and workflow - control access and approval (built into Sharepoint)

“Creative Collaboration: Building Web Apps Together”

Just the Gist

Make sure that developers and designers are talking early in the process
It helps for the designer to sit in the same area as the developers
Team members need to be multi-talented in today’s environment

Paul Hammond,
Flickr

Simon Willison

George Oates,
Lead Designer,
Flickr

Matt Biddulph,
CTO,
Dopplr

Dave Shea,
mezzoblue.com

View Notes

Dopplr

About 1 year old, 4 people
Ships several times per day
Very collaborative
“Technical wife and design husband”
All active features can be switched on and off in dashboard
Live testing = sculpting, not painting

Simon Willison

Used to work at Lawrence Journal-World

Local paper in small town in Kansas
2 devs, 1 designer (css + html engineer), bunch of editorial staff
The work at Lawrence Journal-World grew into the Django framework

Parallel Workflow
Devs design the underlying data model
Automated admin interface allows content producers to start entering data
Devs building the logic for the customer-facing pages
Today...

With apps, underlying data is not as consistent
Continuing collaboration with a designer is essential right from the start

Dave Shea - Mezzoblue

Client design work, designer who codes
Independent

George Oates

Flickr.com, over 2.3 million photos
Paper and whiteboard
Over 20 million photos
Core dev team grown from 3 (5) to 16 (40)
Supporting cast of over 100 people
Still try to release early/often, but is difficult with more people and a larger organization

Decision-makers

Everyone responds well to seeing a design mockup
Collaboration between the roles - don’t leave out
Flipside, “skin this”
Make sure both are involved early
Sit in the same room
The top-down stuff can cause a top-down breakdown
Prototyping very useful, especially with live data
When you build prototypes (in company)
Depends on skill-set of team

Job Roles

Need to be multi-talented
Most productive involve small teams of generalists
Shared understanding of produce - voice of product
Devs can see weird little use cases, errors, etc
Especially important for independent to generalize
Larger teams have a harder time making decisions
Sometimes there isn’t as much overlap as there should be
Process is an antidote for stupid people
Shea: Contracts explicitly set out a design process
- Enforced only if it’s taking too long
Humans don’t respond well to anarchy but also revolt against overly pressuring red tape
Internationalization can invite more problems
Designing for blank slate, zero data, data constraints, are important when designers are working with live data
Learning svn is a very good idea

How can devs and designers communicate more effectively?

Client-side vs. back-end developers - need to have people that are focused on each
Abstractions are a little to tough to talk about in the beginning
Agile change management and request systems
Quickly make suggestions and rebuttal - smarty for PHP
Bugs and design decisions
Differences between team structure and personalities
The design quality of the prototypes should reflect the level of completion
Put a css class on the pieces that are not finished
Mentoring is incredibly important
Agile really relies on client being present
Client-side dev - at least slice up images

“Taking Over the World: the Flickr Way”

Just the Gist

Localization can be made less painful, but requires a lot of good planning
Community and professional translation methods can be leveraged for community-centered sites
The business must also be localized, how will you provide support and allow feedback for other languages?
Always use UTF-8 and plan the system for possible future localization (keep internationalization as part of the creation process)

Simon Batistoni,
Flickr/Yahoo! Inc

View Notes

Flickr engineering team
- Launched June 12th, 2007 -the localization took 7 months for 7 countries
- Emphasis on language over locale (not everyone in the U.S. speaks English, and that's true for every country in the world - every citizen of a country does not necessarily speak in the official language.)
- Good set of localization tools when you can use it in a wide range
- Too many words/legacy code
- UTF-8 was already being used, helped - time zones
Hugely passionate community
Usually people aren’t as emotionally invested in most sites
Flickr-people feel more passionately
Other challenge - owned by a big company. The purchase by Yahoo! gives Flickr a lot of resources to work with, but it also comes with more large company issues to deal with.
Introduces other strains and constraints
Internationalization vs. localization (i18n vs 110n)

Internationalization

What you do to make the site ready for localization
Make sure to deal with time properly
- Character data/sets
- Community data/sets
- Community interaction - bugs, reports, etc
Content classification - different countries have different value systems, especially an important distinction for media. What is okay in the U.S. is not okay in some other countries, and vice versa.
Payment systems
When is the right time? Doesn’t really matter, but should worry about it from day one.
It’s only okay to not internationalize a system unless you’re absolutely sure that it will not be localized (extremely rare)

Localization

Not just starting, where does it make sense to begin the process?
Language-switch
Legal review - large or small company - legal landscape in other countries
Ex: YouTube in Pakistan (keeps getting shut off)
Issues can impact you in a big way
Staffing - need very different structure - need to be able to take things like bug reports, and provide customer customer care. If it needs to be translated for product team to respond, how does that happen?
- All information must get routed tothe right place to provide the right sort of response
Flickr did a tour of all the countries that they were localizing for
- Ex: Found that Korea didn’t like white layout - too much whitespace
- Have not yet addressed other versions of template for issues such as this
Don’t Rush!
Focus on building a really good product first
Better to do it late than horribly, to enter a market and get a bad reputation is much harder than to launch when ready

Be prepared

Make sure you know where all the text strings are
Image tags with titles and acts
HTML alone is not enough
Some people use keys {sentence_replace_confirm}
- Downside: debugging templates becomes very difficult with so much meaningless data on the page
- Slows down entire process
Trans Jaxxx - the tool Flickr built for text strings uses a similar marker, but is much easier and semantic to view - just adds little tags like <!!>Text for translation</!!>
Also work in title tags and iamges
Attributed such as
- <!! esc=”squat”>TEXT</!!> (escape the string)
- <!! dev=”replace”> (replace the string)
- <!! note=”not goes here”> (note for the string)
Can be working on 5 or 6 things at one time (features)
preg_match_all
W3C has internationalization system can all be together
quite complicated
- http://www.w3.org/International/its/

Say no to concatenation, can cause a lot of problems for the system

My {$beverage} brings all the {$gendered-people} to the yard
BAD! = FRENCH
More code than there should be
<!!>{$username} added you as a contact</!!}

Dates, times, numbers

Give choice of time zone, 24 hour can also be worthwhile
Important to set locales
German: top (1,000) is actually (1.000)
- www.vladdy.net/demos/printf.html

Encoding

Use UTF-8, always, just do it
Matches ASCII characters
Most compact byte representation

Design

German is awful for line length
Must be flexible
Fluid too a degree, has to be able to expand a bit (40-50% - but sometimes too much)
When you use images with text in them, need to create them each time - drawback, but makes a decision

Taking The Plunge

Established growth
- Growth potential
- Usage possibility, or growth market
Potential headaches
- Localize somewhere, need support
- If not, a web site with no way to contact us - highly discouraging to users
- Content - legal, cultural issues
How much money do you have?
Have to worry about translation
Translation management tools
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_memory)
Trans Jaxxx - internally (Flickr)-built translation tool
Text units have red boxes around them (using the tool)
- QA people can click on to edit the text
Community-powered Translation
- Free, or at least, cheap
- Broader demand-driven translation
- Community ownership of content and process
- Downside: moderation and QA can be difficult
  - Community or professional for review? Can do it either way, but need to choose early. Some sites are using a mix, this is all easier to do if the site already has a solid user base. English-speakers already using the site are often motivated to help localize the site if they have ownership. in it. The biggest successes have so far been community-based sites, which makes sense because there is a source of motivation for “free work” to be provided.
- Community-only translation does not address the support issue of providing the same level of support to each country if you are only an English-speaking organization.
- Also doesn’t allow for secret launches (everybody knows you’re doing it)
- Examples: Live Journal, Xanga, Facebook, Google
  - Facebook dumped in text from Babblefish and then let the community correct the text
Professional Translation
- Banks of translators, all over the world
- Is expensive
- Hard to capture right tone, pros don’t usually care about keeping the tone or personality of the site correct, more about volume
Deploy - Flickr deploys between 5 and 10 times per day
Pre-bake all templates (PHP + Smarty)

Legal/Policy

Get some advice from someone who knows, which probably means someone from the region that you are localizing in
Cultural considerations

Foster A Single Community

Tear down the barriers where you can
Groups - allow translation of groups by users
Other help is geographical stuff
Visual means where language doesn’t matter - very helpful
Want to make localization seem trivial
Google makes assumptions based on IP, but that has a lot of drawbacks
Even in US, there are plenty of other languages besides US
Flickr uses a multi-stage “flitering” to determine what language to display first:
- Cookies for return visits, preferences on other Yahoo! properties
- Look at where they came from (Ex: if the traffic came from a French-speaking site, chances are that they speak French)
- Flickr also use IP location, never heard complaints
hitherto.net/talks, simon@hitherto.net

Question & Answer

Using .fr for anything?
- No, but the switching is not good right now
Combine community and pro translation?
- Pro as QA - professional translators provide the quality assurance and make sure that each translation is actually saying the correct thing for each text string
- Community as work - community provides the text translations
- “Draft and Official” versions of site - “draft” before it goes into review and becomes “official” text
How does Flickr handle support issues for localized versions?
- Have support agency to filter incoming reports
- Also have employees to do forums
- It needs a human being behind it, can’t just throw a product out with a language and no one behind it
Release Transjaxxx (the custom internal tool that was written by Flickr)?
- Would like to, but nothing is solid
- The downside of most translation software is that it tends to be desktop-based

Notes by Southwest: Notes from 3/10/08

2008-03-20T23:06:00.000-04:00

Notes from sessions attended on 3/10/08 at South by Southwest.

“The Art of Self-Branding”

Just the Gist

Branding yourself is harder than branding a company
Care about quality, keep it consistently good

Lea Alcantara,
Owner & Hired Gun,
Lealea Design

“The Art of Self-Branding Web Site

View Notes

This is not about not about how to design, etc
Entourage clip - Vinny Chase and brand names
Branding a company

Many reiterations, objective, inorganic

Branding yourself

Little no restriction, very subjective, organic

Brands are built on what people are saying about you, not what you say about yourself
Treat yourself like an amnesiac - Who are you? Who cares about who you are?
Interbrand 2007 Marketer

5. Relevance
4. Creative design/Brand I.O.
3. Talk the talk
2. Do who know who you’re talking to?
1. Consistently

Comparison of Wesabe.com (“nice guy”) and Mint.com (“guy’s guy”)
Relevance
Do you make sense?
Look around you
Nice guy - blissfully unaware, afraid of change, same approach
“Guy’s Guy”- changes w/ the times
Mint is about the quality of the presentation (And the tool is just as good)
Creative Design/Brand I.D.
Does your look match?
Sum of all the parts, not just the logo
Personality to product
GG - cares about presentation
Mint - easy to spell and remember
The quality of design adds to the level of trust
Emotion is the experience in user experience
Nice guy: forced, Guys guy: natural
Every potential equal - some are better than others
Too spread out - weakens the core
Example: Wesabe in 30 countries, but that many countries make the quality less overall
List of features, slideshows goes nowhere (Wesabe)
Mint: U.S. only, outlines benefits, and clearly defines outlines itself
Sample banks and cards easy to find
Consistency
Same quality in everything you do?
NG - all over the place
GG - consistency is key
Persist through CRAP

Criticism
Rejection
Assholes
Pressure

Differentiate
Educate those who you’re talking to
Best Personal Brand?
Actively: celebrities
Tim Ferris (The Four-hour workweek)
37 Signals (Jason Fried)
Process vs. Consistency?
Getting to know who you are, listen to users
Scott Bam - Pixel Media/Someone else branding?
Eliminates some subjectivity
Rebrand vs. rebuild
People who vouch for them
Transition to resume (importance of)?
Targeting wrong audience
Self-branding becomes self-selective
General business terms get ignored
Find and exploit weaknesses in another brand?
Frequency
Slow marketing: make friends
Conscious of personal brand while Twittering, etc?

“A Critical Look At OpenID”

Just the Gist

This was a great introduction of OpenID, but was very difficult to notate. The biggest take away for me was that Open ID needs some help yet. The idea is great, but until the larger web properties open up the sign-on system, the promise of the idea is not delivered. For example, Yahoo lets you “use” Open ID, but only as a provider and not a relying partner.

Artur Bergman,
Dir of Engineering,
Wikia Inc/O'Reilly Radar

George Fletcher,
Chief Architect,
AOL LLC

Jason Levitt
Eep! Eep!

David Recordon,
Open Platforms Tech Lead,
Six Apart Ltd

Andy Smith,
Google

“Adaptive Path: 10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment”

Just the Gist

Found best practices from researching a wide variety of high-functioning groups that had an output that with a firm, repeating deadline
Share the knowledge, both for skills and for project direction
Don’t forget who you are talking to
Be willing to give up work, not everything is good to keep around

Bryan Mason,
Chief Operating Officer,
Adaptive Path

Sarah Nelson,
Design Strategist,
Adaptive Path

View Notes

Not a lot of design history to rely on, a bit ambiguous
Started looking at other high-functioning groups - how do they do it?
Kitchens, writers, playwrights, hard deadlines that repeat over and over
Doing different things with the creative process, playing with it
Neo-Futurists

Chicago-based theatre company
30 plays in 60 minutes
12+ new plays every year

Culinary - “Aqua” in San Francisco

How a restaurant system can put out a precise product, consistently

Orchestras

Professional orchestras - Doing entirely new, full concerts every 1 or 2 weeks

“The Job Factory”

High-functioning group of screen writers

Steppenwolff (www.steppenwolf.org)

Includes people like John Malkovich, Gary Sinise, Joan Allen, and more
Another Chicago-based acting group
30-35 members
Groups of members can decide to work together, or not

Avenue Q

Broadway show with puppets
Web Techniques/New Architect
Editorial staff relied on

TIPS

Cross-train the entire team (increase empathy and experience)

Both production and administrative
Teaches you the possibilites
Switching roles, ex: Neo-Futurists, always rotate roles
Want to have a sense of what the other other groups are up to

Rotate Creative Leadership (mostly Neo-Futurist influence)

“The Hammer” - PM + Creative Director (in one)
Changes person-to-person, multiple products at the same time (roles are according to project)
Each actor also writes (Neo-Futurists)
“The Conductor” - Voluntary role - facilitates rehearsal process

Actively Turn the Corner

Defined by sense of possibility
“No bad ideas” -> to eliminating ideas (two parts of the process)
One source of frustration in a creative environment can be someone on the “wrong side” of divergence vs. convergence
With people in wrong corner, either good ideas executed poorly, or bad ideas executed badly
N.F. has a strict turn point, don’t allow people to get off the side

Know your roles

“Battle stations” - really successful teams know and run to their roles (kitchens are a great example of this - each person has a distinct role that is also vital to the function of the whole)
When a kitchen is in service, it relies on everyone doing what they do
In production phase, much different
Orchestra: Each section leader is in charge of each section and sits on the end of a row, it’s up to the person next to them to follow bowing, etc - down the line through everyone in the section... it all starts from the section leader, but each person is following the person to the side of them

Practice, Practice, Practice

Want to be prepped when the team needs to push together
NF do it by repeating the process again and again
When same groups work together, it becomes the same
NF will also sometime try to break their own rules to try something new
People will look for opportunities to practice
Non mission-critical projects for new people or methods
Practice is before getting paid for it
“Design sprints” - adopting and extending the idea of design sprints at Adaptive Path
Start off week deciding what to do for the whole week
Will do it in room with client team (if it’s the right client, does not work with everyone)

Make Your Mission Explicit (To The Whole Team)

Avenue Q - threw out a lot of their early work (just couldn’t use all of it)
Ex: Google - “organize the world’s information”
If the team doesn’t know what’s happening, the chances of it’s success are very low
Missions explicit, and actionable
“Manifesto” for NF - what makes them different from other theatre groups
Specific set of rules to play with
Actually constraints allow for more creativity, able to flip something upside down

Killing Your Darlings

Find respectful ways to remove material that doesn’t support the mission
Supportive, respectful, responsive feedback and teamwork
Every time they cut something, say “we’ll add it to the TV show”
(Avenue Q) - trick is, they won’t have a TV show
Same at a kitchen...when you have your own restaurant...
As reliable as they were willing to be
“That’s great for phase 2”
NF - on Sundays they do play cutting
Originally negative, then changing
Team meeting of play listings - start at top of the list and work through - if one team member says keep it, it stays
Relentlessly positive - yes or skip
Adaptive Path - no conversation about potential hires, only if there’s a huge disagreement. Normally, it’s only a thumbs up or a thumbs down in a room. Otherwise, no discussion

Leadership As A Service

Avenue Q - when a new director was hired, first thing he did was go through the entire cast (Broadway Show - it’s a lot of people) and listened to their entire involvement
In a lot of design departments, visually opposing
Facilitator vs. dictator - giving people the space to do good work
Coming together vs. cog in wheel
“Art of Possibility” book - transforming

Generate Projects Around Group’s Creative Interests

Work is made together
Can choose to work together (Steppenwolff)
IA person can work on taxonomies
Projects by interest - if a project is closer to a person, they will do more and better work
Do stuff that you are engaged in/with
Also important in-house to keep people engaged, come at something from a different angle
“The Job Factory” will drop projects if it’s not working out, or if they have too many similar in a row

Remember Your Audience

Doing it for other people...determine whether or not it is just part of “vision” or will serve the audience
Learn how you relate to users and anticipate feedback they will give
Written for people in diners and parks (Avenue Q)
Kitchen - segments audience into “regulars” and “new diners”
The regulars are the brad and butter, but new diners are an opportunity for something new - both represented well
NF will look at whole experience of show, doesn’t compare with other acting groups - compete with bars and sporting events (late at night)
As UX people, easy to see importance

Celebrate Failure

Often mentioned, rarely followed
Necessary byproduct of a creative process - not everything (if it’s original or trying something new) will be a success
Adaptive Path - renamed “Post Mortems” to “After Parties”
There are small parts of failure in every single project
Talk about things that didn’t work but avoid blame = take risks
Have to be able to take risks
Keeps you from becoming formulaic or losing the soul in your work
Without, would produce the same work again and again

Q&A

How?
Create guerilla tactics
Shared vision is a necessary component of the shifting roles concept
Need to have a Mr. Bush - “The Decider” - ABSOLUTE MUST, or everything collapses in a pool of confusion
Fine line - good to not always bet the leader - rough role to have all the time
Help to not become stagnant? Creative blocks?
Sometimes will get hooked on some problem
Remind of original intent - otherwise will stagnate: ex: “we need a new website” is not enough to go on - need a purpose, some specific things to accomplish
Practice? Correlation? - Photoshop/Illustrator - not typically provided - throw away work
Prototyping?
Tried to figure out how to have play time during projects - ex: play time, sketching

Notes by Southwest: Notes from 3/9/08

2008-03-19T23:04:00.001-04:00

Notes from sessions attended on 3/9/08 at South by Southwest.

“Wireframing in a Web 2.0 World”

Just the Gist

A wireframe is cheaper to build than a whole product and saves a lot of time
Allows for very rapid iteration and a great tool for agile methodology
Should be using the product or project in some way as early as possible, and this allows for that

James Box,
User Experience Consultant,
Clearleft Ltd

Richard Rutter,
Production Dir.,
Clearleft Ltd

Polypage example

View Notes

WHY?

Cheaper than building the whole thing
High-fidelity prototypes, meaning that it shows ALL interactions and workflow
Using something is better than talking about it or guessing
The more complex page interactions that are becoming more common require more encapsulation (more interaction per page in modern web design)
Deliver the whole experience, so are able to get a much better feel for what will happen with full design
Possibility scale - open, now, rather than confined when the actual is being constructed
Without page refresh, feedback mechanisms need to be built back in (for the user)
Universal appeal of high fidelity prototyping - it’s easier for people to get what is happening, and a better foundation on which to make decisions
The high-fidelity prototypes give the opportunity to usability test them

HOW

Basic start, server sides
JQuery-powered for functional prototyping - also allows for a large number of off-the-shelf plugins for quick iteration
Spend time on design, not coding (keep the code messy, it’s meant to be quick)
Example: Lightbox off shelves - can plug in default styles and know you will change them (or not)
“Notes” tab on page - turns on notes in page to show them revealed on click (and turn back off again) - alows for all elements to have attached notes
Mimic simple ajax action with the help of JS libraries and plugins/turn objects on and off to mimic dynamic objects

Ex: showing/hiding objects to fake interaction (ex: stars for rating, etc)

Shared library of widgets between groups (build up a library so they can be used again and again - emphasis on speed)
Sharing early will save crucial time down the road
Dealing with other “ifs” - timeouts, error, notes, etc
Show/hide states again for much more exploration while designing
Can add additional states to the “notes” bar
JQuery plugin w/ new bamboo - polypage plugin allows for this interaction

Adds the options to the bar automatically
Client example: Eden Bee

Looking at an actual page will show how complex it will actually be
Ex: whether or not to use ajax - in this case, 3 interactions in line was too much for one page
IA vs. using to see if it’s working
Polypage demo: elfcartel.clearleft.com - LIVE DEMO (of Elf Cartel wireframes)
Use wireframes as templates, helps to keep momentum going, work away from waterfall methodology
Usually, Wireframes are built for speed and assets are built up over time as the wireframes are used
The wireframes should not be kept a secret, and should be actively used by the team
Ensure conversation is structure/behavior - the wireframes are not about style or designed details
Subversion version control is used to keep track of changes as the prototypes are developed (at least for Clearleft)
Sometimes keep track of release number (of the prototype) in either the polypage selector, or in a list
Can use xml/ajax to simulate a database interaction
Paper mixed w/ high-res forms (sketch this before building it, use the wireframes to refine interaction, workflow, and layout)
Always starts with paper, for formatting

“Magic and Mental Models: Using Illusion to Simplify Designs”

Just the Gist

Designers can learn some things from magic
Controlling perception is key to providing a good experience and even improving the sense of something
Being aware of what to reveal and hide from user’s about technical details is very important

Jared Spool,
Founding Principle,
User Interface Engineering

View Notes

(Using the models of magic to result in the delight of users)
“Magic” = certain level of delight
Jared became interested in magic because his son was getting very into magic, and he’s been encouraging him

1. The Role of Mental Models

Illusion = Separating the user’s mental model from the designer’s model
Opposite from normal - communicate what you WANT the user to think is going on
Example: Teller and the “Miser’s Dream” and later explained it and in video
Disney’s Haunted Mansion

Experience: scary sounds, floating chandelier, head in ball
Technical: lights, scary sounds, tracks, speakers, etc

A computer example: “Deleting a file” in the OS - not actually happening…the file system is a lie
“Complexity fades to the background, simplicity comes to the foreground” - Marissa Mayer (speaking @ Core 77), VP Search & User Experience
Another example: Flickr.com - loading, visualizations, sets, etc - all lead into an experience and structure that's rearranged dependng on the viewing method

2. The Role of Perception

Tunneling effect - this was a live demonstration of a large, spinning disc - when the audience looked at it and then at a person’s head, their head would either contract or expand depending on the direction the disc had spun
Another computer example: Perception of time - blank vs. arrow vs. countdown (for loading, or other methods of showing a chronological progression or data loading)
All metaphors give a different perception of the passage of time
Even if the metaphors are exactly the same length, they come across mentally as taking more or less time
In one user testing example, they had done a test where they just studied user’s experiences compared to the real data. It was a very open test where they could surf pretty much wherever they wanted. The results were uniformly the same, but there was no uniformity from perception to reality. Task completion is the real key to perceived speed.
Tricks and helpers can be used to affect the perception of speed. A good example is the preloader on YouTube (and many other) FLV players - starts to play the video as it is being streamed.
Designers must understand perception

3. The Role of Delight

Over time, excitingnew features/enhancements grow to be an expected feature/entry into the market
Delight by Whimsicality - The Urban Fairies of Ann Arbor
Delight by Attention (to Details) - a good example is iTunes - the connected iPod is correct even down to the color
Bestwestern.com form - fills out all missing fields
Delight by functionality - ProFlowers and Farecast
Article on UIE site
Notes on Opera Blog (includes the Features/Expected diagram)

“Logos: Why They're Irrelevant and Can Actually Hurt Your Business”

Just the Gist

For a startup, emphasizing on identity and logos can distract from more important tasks

Jeremy Britton,
Partner,
Zurb Inc.

Christina Wodtke,
LinkedIn

Luke Wroblewski,
Sr Principal,
Yahoo! Inc

View Notes

People have created iconography to represent something larger for as long as can be remembered
The main reasons to not focus on identity can be broken down into costs, printing/money, time, momentum that could be used elsewhere
Industrial Revolution to Information Age

Manufactured goods vs. URL
Naming vs. logo
Principle of scarcity

Experience Economy
Separation of identity and webwork
Build the business first (startups)

I think I would have found this talk more interesting and convincing if I was involved in a startup, it had good points on that level. It failed to persuade across as large of a generality such as the title would suggest. A better title would have been “Identity for Startups” - it weakened the presentation to jump back and forth between the generalities of presenting an entire history of the logo (at least in concept), and then did not successfully drive the reasons home for their lack of power in today’s world. It was way too tied to the online world, and to a startup experience - both of which they had good points for. It failed to deliver what the title seemed to be promising, however.

http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?659

“Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users”

Just the Gist

Design attention to users into your tools and into your system of creation
Inspire and cultivate your user community
Give them the tools they need to have the best possible results, it will ultimately come back to help you

Kathy Sierra,
CreatingPassionateUsers

View Notes

“Cognitive seduction 4.0”
How do you help users kick ass at something?
To make better products, we must compensate for lack of humanness in them
Which is better? A kick ass... A. Product, B. Company?
What about C. I (the user)
Care about how they feel about themselves
Higher resolution user experience
Being better IS better
Neuro Genesis - Enriched environment = neurogenesis possibilities
Brain death by dull cube
Difference between fantastic and average
Not all about natural talent, talent for practicing
“We need a rage to master”
What do you help your users kick ass at?

Use Telepathy

Two flavors of mirror neurons
Allow us to run simulations of experiences
Resolution of the simulation depends on you - on what you’ve done
For visualization - sitting and thinking about doing something does improve your ability to do it (ex: downhill skiing, etc)

Serendipity

“Psychic” shuffle
“Serendipity” curve
Add randomness
Creative idea cards - Brian Eno

The “Dog Ears” Principle

iPhone scrolling ends in a little bounce
Real world physics - something small matters
Think about details as small as physics in animations, even if they’re small

Create Joy

Play
Amy Jo Kim + Liz Danzko

Inspire First Person Language

Example: In positive reviews, tend to be more “I’s”
Is there a larger action to connect it to?
What do they have in common?
Care
Give your users a way to woo other users

T-Shirt First Development

Inspire passionate users and they will share it with others
Make the shirt and other items before the product, will help to promote it early
People will express passion with objects

Easter eggs are great, so are other goodies

People love discovery

Tools for Evangelism, give your users a way to woo other users.

Video: “Twitter in plain english”
“My passion is awesome, yours is lame”
Help users defend this “totally lame waste of time” - Ex: Flickr, Twitter

Reduce user Stress!

Manage the user fight/flight response

Exercise the brain
Give them superpowers quickly

Example: Electric Rain: A user must be able to do something cool in 20 minutes or less

Momentum (Speed Up/Shorten How Long It Takes Someone)
Focus
Make your user documents reflect great feelings

Can mean the difference between “oops” and “you bastards”

Reinvest Mental Resources Into New Problems
Culture of support

Make sure that there are places that there are no dumb questions or answers. Teach your community how to give and take questions and answers.

Do not insist on ‘inclusivity’

Passionate users talk differently and will sometimes use jargon. Separate advanced and normal users from the beginning.

Practice seductive opacity

The brain loves mystery, anticipation, and curiosity
The digital world has raised the value of real-world things. A good example is the the packaging “unboxing” pictures you can find across the internet.
Example: Electric Rain - “getting and installing should feel like getting a gift”
Etsy - It’s not boomer nostalgia
Make Mag, Na Bak Tag, Chumby

Atoms are not old school

People have senses, use them - ibuddy, etc

Do what this guy does

Gary Vaynerchuk

Tea and Scandal Notes

“SEO 3.0: Optimizing Search & Social for 2008 and Beyond”

Just the Gist

Search Engine Optimization is a marketing tool, not just an analytical exercise - a marketing background can help
Still optimize for Google
Move to cost per action
Focus on providing good content, foster good word-of-mouth and links with your content
Mixed search results are becoming more common, so delivering a wider variety of media (including video) will become increasingly important
Find other ways to appear at the top of search, Google Local for example

Bill Leake,
CEO/Pres,
Apogee Search

View Notes

Search is a type of marketing. It is better to have someone doing it who is good at marketing than just an analyst approach. Though, mathematics is more and more important.
Google is still the overwhelming leader = it’s a Google world, so it’s best to optimize against them. Not only does a competitor have to have something better, but Google has to do a face plant in order for this to change.
Destination sites, particularly socially-based are making headway into popularity against Google (Facebook, etc)

Trends

Online is a piece of a total marketing approach
Avoid online industry myopia
Integrated usually works best – “be on both sides of Google” (Facebook/LinkedIn ads, plus search – combination approach). This requires a tight internal communication to pull off. Use online and offline together for mose effect.
Types of- 1. Word of mouth/referral marketing (best), 2. well-done PR, 3. search/internet marketing
Funnel of measurement for web: Impressions > Clicks > Leads/Sales > Offline sales
“measure twice, cut once” – use your data, build on it, see what’s working

Online Marketing Trends

Pay-Per-Click Trends

Understand who your customers are
Turn on and off marketing spin outside of normal
Move to cost per action
Bid management on the most competitive phrases – not necessarily the most popular terms
Site targeting is worth it. You choose the site, this trend is very threatening to large firms.
A/B testing
Keyword, ads, landing page
“Procter and Gamble” story: they had been languishing in the market, but started using their affiliates for product ideas, now most of their product ideas are not created internally. (Basic idea is draw fromView Notes a larger bucket – consider buying a wider range of adwords, etc – a broader base will allow for more competitive performance based to cost.)
Keywords that may have worked in the past (finding site) may not once those words become more competitive
Think of Google as supermarket – shelf space is limited. How can you dominate, have an unfair amount of that shelf space?

SEO Trends

GOOD content is king (again) – most important thing
Links are really important, and effect Google heavily. HS Yearbook analogy: the more people that signed your yearbook, the more popular you were (validation). Not all links good – what are the links in saying? There is a lot of contextual analysis around links to site (page/trust rank).
Keyword density doesn’t matter, and can kill conversions. Too much SEO time is wasted here.
80% of your Google ranking is what the world is saying (about you), 20% about yourself. The most important is the title tag. Use the keyword you need to be found in the title tag. Like “Keyword here, brought to you by Company Name”. In that 20%, about 6% is keyword.
Do not let SEO write content – most not qualified. Use writers, or write yourself.
Write content that will GIVE LINKS to you
Link baiting: funny, news, resource, controversial (“contra” hook), flame (not recommended, but can work)
Basically, it’s all about the experience

PR agency (good) press releases are excellent SEO (your content on other people’s sites) with keyword embedding (based on data)
Best results with frequency, keyword embedding, use internet wires, internet-only releases are great (not a print one is fine)
Online reputation management: what people can and can’t do with your copyrighted material – if you have enough customers, you will find crazy and evil – hopefully not both

VERY FEW in SEO are doing local, USE THIS
It’s another way to get ranked in Google, also map will show up above search results
Blended search will be more and more important, getting media and other content out there will help more and more (maps, video, books)
Get listed in multiple categories
Properly tag content (VIDEO)
Boring text listing can’t compete with video listing – plus they’ll be more engaged. It’s worth it.
Get ranking in multimedia

More Hype Than Real

Pay-per-click
Mobile is getting bigger, but not in ‘08 – iphone helped, but still to painful over all. Maybe 2010-11?
Virtual worlds (don’t waste money in second life) – only about 100,000 ACTUAL users, numbers heavily inflated – heavy and expensive

Real in 2008

Video. People will respond.
Social media optimization will become more important.
More convergence and cross-channel marketing (across platforms and media, experimentation will happen more and more, properly done online measurement drive more and better)

How to optimize video?

Video must all be tag-driven
Make a smaller video
Use Youtube, or other popular sites (more likely to deliver results)
Tags and text around video, but not overly done (again, youtube does this as part of the system – so better)

Run ALL versions of an ad – better to pick them all then to pick the wrong one internally. Use the data that is available to everyone now and use it. It’s much cheaper to produce and experiment short-term than to do the wrong thing long-term.
Change the way you think about delivering. After finding what works, THEN optimize – build landing pages, etc. Unless you are getting the clicks, don’t do the work.
Use the data, that’s what it’s for. Ignore it to your detriment.
Try not to create something and not use it (create and use everything, at least test it)
Not getting results? Move on.

Notes by Southwest: Notes from 3/8/08

2008-03-19T22:31:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to get my notes up from South by Southwest, but wanted to do it all at once and it has taken me a while to get them out of my notebook and into a better form! So, here’s the first set, also had several sessions on 3/7, but I’ve only posted the most interesting sessions.

“Design Is In The Details”

Just the Gist

Little things add up to make a big difference - sum is greater than the parts
The little details are important
Take the time necessary to do something good, obsession is good
Be proud of your own work, you care more than anyone else will

Naz Hamid,
Art Director, Weightshift

Lives in Chicago, works with designers around the country.

View Notes

Little things add up to make a big difference [in a project] - or, whole is greater than sum of the parts
Within context of the design, does it make sense?
We care, listen, solve problems, and take pride in our work

Finding inspiration in design objects and destinations:

Hotel View NotesMax - Seattle
Rapha Software
Triax Vator 300 (Nike Design)

Experience

Choices
Choose simple, elegant
Consistent
Stay consistent, build up design on parts
Completeness

Don’t want them to get hampered down on details [that just look wrong]
Get it done, done (show what you want them to see, avoid making excuses or explaining missing parts)
“Kellog view”/”Kellog insight”
All details are important

Step in, step out, step back - balance

sometimes take a two or three day break from a design
What are your initial reactions when returning to a design?

Be your own critic

Yale law school library
Simplify it if it’s not working

Complexity in simplicity, less is more

Humanized site

Obsession is healthy

Thoughts, revelations, breakthroughs
Waiting on a decision, let yourself think for the right answer
Also, don’t be afraid to act on something

Opening Remarks

Just the Gist

This was more of a conversation, so difficult to notate, but it will make a great podcast when it comes out.

College of knowledge vs. encyclopedic
More brainpower w/ collegiate vs. singular
Lost vs. the Wire - Media differences
Values applied in convergence out of work
“We” vs. “I” - Language of social networking - Outside in
Hillary vs. Obama

Henry Jenkins,
Co-Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT

Stephen Berlin Johnson,
Author, Founder of outside.in

“Blood, Sweat and Fear: Great Design Hurts”

Just the Gist

Design can be a present, “design for Christmas”
There is no barrier to entry on criticism of color or design
Pixel-perfect mockups, for each conversation
“10 to 3 to 1” - Start with ten, go to 3, then get down to 1
Brainstorming and “Pairing down” meetings every two weeks
The notion that the better a design is, the less resistance it receives is simply not true
Ideas matter more than talent

John Gruber,
Raconteur, Daring Fireball

Michael Lopp,
Senior Engineering Manager,
Apple, Inc.

View Notes

Mentos box - the little tab makes it more than just a box, helps make it more useful
“Design is a present”
Apple + present - good at giving people presents to people who live to open presents on christmas
“Packaging porn” - when was the last time you saw an unboxing of a Dell product posted online?
“Designing for christmas”

Feedback @ Apple

“Fear of the color blue”

Color is tough, it has such a low point of entry for feedback - everyone has an opinion

“Fear of critics”

No barrier to entry on feedback of art

“Fear of ponies”

Q: “What is wrong with this icon? A: Steve Jobs as approved it, so nothing is wrong with it.”
“I want a pony” - if people that feel like they should be hard are not heard, they will blindside you

“References the spirit of the company”
Imagination is more important than creativity

Where to Start

Pixel-perfect mockups, every time a conversation happens. Makes a huge difference to put all the content in, then you can talk about something real.
Don’t believe in lorem ipsum, better to remove ambiguity, that does take a lot of work
Complete feeling for entire mockup
10 to 3 to 1

Choose 10 good versions, bring down to 3, iterate down to 1
A lot of room to design in
Ex: Cultured Code - “Things”

Paired design meetings
Brainstorm (relax, no worries)
Pair down > Production meeting (how it will work, insanity to reality)
Brainstorm/pairing down meetings every two weeks
The Pony Meeting

“The meeting for the ponies”
Once every two weeks, roughly, fitting with brainstorm and production meetings
This is where the best ideas from the other two meetings (brainstorm and production) are presented
They have a place to say what they want to, and just want their opinion heard

Unexpected discovery - design as a present

John Gruber - “The Blood”

Everyone involved in design can operate under the notion that the better the design, the less resistance there is - not true
Ex: Beatles White Album cover - it was compared to “Meet the Beatles” at the time, and less preferred, but history regards it as a great, even classic design
A lot of people don’t want great design, it’s uncomfortable
Comfort vs. quality
“Better” necessarily implies “different”
Different = scary
“Exactly the same, but better” = “Exactly the same, but different”, does not work

The Plea Bargain

Want to go with great design
It always means taking a chance
Design that's “Pretty Good” can be guaranteed
“Don’t try to be original, just try to be good” - Paul Rand

Don’t create something good by trying to be original
Try to be good, will be original

LOGO - instantly digestible, perfectly balanced
Example: IBM logo
“A logo derives it’s meaning from the quality of the thing that is symbolizes, not the other way around.”
Example: ABC logo
“I could do that” syndrome - there’s a big difference between pushing keys and writing
What people think of as a great design
Idea matters more than talent
Apple logo - impossibly perfect bite - “original sin” - temptation
Designers are expected to be clever
Expect something more
“The wig problem” - If I’m going to pay all that money, I want a lot of hair (even if it doesn’t look real)
Design problem - “more design”
UPS logo - package tied with string (also, present)
2003, new logo
Design to stand the test of time
“Design is making decisions, and packaging them for the test of time” -John Gruber
Saying “Wrong blue” is not designing, it's giving opinion
Not delivering a set of decisions, it’s the design
Alfred Hitchcock - didn’t shoot “footage for editing” - got final cut

Meticulously planned out (storyboarded) his movies beforehand, the footage only fit together one way

Henry Ford - asked people what they want - faster horse
You and your design are not the same thing, be able to talk about it objectively
Are you willing to be called an asshole? (in order to create good work)
Small logo vs. big logo - correct answer: no
Conflict is inherent in great design
All great designers have reps of being assholes (another ex: Stanley Kubrick)
More dedicated to integrity of your work, or what people think of you?
No. (is the most important tool)
It’s the only way to achieve great design

Farming, The Wright Way

2008-03-05T18:42:00.019-05:00

Just the name “Frank Lloyd Wright” makes certain things come to mind. It might be words like “innovative” or “out of reach”. “Farming” is most likely not one of them, even though Wright himself worked on a farm himself during some parts of his boyhood.

My wife and I had the opportunity for a two-night stay at a wonderful bed and breakfast that was one of the only farmhouses that had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Through a unique (which is an understatement, it's one of the only in existence) twist of history, the Muirhead House was built in the rural setting of Hampshire, Illinois and had fallen into a state of disrepair.

It has been lovingly restored to a stunning setting by Sarah Muirhead Petersdorf and her husband, Mike Petersdorf. (Sarah is the granddaughter of the original owners of the home, although I have to give a lot of the credit to the hard work of Mike, who also tends to the daily work of the B&B).

Among the goals over Frank Lloyd Wright's career was to complete structures that were accessible, usable and affordable (not all of these goals were always realized, of course.) The farmhouse was designed for a working farm and was designed as such. In fact, much of the correspondence between the family and the architect (or his assistant) is saved for guest reading – which makes for quite an interesting read.

Considering only about 500 of around 1,000 designs of Wright's were ever built, the Muirhead Farmhouse is a unique gem in a very small pool of potential providers. In my understanding, it's the only house that was designed as a working farmhouse. It's one of the only Wright Bed and Breakfasts in the world, and certainly the only Bed and Breakfast Wright farmhouse :-D

If you are within driving distance of Hampshire (a short distance north of Schaumburg, IL), and it happens to be a reasonable hour, call them right now and get yourself a night or two. You'll thank me later.

Driving up to the house (don't adjust your monitor, we did go there in the winter).

View of the main bedroom and front hallway from the dining room.

View of dining room down the hallway showing the dining room glass windows.

The house is designed on a 4'x 4' grid system. The dark terra cotta colored concrete squares that make up the floor are lit from above by pin lights that are centered over each square, except near the walls. The floor also supplies radiant heat produced from a system of heated pipes built into the floor.

At 176' (if I remember correctly), the house is a very long and features two elongated hallways. The front, which was uncovered in the original house plans and altered over back and forth conversation, welcomes into the house with long, full windows into the main living area.

The front hallway is mirrored in design by the front porch, the concrete grid carries out onto the patio and breaks into a brick border.

The hallway at the far end of the structure allows much less light in, which makes sense, since the majority of bedrooms are down this hallway. These rooms were originally designed for the children, of which there originally five, now three because of size limitations of the original design. (When I say size limitations in the original design, think of rooms for monks - very small rooms.) Mike and Sarah made the wise decision of slightly altering these walls to make room for three bedrooms down this hallway, which makes even more since they are now running the house as a bed and breakfast.

One of the smaller bedrooms.

Wright, using the same materials throughout the entire house, and in his Usonian (quite minimalistic) style, brings the materials in to form a unique shower. The brick used here is the (now rare) Chiago common brick, which is very porous and had to be sealed to ensure protection from the water.

Main living room with view to front lawn.

Fireplace (one of three throughout the home) in the main living room, complete with the signature Wright angled wide open face and angled back. (You can find some similar designs repeated in Taliesin and other properties.)

Other links of interest:

PrairieMod: A Love Affair Continues: The Mid-Century Modern Muirhead Farmhouse B&B (he has much better photos than I do - visit this, if any)
Chicagoist article mentioning the few Frank Lloyd Wright houses that can be stayed in (also via Prairiemod)
Google Earth Community overview (text also from Prairiemod)
Savewright.org

Boy Meets Anniversary

2007-04-28T14:51:00.001-04:00

So, I missed my anniversary. But not the one my wife would hate me over.

I noticed that as of April 22, 2007, I have been a blogger for 2 years now. Happy bloggiversary to me.

Jonathan Coulton

2007-03-19T12:40:00.000-04:00

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/
I first heard this guy in one of Ze Frank's last episodes of "The Show". I've been a fan ever since. Jonathan is a very talented guy that has gone from programmer to (full time) independent musician. Of course, why not? This is one of those stories that couldn't have happened without the medium of the internet. At least, it would have been much more difficult.

"I used to write software, but I quit the day job in order to pursue…other things…or something. I am the musical director for Little Gray Books created and hosted by friend John Hodgman, and I am the Contributing Troubadour for Popular Science Magazine.(for whom I do a weekly interview podcast).
My most recent project was called Thing a Week, in which I produced a new song every week and released it for free as a podcast for an entire year. All of these songs will be released on CDs in their original order (and state of completion) very soon, but you can also buy them from my online store, or from iTunes."

Here lies a giant baby, and a rubber duckie. (Bye Ze Frank)

2007-03-16T19:43:00.000-04:00

Last episode of "The Show with Ze Frank" was today. The bizarre, funny, and often thought-provoking podcast will be missed. My best to Ze.

To those who didn't see "The Show", it was essentially a year-long community experiment and podcast (read more at wikipedia) with the personality of a John Stewart. It involved a lot of community projects such as the Earth Sandwich, Comunity Haikus, and many more. The projects are almost more interesting if you know that Ze Frank has a background in neuroscience. If you're just finding this guy, he's worth a look.

Superbowl Ad Watch: Top Spots

2007-02-05T10:39:00.000-05:00

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/super-bowl-ad-watch-top-spots-233870.php
Don't normally cover topics, but hey, it's the superbowl. Some nice ads here, worth a watch.

Screwing over your customers with that attention to detail

2007-01-30T18:56:00.000-05:00

I'm not the biggest fan of Microsoft. Sure. But, this is simply insane, if true. This has never previously been the case, and I'm not sure what you're supposed to do if something goes wrong with your shiny new version of Vista.

"Vista upgrade invalidates your XP key January 29th, 2007 by Blair If you choose to purchase an upgrade version of Windows Vista to upgrade XP, you will no longer be able to use that version of XP. Either on another system, or as a dual-boot option.

The key will be invalidated, preventing activation. From Vista’s EULA found here (PDF) :

13. UPGRADES. To use upgrade software, you must first be licensed for the software that is eligiblefor the upgrade. Upon upgrade, this agreement takes the place of the agreement for the software you upgraded from. After you upgrade, you may no longer use the software you upgraded from.

For many people this may not be a problem, but it’s a change from earlier versions of Windows."

Link to original story:
http://www.tomcoyote.org/tech/vista-upgrade-invalidates-your-xp-key/74/

Frameworks Extravaganza

2007-01-19T09:49:00.000-05:00

Django

Dojo

Moo.fx
moo.fx is a superlightweight, ultratiny, megasmall javascript effects library, to be used with prototype.js or the mootools framework.

Mootools (NICE website)
MooTools is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented javascript framework designed to make writing extensible and compatible code easier and faster. MooTools lets you get the job done efficiently and effectively.

Prado PHP Framework
"PRADO^TM is a component-based and event-driven programming framework for developing Web applications in PHP 5."

Prototype

Prototype is a JavaScript Framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications.

Featuring a unique, easy-to-use toolkit for class-driven development and the nicest Ajax library around, Prototype is quickly becoming the codebase of choice for web application developers everywhere.

Ruby on Rails

script.aculo.us
script.aculo.us provides you witheasy-to-use, cross-browser user interface JavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly.

Spry framework for ajax (from Adobe)
The Spry framework for Ajax is a JavaScript library for web designers that provides functionality that allows designers to build pages that provide a richer experience for their users. It is designed to bring Ajax to the web design community who can benefit from Ajax, but are not well served by other frameworks.

Symfony PHP framework
Based on the best practices of web development, thoroughly tried on several active websites, symfony aims to speed up the creation and maintenance of web applications, and to replace the repetitive coding tasks by power, control and pleasure.

Turbogears

JQuery

jQuery is a new type of JavaScript library.jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages.

jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

Yahoo! UI Library (YUI)
The Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. The YUI Library also includes several core CSS resources. All components in the YUI Library have been released as open source under a BSD license and are free for all uses.

Zend

Make your own palm pilot (kinda)...

2007-01-07T22:09:00.000-05:00

If the Palm Pilot went B.C. ...

Blog post: http://weblog.bignerdranch.com/?p=23

In the spirit of a couple posts ago, a nice recap of GTD-related postings from 43 Folders

2007-01-05T11:08:00.000-05:00

Merlin Mann has posted a nice recent post "Getting Things Done: Recap for ‘07" that details some of his more successful posts over the last year. Interesting read if you're into this stuff. Even if you're not and just interested in the general topic of life organization or GTD in general, I'd recommend it.

Personally, I'm fascinated by the topic of people dealing with and relating to technology and how it impacts our daily lives. It impacts us in so many ways that it's worth thinking about.

Me and GTD

2006-12-09T19:33:00.000-05:00

I recently came across the work of David Allen, author of "Getting Things Done" and I have to say that it's been a good experience. David's work has built a following online (read more about it at Wikipedia) and off, and revolves around a set of techniques and principles. If you are an enlightened person, and thus an iTunes user, there is a very recent series that David Allen completed with Merlin Mann, the host of 43 Folders. (If you do look for it, search for the "43 Folders" podcast and the series of discussions is called "Productive Talk".)

So, the podcast has gotten me into reading the actual book (all right, listening to it, it's an audiobook--it's a more efficient use of time, see its working already). I have to say, not a fan of audiobooks because of the cheesy "marketing jingle" music and robotic breaks between chapters. Aside from that, the book is based on some very practical thinking on things like dealing with email, your inbox, etc. One of my favorite (albeit basic) thoughts so far is the practice of the the "next action". The basic idea is simply that there is a list of stuff that you have to do and chances are that you are procrastinating on more than one thing. The next step would just be whatever 10 to 15 seconds of thought dedicated to each task to come up with whatever the next action would be. For "get a car tuneup", the next action could be "check if the shop can take the car". The idea is that it takes the list of "stuff" and makes it into a more meaningful thing. If the tasks turn into actions, it makes them easier to deal with and get through.

A lot of this is about basic patterns and behaviors, just the doing of the basics over and over. Makes sense, even if someone is a master of something, the basics are still the foundation of whatever it is.

Boy Meets Blog gets an update (not that you can see it)

2006-12-09T19:32:00.000-05:00

This is my first post with the new Blogger! Thanks to Google, the blog will be easier to find things in (once I update my template :-D) since I can add tags now.

So, in short, there will be improvements coming soon, since I can now use them!

Multi-tasking is crap.

2006-11-03T11:16:00.000-05:00

183 million people are regularly exposed to noise levels labeled as excessive by the EPA.

Do you have a cell phone?
Do you have a pager?
Do you have voicemail?
How many email accounts do you have?
Do you have a cell phone with voice-mail and e-mail?
Is there anywhere you go that doesn’t have noise?
Do you ever do one thing during an entire day?
Sleep doesn’t count.

Is there such a thing as visual noise?
When was the last time someone asked how you were and your response didn’t include the word “busy”?
Talking is easier than listening.

Why is noise so enjoyable? If it’s not enjoyable, why do we voluntarily subject ourselves to so much of it? Convenience?

How often do you end up responding to email? How often does your Outlook pop up with a brand new email message?

Just for a while, think about how often in the day you are truly focused on something. How would your life change if you weren’t dealing with perpetual partial attention deficit? Do you need to answer every email right away? Do you need to check whatever electronic device that you’re thinking about checking right at this moment?

Are the tools that are supposed to be helping you stealing something from you? The quality of your work? The quality of your relationships? The quality of your attention to something?

There are and will always be emergencies that need to be attended to. But not always. Just something to think about.

SOURCES (for content and some just for philosophy):
(Some) Attention Must Be Paid! (from Newsweek)
43 Folders, which also has a worthwhile podcast available via iTunes.
Nooma “Noise”

It's Almost Friday!

2006-09-21T22:47:00.000-04:00

I give you permission to dance your socks off. Click it, it's worth it. Not sure what happens at the end there. Okay, not sure what happens in the whole thing, especially at the end there.

Yeah, I'm finally back to blogging again. I kind of took the summer off without meaning to, but it's cold outside now, and I feel like typing.

A Beta Flava

2006-06-06T12:08:00.000-04:00

Microsoft has some betas they released not too long ago if you like free software and fixing computer after you break them by trying beta software. Actually, from what I've tried, they're not too buggy...

Windows Media Player 11
Expression Graphic Designer
Expression Interactive Designer
Expression Web Designer

Office 2007 Beta

Navigation Left

2006-06-01T08:24:00.000-04:00

This doesn't really count as an actual post, and it's been too long between actual posts, but this is too funny not to write about. While doing some research, I came across a fantastic piece of government in action with a useful article about how the most effective navigation is often on the left side of a page. I won't tell you what's ironic here.

Link: http://usability.gov/accessibility/index.html

Geese are the reason people shoot things.

2006-05-02T08:40:00.000-04:00

Spring has sprung here in MI, and the canadian geese are loving it. In the office, you can hear their joyful little honks all day.

But they have cute little fuzzy babies, so I just have to forgive them.

More things to do while you drive...

2006-03-26T11:30:00.000-05:00

...besides looking at the road.

VW is working on an in-dash computer that controls the car, an ipod, a palm treo, and pretty much anything else that you plug into it. Ref: http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6052333.html . Kinda cool--but that's a lot of stuff to do while driving down the highway.

The sleeping giant raises an eyelid (some product news from Microsoft after a pretty long relatively dormant period)

2006-03-08T20:47:00.000-05:00

Since I write so often about upcoming Apple products, I thought I'd give the big guy a break and write about this Microsoft release that's supposed to happen tomorrow. Nobody really seems to sure what the thing does, but they are releasing a product under the name Origami Project (http://www.origamiproject.com/) that is being announced at an event tomorrow. Can't say much for the site, but it's evidently supposed to be a product to take on the iPod in some fashion, sounds interesting.

Sounds distinctly like the buzz leading up to the release of the Segway--everybody is excited about it and have no clue why. We'll just have to wait and see.

UPDATE 3/23/06: Sleeping dogs lie--so, Microsoft launched the thing. So far it seems to have landed with a thud. Seems the price point is perhaps a little higher than people were expecting. You can see the details on their own site here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/umpc/default.mspx

Hold on a moment while I log onto my...hard drive?

2006-02-06T18:49:00.000-05:00

Yeah that's right--online file storage is becoming a reality. And I think it's pretty cool.

Some are hosted servers for a fee, some are free. According to a recent TechCrunch posting, the recommended services are OmniDrive followed by Box.Net and Streamload.

Other mentions include Allmydata.com, esnips, Freepository, GoDaddy, Iomega File Storage, Mozy, MoFile, Openomy, StrongSpace, Xdrive, and Zingee.

It's a great idea, being able to find your files anywhere? How many days into Google gets into this fray? I'm taking bets.

So, where's all this going? Interesting insight (again) from the guys at TechCrunch:

I firmly believe that online storage should, and will, be packaged with new computers and applications like Windows. The amount of unprotected but hugely important media content out there on hard drives (music, movies, home movies, pictures), is growing every day. People need somewhere to back this data up for a reasonable fee, and it seems to me that Dell and others should package this service with the PC. All initial software would be auto stored, and users would have the option to continuously syncronize their hard drive with the virtual drive.

Interesting idea, wonder when a computer company will offer online file storage. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm...interesting. Guess we'll have to wait for the next version of Windows.

Now I need to find one of these services that will let me find my files and car keys.

Use Firefox/Don't always like Flash?

2006-01-18T06:58:00.000-05:00

Don't get me wrong--I do some Flash, but sometimes you just don't want to see it. Well, using PrefBar, you can turn off Flash as well as a few other things while you browse.

Geeky uses for an old mac and some new news from Apple

2006-01-14T17:23:00.000-05:00

All right--so I have this old mac that I couldn't figure out what to do with. So, now it's a media center. Huh?

Well, I hooked it up to our TV with a little help from this useful little thing. So, now the old mac can play music through iTunes and can get on the internet via a wireless connection. Or, the whole thing can be controlled with a remote if I increase the geekiness level a little more and use this. But, hey, it is free.

Interested in learning more? Jon Hicks has a great post about using a mac for a media center. Want to use a PC? There's stuff out there.

Side note: Last week Apple announced new macs that run on intel chips. And Microsoft is using the PowerPC chip (what Apple used to use) for the XBOx 360. Huh. Welcome to bizarro world.

The all-seeing dots (Google Earth)

2005-12-09T15:59:00.000-05:00

Ok--wow.

Don't blame me for how much time you'll spend staring at it, but this is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. It makes all other map tools look like cuneiform clay tablets.

Check it out: http://earth.google.com/

I would heavily recommend a broadband connection for the experience, but it is well worth it. There's a lot of features here, so keep trying new stuff!

We've moved (again)

2005-12-09T15:58:00.000-05:00

We recently moved to the Lansing area, thanks to all those who helped!

Fun links to make your Friday bright and shiny.

2005-12-02T16:59:00.000-05:00

Baby Bush Toys

Fancy Parking

The three step solution to everything

2005-11-18T16:36:00.000-05:00

The only reason I haven't copyrighted this is lack of money.

STEP 1
Listen carefully and intently to all concerns from all parties. Be sure to take notes.

STEP 2
Carefully ponder and consider all input from all angles and all people.

STEP 3
Forget everything that just happened.

Old man winter is a crotchety old guy

2005-11-17T08:20:00.000-05:00

It happened, first snow of the year. Now it's that weird halfway thing where you can barely see the tips of the grass before the snow takes over. We were lucky and got a pretty long fall, but winter is here.

A couple more random links

2005-10-31T17:56:00.000-05:00

Readymechs-- the most fun you can have with folded printer paper and extra desk space.

And, if you're a graphic designer or just really into type: foundtype on flickr

Brought to you by the letter 5 and the color puce.

Google, how do I love thee?

2005-10-28T14:10:00.000-05:00

Let me SMS the ways.

iTunes Linking

2005-10-21T10:09:00.000-05:00

This is kind of cool. Came across this because I want to add this to the blog in the near future, but here you go. This is how to link to an iTunes page from a web site (link to antipixel blog).

General Mess

2005-10-17T09:37:00.000-05:00

Interesting story on a little bit of history, current events, and the future for the folks over at GM. I hope the best for them, and that they can work out their cost issues. Interesting read, I thought that they were in better shape than Ford, but I could be wrong. I'm all about unions, but what good does it do to have great benefits when your employer goes under?

New iPod/iTunes

2005-10-13T07:59:00.000-05:00

This is already everywhere, but there's a new ipod that plays video and you can download TV shows from itunes among other video stuff.

Simplifying the simple.

2005-09-26T16:21:00.000-05:00

It recently occurred to me that there are multiple levels of simplicity. Since I'm in design and (now) user interaction more than I once was, simplicity becomes more and more important. And simplicity isn't so much just the fact that something looks simple. Something can have complexity, but still be simple. Simplicity comes from the fact that the brain can perceive it.

There are multiple levels of simplicity. It takes work to make something truly easy to use, that is, if it's worth making. Like a marathon, you can quit the first time you feel like quitting or you can keep going and actually reach the end, where you should be.

Something that doesn't need to have an explanation shouldn't need to have an explanation. I guess I've known this all along and have actively pursued this philosophy, but it's important to tag and talk about thoughts to solidify them. For me, at this time, I'm just going to call it "Simplifying the Simple." It's, uh, simpler that way.

Skype Recording

2005-09-24T13:41:00.000-05:00

Hey, remember me? I haven't posted for a while, thought it was about time to get some new content on the blog. Came across PowerGramo for Skype and thought it was a great thing to talk about. It's a handy dandy little program that lets you record Skype conversations to refer back to later. Sure, there's the whole fuzzy area about recording conversations and is it really that beneficial... I guess if you have a horrible memory about what you talked about?

If you're reading this and have no idea what Skype actually is. Well, I guess you have more homework to do than the rest of the class. Enjoy.

New job!

2005-09-11T19:25:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to make a quick note that I did start my new job with TechSmith for those that knew. With a mix of excitement and nervousness (mostly excitment), I started this past friday!

Apple brings da rhythm.and maybe a little funk.

2005-09-07T16:02:00.000-05:00

Translated into english: they released the iPod nano and iTunes 5... excited about itunes 5 - lyrics! Not a big deal, sure, but something I've wanted for years.

Google moves in on instant messaging

2005-08-25T14:59:00.000-05:00

Google spits out yet another product. Google talk. Yahoo keeps buying out, and Google keeps developing...

Fun site time.

2005-08-25T10:20:00.000-05:00

Two sites: one is beautiful and the other is just funny. Two guesses which is which.

http://www.stuffonmycat.com

http://www.violetmagazine.com

Shortest distance from point A to point B: A 27' truck.

2005-08-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

Well, we've moved. Sold our condo and moved. We're still in the middle of unpacking to some degree, so it's kind of like a surreal camping experience so far but with all of our possessions along with us. We have no internet and no phone line at the new place at the moment, so we've been watching a lot of DVD's as we unpack and figure out where everything should go.

The moving truck was an experience. I don't often drive a 27' truck. Just call me Hoss. A big thank you to all our friends and family who helped us move. You made it much easier!

My Dog is Tom Cruise

2005-07-26T12:04:00.000-05:00

This is genius.

Courtesy: The New Yorker.

Konfabulator cries freedom

2005-07-26T10:49:00.000-05:00

Yahoo recently purchased Konfabulator and made it free. Check it here.

For those not in the know, it lets you run some really handy (and yes, some really stupid) little programs on your desktop. Things like local weather, search utilities, clocks, system information, translation tools and the like.

Check me out. A newer, shinier me. And now with half the calories.

2005-07-25T11:15:00.000-05:00

Finally uploaded a new version of my online portfolio at http://www.gorslinedesign.com.

Gorillaz: Demon Days

2005-07-18T22:01:00.000-05:00

Mmmmm, ridiculously good. Check it out. Or, yeah, listen on itunes, welcome to 2005.

Say what you want, you may not like it. I can respect your opinion. You're also wrong.

Huge aside: Ok, so has anybody found any good podcasts on the new itunes 4.9? I've tried a few and they all stink up to this point.

One constant: change

2005-07-18T21:44:00.000-05:00

Sure, there's been the death and taxes thing. The optimistic certainties. What about change? Why is change never by itself, but travels in flocks? Things never change small and never one at a time but all at once. If something happens, it's not a single something but a thing over here and a thing over there. Why is that? A question for the void of cyberspace.

Just makes me think that the "stress chart" tests are screwed up. You know, the ones that say public speaking is one of the biggest stressors next to death and moving. Or it goes something like that. I think it's actually that the guy that's stressed out about public speaking also has five other things going on in the back of his head.

Another Friday link.

2005-07-08T12:24:00.000-05:00

Sure, I haven't posted anything in a while. I'll make up for it with this.

It's friday.

2005-07-01T08:32:00.000-05:00

Get up and dance.

People Watching: Thoughts On Walking In A Straight Line

2005-06-29T19:53:00.000-05:00

All right, so this might be a weird thing to write about, but I got a kick out of it. Besides, maybe more appropriate to write and send into oblivion than to actually bring up in conversation. This happened while I was waiting in line at my car dealership to pay for a service appointment. But that's probably more information than you cared about. There is a hallway probably about 15 feet wide and I was standing along one wall and there was another person along the other. The guy who just payed for his car goes to leave and instead of walking down the middle of the hall, asks me to excuse him (move).

I could make a comment about the guy, but it was actually kind of humorous. Instead of walking in a slight arc to get to the door at the end of the hall, he had to walk in a straight line while actually taking longer to walk to the same door...? Kinda funny, but it makes me wonder how often I do the same thing in a less literal sense...

No news is now news...

2005-06-27T19:47:00.000-05:00

Interesting announcement from GM today. They will stop releasing voluntary financial data and have also stopped top executives from buying or selling stock. Things not sounding good over there. Link.

Shameless, totally unrelated personal plug: my online Flickr photos are starting to get more popular - I'm getting added to contact lists, kind of exciting to me.

How do you like them Apples?

2005-06-23T13:26:00.000-05:00

Thinksecret has released some pictures and more info about the Intel Macintosh if you're a little geeky and into this stuff. Check it out here. The thing will even boot Windows XP.

NOTE: This site has been getting a ton of traffic, so you might need to try a couple of times to get it to load. The link *is* correct.

Pimp My Chicken

2005-06-22T12:48:00.000-05:00

So, a couple days ago (actually, father's day-been a while since my last post) we tried beer can chicken for the first time. Everything worked pretty well, but from my experience I can offer the following advice:

1) Use skewers or something you can stick through the chicken to keep it upright.
2) Use a beer you don't mind using (can also be pop or something as long as you don't mind root beer flavored chicken.) But, I ended up using snooty beer so it was a little more expensive.
3) Be patient. I turned up the flammage a little too high a little too early so I scorched Mr. Chicken on his extremities. He was still yummy, and the breast part was nice and juicy from the beer.
4) A smaller can would work better cans weren't designed to fit in a chicken, I was thinking about trying a can from one of those slimmer energy drinks like Red Bull or Pimp Juice.

You can get more detail here from Food Network. Or here for a more unique look at beer can chicken.

EDIT: Gotta apologize for the picture - it looks better after it's cooked.

Apple vs. Intel - What!? Apple IS Intel!? & Star Wars

2005-06-06T21:54:00.000-05:00

Title is weird, yeah, those don't go together. Anyways, check this out. And, cue the end of the world. Kinda strange, don't get me wrong, I'm typing this on a PC. But I love Mac.

Plus, I thought I should say this: I saw Star Wars last weekend and it was actually pretty good. But, Hayden Christiansen's acting IS better with the helmet. And, if you haven't seen it, the big surprise is that Darth Vader has asthma. You know, hence the breathing.

ASIDE: PISTON'S JUST WON! WHOOHHOOOOOO!!!! Thanks, Chauncey.

General Update

2005-06-03T07:56:00.000-05:00

Well, we're meeting with one more realtor tonight about the house. It's a little weird just having finished our basement and getting ready to sell the place. If you want to check out our place while we still have it, go to http://www.213carringtonplace.com. We'll most likely be listing with a realtor soon.

Beside the house and normal work projects, I have gotten the blog to look a little more like I want it to. There are a couple other personal projects I'm working on at the moment - I'll tell you more about them when they're ready!

New look

2005-06-02T22:14:00.000-05:00

Partway through the blog redesign, new look is part there part not.

Google Sightseeing

2005-05-19T12:01:00.000-05:00

This is kind of cool... Not too into the UFO thing, but the rest of it is worth a look.

Episode Tres

2005-05-18T16:22:00.000-05:00

I'm a little surprised by how many people are excited about the upcoming Star Wars flick. I'll go, but mostly just out of curiosity. Twenty bucks says that Hayden Christensen actually seems like a better actor when he has a massive black helmet on.

EDIT (5/16/05): All right, so maybe I was a little too hasty to judge. Even rottentomatoes gave it 83%. That's compared to 62% for Ep. 1 and 65% for Ep. 2. We'll still have to see about Hayden Christensen...

Bono, Yachoud and the United Center

2005-05-12T08:38:00.000-05:00

Just got back from Chicago after seeing U2 at the United Center on the 10th. Farthest I've ever sat away from stage at a show, but the best concert I've been to. And all I got was this lousy t-shirt. Good times. I'd show you pictures, but you couldn't take cameras or video cameras in.

Plus, I got to meet a cool cabbie named Yachoud that somehow found a way to the United Center drive in about half the time it was supposed to take. Go Yachoud!

Random link of the day: one.org
Some of the celebrities backing it up might not be my favorite, but it's a good idea, and a great cause. Ambitious, but it really could make a difference in a lot of areas of the world...

Word Schmurd.

2005-04-29T15:00:00.000-05:00

I HATE WORD! I had to use it today on a project and it's like designing through a drunk monkey. This won't be a "how much Microsoft sucks" post, but I do find Word really frustrating.

Google (oil) Microsoft (water) or Gates v. Google

2005-04-27T14:26:00.000-05:00

I'm not the biggest Microsoft fan in the world, I'd use an apple all the time if I didn't already give Microsoft so much money. Anyway, here's an interesting story from Fortune magazine that's worth a peek.

Personally, the stuff from Google tends to be a lot more intuitive, better looking and overall less "bloated" in my humble opinion. You can check out their digs right here. Especially, check out Picasa. Great little program for home photo stuff.

crazy inventor + too much time = HUGE ROBOTS (hide the kids)

2005-04-27T14:16:00.000-05:00

I don't know where I first saw this, but it cracks me up. Here's where I found the link back again (via google, of course.)

I'm not trying to stereotype, but it seems appropriate that a huge walking robot first came out of Japan.

Michigan Weather, Konfabulator and some random links.

2005-04-27T11:24:00.000-05:00

Thought I should write something a little more, I still have to finish making my own template for this blog. Nothing against the default Blogger templates, I just want to have my own look, ya'know. I honestly don't know if that sentence should be ended in a period or a question mark.

So this is life in Michigan. Right now it's 39 degrees outside. Two weeks ago it was about 80 and not so far into "summer." Go figure, at least it's never what you'd expect. And there's no snow.

Useless download link: Konfabulator. So you to can have all sorts of stuff littering your desktop. It's konfabulous. The downside is that after the trial period is over, an annoying little "buy me" box always sits in the corner of your desktop, but it's still cool. Guess the world just needs to switch to MAC OS 10.4 with dashboard... that'll fix everything.

My First Post Ever, Wow.

2005-04-22T20:55:00.000-05:00

I thought exactly what the web needed was another blog that nobody would read. So, here it is.

But, I do solemnly swear to you, the blog reading public, never ever to use "LoL" in any post. ever.