When I talk to people about getting the iPad, it’s pretty common for them to dismiss my enthusiasm for fanboyism (a word that gives me a headache, just trying to spell it “correctly”). I see this little device as the thing that will make certain tasks easier, and maybe even get me into old habits again. So, while I patiently wait, I’d like to share what makes me excited about the iPad:
Reading
I had an argument with a coworker the other day about how I just don’t read books. There isn’t a reason. I like books, and I like to read. I do it all the time with blog posts, news articles, and instructional writings. Honestly, the internet is probably the best thing to happen to my reading habits. The problem is that I’ve migrated to the browser, so my reading experience is looked at as browsing the web instead of the traditional kick-back-my-feet book reading. I know that there will be some kind of awesome news aggregator app designed specifically on the strengths of the ipad, and with the ibooks app, I will finally have a traditional ereader (or should it be ireader?). I might actually be able to find some comfortable middle ground between traditional reading and my browsing habits.
The boys and girls over at ohnodoom.com have created a concept pair of jeans with a big ass pocket at the back designed to hold your iPad.
iGotaBigAssPocket Concept
At this time it’s simply a concept with an amusing message, focusing on a product created by a company whom we respect to the utmost.
We currently have no plans to produce the iBap apparel line for any market. Our intention was to bring our idea to life and send a message about the future of mobile devices and their portability. We enjoy fashion with function, but can it go too far? What will unite our technology and couture as we
creep into the next generation of moibile devices? Just some questions we’ve asked ourselves, and now we ask you.
We hope you enjoy the concept, stay tuned for the newest addition to the bigasspocket… a bigasswallet! <3
On a semi serious note we think these jeans look awesome. It’s true that once you sit down you’ll break the iPad with your big old arse but at some point all great inventions needed to be revised, we just wonder what the iBap’s would be. Building on from the iBap, you could put these big ass pockets on anything big enough. An inside pocket in your jacket, pocket in your shirt or how about, crazy as it may sound, in a bag!
Whether you’re an SEO, a developer, or just a bit of a geek, you’ve probably accumulated half a dozen firefox plugins over the years that slowed your browser down to a crawl. If like me you switched to Chrome, you’ve replaced some of these plugins with a pile of bookmarks instead – the browser stays fast but actually using it for work is a hassle. Quix, unleashed by Yoast last week, is a solution to these problems – an extensible bookmarklet that gives you toolbar/bookmark functionality with just keyboard commands.
What does that mean?
Well, say you’re using Chrome and you’ve got no toolbars, but you want to see the number of backlinks according to Yahoo! Just open Quix, type in the relevant keyboard shortcut (yl), and hey presto – you’re taken to a Site Explorer results page.
Time saving? Easy to use? When you spend half your day exploring the innards of the web this can only be a good thing. Not only that, but it’s extensible (i.e., if you’re a smartypants you can create your own commands) – if Quix doesn’t do something you need, you can improve it yourself
Yoast was kind enough to answer a few questions on his new bookmarklet:
We first saw Quix at Think Visibility in September (and were sworn to secrecy) – did you develop Quix with Marketers in mind?
Well to be honest, Quix was designed with me in mind: it scratched an itch I had and seemed like a great way to integrate a lot of my tools into one. After showing it to a couple of friends, it became pretty obvious this is something a lot of web power users wanted. Among those power users will be a lot of marketers, as the tool comes with a pretty hefty set of built in commands for marketers because of my own background, but I think a lot of web developers will benefit from it too.
It seems like Quix could give people cool functionality on the browser of their choice – does it work across all browsers?
Yes, even on your iPhone! I’ve got a pretty good write up about how to use it with the different big browsers out their on the browser page (http://quixapp.com/browsers/)
I’m not so technical – is there a tutorial on how to create my own commands?
Not another one than on the Syntax page, but I probably need to cook one up
Are you going to add more commands to the plugin?
Of course, I’ve added 4 or 5 since launch already! If you’ve got good ideas, please do submit them either on Twitter or through getsatisfaction.
An introduction to Quix
Final thoughts
So, I’m giving Quix a go in my working day and so far it’s a neat little app. I always thought when Chrome came out that I’d miss toolbars, but that kinda seems like the old way of doing things now. Typing commands into the Chrome address bar and using shortcuts to perform operations with Quix puts an impressive arsenal at your fingertips. It’s an intuitive way of working, it’s faster, and it feels like the future
Amazon has release a Kindle iPhone app that allows users to read their Kindle books on their hand held device. The app is free to download from the Apple app store and connects iPhone and iPod users with over 400,000 Kindle books. Now with the announcement of the new Apple iPad, launching later in the year the question is “Could the iPad be a competitor to the Kindle as an e-book reader?”
So people are saying that the iPhone Kindle app, which more or less provides the same ebook reading functionality on Apple’s smartphone, will kill the Kindle. Makes sense actually. After all, why spend $360 on a gadget that can only do one thing, when you can spend roughly the same for a smartphone that multi-tasks? This argument appeals especially to die-hard fans of the Apple “experience”.
At the same time however, I can tell you that reading text on a backlit display strains the eyes. The e-ink of Amazon’s Kindle, on the other hand, is easy on the optics. That’s still why a lot of us still prefer reading printed words on dead trees, even if literally all books ever written are available through the web browser; no tiring light shines from them.
Future Kindles will definitely display color, free from the limits of grays. And you can bet that development will make Amazon’s reader more attractive; who wouldn’t artificially generated color pages that are easy to read? Amazon has the luxury of concentrating on ebook research, unlike supposed future competitors like Apple who are taking a more broad research towards R&D. What do you think?
Okay so in theory the iPhone is too small to really compete with a Kindle and the screen sucks but how about the iPad. The screen is still an issue but it’s around the size of the larger Kindle DX plus is does so much more. The Kindle does just one thing though people argue it does it well and has been designed specifically for the job.
Apple app for iPhone and iPod (and iPad?)
Here’s some quick features of the app:
No Kindle required
Get the best reading experience available on your iPhone or iPod touch
Access your Kindle books even if you don’t have your Kindle with you
Automatically synchronizes your last page read between devices with Amazon Whispersync
Adjust the text size, add bookmarks, and view the annotations you created on your Kindle
Read in portrait or landscape mode
Select alternate background and text colors to improve reading comfort in low light conditions
Tap on either side of the screen or flick to turn pages
Pinch to zoom images in books
Tap and hold on a word to create a note or highlight
Whispersync will back up and synchronize annotations with your other Kindle devices
Kindle Book Readers
I find the syncing feature a great asset of the app. It also opens the door to Kindle books so in theory the only difference between the iPad and the Kindle is the user experience and the screen.
Comparison
Price wise the the Apple iPad and equivalent Kindle DX are both competitively priced. The cheapest iPad without 3G is on paper at the moment $10 more than the top spec Kindle.
Final thoughts
If we were to analyse this battle solely on the premise they are both e-readers and are sold as such with no other features then surely the Kindle would be the wise choice. The kindle is brilliant at what it does and price wise is competitive with the iPad and it’s competitors. The iPad costs more and hasn’t got an ideal screen for long periods of reading. So in our opinion, as an e-reader, the Kindle is a clear winner. However this isn’t an e-reader face off, the iPad isn’t an e-reader, but can be used as one. In fact, what exactly is it? Who is it aimed at? Is it trying to be a Jack of all trades? What is it’s USP? Soooo many questions…
We’re sure with time the iPad will fit within a niche it’s ment to be in. It has the potential to be amazing primarily due to it’s vesitility, just not as a users primary e-reader.
Thanks to Amazons Whispersync technology we see handheld devices like the iPhone and BlackBerry being perfect accompliments to the Kindle. These devices are unlikely to become a users primary e-reader but there is certainly room to support the technology on other devices.
Viewing historical browser market share statistics the old fashioned way is a pretty dull task. There’s nothing less inspiring than sitting staring at a table of data that visually tells you nothing. On the flip side we all like a good pie chart right? All those colourful segments that kind of look like a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, indicating immediately the impact of the resulting data in a visual form.
Historical browser statistics
Current browser share statistics is something I reference from time to time and I use W3schools.com as a primary source for this data. A tool I recently discovered from Axis shows the historical browser statistics from W3schools.com in a custom visualisation. It tracks back to January 2002 and includes historic deprecated browsers such as IE4.
Conclusion
A cool online tool for viewing historical browser market share statistics. Witness the demice of Internet Explorers dominant control of the market with this intelligent custom visualisation. Let us know what you think of the tool and the market share as a whole.
In just a matter of days our glasses will be full of cheap Brut Cava, the countdown to midnight will begin and we’ll drunkenly sing along to Old Lang Syne as we welcome in a new year, a new decade and the start of 2010. Looking back 10 years I regale my girlfriend to where it all began where I, a mere design student, started the long road to design stardom, stardom which still avoids me of course but the start of a career that sees a lot of change and evolution in the design industry. Print is in decline, web has been a rollercoaster of growth and decline but most amazingly my mother gets her first computer and starts blogging (no you can’t have a link she’ll kill me).
Good took a look back at the last decade in design and highlighted the most significant moments. We chose are favourites below but please do click through and read the entire post as it’s really worth the read.
It will also be great to hear your achievements from the last decade, whether you’re new to the game or you’re an old skool designer make sure you regale us below in the comments.
2000
Tech stocks plummet, signaling the official burst of the dot-com bubble. Thousands of newly-minted web designers are laid off. San Francisco’s cafes swell with unemployed creatives paying inflated rents.
2001
Apple’s first retail store opens. Steve Jobs announces the first-generation iPod, which can hold 512 MB of music. It is available only in white.
2002
The stop-motion Lego animation of the White Stripes’ video Fell in Love with a Girl by Michel Gondry heralds a new generation of video and commercial auteurs who bring their specific aesthetic to feature films (and Criteron Collection DVD sets).
2003
Jeffrey Zeldman’s book Designing with Web Standards transforms the way that web developers interact with code, calling for universal accessibility across browsers.
2004
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is launched by Ogilvy & Mather, featuring self-esteem messaging for young girls, an attack on glossy magazines, and imagery of real women shot by Rankin.
2005
The One Laptop Per Child project announced by Nicholas Negroponte. The lime-green laptop is later designed by Yves Béhar.
2006
The Wii gaming console is launched by Nintendo, forever transforming the way we interact with games. We never need to go outside again.
2007
The 2012 London Olympic logo by Wolff Olins is revealed, sparking a international scandal as more than 50,000 British citizens sign a petition against its design. An animated version is said to cause seizures.
2008
Shepard Fairey creates the “Hope” poster to support Barack Obama’s presidential run. It becomes the single most representative image of any political campaign, ever. Fairey spends the next year in a heated fair-use battle with the Associated Press. No one wins. Oh, except Obama.
2009
Dubai’s Burj Dubai, designed by Adrian Smith, tops out at 2,684 ft, the tallest man-made structure ever built. It’s scheduled to open in January 2010 as reports of Dubai’s downfall begin to trickle into architectural publications.
According to Mashable, Facebook is getting a redesign. After looking at the screenshots, shown below, it’s seems to be quite a substantial tweak to the architecture. Personally I find Facebooks current design hard to navigate and lacks basic usability. These new visuals show an appreciation for the less IT savvy facebooker. Search seems to be pushed more with a larger search box in the header and an inbox preview on the homepage seems a great idea.
Screenshots of new Facebook UI currently in user testing
News feed
Requests
Inbox preview
Notifications
Account settings tab
Your thoughts?
Let us know your thoughts on the Facebook design, both current and new, in the comments below.
I have been quite vocal about my switch from the iPhone to the Droid in my immediate circles, but I haven’t really been detailed about it. I promised a writeup to The Floating Frog, but I just haven’t been able to get around to it. There has been some unknown block keeping me from really getting into the nitty gritty of a phone vs. phone comparison.
I think I’m finally able to address that. I was frustrated with the iPhone experience and I really wanted to change. So I did. It was as simple as that. There was no lengthy montage of me comparing the two phones over the course of two weeks. There was no dramatic music that played when I finally walked into the Verizon store to pick up the Droid. It just happened, and in retrospect, I should have done it earlier.
The iPhone has a massive catalog of apps. The Android OS doesn’t tell you the best way to use your phone. It’s as simple as that. There are many more subtle pros and cons to each device, but that is really all you need to know about each phone. They are both capable of almost the same things, it’s just a matter of how easy it is for you do them, or if you need to do anything at all.
The iPhone has some fantastic app standards in place and has really made it easy for developers to craft a quality app. Tweetie 2 is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of modern app development. The problem with the iPhone platform is the platform itself. The ridiculous app approval process stifles creativity, and the lack of background processes severely limits the potential of apps in our always-connected lifestyle. This is never going to change.
Android is the antithesis of the iPhone platform in that it is completely open and they put the responsibility of the user experience on the user. Yes, there are some standards in place and a “google experience” that the devices attempt to deliver, but, outside of that, you can put whatever developers can cook up on your phone the minute they are done with it. I like that freedom. That is why I have decided to switch to the Droid. It’s my phone, not Googles’.
I did not come to this decision easily, for the sole reason that I felt it shouldn’t have been an easy decision to come to. I waffled for way too long about things that just didn’t really affect me. So here’s my advice if this kind of decision has fallen into your lap: don’t stress out over it. Just pick a device and learn to love it, because it’s going to be with you wherever you go. After all, it is just a phone…
The internet is big, as as this illustration proves, it’s growing faster than the Solar System. It’s amazing when you put all these figures down in one place, it makes you feel quite inadequate in comparison. 210 billion daily emails is staggering, if I just try a little harder I’m sure I’ll be able to increase that to 211,000,000,000 emails. Simply leave your email below and we’ll get the ball rolling
Design by committee is a coined phrase to describe a collaborative approach to designing and, as I experience way to much, is bound to produce suboptimal results. Best described by the maxim “A camel looks like a horse that was planned by a committee”, I firmly believe this approach is severly handicapped. To illustrate it better let me regale you on a fictional example from the web design world, roll the tape Jack!
A typical design process
A tried and tested approach to efficient, time saving, quality controlled design.
Initial design consultation with client
Design spec developed and pre-agreed
Ideas generation and presentation to client
Feedback
Revisions
End artwork produced
Signoff
A typical committee based design process
Initial design consultation with client
Design spec developed and pre-agreed
Ideas generation and presentation to client
Feedback
Susan gives her thoughts
Clive gives his thoughts that contradicts Susans
Malcolm gives his thoughts 2 weeks later that contradicts Susans and Clives
Mike loves it and doesn’t want any changes making
Clives wife adds her two cents
Two members of the committee fail to give feedback
Designer makes revisions
Feedback
Susan loves it
Clive hates it
Malcolm gives his thoughts 2 weeks later that contradicts his original changes
Mike wants it how it originally was
Clives wife adds her two cents
Two members of the committee fail to give feedback
Designer makes some more revisions
Feedback
Susan hates it and wants revision 2
Clive has a shouting match at Susan and demands further changes
Malcolm gives his thoughts 2 weeks later that contradicts his second set of changes
Mike wants it how it originally was
Clives wife ends up having a fight with Susan
Two members of the committee finally give some feedback on revision 1
Designer can now either A. Quit. B. Call a design clisis meeting. C. Demand all changes funnel through one person only. D. Goes on a manic killing rampage.
Luckily the designer chose C and Susan was the designated first contact
Revision 3 evaluated
Amends agreed
Susan passes on feedback from all comittee members
Clive wants to try another strategy
Malcolm disappears for a month to his villa in Spain
Mike wants it how it originally was
Clives wife apologises to Susan and gives her two cents
Two members of the committee finally give some feedback on revision 2
Designer rightly demands further design budget… the committee say no!
I think by this point to see it’s not the ideal situation for any designer to be in. They can set out a strict spec, claim a deposit before the work is started but there’s always this middle grey area that can very easily go out of control. Too many cooks spoil the broth, and it takes a strong and experienced person to manage feedback. Some are changes, some are just ideas but at the end of the day it’s just not a situation a cherish being in.
Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington enlightens us further
There was a really funny exchange between Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington on his podcast the recently. They started talking about Chinese proverbs and quickly devolved the conversation into Noah’s poor decision to let similar animals onto the Ark.
This is paraphrasing, but you get the idea…
Ricky: “One of my favorites is, ‘A camel is a horse designed by committee.’”
Stephen: “Carl’s already wondering who’s on that committee.”
Karl: “I was just thinking why would you request the hump bit, cause that’s just gonna get in the way, innit?”
Ricky: “Ok, Karl. I’ll give you an animal, and you tell me where it has gone wrong. The Octopus.”
Karl: “It should have some bones. I never understood why it would like to get in a jar anyway.”
Ricky: “A Giraffe.”
Karl: “Noah should have seen some of the animals coming in and said, ‘Hold on. Just saw one like you.’ and then throw it out.”
Not sure if I captured the humor there, but, regardless, I like the premise of the initial statement. Design-by-committee is bound to produce suboptimal results, and I recommend to every designer to think carefully before accepting such projects, they can be more trouble than they’re worth.
I had an argument with a coworker the other day about how I just don’t read books. There isn’t a reason. I like books, and I like to read. I do it all the time with blog posts, news articles, and instructional writings. Honestly, the internet is probably the best thing to happen to my reading habits. The problem is that I’ve migrated to the browser, so my reading experience is looked at as browsing the web instead of the traditional kick-back-my-feet book reading. I know that there will be some kind of awesome news aggregator app designed specifically on the strengths of the ipad, and with the ibooks app, I will finally have a traditional ereader (or should it be ireader?). I might actually be able to find some comfortable middle ground between traditional reading and my browsing habits.
