HTML5 is picking up adoption and has increasing developer interest. Look for example at this basic but elegant drawing program called Harmony. Hit Save to get a PNG (pronounced “ping”) of your artwork. Jolly.
/via Daring Fireball
Harmony: HTML5 Drawing App
March 9th, 2010 · Inspiration, Interaction design, Interesting, technology
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Culturele instellingen en Technologie?
March 9th, 2010 · technology, video
[This post is in Dutch only]
Door een toevallige Internet dwaling kwam ik een serie video-interviews tegen van experts over hoe technologie in de culturele sector ingezet kan worden. Het lijken video’s die zijn gemaakt voor een bepaals seminar door gebruiker genaamd Observatorium. Er staat verder geen profiel-informatie van wie of wat Observatorium precies is (als iemand dat weet dan hoor ik dat graag). De hele reeks video’s is de moeite waard maar ik vond het filmpje met Prof. Zwijnenberg erg overtuigend.
Video: Computer Scientist David Gelernter
March 8th, 2010 · Inspiration, Interaction design, documentary, technology, video
The PC will Die
March 7th, 2010 · Interaction design, Observe, technology
While mobile has glimmered my mind for years, it never really had my focal attention. I guess since the dynamics were less attractive to me; mostly because of the Telecom-attitude: we know what is good for you. Lately I’m more and more convinced about mobile as having a future.
Not only is mobile interesting from a business perspective: people are still making loads of money in the mobile business. But also from an UX (user experience) point of view I believe good things are happening. I base this mostly on the iPhone-model: a closed but carefully crafted digital ecosystem. This is a device I want to give to my dad, and which empowers him. Instead of making him feel stupid. Say goodbye to multi-tasking (doing all with half-attention). The iPhone is one of the first computers which doesn’t feel like a computer, like a book or a pencil for that matter.
Picture by Elsie esq.
What would the late Mark Weiser — who coined calm technology — have thought about the iPhone? I guess we will never know. But with the iPhone, iPad and their positive collateral effects in place I have good hopes. And it just might be at the cost of the PC. 30 years of effort has brought us Ubuntu, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard. But sadly we still need to install programs, type everything thrice ourselves, and for many folks it still incorporates a whole room!
Another Blogger Down
March 4th, 2010 · Interesting, social media
After yesterday’s goodbye from Spolsky I’ve read today that Alex Payne (engineer at Twitter) also quits blogging for the time being. His rationale:
Lately, I’ve found the cathartic returns from blog-format writing to be diminishing. The ideas I’m trying to express never really get put to rest in my head when I write, now. Instead, they spark whole conversations that I never intended to start in the first place, conversations that leech precious time and energy while contributing precious little back.
Even-though the reasons for Payne are distinctly different from Spolsky, it might be the start of more people second thinking blogging and its (im)balance between input and desired result. Since I personally have no idea where this mostly Paste-stuff-blog is going, there is also no need to stop it just yet. Unless people start asking me to stop.
Spolsky Quits Blogging
March 2nd, 2010 · Inspiration, Interesting, Observe, technology
Joel Spolsky founder of Fog Creek software and blogger at Joel on Software is quiting blogging with a modest marketing campaign. Perhaps he is right, perhaps he is wrong. I personally appreciated his blog even-though his articles were often print-quality level. Like a true blogger he says goodbye with an insightful personal post with some important lessons:
To really work, Sierra observed, an entrepreneur’s blog has to be about something bigger than his or her company and his or her product. This sounds simple, but it isn’t. It takes real discipline to not talk about yourself and your company. Blogging as a medium seems so personal, and often it is. But when you’re using a blog to promote a business, that blog can’t be about you, Sierra said. It has to be about your readers, who will, it’s hoped, become your customers. It has to be about making them awesome.
But…
Once I had built an audience among programmers, enough of them turned into customers that I was able to get my bootstrapped company off the ground. The audience was so precisely defined that products we tried to make that weren’t specifically for programmers pretty much flopped. They were great products, but they just weren’t for programmers, and we didn’t have a way to market them effectively to nonprogrammers.
Something Cheap that Works
March 2nd, 2010 · Inspiration, Interaction design, technology
Interesting RFS (request for startups) by YCombinator for iPad Applications:
Programmers may never want a computer they don’t control, but ordinary people just want something cheap that works. And that’s how the iPad will seem to them. Many will never make a conscious decision to switch. They’ll get an iPad as well, then find they use their Windows machine less and less. When it dies they won’t replace it.
Video: The Duality of Happiness
March 1st, 2010 · Inspiration, video
Behavioral economist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman gives a TED-talk on the difference in perception of happiness between the experiencing self (the temporal aspect) and the remembering self (the reflective aspect).
Lets hope some of Kahneman’s research finds its ways into our governments policies. It could fill part of the huge gap a perverse fixation of economic growth has given our current society. I believe well-being and happiness should be considered seriously in any modern civil society.
Hat tip to @yoldaanderkor.
Documentary: Art & Copy
March 1st, 2010 · Design, Inspiration, documentary, video
Haven’t seen this one yet, but I like the pitch. I presume Art & Copy is mostly about advertising and where marketeers get their constant inspiration from. There is a screening in Amsterdam later this week in the SMART Project space.
YouTube: A Storytelling Mechanism
March 1st, 2010 · Inspiration, Interaction design, Interesting, technology, video
YouTube is a true marvel of an alternative storytelling mechanism. You start with one video and you yourself determine how the plot continues. I’ve pasted a storyline of myself:
Sunglass Catch
“Catching Glasses” Explanation
Gondry Shoes
And so each person creates his/her own story — no director required. Not surprising one of YouTube greatest innovation is the related video-feature.
