I think it was pretty much a consensus that Apple's recent introduction of the MacBook Air was amazing and certainly generated the Christmas-like buzz we've come to expect from MacWorld Expo.

On a different note, Adobe just released their own AIR in much quieter fashion. AIR is a development tool for creating RIA's (rich Internet applications) that exploit existing technologies and run across operating systems.

I'm no developer by any means, let alone a coder. I have however been designing for the web since the mid-nineties, and every time I turn around, there is a brand new challenge to design to. When I saw a few examples of how this tool is being put to use already, I know I would simply love an opportunity to design for it.

Between the MacBook Air and Adobe AIR, I think this a fast forward glimpse at what the future holds for us in terms of hardware, software, and increasingly rich user experiences.

Labels: Adobe, Air, Apple

It sounds like gibberish singing at first, accompanied by odd actions such as popping balloons, knocking over blocks, and drinking orange soda. That's the first half.

In the second half of the video the footage reverses, revealing the fact that the guy was actually singing "The Star Spangled Banner" in reverse!

Check out Fred. Fred makes the coolest products on the planet. Hail Fred.

Read Fred's Blog while you're at it too.

I don't know if this list makes feel old or not (I used to have to use a lot of these skills, dangit!), but this list is a great illustration of how technology can have a direct impact on how we live our lives. At one time people had to spend some portion of their lives mastering these skills to survive. Now you can get by without them just fine. Heck, you might be like me and not even remember that you had one or more of these skills at one time in the distant past!

Some examples:

• Adjusting the rabbit ears on a TV.
• Adjusting the horizontal and vertical hold on a TV.
• Balancing the tone arm on a turntable.
• Booting off a floppy disc.
• Churning butter.
• Config.sys editing.
• Dialing a rotary telephone.
• Typing in "freeware" programs from a magazine.
• Looking up information with Gopher.
• Programming Hypercard.
• Lining up the paper on a dot-matrix printer.
• Sending Morse code.
• Making popcorn on top of the stove with a pan and oil.
• Operating a mimeograph machine.
• Typing ditto stencils.
• Setting up a modem using AT commands.
• Using a sliderule.
• Programming a VCR.
• Inserting formatting codes in WordPerfect.
• Creating multi-disc ZIP file archives.

The fact that I think this video is hilarious probably reveals more about me than I intended, but oh well! Enjoy!

I think that it really sucks that Marc Steiner got canned from WYPR because of "ratings." Ratings?! It's public radio, for gawd's sake! I really have a hard time believing that Dan Rodericks (nice guy that he is...he even had me on his TV show back near the dawn of time) is going to draw more than Mr. Steiner. Knowing what I know about the internal politics of WYPR, I suspect it had a lot more to do with some stoopid new "direction" that management's thinking about than "ratings." I mean, please..."Heats of Space" gets better ratings than Marc Steiner's show?

Anyway, Claire and I were talking about the situation the other day and she had the great idea that someone should make a "Che"-style graphic as a sort of tongue-in-cheek protest against Marc's firing. So, having a bit of time this morning due to the icepocalypse that's closed all the schools, I fired up Photoshop, did a bit of image searching, and came up with this graphic. Feel free to steal and use it as you wish (though I'd be very, very happy if you gave credit to Claire and Sean Carton and linked back to this blog if you do).

Brilliant and beautiful idea for those "cutlery on the go" moments! Definitely one of those "I wish I'd thought of that!" things!
See more at Design Boom.

I dunno...for some reason this list of sites was strangely soothing. Think "web zen."

I suppose it is not ours to reason why people make sites with one single purpose (and often one single word). I'd imagine nothing could score higher for "usability" than these.

Single Serving Sites

As an interactive designer, getting good solid typographic control of "system text" seems to be a constant battle. In an age of endless typeface choices to choose from, I am amazed that in the year 2008, I find myself continuing to design within the constraints of Arial, Helvetica, Times, Courier, Georgia, Verdana, Geneva and Trebuchet.

I remember a work around for headlines and short subheads that had it's own set of limitations called P+C DTR (PHP + CSS Dynamic Text Replacement) but seldom saw it used, and I believe it has since been put to rest.

This morning I stumbled on a very useful design tool, csstypeset. It provides an intuitive and familiar set of type controls, and demonstrates in real time not only the visual effect of the sytem text being rendered, but also yields a chunk of .css code that you can paste into your stylesheet once you are content.

Another useful tool is Typetester, which is similar to csstypeset, but also allows comparison between 3 typeface choices as well.

I think this is useful not only to experienced designers, but younger designers starting out, to easily push your online typography a bit while gaining a sense of the limitations of the system text fonts we currently have available. While designers like Craig Kroeger of miniml and others have designed a variety of pixel based fonts, they remain unavailable as part of the lowest common denominator safe set of fonts.

We can only hope that one day, there will be a greater selection to choose from when designing non-flash websites. In the meantime, these are both good ways to get more out of your typography, while designing within the inherent constraints of the medium.

Nielsen Online recently reached the conclusion that women are twice as likely to watch Network TV as men. Men 18-34, on the other hand, are more than twice more likely to watch user-created content on the Web, such as stuff found on YouTube. The article says it’s because men have a sense of humor, or something like that… I will let you read the article and see if you read it the same way as I did :).

Anyway, this is really important. In advertising, you want to know who your target audience is and where their eye-balls are going. This is a good first step in understanding Web video viewing habits, but we still have a long way to go before the market is fully segmented and understood.

More on this as it becomes available.

Labels: marketing, Online Advertising, online video

My buddy and colleague, Hoby, sent me the most saddening implementation of Google maps I have ever seen. The email subject was perfect, "Bleedmore, Murderland" Ugg! Take a look at it and see how dangerous it really is to live in "Baltimore, Maryland." It's jarring to balance the Sun's great implementation and the starkness of the data.

Check it.