Technology

Design / Technology / Web — 3 Comments
16
Aug 10

Web Typographers, Rejoice

Real type comes to the Web...without Flash.

Finally, your site will be able to display beautiful fonts without Flash replacement technology. Adobe has just offered several typefaces for website design and development through the Typekit project.

Typekit supports a wide array of browsers, and users who don’t have a supported browser will simply see the default typeface, like Arial or Verdana. Typekit’s costs are reasonable (though not free), you can adjust a wide variety of type settings and styles, the library is expanding, there’s a nifty colophon tool, and the fonts have been hinted for optimal on-screen viewing.

All in all, a pretty great day for type on the Web.

UPDATE: WebType is another player in the web typography game, with technology similar to Typekit, but with fonts from FontBureau, among others.

Ideas / Rants and Screeds / Technology / Thoughts / Usability — 9 Comments
9
Aug 10

Wireless with Wires

When charged, no wires; when charging, wired.

The only thing I hate more than wires around my computer are wireless devices. They run out of juice constantly, and recharging them is a hassle. Your options, depending on your wireless device, are:

  • Destroy the environment—and your wallet—with traditional batteries
  • Use rechargeable batteries which last about 3 hours, have a 6-month total lifespan, and require you to keep extras on hand so you can keep working when they run out
  • Plop one of those recharging bases on your desk, thus adding clutter (and wires!) to your workspace, and again taking your device out of commission during charging.

My proposal is to do something similar to game controllers: when your device is charged, it works wirelessly just like it should. When it runs out of juice, you simply plug it into your computer, turning it into a regular wired device while it charges. Once it’s done charging, simply unplug it and go back to working wirelessly.

It’s the 21st century. I find it hard to believe no one has done this yet. (Am I mistaken?)

Update: Yes, I was mistaken. I turns out there actually are some wireless mice (mouses?) that can be used in a tethered mode while charging…or so it appears, though I can’t seem to find adequate product descriptions to confirm whether, when tethered, they are also charging. One would assume so.

Software / Technology / Thoughts — 2 Comments
8
Aug 10

Why Google Wave Failed


Google Wave is dead. Over. Kaput.

Of course, to anyone who considered using it, this isn’t a surprise. Nonetheless, it’s a bit sad; Google Wave had great promise and received much fanfare. It was heralded by many, including Google of course, as a revolutionary way to communicate.

But it had one major, insurmountable flaw: no one understood it. Or, rather, it took too long to understand.

And in this there is a lesson. Successful products and services almost always share the trait of understandability. When you encounter them for the first time, you understand what they do and how they can benefit you. If they are complex, then the wrapper does a good job of explaining why you should buy, though that’s a less desirable circumstance for the provider to find themselves in.

It’s not that Google Wave was overly complex in and of itself; rather, it’s that Google never did a good job explaining to people why they should use it. On top of that, the product itself—the user interface—gave few if any clues as to what made it tick, why you should use it, and why it was so revoluationary. Adding insult to injury, you could only use it with other Google Wave members, so it meant you were only able to communicate with the rare few who, like yourself, “got it.”

I’m sorry to see Google Wave die. Not because I think it was great, but because it might have been great but I just didn’t know it.

Information Design / Technology / Thoughts / Usability / Web — 1 Comment
4
Aug 10

Going Mobile?

The following white paper, written by me, was originally published at Netsoft-USA.

Thinking of going mobile? If so, there are some important things you should consider. First and foremost, does going mobile make sense for your business? If so, should you build a mobile application (or app) or simply offer a mobile-optimized version of your website?

Netsoft's HealthMobile app puts vital information where it belongs: in the hands of users.

Is Mobile the Right Move?

As always, the answer begins — and ends — with your target audience. If they’re not mobile, you shouldn’t be either. For example, if your target audience spends all day tethered to a computer, a mobile version of your offering might be superfluous.

If your target audience is mobile, then it’s time to ask some questions that will help determine the best course of action:

  • What services, products, or information can you provide that your audience would find useful and engaging?
  • What devices or mobile platforms does your mobile audience use?
  • Would a mobile offering support your overall business efforts or contradict them?
  • What, if anything, is your competition doing, and how can you do it better, or at least as well?
  • Is there awareness and appetite within your organization for a mobile offering, or will you need to educate key decision makers?
  • Do you have internal resources capable of delivering a mobile initiative? If not, how will you identify the right partner?
  • Do you have support and budget to raise awareness of your mobile offering?

If the answers above indicate that you can and should go mobile, then you’ll need to determine which platforms to target and whether or not you should build an app or a mobile-optimized website.

It's like the browser wars of the late 90s all over again.

Which Platforms Should You Target?

With such a wide variety of mobile platforms available today — including iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm, and so on — you might feel overwhelmed in deciding how to approach your customers. However, it’s not as confusing as it sounds.

Most importantly, you need to find out which platforms your target audience is using. If, for example, they are corporate clients who use Blackberry devices, targeting iPhone or Android platforms would not be a wise choice. If, on the other hand, they use a mixture of devices, then you should determine which platforms are most prevalent and target them first.

To start, interview a representative sampling of potential users to determine which devices they use. Next, if you’re building a mobile website, review your current site’s analytics, if available, to see which devices are being used to view your site.

Mobile App or Mobile Website?

Mobile apps and mobile websites are not the same thing, so understanding each is critical in determining which to build.

Apps

A mobile app is really just software designed to run on a mobile device. Apps are often one-trick ponies, but they do their one trick very well. They’re so useful and engaging that they’re fueling the explosive growth of the smart phone market.

Like traditional software applications, mobile apps are often platform-specific, so if you want an application to run on multiple platforms (e.g., Blackberry, iPhone, Android), you need to develop multiple versions of your app and market it through the appropriate channels. This can add significant expense, so knowing your target platforms is critical.

In addition, as tablet computing grows in popularity, as it looks likely to do with the runaway success of Apple’s iPad, it may be worth considering an application that takes advantage of the tablet platform’s larger display and unique capabilities. But, as always, you should only go down this route if your audience is already there or will be there very soon.

Do you know if your users are mobile?

Mobile Websites

A mobile website is similar to a non-mobile website, except that it has been optimized for the more limited experience of accessing the Web on a mobile device. For example:

  • Extraneous graphics and other heavy download items are removed so pages load more quickly.
  • Navigation is usually simplified and prioritized to only the items a user would actually need when out and about.
  • Large blocks of information are broken into more digestible chunks.
  • The user interface is composed to take advantage of the much smaller screen real estate of mobile devices.
  • It’s important to note that some sites don’t need to be optimized for mobile delivery; their current format may actually translate without modification. However, this is the exception and not the rule, and you should test your site before assuming no changes need to be made.

If you do decide to build a mobile version of your site, it’s important to understand that this effort is more involved than simply “screen scraping,” or pulling your existing site’s content into a mobile format. You should prioritize and skinny down your site to the items your mobile users will want, and ditch the rest.

In addition, there are a wide variety of mobile browsers — some better than others — which means that there may need to be multiple formats of your mobile website designed to work with each browser. That said, there is a move toward standardization, and both the iPhone and Android platforms use the WebKit browser as a common platform, and soon Blackberry devices will use the WebKit browser as well.

Apps vs. Websites: A Head-to-Head Comparison

The Best of Both Worlds

Many companies and organizations provide both a mobile app and website to their users, ensuring all their bases are covered. For example, Facebook has an app available for the major mobile platforms, and they offer a mobile version of their website for users who choose not to download and install the free app. For technical reasons, the Facebook app and mobile websites are slightly different in the experiences they provide; however, by having a mobile website and an application, Facebook avoids losing any users who prefer one technology over the other.

By providing similar features and functions on both its mobile app and website, Amazon lets users choose how they want to shop.

Alternatively, you might find that some of your information is best presented via a mobile website, while other information is better suited to an application. For example, some companies have a mobile website for their public Web presence but a feature-rich app for their corporate intranet. Likewise, some financial institutions have mobile websites for public content and an app that provides transactional capabilities for their account holders.

Don't be afraid to listen to your users before, during, and after lanuch of your mobile site or app.

Launch, Learn, Revise

Once you put your mobile website or app in the hands of your users, the fun really begins. By keeping an open line of dialogue between your team and your audience, you will learn what works, what doesn’t work, what you should improve, and what you shouldn’t touch.

Don’t be afraid to take an iterative approach. Launch with a few features you know work well, and only add new features once they’re ready for prime time. Like any technology endeavor, embrace the concept of permanent beta. It doesn’t mean you’re never done; it means you’re always on a journey.

Recap

Going mobile needn’t be a daunting undertaking. All you have to do is stick to the basics:

  • Identify your business objectives
  • Know your audience
  • Find the best resources or partners
  • Choose the right technology
  • Launch, learn, and revise
Cool / Technology — No Comments
28
Jun 10

Shot Entirely with an iPhone 4

The following short film was shot and edited, in its entirety, including sound, on the new iPhone 4.0. (Thanks to Daring Fireball for the link.)

“Apple of My Eye” – an iPhone 4 film from Michael Koerbel on Vimeo.

Rants and Screeds / Software / Technology — 5 Comments
24
Jun 10

You Snooze, You Lose

As I’ve mentioned before, a shortage of ideas isn’t my issue. I have plenty. It’s getting them going (enemy number 1: time, or lack thereof).

Anyway, yesterday I saw that 37signals had launched an iPad app called Draft. This app is so similar to something I’d been mulling over it actually spooked me.

37signals Draft for iPad

No, I don’t think the folks at 37signals got into my brain and stole my idea. I do, however, lament that, yet again, I may have let an idea escape that would have been pretty cool.

Ah, well…I’ll take consolation in the idea that it wouldn’t really make sense to develop an iPad app at the moment…given that I don’t even own an iPad (yet!).

Information Design / Technology / Usability / Web — No Comments
12
May 10

HTML5 Readiness

And it's interactive.

Here’s a great information display showing HTML5 and CSS3 compatibility and readiness of major modern browsers. The creators also developed the helpful website whencaniuse for Web developers.

Update: when I first posted this, I didn’t realize the interactivity is, of course, created via (wait for it) HTML 5!

Cool / Software / Technology — No Comments
9
May 10

Save the Earth, One Letter at a Time

Ecofont..the holes save ink, money, and the environment.

Ecofont is a software program that allows you to reduce ink or laser toner usage by as much as 25%, thus cutting costs and doing less damage to the environment. Ink and toner production, use and disposal are actually serious issues.

The nice thing is that at almost any normal size the holes are invisible to the naked eye. However, Ecofont claims the impact on your bottom line (if you do a lot of printing) are apparent.

You can either download an ecofont for free, or purchase the software that will allow to turn almost any typeface you normally use into an ecofont.

Software / Technology — No Comments
21
Apr 10

Walled Garden, or Eden?

In or out?

I am surprised at the anti-Apple vitriol surrounding the Flash issue on iPads and iPhones. Whether or not you agree that these devices would be made better by the inclusion of Flash capabilities, the argument that Apple is creating a walled garden has always rung a little false to me. Then I read the following quote from Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller in an article on CNET, and it all made sense:

“Someone has it backwards—it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 (all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard, while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary.” (Thanks, Daring Fireball.)

Design / Information Design / Technology / Usability — 1 Comment
20
Apr 10

Inside Out

Here’s an interesting concept: show the contents and storage use of a USB stick via colored lights on the outside. No lights, no files. Different colored lights could represent different file types (e.g., images, music, documents, etc.). Of course, this assumes we’re still using USB sticks (!) to carry our files around, but it has applications for other devices. I like the idea that you get an immediate visual read with little interpretation. (Thanks to Information Aesthetics for the original article.)

More of this clever designer’s work can be viewed here.

Rants and Screeds / Software / Technology — 2 Comments
15
Apr 10

Photoshop for Rent

Pay for play.

As long as I’m railing against Adobe for their exorbitant upgrade pricing, I might as well relay one of the ideas that’s been bouncing around my head for a while: why not allow users to download software for free, and only pay each time they use it.

Heavy duty Photoshop users, for example, would pay more than the casual experimenter. Professionals would likely pay more than amateurs. And you could have corporate pricing, similar to family plans in the cell phone world.

I believe more people would download the applications to try them out, and if they liked them, subscribe. Plus, users wouldn’t have the pain associated with upgrade cycles. When new releases come out, they just download the update and keep paying. This would alleviate the perceived need on the part of software developers to push upgrades out every 18 months, and allow them to focus on iterative improvements instead. And, it would reduce the revenue lull between upgrade releases for developers, providing a more consistent stream of revenue.

I’m sure there are many sound business reasons why things don’t work this way, but I’m too frustrated to think of any right now.

Perhaps as software continues its migration into the cloud, this is the way it will be.

Until then: Adobe, lower your upgrade prices, dammit!

Technology / Thoughts — 9 Comments
7
Apr 10

wePad

Evil Steve and Good Steve don't want to share their iPads, but you might.

If the iPad is to be a household media device, one feature that should be included in tomorrow’s iPhone 4 OS update is support for multiple users. I haven’t heard much on the rumor or speculation sites regarding this capability, but I’d say it’s a no-brainer, and critical to the iPad’s success.

If this is to be the device a family uses to check facebook, review recipes, read books, peruse the NY Times, update the Netflix queue, etc., the iPad must support multiple users, preferably via single sign-on whereby each user’s passcode opens up their unique environment.

One argument could be that multiple-user enabled iPads could lead to fewer sales. I doubt it. Ultimately, people will want their own unit. Just as most households only had one television set, today most occupants of a home have their own.

Cool / Technology / Usability — 1 Comment
5
Apr 10

iJealous

Green with envy, red with passion.

Here are my impressions after using a colleague’s new iPad for a few minutes:

  • It is heavier than I expected, but in a good way; it has a heft and substance that make it feel like a quality product.
  • It is extremely responsive, spritely. Applications launched quickly, scrolling across the desktop felt breezy, and other interactions had little if any lag.
  • While I didn’t try thumb typing, the keyboard felt easier to user than I’d expected. I think it would be great if users could scale the keyboard to fit their hand size.
  • The display is vivid and bright, and the surface does, in fact, seem to prevent fingerprints (as promised).
  • Native apps (those designed for the larger screen) have a wide variety of very interesting UI techniques that would be impossible to replicate on a laptop or smartphone, so expect many new user interaction schemes to abound.
  • iPhone apps that haven’t been ported over aren’t as unattractive as I’d expected, and if viewed at normal size (not enlarged) feel just fine, not as small as some had suggested.
  • Jason Snell commented that holding a website in your hands felt kind of amazing. I didn’t know what he meant until I opened some sites. Instead of peering into them like you do on a smart phone, you actually do feel like you’re holding the Internet, which is kind of a cool sensation.
  • Visiting this blog and seeing the empty blocks where Flash elements (videos, etc.) should be was disheartening. I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that there was no icon suggesting the experience was broken. I’m sure from a marketing perspective it makes the experience feel less incomplete, but from a usability perspective, this omission fails to give the user any clue that they are missing what might be a vital part of the experience.

As you might know from reading my earlier posts, I’ve gone from skeptical to excited about the iPad. Now that I’ve held and used one, I’m officially jealous of those who have one.

And this is what I think Apple is hoping for: talking about the iPad is one thing, but I truly believe that once most people hold one, they will want one. This is the reason for Apple’s success: they create products that market themselves.

Software / Technology — No Comments
27
Mar 10

Next Year Photoshop Can Drink

Photoshop is celebrating its 20th birthday, and to celebrate, one of its original developers takes you through the first demo of the iconic software.

I started using Photoshop about 17 years ago, long before layers, alpha channels, editable type, layer effects, smart objects / filters, 32-bit support, etc. Photoshop is one of the rare pieces of software that was fantastic when it first appeared, and has only gotten better since.

Enjoy your cake. I’m going to have myself some PSDs.

Cool / Technology — No Comments
7
Mar 10

The Clavlilux 2000

From the creator of The Clavilux 2000:

The Clavilux 2000 is an interactive instrument for generative music visualization, which is able to generate a live visualization of any music played on a digital piano. The setting of the installation consists of three parts: A digital piano with 88 keys and midi output, a computer running a vvvv patch and a vertical projection above the keyboard.

For every note played on the keyboard a new visual element appears in form of a stripe, which follows in its dimensions, position and speed the way the particular key was stroke. Colours give the viewer and listener an impression of the harmonic relations: Each key has it’s own color scheme and “wrong” notes stand out in contrasting colors.

All stripes stay and overlap each other in an additive way, so at the end a kind of pattern remains – a summary of the music – which will be always unique since the notes of the composition aswell as the interpretation of the piano player are influencing the outcome. Furthermore the piano player can switch between the standart 2d view and an additional 3d view of the visualization while playing.

More information

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