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Or the things that go through my mind in the car.
Design, art really, is a form of communication. Whether it’s emotions or a direct message, they are all trying to communicate something. The rules of design are like the rules of language. Line, shape, value, space, they are the constants that allow the viewer to interpret the message. Some are inborn in all humans, others are taught to us by our culture. Only once you know the rules can you break them properly without losing your viewer. An infamous example on the Internet is programmers who go back later and can’t decipher their own code. They broke the rules by not commenting properly so the message is lost.
Breaking the rules properly draws attention to a desired part of the message without obscuring the whole.
The long-awaited release of Delicious Library 2.1 is out. With this release comes the native iPhone application we’ve all been dying for.
The first thing I noticed when I opened it for the first time was that the info pane is back on the right side. Yay! Having it on the bottom was hard to read. Although the wood background I’ve loved since I first got it now bothers me and I miss the option to change imagery it used to have.
There’s a link to the iPhone app on the iTunes store in the preferences. Once it’s installed on your device you get an option to use a dummy library or sync your own. Connect your phone to your computer and open the desktop application. Your device shows up in the left-hand pane on top under your list of libraries. A screen like the one in iTunes pops up and there is a code you have to enter to link the two libraries. Then you can sync and import the data from your  desktop to your device. You can import all the items or just selected shelves.
In the mobile app you get all of the content you specified plus the people you’ve loaned stuff to and what they have. There’s a built in search function but unfortunately the library content isn’t available to the iPhone’s overall search function.
There isn’t a way to add content on the go or edit the content but you can email records or follow a link to Amazon. The visual design is entirely consistent with the desktop application while also being appropriately formatted for mobile use. I’d like a little more customization ability but it’s good for a first release.
Like blogs before it, Twitter is “the next big thing” from the Internet and most people who aren’t massive Internet users have no idea what it is. And like blogs what it does is hard to explain. With blogs, and with Twitter, it’s a tool. The fun and helpfulness comes from how you use it.
The basics are you create an account and start following other people, friends who have accounts, celebrities, businesses, etc. You then receive their posts in your Twitter feed. Some of them follow you back and they receive your posts, or tweets. You can tell the world how much you liked a movie or advertise the car you’re selling. You can have conversations with other Twitter users and anyone else can jump in. There is also a private messaging function for things you don’t want in the public domain.
There are a myriad of ways to use twitter. Street vendors in San Francisco post where they will set up daily. Layer Tennis is a design competition that tweets when new entries are posted. Many people post when they add new posts to their blogs. Some websites use it to directly communicate with their audience. I use it daily for discussions with my friends. We often plan get-togethers with it. I also find it useful for keeping up with the general news in the world as well as interest-specific news. Sounds a lot like blogs. Part of the popularity of Twitter is that it is very easy for fast short updates where full blog posts feel like too much work or too formal.
It can be a great networking tool as well as a fun time-waster. Businesses search for their names and communicate with customers who have problems, bloggers advertise new posts, I have my twitters posted on my website so there is always fresh content. There is a great article on getting started with Twitter on ProBlogger.
Like blogs before it, the only way to really understand Twitter is to use it. Search for a topic and read what other people are saying. Then create your own account and start talking too.
A long, long time ago (in Internet time) and far away (on another domain) I posted some pages I had made with html and css as templates for others to use as I was learning them myself. I’ve added to these occasionally since and today I pared them down to the ones I consider the best and moved them to this site along with a new one. You can find them all on the Layouts page.
Yes I am one of the many geeky Iron Chef fans. I loved the original and I love the American version as well. It only hit me tonight though, the may things I had learned from a mere tv show that ca be applied to my own, non-culinary pursuits.
Have a plan
They may not know what the specific ingredient is going to be but they obviously have a plan going in.The secret ingredient is revealed and they go straight to work. The plans have to have some flexibility to account for the unexpected, but you never see anyone asking what they should be doing.
Work now, play later
When they go to work, they are all work. There is very little goofing around until the bell rings and it’s all over. Which doesn’t mean it’s joyless, these are people doing what they love best. There’s plenty of celebrating after but the work is their first priority
Stop and look at what you’ve got
You see them tasting things constantly, checking the seasoning and the doneness. Recently I was creating artwork for a project and was very unhappy with it. I had the luxury of time so I went to something else and came back later. To my surprise, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had thought.
Get opinions
Countless times I’ve seen sous chefs ask the head chef to taste something. Sometimes you don’t have the time or simply can’t step far away enough from what you are working on to evaluate it objectively.
It’s in the details
Every teacher I’ve had in art school has told me this numerous times. But nothing has gotten it through to me like watching an ingredient that was little more than a decoration be delicately cooked in wine and carefully placed just so with instruments that looked like tweezers.
Don’t be afraid to start over
Something else you see often is chefs unhappy with the way a dish is working just throwing out everything and starting from scratch. Despite the time constraints they’re under, they won’t turn in something less than their best work.
I’m sure there are many more lessons to be gotten from watching masters apply their art. I’d love to hear things others have picked up on.
How to Succeed Marketing to Generation “G” Copyblogger
There’s a brand new generation for online marketers to adapt to.
This time, however, the generation is not defined by date of birth. This generation is defined by repulsion at the corporate and political greed that has plummeted much of the world into economic doldrums.
In other words, Generation “G” is all about generosity and sickened by greed.
I don’t intend to make this a link blog but this particular article is particularly pertinent. I see this very attitude all around me at school and with my friends.
Thanksgiving and I finally have a break from school and time to work on other projects.
- Evernote is my external brain. There is a desktop app for Mac or PC, an iPhone app and a web app that all sync automatically. There’s even a Thunderbird extension that sends things to your account. Text, audio, or photo. It’s searchable, taggable and has categories.
- Bookshelf is an e-book reader specifically for iPhone and the iPod Touch. It supports a lot of file formats (no DRM), including all my MobiPocket formatted files from Webscription.net. The best part is the customization options. There are a number of color themes and you can set the font and the size for what is easiest to read for you.
Any time I mention e-books, someone goes “But I like paper”. I like paper too but paper is heavy and bulky to carry around. I can fit a dozen books on my phone, which is backlit for low-light situations and always have something to read when I have to wait. Plus, with Webscription.net’s free library and low prices I can save money and a tree.
- Mah Jong is an old favorite game of mine and Moonlight is the best execution of it for the iPhone. There are several layouts and a free as well as a pay version.
- Sudoku is popular all over these days and Big Bang’s web version for the iPhone was the most popular option. The installable version is still good, though there are a couple of changes I would like.
- Yes I’m a Twitter addict. All my friends are too so it works out to help us keep up with each other. I’ve tried several different Twitter clients for the iPhone, including Twitterific which is my desktop client but I’ve only fallen in love with Tweetie. It loads quickly (moreso than the website) and gives you access to all the normal Twitter functions.
There are lots more great apps and I’d love to hear your favorites.
It’s a common rule of thumb that using images as part of your blog posts helps draw attention to them and illustrate what you’re saying. Finding and creating these pictures can be difficult if you aren’t a photographer but there are plenty of places on the Internet where people are sharing their own photos for free or low prices. You have to watch the Terms of Use though, particularly if you are selling the article.
A number of graphic designers have successfully converted their expertise into Second Life businesses. Everything made in Second Life relies on textures… pictures made in an image program like Photoshop… to not only make it look like what the creator wants it to be but to give it depth and reality. So an orb becomes a basketball and an undershirt becomes a tattoo.
Because of the ease of entry (software-Gimp is free, upload fees-10L each, 400L for $1, and time), Second Life has a thriving home-grown fashion market. There are people making a living just making virtual doll-clothes and accessories.
Real world fashion businesses are taking notice of the money and interest being spent by this circle of fans and are coming into Second Life to create a presence for advertising purposes- and are not doing well.
The most memorable of these is none other than Armani. When Armani announced that they were building an in world store there was great deal of anticipation. They hired a good, experienced builder and got a nice store but apparently left the creation of their items (only 10) to their regular designers who presumably didn’t have the time to really learn the built-in Second Life tools. The result is a too small collection that the very people Armani was hoping to attract took one look at and said I can get twice the quality at a third of the price.
They aren’t the only ones though. A famous athletic shoe retailer created a “build your own” factory that doesn’t see much use because the resulting shoes take up too much computer and server resources to render.
American Apparel has a store as well. They at least have more than 10 items and what they have is ok but when you’re options include a leather trench coat and being a dalek, very plain colored t-shirts and khakis don’t have much appeal. It’s also a well-documented effect that you have to release new items regularly to keep traffic (and sales) up, which American Apparel has never done.
Doing it Right
There have been successful transitions. Most notable is a canadian couture designer named Nyla who has a set of shops where she has taken her real creations and remade them in Second Life. Because she took the time to learn the tools and the customer base her products are excellent quality and well-priced while still remaining in her style.
The japanese also have good ideas about in-world advertising. Treasure hunts for freebies are always popular and the word of mouth affect is very strong in Second Life.
Now that IBM has given a demonstration at the National Retail Federation on using Second Life for prototyping, there may be more mainstream fashion companies coming into Second Life but independents who can devote the time to learning the environment will still have the advantage for quite a while.
Help on learning to use the Second Life templates, scripting language and building blocks can be found on the forums. Marketing guidance can be found here.
The Internet is a decent place to do research these days. The idea that “everything is online” is still not true but it becomes more so every day. The problem for everyone is that much of this information costs a lot of money to access for large institutions much less small organizations. Help is often available in the form of the public library. Tennessee has a project called the Tennessee Electronic Library, which provides access to a number of databases for any Tennessee resident through their school or public library.
There is plenty online for free though.
- For instance many government departments have websites ending in the .gov domain. Useful at this time of year is IRS.gov where you can download the forms or fill out a free electronic submission form (you can’t have made more than $54,000 to use Free File though). They also have information meant to make filing your taxes easier and a “Where’s my Refund?” system.
- The first and fastest growing area of free information is medical. Pubmed.gov is the government’s free portal to its database of medical journal articles (Medline). Medline is the foremost database of medical citations in the world. These are the articles written by scientists and doctors for other scientists and doctors, where they publish drug trial data you hear about in commercials. Doctors like PubMed because they can get into it anywhere. It can be difficult to understand for those without a medical degree though. MedlinePlus.gov is produced by the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine. Searching it gives results in journals, medical dictionaries, encyclopedias and selected websites.
- The New York Public Library has posted an extensive Digital Gallery of scanned images that are free for noncommercial use.
- The American Kennel Club (AKC)’s website is a font of information for prospective and current dog owners including a directory of breeds and a list of registered breeders.
- Open Vault: WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA) provides online access to materials produced by WGBH public television station. The database currently houses more than 50,000 audio, video, and film masters.
- TRIS (Transportation Research Information Services) is a comprehensive source for published transportation research on the Web from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the Transportation Research Board.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.
- Open J-Gate is an electronic gateway to global journal literature in open access domain. Launched in 2006, Open J-Gate is the contribution of Informatics (India) Ltd to promote OAI. Open J-Gate provides seamless access to millions of journal articles available online.
- In 2003, PLoS (Public Library of Science) launched a nonprofit scientific and medical publishing venture that provides scientists and physicians with high-quality, high-profile journals in which to publish their most important work, while making the full contents freely available for anyone to read, distribute, or use for their own research. The PLoS journals are run by professional editors, trained scientists, and physicians, in close collaboration with editorial boards. Papers published in these journals are peer reviewed using a uniquely consultative process between editors and experts in their field, and are produced to the highest editorial and production standards. Under the open access model, PLoS makes all published works immediately available online, with no charges for access and no restrictions on subsequent redistribution or use, as long as the author(s) and source are cited.
- AGRICOLA is like Medline but for all aspects of agriculture, including nutrition and veterinary science. Unfortunately, it’s also the National Agriculture Library’s catalog so you have to be aware of whether you’re searching the books or the journal articles.
There are free sources for pretty much any subject, you just have to be careful that they are reliable sources. .edu and .gov domains tend to be good indicators
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