A Safari extension by Panic that lets you draw, use a highlighter, edit text and add sticky notes to a web page and then email it to someone. It’s free, so get your clients to install safari and start using it. The little touches are what makes this a fun to use, and as such a great bit of interaction design.
Panic also creates Coda, a text editor for Mac, and Transmit – the only FTP client I have ever felt willing to part with some cash for.
The server running this site is a the most basic virtual server available running at Slicehost.com. I recently rebuilt the slice from CentOS to an Ubuntu distribution for the hell of it. But since then, I have found things a little slower than before, especially with WordPress. I needed a fix.
I spent the spare time I had this weekend revamping the theme for this website. I chose to use as much of the new standards as possible.
My previous layout here was a fairly simple custom theme. But not simple enough for an upgrade to the new version of WordPress, which broke it.
So I have a default layout with a shoe-horned header image.
Todo, tofix.
Tonight I read this from Groupware Bad in which Jamie Zawinski tells the story of when he convinced his friend not to try and make an Open Source Groupware product:
If you want to do something that’s going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.One thing that always confuses me is how, as creative people in this industry, we are somehow often convinced to base our decisions and channel our energies around corporate structures and managers’ whim, like somehow that is something cool, something to aspire to. I see it all the time in studios where developers, designers and account directors alike lap up the promise of higher management, client or wider industry affirmation. Instead of thinking about the people who will use our products decisions about product behaviour are made in a boardroom full of management egos.
It really winds me up.
I’ve been reading every opinion in my feeds following the fallout of the iPad launch. I think it’s fascinating to see how quickly people are polarised. There are a lot of angry Flash developers out there, and a lot of smugness coming from the other side.
I will admit that I like developing with both ActionScript and JavaScript/HTML. I think both the Flash Platform and the Browser show great potential for different purposes. And each has its problems when misapplied. So what’s new? As developers we face these choices with our technology every day. So Flash isn’t on the iPad or iPhone. Does it matter that much? It’s a single device platform with a visionary design. It should be applauded. But we are not creating interactivity for a monoplatform world. Innovation will mean there is something that outwits the iPhone OS. Necessity will require us to adopt new, unchartered and non-standard solutions. Interaction design and communication technology is not all about LED screens and input devices. Principles will still be the same: make things for people not for technologies.
There is so much to say on this subject, it opens up so many juicy channels of opinion, debate and evidence. Is this about openness? Is it about innovation? Is it about standards? Is it about winners or losers? Ultimately the debate is good for the web development community, and it’s time we all had a chance to define some thinking about these issues in this landscape. The launch of the iPad may be a watershed moment for more reasons than innovative touchscreen technology and eBooks saving the publishing industry.
I think the ball is in Adobe’s court right now. They could really turn this around to their favour. Open source the Flash Platform completely? Support the development and adoption of the HTML standard by giving developers more great tools? Make Flash better and more essential to everyday browsing? Make a FlashPad device?
Ray Valdes on Gartner probably offers the best and most balanced overview of the issues that face us as media producers for these platforms.
I recently decided to change the way I use the social bookmarking service delicious.com to how I have been using it for the last five years or so. I have starting to see it less as a big bucket to catch anything of minor interest I encounter, and more of a considered record of my daily worthwhile reading on the web, with space for my comment. Not quite a blog, but a timeline of my online reading that reflects my thoughts, research and daily problem solving. We’ll see how this new approach turns out, but to get there I felt I needed to organise my delicious account a little better.
Mashing up the Universe at the Science Museum on Saturday, ActionScript frameworks and Design Patterns at the London Flash Platform User Group at the Cosmo Bar in Clerkenwell on Thursday, and Playful09, ‘a day of cross disciplinary frolicking’ on Friday. read on…
Last Friday I took the day off work to go to Playful 09 at Conway Hall in London – and had a fun and inspiring time.
At Clinic London we recently hired a contractor to help us with the Drupal development on a new project (details as yet undisclosed, but it is an exciting job). Having worked on a very big Drupal based project recently, and at times struggled with way Drupal works compared to our usual bespoke development with PHP, we felt it would be good to get some help and some extra Drupal brain power in the studio, and having an expert in the studio to help raise our knowledge. read on…