subvisual

links for 2010-02-26

adam — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:04:00 +0000

20 Linux System Monitoring Tools Every SysAdmin Should Know

Useful? I hope so, it's the link I sent our IT support team trying to solve a CPU overheating problem on one of our linux dev servers.

(tags: tools reference linux monitoring sysadmin)

links for 2010-02-16

adam — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:05:06 +0000

Social gamers aren't looking for games

Games, stories, imagination, user experience, social engagement… can one draw a line between them? I think the potential of play and imagination in communication, storytelling and advertising is massive. Just don't get stuck on the labels. People like to play – whatever they are doing and what they call it.

(tags: games design imagination storytelling social)
The Convergence of Advertising and E-commerce

Tim O'Reilly shares his vision of the future. It makes sense that the customer/user experience will simplify this way, particularly on mobile where traditional advertising is lost. Get the user to the point with the transaction to purchase your product, forget about all that marketing speak or persuasion (although I assume these will still need to be part of the overall equation somewhere in informing choice and identifying products for purchase). In a way direct purchasing establishes a more trustworthy relationship – your customer can get what they already know they want with no middle men or story makers, and the directness of that purchase builds a better relationship.

(tags: ecommerce advertising future)

What is wrong with the word “Users”?

adam — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:11:28 +0000

Don’ call me ‘user’! Interesting idea, nice T-shirts and some good comments in the article. This is a debate as old as computing itself, if not older. It reminds me of when I worked for a post-privatisation rail company, and there was resistance among staff to the new company policy of referring to “passengers” as “customers”. It reflected the clashing cultures of the new profit-driven ownership and the public service-oriented staff. I agreed, and I still get a little annoyed when I am referred to as a customer when stuck on a crowded platform and waiting for a late train. Customers have choice. Passengers need to get from A to B.

I’m not sure I have the same sympathy for the call to drop the term “Users” from our vocabulary. What should we call people who use computers and interfaces? I’m not so sure the term lacks in dignity and respect as much as Don Norman insists. It’s an interesting question, but one of those real distractions from getting the job done. One for the philosophers and PhD students of related Social Science disciplines…

Sure. Users are people. Call it “people-centred design” if you like. But in practical discussions with clients and those less concerned with our methodologies, I find it is essential to explicitly differentiate between the stakeholders, clients, managers, developers and designers and the people who will actually Use the product. Each person in this complex process has different and sometimes opposing needs, and this really needs to be drummed into clients’ understandings, otherwise they become convinced that we should be making the product for them, their preferences and tastes, and their world view. We need to strongly resist this, or our output becomes sycophantic and useless. No one is happy, the client loses customers, and we lose the clients. And so the cycle goes.

Until a word that accurately describes who I am talking about, I will have to continue using it.

Mobile phones need an experimental dev zone. Is it Adobe AIR?

adam — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:57:32 +0000

They were hinting at a big announcement, and I was secretly hoping Adobe would announce the launch of their own “Flash Tablet” at this week’s Mobile World conference in Barcelona. That would have made for lots of fun rants ahead. Too bad, it’s just AIR on Android. TechCrunch reports optimistically:

Apple might eventually have to cave if Flash becomes a standard feature of all other smartphones.

AIR For Android, And Adobe’s Plan To Deliver Apps Across All Mobile Devices.

We’ll just wait for New York to wake up and find out what John Gruber has to say about it – although he probably couldn’t give a monkeys – but it is sure to be entertaining reading if he weighs in.

For what it’s worth, I think it’s a great idea and a terrible idea. If this is a backdoor for poorly designed and poorly developed Flash Apps and advertising banners to dominate our interactions, then it will do none of us any favours. I think the same about Flash CS5 export to iPhone. But if AIR is another option to distribute apps then why not? (remember, AIR has a great HTML5 rendering engine in WebKit too). This is obviously not going to be subject to the same UI standards that make the iPhone so universally usable, but the reality is we live in a plural world, and the monoculture of iPhone UI specifications cannot possibly last forever, and nor should it. These platforms and devices all need to let go a little to allow the innovators and expressive interface designers experiment a bit.

Interesting times ahead.

The HTML5 and Adobe Flash debate resolved: use the right tool for the job

adam — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:50:50 +0000

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.

links for 2010-02-08

adam — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:04:09 +0000

Interview with MPEG-LA's CEO re: H.264 Royalties

"The license still would be beneficial because it provides coverage for use of H.264 in these free internet applications. Therefore, all web sites using H.264 for free internet distribution should contact our licensing department and sign a license, even though there’s no royalty."

(tags: video h264 licensing legal)

links for 2010-02-01

adam — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:04:20 +0000

The Development -> Staging -> Production Workflow Problem in Drupal | Development Seed

Deployment is one of my biggest bugbears with Drupal. So much important work is done in hellish checkbox configuration interfaces, breaking what decades of programming has developed as the most effective way to track changes, work as multiple developers on a project, and version control. (i.e. SVN)

There is no way to track what you did to get the damn thing working, which combination of checkboxes and modules actually worked. Then you have to repeat it all from scratch on the live server. There are various strategies and modules out there designed to solve this problem, but none so far have been satisfactory. This looks promising, and I'll have to try it, although I am nervous of putting an entire project's deployment strategy into a third party module. And it still seems to rely on a manual export process, which is a bit clumsy.

For the time being we are doing as much in code as possible – building custom modules with hooks and alters instead of using things like Views.

(tags: drupal deployment svn process)
35 Excellent Wireframing Resources – Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine love to put everything into a numbered list. Here's a useful collection of resources for making wireframes. (35 resources to be precise).

Expressing dynamic behaviour and a live interface on static paper is always going to be difficult.

In my experience, wireframes are deeply misunderstood deliverables and they are difficult to get right. I have seen a lot of poorly produced wireframes that add complexity and confusion rather than helping define the interface part of the user experience. The biggest problem I see is inconsistency and lack of meaningful annotation, which leads to too much brain power dedicated to decoding and interpreting the wireframe when it comes to producing designs and functionality.

(tags: design article ui prototyping informationarchitecture)
Introducing ‘Sign-in with Twitter’, OAuth-Style “Connect” « hueniverse

The difference between federated and delegated authentication explained… Twitter OAuth API is a federated authentication system, much like visa is a federated payment system. Facebook Connect is a delegated system, like in-store cards. The way I understand it, Twitter is a platform to build social apps on, Facebook Connect is a social platform you plug into.

(tags: openid oauth twitter facebook authentication)

links for 2010-01-28

adam — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:04:30 +0000

Daring Fireball: The iPad Big Picture

Apple have developed their own super fast mobile CPU, the "Apple A4" and are showing off, calling themselves bigger than the rest. And they may be right. This is the most interesting angle I have read on the iPad launch so far.

(tags: apple ipad iphone hardware mobile article technology business)

links for 2010-01-26

adam — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:05:54 +0000

How to Develop a Hit Facebook App: 29 Essential Tools and Tutorials – Software Developer

Here's a jump point for kicking off a career in Facebook Appliation Development. Not sure if I wouldn't prefer to be jumping into an stinking bog, but anyway. Kicking and screaming all the way.

(tags: facebook development programming howto)

links for 2010-01-25

adam — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:04:38 +0000

Implementing Facets in Drupal :: andrea resmini

Here is a pragmatic approach to applying Drupal to faceted navigation, using the standard Drupal Taxonomy module.

(tags: drupal taxonomy information-architecture facets)
Shortcomings in Drupal Taxonomy Module | Roberts Street Social Centre

Drupal is causing us headaches again. It can supposedly do everything, or rather, proponents of Drupal love to claim it can do everything. It's no wonder the backlash can sometimes be a bit strong. This article is quite measured compared to other rants I've heard in the studio, and seen online. Anyway, I have always found the IA and taxonomy modules fit nicely with the theory and the way IA is supposed to work. Well the thinking and documentation behind them does, but as with all things Drupal, implementation is often another story. Usually it's a case of hammering away at the various config options, and trying one's best to try and interpret the cryptic help messages in the Drupal interface, and then the penny drops, and yes, it is powerful once you get it.

A thought: do people claim to love it so because they have invested so much effort into getting it to work and survive with it – like a variation of Stockholm Syndrome?

(tags: drupal information-architecture taxonomy)
DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

This is a handy reference for tracking what packages you get with your Linux Distro. We've been hitting problems with version differences between our dev server and the client's staging server, so we've opted to set up a new VM that is closer in configuration to what we're aiming for. This has helped confirm that we are installing the right thing.

(tags: linux reference distribution)