April 2006 Archives

• 30 Apr 2006

  Death & Information Graphics

  Somewhat macabre, but it seems that artists/designers have found interesting ways to convey death statistics. The New York Times, for instance, recently ran a graphical map showing homicides in New York City's five boroughs between 2003 and 2005: Homicides and Crime in New York City - New York Times Interactive Graphic. Instead of their typical...

• 29 Apr 2006

  Site Spring Cleaning Oops

  Apologies to those who may have visited the site recently and found a wonkered Works section. I had been doing some spring cleaning — a tad too aggressively — and apparently tossed out files that I shouldn't have. Thank goodness for backups, the Works section is now restored: SimplifierLab: Works.

• 29 Apr 2006

  Site Usability for Kids and Teens

  "Teens prefer a simple and clean design and feel that functionality often gets lost in the more elaborately designed sites where download speed is also often compromised." This reaffirms what I discovered in my thesis research as well as observations on usability conducted for a number of children's sites. for A number of tips on designing for a young audience: Content Matters: Designing Usable Sites for Children and Teens.

• 28 Apr 2006

  Eye Tracking Case Study: Virgin Megastore

  Eyetracking study of the Virgin Megastore homepage showing how users change their visual focus with a simple banner change: Blog - Etre.

• 27 Apr 2006

  Fewer Folks Fear Cookies

  Seems that internet users are getting over their cookie paranoia. According to a poll conducted by The Ponemon Institute, only 8% of those surveyed deleted cookies routinely, a marked contrast from a study done Jupiter Research a year ago where almost 40% reported they deleted cookies on a regular basis. Survey: Net Users Easing Up on the Cookie Hate, via Clickz.

• 25 Apr 2006

  Looking to Work on a Mobile Social App?

  Friends at Kamida -- the folks who brought you Socialight -- are hiring. They are offering internship opportunities for developers and designers and are also looking for a full-time Lead Engineer. See details...

• 25 Apr 2006

  Photoshop Browser Templates

  If you ever need to show mockups within specific browser environments, then you'll want to download this free Photoshop template: Free Photoshop browser templates for webdesigners and screendesigners | webdesignerstoolkit.com.

• 25 Apr 2006

  Thumbs Up for ThinkFree Online Office

  You get 1GB file storage. You can create, edit, collaborate and share Microsoft-compatible word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Did I mention that it's entirely free? ThinkFree. I've only just started to play with it so I'm sure there are more features that I haven't uncovered yet. It probably makes coffee too.

• 24 Apr 2006

  Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly

  Once again, complexity takes a back seat to simplicity as studies confirm that readers are more impressed by simpler writing: ScienceDaily: The Secret Of Impressive Writing? Keep It Plain And Simple.

• 24 Apr 2006

  Design Gestalt

  An essay from IDEO's Diego Rodriguez defines Design as a sum of many parts: It's the Ecosystem, Stupid. As I pointed out previously with Joel Spolsky's essay, designers should approach and view Design holistically rather than fragmenting it into artificial, myopic sub-practices.

• 21 Apr 2006

  DonorsChoose Gets Blogging

  DonorsChoose has tapped bloggers to help raise money for learning materials and experiences that schools cannot afford through their Blogger Challenge. You can help public school kids by funding my Kids and Technology Challenge at DonorsChoose. Or, you can help spread the work by blogging about the challenge or submitting the DonorsChoose Challenge to Digg and other similar sites.

• 20 Apr 2006

  ITP Spring Show 2006

  If you're a fan of Make, circuit-bending, etc., then you'll love the ITP Spring Show, a two-day exhibition of interactive sight, sound and physical objects from the student artists of ITP. This event is free and open to the public. No need to RSVP. ITP Spring Show 2006.

• 18 Apr 2006

  Steer Clear of Angry People

  While seemingly obvious, Kathy Sierra offers some research on why Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain. Of course, my own quick cure for those times when I get sucked into negativity: watching baby panda videos.

• 17 Apr 2006

  Essential Word Tips

  As much as I loathe Word, I can't avoid getting/exchanging Word docs from clients. I find that the docs I receive are often riddled with telltale signs of their lack of knowledge of Word's features. So I'm naturally grateful to...

• 16 Apr 2006

  ITP Thesis Week 2005 Live Webcast!

  Thesis presentations for NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP ) graduating students will be webcast live from Tuesday, May 2 through Friday, May 5. Newsweek calls ITP "the Harvard of Interactive". See http://itp.nyu.edu/thesis for the updated schedule and list of presenters.

• 15 Apr 2006

  Samsung's Virtual Screen for Mobiles

  Samsung has applied for a patent on a virtual, projected screen as an alternative input mechanism to QWERTY thumb keyboards, according to a report from unwired.com. View illustration of proposed concept

• 15 Apr 2006

  Demystifying Photoshop's Sharpen, Unsharp Mask

  Helpful tips from the stock.xchng community on when to use Sharpen vs. Unsharpen mask without sacrificing color fidelity: stock.xchng: Sharpen/Unsharpen.

• 14 Apr 2006

  Searches Typically End on Page 3

  Not so surprising results from a Jupiter/iProspect survey show that most Search users 'stop at page three' of the search results.

• 14 Apr 2006

  Rounded Corners Generator

  Sitepoint: Generate Corners (beta) does just what it says. It generates CSS-based rounded corners with no javascript. It does, however, require four small images (GIFs).

• 12 Apr 2006

  Joel on Design

  Finally, a cogent essay on the importance of design -- particularly in how he defines design and distinguishes it from decoration: Joel on Software - Great Design: What is Design? (First Draft). You know the folks who have been peddling Experience Design as the new black? Guess what folks, it's redundant. Design = Experience. It always was, always will be.

• 10 Apr 2006

  Simplified Feed Publishing

  Feedo Style - Feed formatter for RSS and ATOM feeds offers a simple way for bloggers and content publishers to display RSS feed content into their websites. No programming or markup knowledge required.

• 5 Apr 2006

  Low Usage for Podcasts

  Although "podcast" topped the list of new words for the past year, apparently the masses (myself included) haven't truly taken an affinity for it with a paltry 1% admitting to using podcasts regularly, according to Forrester Research. Read the overview from Charlene Li's Blog: Forrester podcasting report - just 1% use podcasts.

• 4 Apr 2006

  OnlyWire Functional Improvements

  I've been using OnlyWire, a handy tool/bookmarklet that allows users to post to multiple bookmarking sites. They recently made a number of improvements to the application including the ability to mark bookmarks private and to select from your pre-existing tags which are now displayed. OnlyWire: The Only BookMarklet You'll Ever Need.

• 1 Apr 2006

  Good Magazine

  Beautifully designed magazine, GOOD MAGAZINE | What Matters, done by Area 17. It has the typical impeccable typography and gridwork of Arnaud Mercier. What a good magazine, indeed.