Scrolling down through the page, it’s obvious that the site is designed for tablets. The scrolling between sections seems attuned to touch. Transitions between sections like Latest News and The Players appears to be almost physical, like folding a page. Hovering over the top striped bar, shows a heads-up banner of the main headlines. Interesting again.

To distract myself and all of yiz, here’s a video of MPU Labs “Snake The Planet” that has been selected for Sydney’s Vivid Festival this Summer. Think Snake, but projected and including traces of the world around us. The promo film was produced by Finch and Publicis Mojo.

Snake the Planet! from MPU on Vimeo.

• A Henry Miller Eames rocker I renovated myself.
• Coquettish dog squirming into every frame. Preferably licking his coxsies on my Anthropologie spread.
• A Florence Knoll settee green/grey wool with wood trim.
• A ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ poster.

Instead I’ll link you to a post by Steve Henry on how creativity at UK digital agencies there is at an all time low. And Ireland is doubtedly the UK’s poor cousin in this regard. Discuss.

An advert made for Inlingua – a language course provider.

Love Irish Food.

Unarocks ‘Love is Equal’ animation on the Playhouse installation at Liberty Hall last night. Oh and ‘fish’ by tim.

Say you’re out and about with your iPhone, wouldn’t be it handy to be able to create a new playlist in iPod and add songs to it? You don’t want Genius to guesstimate the playlist, you know how the playlist should build and boom.

There isn’t an option to do this on iPhone at present. Ooops. The amount of time one spends away from iTunes far outweighs the time they spend syncing with the library open. Therefore, even basic access to organise playlists seems a no-brainer. The decision to organise and finetune playlists might be one of those jobs you’d like to be able to do on that long bus ride home or while waiting to meet someone.

Maybe it’ll come in the next iTunes and iPhone OS updates? * crosses fingers *

Just came across this picture of an ambient mailbox. Not sure about you, but I’d like a mailbox like this. The idea of a rapidly filling inbox screaming at me, makes me uneasy. Action me, action me!

How could we design sites and web applications that are cognescient of action and reaction from users? Interfaces that not only tell us things, but tell us in a particular sort of voice.

Think about for minute. How many mails do receive every day? Wouldn’t it be interesting if you could set boundaries or rules for the display of those mails. Not a simple rule that reroutes a mail to folder and marks it as read, but rather a rule or some plugged-in intelligence (like a profile) that could modify the display of a mailbox. An intelligent skin.

I could define a rule turning my mailbox turn from light grey to progressively red for every unread mail item past an acceptable threshold. Perhaps, I’d like to highlight certain mail threads because of keywords, senders or titles by changing their default color or size (from line item to full item preview).

Most emailers are used to the idea of setting up rules to sort mail, how about rules to define mail display?

Photo by Jessamyn. Licenced under CC.

The last Ziegfield Girl. NYT loginwall, you suck!

The New Yorker reviews the Youtube Symphony. * replaces*

Moot is Time’s world’s most influencial person. Via Jack.

Jonathan asks has Facebook’s gamble on freeing status messages for developers to consume going too far?

Cornell researchers analyse 35m geotagged photos on Flickr and generate an accurate map.

The White House Flickrstream.

The Tarantino Mixtape. (sensitive readers, beware!)

Snap!

Original photo by StrangrThanCandy

Multi-touch. It’s beginning to change how we think about interacting with computers and devices all around it.

In a land so young, what fruits can multi-touch bear for us? And are we ready for its ubiquitous debut?

Contextual feedback

So far the mass-market multi-touch screens we’ve seen in demos and on the street are all oneway. Won’t it be really interesting when the screen touches us back? Contextual feedback is going to be massive. And it’s already here – in a fashion.

The vibrate function is a contextual feedback alert. Caveman as it is, it is a cheap and cheery of the alerting attention of the phone user. It’s already plugged into the AudioServicesPlaySystemSound function of the iPhone SDK. But imagine making this function beefier, imagine using it in space.

Spatial Awareness

The iPhone’s firmware 2.2 is due for release next week and one of the big feature wins we are promised is Google Street View on the iPhone. I wonder what baked-in gestures we’ll get. What will it be like to play with? Rotating aspect is going to be fun. Multi-touch and spatial interaction could offer some really nice scenarios.

Taking this to computerland, Apple is already looking at making the trackpad a big Kahuna. A space where trackpad touches and keyboard functions are bundled together. Could a super trackpad also give feedback with changes in terrain or topology on the screen? A vibrate sensation that gets stronger as you scroll across distinctive landmarks on a map perhaps?  There are so many interesting directions reactive contextual feedback could be used on multitouch surfaces.

Are you sure you want fries with that?

Imagine being able to setup sites on your iPhone that could alert you when important decisions are need to be made and yes/no choice needs to be taken. I’m not advocating for a UAC system, but rather an opt-in preference console, where you can define the sites and actions that you want to be alerted on. This would have to be a browser specific preference.

You may only use this function on one or two sites, but it would be used in taking important decision-making actions. Imagine being able to setup an alert when you are making important banking transfers. A reminder, a notification.

The important thing to stress about this feature is that it has to be opt-in. And it has to be secure.

Global Sensual Support

How many benefits could contextual feedback on trackpad make those with visual disabilities? Imagine the power of listening for and projecting touch to those users? And not in a specialised/expensive way either. Accessibility touch stylee.

Were this technology readily available on laptops with trackpads or plug and play peripherals for the desktop, users could simply turn it on. Mass adoption of this technology by manufacturers means universal availability, so moving from one computer to the next is not a trial.

Multi-touch Bubble

In the last OpenCoffee, after watching the Windows 7 demo from PDC the topic of multi-touch technology came up – is it viable? / who uses it? / would it be bad ergonomics? / perhaps multi-touch perpherals are the future? Interesting thoughts.

Wouldn’t it be nice to take the idea of a multi-touch as addedum to your desktop and make it a peripheral too? Call it the Multi-touch Bubble (sexy name comes later after my Angel round!).

The Bubble is so named as it’s a shallow hemisphere. Something that feels good in my palm. A place to rest my hand and when I want to use Multi-touch, an easy place to rotate, zoom or move my content.  You see I’m lazy. I don’t want unnecessary fiddling to find my Multi-touch device. I want a hammock.

The hemisphere is sunk into a moate. My fingers want space to twist too. And the surface must be strong, yet something I want to touch. Preferably, I want a surface that feels like  warm marble  (an impossibility, I know). Perhaps a smooth compound? Alu, metal or cheap plastic is not a place I want to rest my hand on for extended periods. Think of the sweat. Eugh.

So the Bubble will have all of the standard multi-touch gestures, like rotate, pinch etc, would it be nice to play teacher too? You ought to be able to train the Bubble. Imagine it has a clear surface. When I choose to train the Bubble, coloured tracks of my fingers tracing the movement are replayed back to me. I can see a real-time replay of the gesture and then map it to some movement I record or describe to the training software. I don’t have all the answers, but simply having the option to train new gestures outside the scope of standard interactions expands my Bubble’s multi-touch language.

There are just so many applications of the Bubble too. For example, can you imagine having a Bubble as the head of the gear stick in your car. Having immediate access to climate controls or your stereo, without moving your attention from the road. Amazing. I’d love a robocar of the future with one of those.

Ideas, Shmideas – The Future is in Our Homes

Multi-touch is such a young technology. Devices that use it won’t be the sorts of Jetson tech demos we’re used to seeing. It’s far more likely that embedded devices will slowly and silently adopt multi-touch as a big UI path. Gadgets in our homes, like microwaves or washing machines.

It’s likely that many devices with manual knobs and switches will turn to multi-touch interfaces to simplify and humanise their control panels. I’d love to see my mother use a multi-touch dryer, wouldn’t you?

MAKING SLIDES MEMORABLE

Use Text Sparingly

Original photo by dmodzelewski (cc)

The more and more I attend and give presentations, the less text I want to put on and/or see on them. Slides are there to highlight a point, not to fill up with an essay. Too much text confuses the audience. Ideally, a slide should just have a single statement on it, with an image that pushes that idea home.

Some of us are wowed by text, others by images and yet more are bent to the auditory. Why not make your presentation appeal to all of the above? Cut the fat right out of your slides and build out a takeaway document for your audience. Slides sell the idea, a takeaway is opportunity to record context.

Stick to a Three-colour Theme, if possible

Original photo by Mestissa (cc)

You want your slides to look unique. Iconic. Logo designers often stick to a three colour palette with a eye to simplify a concept.

Taking this idea into slides, use coloured headings to highlight your points.  Try to associate your palette with how you want your audience to feel. If you are trying to sell a new idea, something fresh and clean – how about green and blue? If it’s a luxury item, should you be looking at something burgundy? Of course, the main font ought to stay black, unless of course you decide to mix it up and use one of the  heading colours as a background in a slide or two. Black text on burgundy? Ugh! No! Be smart.

If you are using Powerpoint 2007, your choices can be made this a little easier as it has a suite of themes on tap. There are piles of sites out there like that do help web designers with colour combos. You could check those out for inspiration.

Make use of Creative Commons images

Original photo by blprnt_van (cc)

Spice up your slides by using pictures licensed under Creative Commons. There are lots places where you can pick up quality photos and use, once you use them under the correct license and are sure to give proper attribution to the photographer/artist. Lots of people are turned on if you use their images. Just make sure you don’t abuse their kindness.

I like to use Jazz Biscuit’s handy Creative Commons image search. Yes and all of my images were found using it.

ON THE DAY, BE PREPARED

Cast a Hook

Original photo by The Wandering Angel (cc)

Be daring, the meek aren’t remembered. Your audience have carved out time in their schedule and are ready to be blown away. While this can be hard in some presentations, there’s almost always a neat idea that you use to make a lasting impression.

Are you making a bold statement? Can you use a live demonstration in your presentation with props? Things that people can smell, touch and feel leave a tangible mark with the audience. If it’s presentation on food, can you bring samples?

Ask yourself everything

Original photo by Tonamel (cc)

Imagine all your toughest critics in the room. When you quote numbers, stats or give examples have your homework done.

If you’re selling then the audience are like a team of VCs. Be sure to give precise answers. If you don’t know the answer to something admit it, make a note and promise to come back on that issue after the talk. Move on, there’s nothing to gain by talking bull.

Know your venue

Original photo by jcortell (cc)

Scope out where you’re going to do the presentation. Do you have to bring a laptop? Got the required AV cable to hook into the projector?

Also there’s a number of simple things you ought to do, like check you have enough seats and meeting notes for attendees. Know where the light and AC controls are too.

Do you have any presentation tips you’d like to add?

Adobe Premiere can do some swanky things like this. And here’s The Making Of.

For every Helvetica, there are clones like Olnova Bold. Olnova Bold is quite nice, though I’m on the fence on the e’s.. What do you think?

So the Moo cards hit the table last Saturday in the Porterhouse after the photowalk, and I couldn’t stop thinking about this scene throughout. Of course, Eco Moos trump bone cards.

There’s a few basic rules that you ought to keep in mind for academic poster-making:

• Make sure you poster comes to a concrete conclusion. Every scrap of text and diagram is pushing for a big bang at the end. Your poster should be a document of your opinion on the subject matter and it deserves a stonking conclusion.
• Cut down text to points and conclusions. Essays do not belong on a poster. That’s what references are for.
• And on references, use them like chilli powder. Sparingly. Add omph where it’s needed.
• If you can include a summary graphic that unifies your whole poster, then do it.
• Font is very important. Use one that’s easy to read. And it goes without saying, Comic Sans will doom you to an eternity of damnation. The doomed still use it though.
• Stand back five feet from your poster. If you can’t read it from there, time to redesign.
• Keep your colour palette to a minimum. Try to aim for three main colours, just like good logos have (at a max). Other colours should only be added where necessary, and even then just to distinguish small areas of the poster. Black text on white is always a winner.
• Simple graphics should be used just to illustrate points. This isn’t an art contest or an exercise in squeezing a thousand elements into a window 100 pixels wide and high. Your graphics are all about clarifying your hypothesis, so they should be uncluttered and easy to digest.
• Get unbiased feedback. Ask for advice from lots of people. Folks that have a grounding in the subject matter, so that you’re verifying the correctness of your information and from people outside that area, so you’re testing the readability of the poster.

I’m going to start making more posters, just for fun. And not only the nerdy, academic type either.

(Update: changed the title as it wasn’t very descriptive, now was it?)

Banksy wants to stay anonymous for his own reasons. Perhaps it’s because he is a former ex-public schoolboy brat; a product of the middle-class. Or maybe it’s because he believes that his art ought to speak for itself and not be about the man. More likely, he knows that the mystique of the Banksy legend will evapourate when the big reveal happens. To transform this into the geek arena, how did you feel when you heard that Fake Steve Jobs was actually Dan Lyons?

The nub of the tale is that this is really about the British class system. It’s a war between the street art proletariat and the middle-class. Banksy’s art is street theatre. Splashes of fun on grim building-fronts. Banksy is someone that graffiti artists would love to call one of their own. He’s a graffiti animator with a dark sense of fun. Mutterings that he might hail from a well-heeled family don’t sit well either with the graffiti gang or with the middle-classed Art School indies.

The streets see Banksy as an oddity. And he is. He’s just as comfortable selling the Jolie-Pitts pieces worth over €1.3m as he is stenciling on the back of a building in East London. Call it marching to the beat of his own drum, viral marketing guerrilla-stylee or attempting to gild his reputation with a thin film of urban cred. Banksy mixes it up.

By encroaching on the traditional stomping ground of graffiti-makers using their materials and canvas and selling to the hoi-polloi, Banksy is a incendiary point between the street and the SUVed. And if he does emerge as a member of the middle-class, what does it say about this hallowed slice of society that he’d rather stay anonymous than publicly acknowledge his socio-economic tribe?

Ah, societal conflict inside societal conflict. Anonymity is Banksy’s best friend. Banksy just is. And he likes it that way.

Banksy Photo owned by unusualimage (cc)

Loving this little surprise gift that I got this morning. Who says big is best?

Could you streamline the ever-present school transport headache so as to reduce parents’ traffic run? Or how about looking at the humble corkscrew; could it be made foolproof so that broken corks are a thing of the past?

Via Colm, I see that there’s a global Usability Challenge this August 1st. The aim of the challenge is to get as many people as possible focused on solving real-world problems, and then get them to approach the industries and service vendors with their proposals. A very cool approach to seed invention in those that wish on a star and a tidy method to push for innovation across borders.