So many businesses are convinced they need an app these days and will dump good money on a lousy implementation without strong business or user goals defined, all for the sake of saying to an executive “We have an app”. You possibly don’t need an app any more than you should be putting ugly QR codes on your (hopefully) nicely designed marketing pieces. I guarantee you the marketing design team hates that and is pissed at IT or the business group for pushing it. They aren’t catching on for good... Read full article →
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/eric-schmidt-on-steve-jobs-10062011.html Great personal experience story from Eric Schmidt about Steve Jobs. The common burn on Jobs is that he was “just the business guy” and didn’t make or build anything he’s attributed credit for. Arguing the value of programming languages isn’t something even many tech executives could do. I’ve been in design and code reviews where I influenced someone else’s work based on my experience and expertise, directing them away from what would lead to problems technically and aesthetically. I’ve also worked with developers who had trouble articulating their value... Read full article →
I’ll save my money for the Raiders of the Lost Ark Blu-Ray http://www.reelz.com/movie-news/11794/steven-spielberg-promises-not-to-alter-e-t-or-raiders-of-the-lost-ark-for-blu-ray-release/ Does George Lucas have a good editor inside himself anymore? Tweet
The design aesthetic is subjective, but tapping on other views should switch them. Instead, I’m “educated” that the common iOS UI pattern is “wrong”, and that I should swipe left/right. As John Gruber points out, the location of switching views would be better served as tappable tabs at the bottom. Who the hell puts “Cancel” first in a vertical UI? “Cancel” is not the first act I should be thinking about. If you’re gonna make an iOS app, embrace it and regardless of platform, use good UI logic and usability... Read full article →
Information Week has an article about Adobe’s new tool for animation with web standards development: Why Adobe Edge Says Nothing About Flash’s Future http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/webdev/231300020 I think “nothing” is a declarative statement that’s flawed. The title should be “Why Adobe Edge Says Nothing About Flash’s Immediate Future” to be more accurate and flexible to unpredictable developments. JavaScript has replaced a number of things people relied on Flash for, because JavaScript engines are a part of browsers that each browser development team has control of. Flash Player can’t be improved on by... Read full article →
From what I’ve seen and heard about Google+, I am very interested in it and wonder if Facebook will have to make changes. One of the reasons Twitter is so popular is that it’s part of the open web. Content on Twitter can be seen by those without Twitter accounts. Twitter profiles and content can also be made private, only seen amongst just your group or direct messages to only specific people (which Anthony Weiner failed at). Facebook content is behind the walled garden of the application. I don’t think... Read full article →
Just don’t care much what anyone names their devices anymore (Wii and iPad name jokes ended when they sold like hotcakes). Wii U? Tons of parents will call it Wii 2 in confusion, which would sound a bit better, or plain, simple Wii HD or get retro and call it Super Wii! It won’t matter. I also don’t care much about hardware specs of consoles (aside from core ones like disc format for versatility for movies, HD space and as long as it includes wifi), because most serve as marketing... Read full article →
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/10/google-music-to-stream-20-000-songs-for-free-launches-at-i-o-la/ Maybe I’m less visionary on this, but I’ve never thought “Boy, I wish I didn’t need to use my local storage for more music.” Could be I just don’t have a huge music library, but more likely, it’s nice to cloud-store content and not need to keep managing what’s synced or downloaded locally. Maybe it’ll be nice to stream my library from anywhere, freeing up local storage for apps, but being someone who lives in a data-capped world, usage needs to be watched. I imagine Verizon will join the... Read full article →
In all the iPhone 4 hoopla, I missed the announcement that Netflix is launching a “free” (with subscription) iPhone app this summer to go along with their iPad one. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an Android app in 6-12 months, if they can work out a deal with Verizon, the biggest Android device service provider. There will probably be a paid Hulu service to compete pretty soon. It’s interesting that the paid subscription of Netflix has become a huge disc/stream content distributor, while TV networks like NBC and Fox... Read full article →
Yeah, this is going to save me a lot of time. http://mashable.com/2010/04/15/gmail-drag-and-drop/ Tweet
