Archive for January, 2007

While I built my first few portals in the late 1990s (Lotus Domino!) , I’ve found myself doing a fair amount of work on news portals - and love it. It’s a purists playground with priorities to remove friction from the enterprise before anything. There’s a real rush in building a system that takes advantage of new technologies (RSS/XML/etc.) and saves very real time for the company needing it.

It’s my observation that what works on corporate portals work well on public news portals too, as long as you consider the less savvy user, requirements for branding and monetization. I’ve not been a big news portal user… I typically get my news via RSS… but during these projects I’ve been sharpening my pencil through review of dozens of portals and re-reading a few of my favorite Information Design books.

News portals make a unique set of design mistakes - as well as a bunch of the usual. In the comparison image below, I put two newspaper pages up against each other to show some contrasts that demonstrate typical issues.

The top design demonstrates what appears to be the “fill available space”logic …Your eye must dart about through a maze of different fonts, headline designs, and inconsistent graphics. Some may say, “hey, it’s a medium sized market TV station website, we can’t afford a fancy design.” But hang on a second. The problem here is the focus of time and energy was misplaced. Nobody cares about the fancy graphical drop down menus or the home page animation. Every study I’ve read shows users want simplicity on their news sites. If the news site is a low priority project for the organization, then they should strive for simplicity and put all of their available funds into finding a top designer with experience and no need to show off.

The lower design, from the Houston chronicle, shows a news portal page done right. Nobody felt the need to put whiz-bang garbage on the home page. Despite the variety of news feed sources, there is a strong consistency in layout - the headlines are color coded, and the eyepaths are simplified. A clear design guideline is in place for headline length, keeping wrapping to a minimum. It’s a pleasure to read that page. It’s skimmable and I know exactly where my favorite area will be the next time I come to the page. Ads are in the eye path, and will be remembered far more than the noise of the top design.

The effort required to build the page on the bottom, from a style sheet and programming standpoint, wasn’t much harder than the top layout - but it required planning and agreement to adhere to a design standard site-wide. To put it simply… the Houston site design was created by someone who didn’t care one bit about impressing visitors with their web snaz… they just wanted to do a great job making it do what it should. My Hat is off. Beautifully done, congratulations to those in charge.

If your role is to build such a portal or newspaper site, spend 2 hours on Google and look at the differences between news sites on the web - there are tremendous a-ha moments to be had.

See also This post about news site design I just found.

Steampunk - Science Fiction where characters (often scientists) fight against an oppressive establishment often using ultra-modern technologies presented in Victorian-era form factors.
Okay, I admit it. I’m a steampunk fan. Not as much the literature, but the imaginative machines and bizarre mixes of digital and non-digital elements, craftsmanship, and tactile sensibility of the artists.

I first got a sense of Steampunk type hardware ideas while watching Brazil, Edward Scissorhands, Wallace and Grommit, and Harry Potter. Someday I will own a nixie clock. I have a wood en box in my garage full of antique tools. So I thought it would be a good idea to list a set of great steampunk-like sites that give a well-rounded overview of the phenomenon, along with a few words about each. If you have one to add to this list, post in the comments with a link. I’ll look-see and possibly add it to the main post as well. Steampunk Labs, Artists, History

• Robots of the Victorian Era
• Radio Guy

• Brass Goggles
• Steampunk Magazine - the journal of misapplied technology
• The Steampunk Workshop - awesome stuff and nicely done photos
• Datamancer - home of the home of the The Nagy Magical-Movable-Type Pixello-Dynamotronic Computational Engine (also featured on Wall-Street Journal Video)
• Steampunkopidia
• Dr Grordort’s Rayguns - this site is amazing. Check the custom cases.
• Stephen Berkman - Love the photography style … reminds me of Nine Inch Nails artwork. Perhaps NIN copied HIM!
• The Retrocomputing Museum
• Vladimir Gvozdev’s terrific artwork - sites’ a little hard to navigate.
• Da Vinci Automata - clockpunk
• Stephane Halleux - do not miss this gallery (example to right)
• Steampunk Fashion
• Steam Brass and Fzz - Check the lamps
• Steampunk Jewelry
• Christopher Locke’s Heartless Machine - Check out the Scissor Spider
• A Better World -Gaming console and ipod imagined in Steampunk Style
• Alex CF Artwork - Many Dead Thinks - brilliant research cases.
• Eccentric Genius - Antiques from a Parallel Universe.
• Spookypop - Wow, a lot of talent in one place (note, you must click on the vines on the left to navigate the site.)
• Animals from Junk - Steampunky
• Steampunk Labs
• Insect Lab
• Steampunk Jewelry and Goggles at EDM
  
• Art Donovan / Steampunk Design
• Suekichi Steampunk Watches
• Absolutely gorgeous Titanium steampunk goggles.
• Steampunk Cellphone design by Arthur Schmitt (note, site uses flash :-( so I can’t bookmark the phone itself, but click on the graphic at the bottom)

teampunk Devices

• Gramophone Ipod
• Steampunk iPod
• Steampunk Lamps
• Steam-Powered Computer
• The Electriclerk
• Automatic Tea Machine
• Steampunk Watches
• More Steampunk Watches (you can buy)
• Cool Steampunk Clocks
• Steampunk Tree House
• Steampunk Lightsabre
• The Vulciana Watch - I want one!
• Photos of cool devices on Flickr
• Steampunk iPhone - this thing is the coolest
• VictorioNixie Tube - Awesome Mod of a toy (also on video.)
• A couple of awesome clocks and some amazing Russian stuff.
• Steam-Powered Robot
• Steampunk LCD Monitor (with a few “how-to” photos)
• Pierre Matter Sculpture
• Steampunk R/C Centipede
• Big Steampunk Animals - wow, check out the crashed spaceship

Interactive Steampunk & Multimedia

• A Modern Compendium of Minateur Autometa
• Crazy Machines (my kids love it)
• Nine inch Nails Closer Video (mature / language / NSFW)
• Steampunk Rayguns (G Rated)
• The Golden Compass Movie Trailer

Articles / Blog Posts

• SlashBoing - Steampunk Eye
• Wired - Steampunk Design
• Gizmodo - Steampunk Laptop
• Gizmodo - Steampunk Keyboard
• Cre.ations.net - Jar of Fireflies
• Thoughts on the popularity of Steampunk

Stuff you can buy

• Steampunk Supplies/Salvage from Sequential Glass
• Klockwerks - amazing clocks
• Steampunk Watches
• The J Peterman Company Iron Gothic Clock
• Steampunk Gift Guide - Make Magazine
• Skerror’s bunch of great dark, gothic-modern designs.
• The Golden Compass , the Cryptex and the Spy Insect
• Steampunk iPod Skin (I tried to order this but javascript errors prevented it bah!)
• Retro-Futuristic Design

Misc Fun Steampunk-like Sites & Resources for Steampunkers

• Wallace and Gromit Cracking Contraption
• Make Magazine “My God, It’s Full of Wires”

Gears image by mehrit used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License

personalpost

Everyone’s chiming in with CES predictions and mine will be that one of the small LCD partnership companies will introduce a sleek, beautiful WI-FI and Bluetooth enabled digital photo frame that we’ll be proud to hang on our wall for under $500. Phillips? Apple? Sony?

A Wifi digital photo frame does not seem to be such a hard thing to put together, but for some reason it’s taking it forever to hit the market in a usable, marketable format. A plug-and-play system that “Mom can use” is what we need - and when that comes along things will truly heat up. The eStarling system was a major let-down to me and many others, and a bit of a nightmare for ThinkGeek the best I can tell.

The wi-fi digital photo frame will see new uses too. It’ll show family reminders (”Take out the trash!!!”.) Someone will fire up one of those inane trivia games like is shown at movie theatres to keep people happy while waiting. It’ll start showing up at kid’s science fairs and trade show booths. It’ll start decorating lobbies and the insides of hopped up cars. It’ll start showing ads in restrooms and waiting areas. It’ll start displaying ads near gas pumps and on grocery shelves. We’ll see it in store windows and in pharmacy lines.

This technology is needed far beyond the living room wall. I think that someone will rock the world at CES this year with a Wifi picture frame appliance that makes earlier efforts look downright tame.

Photovu has some awesome looking hand-built wifi photo frames and I’m thinking seriously about giving one a try. They just announced Picasa support in addition to Flickr, and already they have what appears to be a technical and aesthetic masterpiece. The price is justified considering how much work’s going into these things, but I have this feeling that this market is about to explode so it’s kind of hard to let go of the $1000. If you need a frame now, and have the money, I would say give those guys a call. These frames look great based on what I see.

Kodak’s new Wi-Fi digital picture frames are now out, also… but I’m not seeing Flickr or Picasa anywhere on their spec list. I simply don’t get it. Why cripple the hardware? Well, it’s so close that I’ll bet there will be some kind of hack within 2 months. When I asked Kodak about this, an email came back stating [unaltered response]:

“You can but not directly to your Kodak Smart Photoframe, you’ll need a
memory card. You can save your photos in a memory card then view it to
your Kodak Smart Picture Frame make sure that the file format in your
Picasa or Flickr is supported by kodak products like jpeg files.”

Huh? I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I’m not couting on native Flickr support anytime soon.

Here is the toy to have in 2010. We’ll all be doing dogfights, chasing birds, chasing criminals, buzzing the annoying old man down the street and more. I want one. Now.

personalpost

Small Business TV Advertising still vital when these numbers are considered

Hey, The Census Bureau just put out a snapshot of how Americans are using media in the Statistical Abstract of the United States, Here are a few hilights…

• 41 days listening to radio.. okay, multitasking is good.
• 7 days using the Internet (email and web) ..yeah, right.
• 7 days reading the newspaper… oooh..kay.
• 7 days listening to recorded music…
• 65 days in front of TV (25% of waking hours!)

Call me naive Just who are they measuring, anyhow? Even though I am here in “Kean-tucky” everyone I know have vastly different habits than these shown with the web, books, and newspapers taking far more time than shown.

The statistical Americans are in front of the TV 25% of their waking hours… so that really does run down the chances we’ll run into each other. A quick walk around the neighborhood at night will show lots of flickering TVs in the living rooms. Wow. You do have to recalibrate a bit and realize that not everyone is out here surfing the blogosphere. It’s easy to get out of whack when you spend so much time on the web.