I do. I was living in Koreatown with a photographer at the time…Homestar Runner, pencil skirts, and hoop earrings…
I see the above turning into a VH1 “where are they (meme makers) now”?
I’m not naming names, but a couple of the ladies here at Fluidesign were joyfully discussing the effects of working late into the night. The caffeine highs/lows, buggy eyes and weird sense of humor- we’ve all been there. Even though the time is in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, it just slips away somehow.
It makes sense though. If you’re staring at a lit screen all day, your brain isn’t getting any natural clues to switch on it’s sleep cycle. Nocturne is an application for Mac created to combat this problem. As seen on MakeUseOf.com, it slowly dims your screen and turns it monochrome.
You can pre-set the time to correspond with the sun or, for nite owls like myself, set it as late as you like. I don’t know if I’ll be downloading this myself, but there are a couple computers I might just sneak it on.
As a web developer, I consider part of my job responsibilities to ensure that I am aware of technologies coming down the pipe and to changes to the market (the internet). Sure I have to keep up with the differences between Firefox and Internet Explorer, jQuery and Prototype, CakePHP and Symfony. But I wouldn’t consider these market altering changes.
Since I’ve only been in web development for a few years, I would consider the introduction of Ajax to be the only major, market altering change that I have experienced. It revolutionized the interaction between users, their browser’s, and servers. Ajax truly revolutionize web development as it was known.
The next market altering change will be content delivery. What does this mean? Internet service providers are starting to take steps to control the flow of data from content providers to internet users. Whether it’s stopping or slowing the flow of P2P traffic, like Comcast was found to be doing, or just plain grumbling about their infrastructures not being able to hold up to the common user watching their favorite videos on YouTube, ISP’s do not like unmanaged data flowing limitlessly to users. Some ISP’s have even take steps to intercept ads in web pages and replace them with their own claiming that they know their clients better than anyone else.
So where does this all lead? It all points to one thing, content delivery. The internet has passed the content creation phase. When Google came to the internet, they brought the idea that user generated content is better than webmaster generated content. I don’t think anyone would disagree (except a few people who still hold the 90’s job title of “Webmaster”).
Content delivery is a multifaceted issue so let’s start with simple net neutrality. No matter how much spin is put on this term, it means one thing. Either all internet traffic is equal or it is not. Comcast has said that their bandwidth throttling practices only effect 0.01% of their uses and “More than 99.99% of our customers use the residential high-speed Internet service as intended.” This means that Comcast believes that less than a tenth of a percent of their users are causing major havoc to their networks and they are therefore justified to throttle the speeds at which content is delivered to users. It also means that Comcast believes that it has the right to determine what they believe clients should and should not be allowed to do with their internet service.
This leads to a very dangerous idea. An idea that means ISP’s, Comcast, AT&T, Rogers, Charter, Verizon, can determine what traffic their users receive and at what speeds. So, along those lines, let’s say you run a business called Bill’s Internet Widgets and your company develops hosted widgets for businesses. Company A calls your company and orders a news delivery widget. This widget will be used to pipe news to readers. This news happens to have one sponsored ad at the bottom of the widget advertising cheaper internet service in the readers area. The reader’s ISP notices this ad as detrimental to them and decides to make the speed at which content is delivered to that widget so slow that users decide to not use it. Or, as another example, instead of limiting the delivery speed of the content for that widget, the ISP picks up the phone and calls Company A and/or Bill’s Internet Widgets and tells them that in order for their content to be delivered at the same speed as other content, they will be required to pay a service fee to the ISP. Don’t think it will happen? Tell me the last time an ISP did something for their clients out of the goodness of their hearts.
Now let’s move to another side of content delivery, the internet browser. Currently, your browser is your’s. You get to decide what content is displayed. Ads flow to your browser via web pages that you are viewing. These ads profit the sites that server them and cost your ISP money to deliver them via their networks. Let me introduce Pogo, the internet browser being developed by, you guessed it, AT&T, an ISP. Open up your bookmarks. See any ads? Open up your history. See any ads? If you were using Pogo, your answer would be yes. AT&T discovered that if they can’t intercept ads on pages like Rogers and Charter were trying to do, they would develop a browser where they could fill every blank space with their own ads.
This post isn’t meant to be a bashfest on ISP’s. So let me get to the good stuff.
In comes AIR and now Aurora. What do these have to do with ISP’s, torrents, and the rest of the previous part of this post? Content delivery. AIR is a revolutionary content delivery method. No more firing up your internet browser and opening dozens of tabs for your news, music, social networking and work. Pandora or seeqpod no longer need to rely on the browser to delivery content. Facebook and LinkedIn can build their own AIR applications and delivery their content directly to the users without the need for cross browser compatible CSS or any of the other issues that come into play when developing feature rich sites.
Details of Aurora are still very limited, but if they are anything similar to AIR, I’m sure they are on the right track.
The entire time I’ve been writing this post, I kept fighting the urge to call it Web 3.0, mainly because I am not one to throw around marketing phrases, but I truly believe that content delivery will be the next great revolution of the internet, no matter what it is called by the marketing team.
It’s a game. A really cool one:
I don’t know the specifics. Like what platform it’s on, or when it’s coming out, or who made it Kokoromi. The gaming industry’s been bland for a long time. I’m glad things like this and the wii can help more of us appreciate the visually different, rather than just things with high production value. Another current (anti)trend in games is low budget. During one session of a gaming class while in my major at UCLA DMA I sat in just to hear Jenova Chen from USC Interactive talk about his work, notably Flow.
With games getting smaller and easier to make for individual creators just as quickly as they are becoming more complex in the commercial industry, I wonder if someday we can all make our own ‘games’ and tailor them to our needs and dreams.
Jeffrey Zeldman said it best, “Wireframing AJAX is a bitch.”
Quite frankly, I would boil that down a bit further and simply say wireframing is a bitch. That was until recently, when I began playing around with a sweet-as-saccharin web app called Jumpchart. Imagine the irony as you use a slick web app stuffed to the gills with Ajax functionality to create blissfully simple wireframes!
I’ve created an account for myself, and needless to say I have been impressed. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to replace whatever methods you are currently using (you are wireframing, aren’t you?), but it’s pretty darn handy to be able to export to XHTML and CSS files once your done. I particular like Jumpchart because I can immediately work in HTML, where I feel most comfortable, and create things that visually make sense to me right off the bat. Considering I can barely recall how to make use of a pen or pencil, this is a major advantage to me.
Enough blather - go watch the demos, or better yet, mess about with it and tell me what you think.
and yes, this is also another welcome distraction from working…
If facebook had only made a movie like this one, my previous post would have been much easier to write. While a great design is suppose to be transparent, my confusion with the redesign of the simplest website (next to our own) delicious.com (bah, the old url was cooler) makes me feel today’s user has no patience to figure everything out on their own. I definitely see the value in editing screen captures and animating layouts to show the features of a site. The time spent seems to be a good trade for increased usability. Too bad delicious didn’t make this video the most accessible thing on the site. As a sidenote, Flickr video may become an interesting platform for pecha-kucha-like content.
If you want more snazziness than simplicity, check out the videos from Good magazine. This one I particularly like. The music is well integrated, and the animations illustrate the rather exhausted information in a refreshing way.
I’m not suggesting this is the future of distributing information. I’d still prefer a wiki. But if it’s something that you want to share with many folks, then why not make it a fun and exciting experience as well.
And, you kinda feel like a poser with those dark-framed glasses and Chuck Taylors? Well, I don’t blame you. I do too sometimes. Everyone does.
I was speaking with a friend last night who wants to understand more about technology, the web-o-sphere, new media, and probably just be able to laugh at LolCat jokes. He said he wants to be knowledgeable and up-to-date on what’s out there, but doesn’t know where to begin. Checking out the right blogs & bookmarks only make him feel like it’s all some kind of secret language mixed with inside jokes.
Well, I was not prepared or qualified to give him a comprehensive history of the internet followed by a overview of the current trends… and I was about 3 glasses of pinot noir deep. So, I recommended a TWiT cocktail with a twist of Google:
TWiT stands for “This Week in Tech” and is a weekly podcast hosted by online media guru, Leo Laporte. It’s available for download on iTunes, directly on the site or press play on the site’s media player; it couldn’t be easier. And best of all, Leo is extremely entertaining as he and his with tech-savvy guests discuss the latest advances, news and speculation about all things webby.
But, how do you know what they’re talking about? Pause it and Google any names or words you don’t understand. You’ll surely be directed to wikipedia or a relevant search page. Yes, it’s a bit of a process, but after a few episodes you’ll probably be “pwning the newbs” with the rest of us.
I know how much you like to track your time. I also know how much you like to tweet every heartbeat and breath of your life. Now you can combine two of the world’s previously mutually exclusive activities into one bursting barrel of fun.
Track your time via Twitter in Tempo!
For me however, nothing beats the painstaking process of firing up Netsuite, wrestling with the counter intuitive form controls that disallow me from entering in any useful information, and logging my grief stricken hours of fixing Internet Explorer bugs and handling the desalinization of Fluid’s drinking water.
It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s simply got to do it.
