Blogs

• Interactive Gestures: Designing Gestural Interfaces :: Download Chapter 1
  In advance of my Tap is the New Click presentation at ETech, O’Reilly has graciously allowed me to post a draft of the first chapter of this book (now titled) Interactive Gestures: Designing Gestural Interfaces. It’s pretty much my unedited first draf
  (tags: books gesture ui ux design patterns multitouch)
• Technology Review: TR10: Modeling Surprise
  Combining massive quantities of data, insights into human psychology, and machine learning can help manage surprising events, says Eric Horvitz.
  (tags: surprise modeling bayesian research prediction probability future)
• PogoSticking: A bad menu design causes pogo sticking on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
  A good anti-pattern to look at for menu design. It’s when the users eyes are forced to jump around the pages in a zig-zag or pogosticking manner, instead of smooth path.
  (tags: ui ux pogosticking design usability vision eyetracking)
• Hadley Green Creates/Seattle: EFFIE-winning advertising, design, brand, PR and web expertise.
  Seattle based design firm.
  (tags: seattle design)
• Very Cool AIR App! Snippage
  “That is what Snippage does, you can crop a web site and keep the cropped “snippet” on your desktop. Once it is cropped you can set a refresh increment and visually watch for changes. When you want to view the whole site again just click on it and the
  (tags: toblog snippet air ria attention monitor)
• Fluid: Desktop Web Apps | walkah
  fluid lets you create website-specific applications – really just little webkit browsers as their own applications with their own icons. – kinda air like…not offline thought just chrome and icons. interesting what subset of AIR people think is important
  (tags: fluid air ria desktop browser mac chrome)
• Free Online Storage—Xdrive
  cheap online back up seems kinda cool to, but the neat part is they us an air app. should make it easier on people to jump ship from pc to mac. the os is becoming irrelevant!
  (tags: storage backup online free tools hosting internet air os pc mac)
• 6 Adobe AIR Apps to Check Out – ReadWriteWeb
  A review of 6 interesting looking AIR Apps. Worth checking out. I like to see what applications of new technologies, non-techies latch on to first.
  (tags: air adobe web2.0 apps adobeair applications flash examples)
• Home – Adobe Open Source – Confluence
  This site presents the definitive view into open source activities at Adobe, including details regarding projects that Adobe participates in and hosts.
  (tags: adobe opensource flex flash development open air ajax toblog)
• Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote
  VERY COOL! Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal t
  (tags: cool games tracking video wiimote Technology virtual_reality Wii gesture ui ux)
• iShowU
  cheap and easy mac screen casting software. Only draw back is you need another program to edit your video afterwards.
  (tags: mac screencast software video screencasting apple osx ishowu)

• Ted On Flex: Microsoft vs Adobe: Comparable Runtimes
  Ted setting the record straight on comparing Flex, Air, Silverlight and WPF. There does seem to be a lot of confusion.
  (tags: tedpatrick flex silverlight air ria wpf)

Congrats to Joe! He’s giving a talk onDog On Rails at Open Web Vancouver

Whenever we think of Dashboard Apps, we usually think of things that show visualization of data on a Web Application. How many tracks were downloaded, how many hits, how many people have visited the site, etc, etc. However, this is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to dashboards and visualization. There are many more apps that need good centralized mangement and visualization, and a web management application can be exactly what you need. Currently most of these apps were done in the 90s and don’t work very well. Nobody really talks about how I can connect my toaster to the web, except for hobbyists, but I think that it’s going to happen again.

FreeTheNet is a really cool project to provide free Wifi in Vancouver, Nitobi, but more specifically Joe is a big supporter of this project.

The Adobe on AIR Tour is Headed to Europe And I’m on board to talk up Ajax development in AIR, our Dreamweaver Extensions and some usability topics.
Here’s the schedule:

* Madrid – March 31
* Paris – April 2
* Amsterdam – April 4
* Brussels – April 7
* London – April 9
* Dublin – April 11
* Stockholm – June 2
* Berlin – June 4
* Warsaw – June 6
* Prague – June 9
* Munich – June 11
* Milan – June 13

Please let me if you’re in any of these cities and would me to buy you a beer;-) Also would love to get some recommendations of stuff to do an check out.

• NYTE | Visuals
  Very cool visualization of communications in and out of New York being displayed at MOMA. Too bad the videos on the website don’t work.
  (tags: visualization maps internet commnication)

• James Ward – RIA Cowboy » Blog Archive » Adobe AIR on Linux: Pre-Beta Testers Needed
  Adobe is committed to getting AIR for Linux out ASAP and looks like they’re doing it right. If you’re a linux geek contact James Ward.
  (tags: linux air adobe flex beta test)

• Paper: Pattern Languages for Usability
  The best way to ensure usability is to treat human factors as an input to design, rather than merely evaluating prototypes or design documentation. The capability of pattern languages to facilitate the design process, improve communication, and record des
  (tags: patterns usability design Interface hci webdesign interaction)

• UPA – The Usability Professionals’ Association
  The UPA supports those who promote and advance the development of usable products, reaching out to people who act as advocates for usability and the user experience. Members come from across the broad family of disciplines that create the user experience.
  (tags: associations design usability webdesign upa ia userexperience userinterface interface interaction ui)
• CrazyEgg & RobotReplay- Get more out of your site statistics « living for the weekend
  “I found this tool invaluable to track the actions of my users – it’s more of an observational tool, but valuable nonetheless as it can really show you how people moved their mice in real time to get around the site.”
  (tags: robotreplay blog press pr media feedback positive review analytics)

Open .docx Files Without Word 2007 or Convert Them to .doc Online – Digital Inspiration

Changing the extension from from .doc to .docx seems sooooo annoying and stupid! Hope this helps some folks. The article linked above has solutions for Mac and PC.

This is almost as ridiculous as Buzzword not being able to save to PDF!

[UPDATE] The link for Mac users in that blog doesn’t work, this the correct link for the Mac converter Careful there’s a beta 0.2 out that expired Dec 31 2007, you want beta 0.2.1 which expires Dec 31 2008.

• Flash on iPhone is just around the corner | Gear Live
  Just a rumor at this point but very exciting, I really hope it happens soon:) I wonder version it will be? Flash lite or some special version?
  (tags: flash iphone apple mobile ria)