Wednesday, May 24, 2006

my favorite widgets

So i finally upgraded the old iBook to OS X 10.4. in doing so, i am now able to sample (and comment on) the great widgets that are up on the apple site. before the upgrade i was also dabbling in using Yahoo's widgets, but they were only semi-satisfactory, and you have admit the who "expose" thing rules: finally a reason to click the scroll wheel.

i am going to archive this post in the links nav, and simply add to it as i discover new and exciting widgets.

and so, without further delay, a sampling of the best in dashboard functionality:

go-go redball









this little toy uses some kind of simple collison detection and gravity simulation to create a virtual superball you can throw around your screen with your mouse and relive that childhood feeling of anticpation as you try to predict where the thrown ball will end up. luckily there is no OS X sewer grate.


NoteZar
this item is brilliant and tres useful, and only has a couple small drawbacks. basically, this widget is a multi-page notepad - it takes all the text detritus you would normally keep in Stickies and puts it into one single, indexable widget. big deal, eh. well, this is where the bigness comes in - the text is saved not on your computer, but on the developers website. that means rather than having one set of stickies at home, and another at work, and another on your laptop, you have but one single set, synced automatically when ever you post. there is also an option to share Notezar with your friends, so they can see all your notes.
Neat.
The widget itself is a little ugly - the default display is dull grey with white text and green and purple headlines - i hope the guy doesn't fancy himself too much of a designer. You should be able to choose note and text colors in some sort of preferences. The other visual problem is the clunky clip-art-looking icons. if only he knew some great interface designer...
The biggest drawback to this widget is there is no local version of your notes - say in some sort of cookie or cache. if you are not online you can't see your notes, period. bummer. There are also probably some security issues with keeping sensitive info online - i dont know what sort of protections are set up for that. Also, the responsiveness when you click the icons is a little slow - all in all, minor complaints, but the concept is so great i just want the rest of the widget to live up it.

DashFlix
this is another very simple idea that is useful in a "i am too lazy even to bookmark" way - it displays your currently viewing and "in que" films from your netflix account.
it is one of the few widgets that is "two sided" - the 'front' displays your "viewing" films, and the 'back' lists the next 26 or so films in your que.
nice branded skin, also.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

game physics








enigmo 2 is the first video game i have been interested in since snood (motto: forget life, play snood), and even so i can only play for a few minutes.

the rube goldberg concept and the 3D is so neat and the play is so subtle - kudos.

the enya soundtrack is a little hard to take however - mute it and just run your itunes.

interestingly, there was a toy back in the 70's that was basically a real life version of this game... see a vintage TV spot about it here.

also, the whole rube goldberg concept is being played out in virtual reality through video game hacks that allow "players" to manipulate the game environments, constrained somewhat by the local physics of the video game

Friday, May 19, 2006

e-design


where the 'e' is for 'environmental'

an amazing toy car from Horizon lets you run your own alternative energy power plant.

i would be HIGHLY interested if they could upscale this thing into running a Go-Ped.

back in black



what can i say. i am a sucker for Sith laptops. As soon as Adobe releases the intel-native version [warning-PDF] of CS.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

cross posting



as i suppose a blog is just shameless self-promotion masquerading as shameless self-involvement, i might as well mention when i post new things on my website.

i just put up comps from a little bit of online application design i did over the winter for Stein Rogan + Partners

The project is an online e-commerce application that allows users to download quicktimes of 15, 30 and 60 second ads recently broadcast on television. It is marketed mostly towards competing ad agencies so they can keep up with the Jones with out all the time and hassle of watching TV

This one of those gigs where you walk in and they say, "we need you to redesign this application, but you cant change the colors or fonts or placement of elements"

this happens more often than you would think

however, there somehow is leeway within those constraints to improve upon the early sketches, and i think this interface came out all right, if a little heavy-handed

click the first icon on the right on this page to see the final result - the client logos are edited out

great minds think alike?



there are few things more frustrating then coming up with a great idea for functionality implemented with a hot new technology and seeing someone else be first to market

on the other hand, the same thing re-enforces the marketability of the idea

the last couple months i have been working at a high-end interactive shop, concepting and designing a new shopping portal for a major Fortune 500.

last monday, yahoo launched a new geek gadget portal using several fancy-pants ajax intereractive elements i had been building into our prototype

tech.yahoo.com has several great concepts going for it - most notably is the add to compare tray ajax widget. i love it, and in fact i thought of it two months ago, after discovering a certain functionality that was being shown off on the demo site of a software suite that builds plug and play Ajax modules

my Information Architect said he would defend me in 6 months when our site launches and everyone says i got the idea from yahoo. thanks, charlie

they're handing out Geek Makeovers, however, so that's a tough act to follow