In yesterday’s W4W class, I talked a little bit about mash-ups and today noticed the Seattle Times has an interesting twist on the popular Google Maps-Traffic data mashup; instead of traffic data, they mash it with a global news feed so that the map then automatically shifts every few seconds to the specific geographical location of that story. They call it Live Maps.
Google Calendar is a great piece of software, especially given its price (free, of course) and mashability. But one small UI quibble I have with it is the weight of type used for the date that appears in the Month view. Maybe I’m getting old, but I’d like to see the weight increased a bit so that there’s more of a visual hierarchy between the gray border that runs across the top of the date cell and the corresponding appointments that appear below. This added visual hierarchy would make skimming or scanning the month view more efficient. Assuming a CSS standard, it would be nice to see weight increased by an additional 100.
In another line of the ongoing thread of discussion surrounding e-book readers, David Rothman at TeleRead responds to a piece by Christine Rosen. What I like about his post as well as Rosen’s is that they look at the question of concentration, namely, does an e-book reader undermine it, especially if it’s networked to the Web?
The role of concentration plays an important role in educational contexts, which is what grabs my interest. Anecdotally, what I hear from students is that they want good screen clarity that allows for sustained viewing (e.g., no eye strain or headaches) and the ability to annotate. There have certainly been progressions on the screen front, as well as on the annotation front. (Amazon’s Kindle is one device that has annotation capabilities even though it’s demo video doesn’t mention it.)
Going back to the Rothman post, most of what I’ve read to-date on e-book readers has been polemic: either the writer is for or against them. Taking a lead from Steve Krug, this seems like a prime opportunity for user testing, so that the conversation can be based less on ideology and more on actual user experiences.
A relatively recent entry to the web-based writing collaboration market is EtherPad. One highlight from their screencast was the ability to integrate Skype, so not only can people see what the other collaborators are writing, but they can hear them as well. SubEthaEdit probably does that via iChat & Bonjour, and it’s a great tool, but it’s not cross-platform (if memory serves).
But what makes EtherPad different from Google Docs? The creators say it’s the lack of lag time by way of a technology called Comet.
EtherPad sends messages in both directions between the browser and the server, using a technology often called “Comet” or “server push”. This comparatively recent innovation in web app functionality allows EtherPad to be fully real-time.
While this may not be a big deal for some, I nevertheless like their way of arguing the substance of that time lag: Imagine if whiteboards or telephones had this kind of delay!
So if you’re in a collaborative group and doing some intensive brainstorming and you don’t want members to be blocked out by this kind of time lag, then this tool deserves a look.
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EtherPad, SubEthaEdit, GoogleDocs
This week many of the tech blogs celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh. One of my fav tech news sources, CBC Radio Spark, has assembled a nice montage of radio and tv clips.
The TV clip features one of Apple’s Canadian reps sitting down with a CBC reporter and showing him how to use a mouse and then manipulate it in MacPaint. Now 25 years after the fact of this game-changing hardware, it’s kind of funny to see the Apple Rep carefully explain concepts that have now become such an embedded part of our everyday vernacular: mouse, icon, pull-down menu, and click-and-drag.
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Radio Spark, Apple, Macintosh
Boagword has an interview with Andy Budd from clearleft where he talks about the expanding role and value of User Experience (UX) designers in a recessionary market. When the climate becomes competitive and it’s hard to distinguish by product or service, companies focus on retaining their existing customers by channeling their creative energies around delivering a better experience.
In a related thread of the interview, Budd also urges freelancers or designers new to the market to get out there and get involved in a web community: write a blog, set up a Twitter stream, go to conferences, an unconference, a BarCamp, etc. So he gives out some good inspirational words for new designers who might otherwise be a little shy and inclined to just hang out on the margins of the web.
As open-source distributions such as Ubuntu gain more popularity in the mainstream, it’s likely that there’s also going to be more people looking for open-source applications to run on that operating system. One type of application many newbies would likely be interested in is an image editor that comes close to what Adobe Photoshop does (but without the hefty price tag). Well, as Dave Girard writes in Ars Technica, the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is a worthy rival that not only meets the needs of basic users, but advanced as well. In his extensive review of version 2.6.4, he evaluates a variety of features such as
and several others.
For people ready to dive in and give it a try, there’s a pretty decent array of tutorials: GIMP Beginner, user forums, video tutorials, and even a podcast.
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GIMP, Open Source
Tomorrow begins a new semester for my Writing for the Web class. In general, the default WYSIWYG tool is Dreamweaver. Some students, though, like to explore alternatives, and while there are quite a few out there, an email I got today from Karelia reminded of their solid tool for Mac users called Sandvox that accommodates many of the web design needs for academic projects for a very reasonable price ($49 for regular; $79 for pro).
One of the recent MIT Media LabCASTSs has an engaging story on their Scratch programming language that essentially makes programming accessible and fun for K-12 students. It draws its inspiration from Seymour Papert’s famous Logo programming language. Scratch is a free download and works on both Mac and Windows platforms. (I’m somewhat surprised that there’s no package for Linux distros, but maybe that’s coming in the not-too-distant future.) I wish I would have had this when I was young, K-12′er.
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MIT, Papert, Programming
From time to time I’ll run into somebody who’s been reading about wikis and wants to take the plunge, but doesn’t really know where to start. While Wikipedia’s matrix is certainly comprehensive and Stewart Mader’s authoritative, these might be a little overwhelming for someone just starting out. A better, more user-friendly launch-point might be Cameron Chapman’s list in Mashable. She has some nice, concise descriptions of both hosted and self-hosted options.