One thing I do like about this UI is that it only shows the related places relevant to the currently displayed photostrip, and only photos that are geo-tagged are displayed here.
The default view looks at the most recent photos only, with the option to sort by interestingness.
Other recently launched features include the ability the explore the world and places, allowing the user to either find out about popular cities, or little known destination — which is a great way to learn about the diversity of culture and humanity.
Kind of like Kyte, except with better UI – but it does not do video streaming captured on mobile phones which the Kyte platform allows.
In a gist: Yahoo Live allows anyone with a Yahoo ID to broadcast webcam video stream from multiple users at the same time. Y! Live was previously used at the Winter Music Conference which streamed live video stream from different events: http://live.yahoo.com/evt/wmc/
Y! Live is currently under an experimental release, and supports a highly customizable widget for your live feed. I will provide more details after I play around with this a little bit further.
Bonus: you can follow @ylive on Twitter to see if there’s anyone broadcasting live from the site: an interesting idea to get audience.
Updates + 2008-04-27: In the original blog post published on 2008-04-25, I have incorrectly stated that Yahoo! Live does not have native Facebook and MySpace support, and i was informed by the development team that there is in fact two Facebook apps and MySpace implementation developed. Details to be posted shortly.
An interesting presentation by Garret Dimon on interface design, filled with quotes and examples. Presented originally at the Web Visions 2007 Improving Interface Design Workshop.
This is a quick post because Twitter has now become my number 1 English killer: my sentences are malformed and I can no longer write beautiful proses that Mr Herz can manifest.
That said, I am becoming increasingly annoyed by what it appears to be the end of an era of transparent UIs: there is not just an explosion of sites in "beta" but also sites filled with rounded corners and gradient-ware that I believe is stealing the audience from the content and function that a webapp is trying to do.
While Tufte held his flag against the chart junk that's obscuring the presentation of chart data, I proclaim the that UI junk must die: they are adding more visual stuff to adjust which adds no value to your app.
An interface, like well-set typography, should be transparent: that is, that the user should not be made aware that its existence. As soon as you attract users to look at how beautiful your tabs and buttons are, your content is nowhere to be focused. Surely your content is more important?
The Human Calendar™ is a calendar created by Craig Giffen where portraits of everyday people and puts them into a calendar, where everyone is looking at the current date.
In addition to the main calendar, there are also portable versions, i.e. widgets for Google Homepage, your blogs, MySpace, etc. Very neat. Here's the blog widget. I will look forward to seeing it change for tomorrow:
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SML Thank You I found this on the Facebook posted items from Tom Ajello (SML Wiki). Thanks!
Project Rebirth is an online chronicle of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site. As immediate and compelling as a physical visit, this project gives people the opportunity to observe and share in the progress of the reconstruction.
Newly released at the time the team was considering technical specifications, this Project Rebirth Web site site uses the FlashMX development environment to full effect. Functioning as a portal to extensive content, the beauty of this Web site lies in its ability to be current and historical. With a visual design that appropriately takes a back seat to the content, it records ideas, images and interviews in their original context while also allowing for their evolution.
Primary content consists of a series of video images (presented in a timeline format) captured by six, 35mm time-lapse cameras positioned by Project Rebirth around the World Trade Center site. They shoot one frame every five minutes—and will continue to do so for ten years. The images enable the viewing of the rebuild as it occurs on any date; in seconds, visitors can see the footage of a single day. There are also interviews with reconstruction overseers, journals by filmmakers and video of major milestones in the redevelopment efforts.
Project Rebirth Web site
The key challenge for the developers was to create an interface that would incorporate what would ultimately be ten years of film footage, that didn’t inundate visitors and yet communicated the passage of substantial amounts of time. Their solution is an interactive, XML-driven timeline that delivers fluid viewing of time-lapse footage. It provides an appropriate time-based metaphor that also does a nice job of integrating video, audio, imagery and text-based content into a single interface. The time-based experience allows access to any moment in time and provides the ability to navigate the Web site by date and/or event. Our one complaint: The link from the home page, to this main feature, looks far too much like header art. We would have liked to see billing more in line with its importance.
This collaborative effort between Project Rebirth and IconNicholson began in the summer of 2003 and the site launched in September 2004. On average, visitors are staying on the site 19 minutes, which is significant in comparison to Internet-wide stays at sites with similar content. Interestingly, international users comprise 30% of all visitors.
Robert Fisher, creative director Claudia Chow, art director See-ming Lee, timeline art director/developer Larry Burks, information architect Miles Kafka, CGI programmer/engineer Tim Murtaugh, HTML developer Leslie Freeman, producer Katharine English, Project Rebirth, general manager Paul Wood, Project Rebirth, technical producer IconNicholson, site design and development
Apple (AAPL) released iPod Touch today. The new iPod has all the features of the iPhone except the crappy phone reception. Here are some highlights of the new iPod:
Multi-touch. Like the iPhone, the iPod touch features a multi-touch interface for all the user controls.
Accelerometer. The added accelerometer detects the rotation of the device and automatically adjust content to fit portrait / landscape orientation.
3.5-inch 480x320 163ppi display. The removal of the hardware interface provides new space to stuff a nice high-res widescreen display onto the unit.
Wi-Fi Web Browser. The new iPod comes with WiFi (802.11 b/g) and comes with Safari so you can browse the web and watch your YouTube video.
iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. Because of the added Wi-Fi, you can now shop for new songs and add to your iPod wherever you have a Wi-Fi connection.
Power and battery. iPod Touch is rated to play for up to 22 hours of audio or 5 hours of video when fully charged. 80% of battery charge capacity takes 1.5 hours. A full-charge takes about 3 hours.
The new iPod is scheduled to launch on September 28th, 2007. Pricing is very reasonable: 299 for the 8GB model, 399 for the 16GB model.
“Light is the metaphor for hope and knowledge,” says Gregg Fisher, vice president of Health and Life Science Practice at IconNicholson.
So it only seems appropriate that the firm developed an interactive candle-lighting experience for the 2006 Light to Unite website. This annual campaign from Bristol-Myers Squibb raises awareness as well as funds for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention in the U.S.
“When people start to think about AIDS, they often think about Africa,” says See-ming Lee, art director and senior interface engineer. “It’s still a very serious disease in the United States.”
This fact was reinforced as soon as visitors logged onto the site. During the roughly seven-week campaign, which started on World AIDS Day, users found themselves facing an unlit candle against a dark background, with only a lit match to help them navigate the screen. As they moved the flame around, they illuminated startling statistics about HIV’s spread in the U.S., and these facts all became visible once users lit their candles. For every person who completed this simple act, Bristol-Myers Squibb donated $1 (up to $100,000) to the National AIDS Fund. Site visitors could also give additional funds.
Fisher says the project is a great example of what happens when you give power over to community and let it take control. The majority of the site’s traffic came from people who found out about the effort through word-of-mouth online—not paid media. this becomes all the more impressive when you realize that more than 1.8 million candles where lit during this relatively brief effort. And through the first week of January 2007, more than 8000 people signed up for the site’s newsletter—and there were more than 200,000 requests to send the site to a friend. “It's taken on a life of its own,” Fisher says. “Light to Unite is spreading life, spreading awareness, spreading knowledge.”
After lighting a candle, visitors could learn more about the personal impact of HIV/AIDS through the site’s user-generated stories. These short, emotional snippets were submitted through last year’s Light to Unite site, an they’re each represented by a burning candle. “We spent two weeks trying to animate a candle to make it look real,” Lee says. “Every single flame is animated differently.” This attention to detail heightens the experience as you navigate through individual stories or explore them by broad themes ranging from courage and fear to family—and the stories are still accessible now that the campaign as concluded.
IconNicholson | Life Sciences Strategist: Scott Friedberg | Senior Producer: Mark Hopkins | Associate Producer: Jennifer Crowe | Art Director: See-ming Lee | Flash Production: Steve Baker | Technical Director: Jabe Bloom | www.iconnichoslon.com
The inspiration for associating candles with the story came from Hillary Savage (LinkedIn), who suggested that behind every candles is a story worth telling during our brainstorming session.
The inspiration behind the using highlighted words (aka tags) to get to different collection of stories came from my avid tagging behavior on Del.icio.us. I felt that users ought to be able to tag the stories themselves, as different people will interpret the stories differently. However, due to legal contraints—it is pharma afterall—we compromised to pre-tag the content.
The candle flash animation are individually generated using Flash 8's BitmapData.perlinNoise method to alter a 5k PNG. Writing this class was the most satisfying accomplishment thus far—most of my friends thought that they are videos.
I would like to thank my friends from the gay community who provided much inspiration and support while I worked on this project in 2006.
I would like to thank Stephen Baker of Red Antenna for collaborating with me on this project. Besides being the best ActionScript 2.0 - compliant Flash developer I have been able to find in New York City, his expertise in visual and interaction design have brought tremendous value to the project.
I would like to thank Jennifer Crowe who spent days and nights being our tagging engine.
I would like to thank Hillary Savage who provided me with a lot of courage and support during my stressful times working on this baby.
I would like to thank Celeste Bryant (LinkedIn) for submitting the project for awards consideration.
SML + HR
I am looking for ActionScript 2.0 - compliant Flash developers to collaborate with on future projects—because Stephen is very busy these days. If you think that you are more than capable, please send me an email with your portfolio + resume + sample code snippets.
GUIdebook is "a website dedicated to preserving and showcasing Graphical User Interfaces, as well as various materials related to them.”
1. Screenshots. This site has an amazing repository of screenshots of all the main applications from pretty much all the OS that's ever been introduced, all saved in 24-bit PNGs (aka lossless) quality.
3. Sound. Fairly interesting, and is often missing in other GUI repositories is the collection of sounds in WAV (lossless) format, which is a very effective means of user feedback in interface designs.
4. Applications. The site also include application splash screens, and an applications section that detail every aspect of iTunes and Photoshop during their entire history.
5. Additional resources. It even has repositories for ads, videos, articles, books and tutorials of everything known to human history about GUIs.
More information about specific GUI families can be found on the site's site map.
The accumulation of the complete SML Collection is currently in progress. For the full collection of work available in text-only format, visit SML LinkedIn or SeemingLee.com;
