David Emery OnlineSleigh-ed In Flame
...But actually this is one of the most forward-looking electro-guitar pop albums of the year (by turns it mixes Atari Teenage Riot with MIA, the Mary Chain and industrial hip-hop beats). It seems to constantly push you to the edge of your senses and then reels you back in. It wants to give you a headache and then sooth your brow.
I love the Sleigh Bells album – got to be not only the best debut of the year so far but one of the best albums of 2010 full stop.
Visit ➔I think iTunes is done.
I hated the media-creep of iTunes from the start. A dedicated ‘QuickTime Video Library’ would’ve been my preferred solution for Movies and TV shows, a rebuild of iSync to handle MobileMe and iPhone synchronization settings, and a standalone iTunes Store app (or, frankly, web site) for media purchases.
I have a real love/hate relationship with iTunes; I love the fact it has all my music in, and the power of smart playlists and the useful features it’s accumulated over the years, but simultaneously rue the fact it’s undoubtably the worst designed application Apple have.
I think it’s quite interesting that on iOS the functions iTunes does on the Mac are split out into 3 different apps (or 4 on the iPod/iPad with the Movies app) – “iPod” for media playback and organisation, “iTunes” for purchasing media and “App Store” for apps. I’d quite like to see something similar on the desktop, with the Finder handling syncing devices (don’t really need a separate app for that I don’t think).
Visit ➔I believe in WikiLeaks.
I wonder what it’s like to be 14, to be watching this unfold and have Wikileaks as the base of certain assumptions you will make about media, news, government and information for the rest of your life.
I am proud to live in a world where this is possible.
WikiLeaks defines the effect the internet has on the world; information cannot be controlled anymore (once more then a small handful possesses it), and you just have to deal with it.
As Anthony says, WikiLeaks is like Napster, but for governments.
Visit ➔Creating Digital Magazines
As mentioned, Adobe InDesign CS5 software is the central component of the workflow. Using InDesign CS5, design teams create layouts and add interactivity. With layouts in hand, production teams package the assets using the new Digital Content Bundler utility that allows publishers to import vertical and horizontal InDesign CS5 layouts, add metadata, (article title & description, issue number, etc.) and export them into a new “.issue” format.
I’m quite torn on this development from Adobe, which – when it’s finally released – will allow (relatively) easy eMagazine publishing, in the style of the Wired app, from InDesign. On the one hand easy publishing = a good thing, and I love the focus on design that this workflow provides. On the other, surely this stuff should be done in HTML?
Visit ➔It’s As If Apple Has Hired Don Draper
Watching Apple’s iPhone 4 FaceTime commercial again, it reminds me of something: Mad Men. The television show is starting its fourth season in a couple of weeks, but the commercial takes me back to the end of season one — an episode called “The Wheel.” I’ve actually talked about this episode before because it contains a scene that is perhaps the best in the entire series. In it, ad man Don Draper gives a presentation to Kodak showing why Sterling Cooper should be handling the account for their new picture projector.
I really like the FaceTime ad for the new iPhone; yes, it borders on (well, cannonballs straight into) over-sentimentality, but it’s an ad that actually makes you feel something and you can’t say that very often.
It feels old school, timeless, in way quite reminiscent to what Pixar achieve with their films.
If you haven’t seen it:
Visit ➔Supersize that Background, Please!
These are exciting times for web developers, with all the browser makers working hard to implement upcoming technologies like HTML5 and CSS3. As a result, it’s time to start revisiting old techniques to see how the same things can be done in smarter, cleaner ways.
An interesting hybrid of techniques I’ve used for the large header images on this site – this latest version uses the CSS3 background-size property to scale it appropriately. Previous versions used javacript to switch different sized images in and out depending on how big the image was, and using media queries to do the same is pretty nifty, however I dropped it for this version as it turned out most people were ending up with the same size image anyway (as the majority of visitors had similar browser window size) and the file size savings weren’t that great.
Visit ➔BBC News website redesign
We have focused on design and navigation, looking to see how we can make all the existing content we produce each day easier for you to find, use and share.
It’s obviously a bit premature to judge a website from static screenshots, but this is looking very nice.
Visit ➔I hope ebooks usher in a world of ideal book lengths
I hope ebooks usher in a world of ideal book lengths. I.e., detached from the burden of having to be "book-sized"; less filler, more focus.
A great idea – after having now spent a bit of time reading on the iPad (2 books so far) I firmly believe this is the future of the medium, and it’s a lot more adaptable then paper ever was.
Of course, whether the publishers will get their heads around this sort of thing is a whole different question…
Visit ➔Redesigning stories
Over at msnbc.com, where I spend most of my waking hours, we just launched a massive redesign of our story pages. For a news site, the story page is the most atomic and probably most important page of the site. The homepage (“cover” in our vernacular) and section fronts get a lot of attention and push our readers but the story page is where they’re trying to go and it’s where they spend the most time when they get there. This was a massive undertaking, the seeds of which were planted almost two years ago, and spanned the entire company, it’s amazing to finally see it live.
Amazing work – the layout is great, and I particularly like the ‘Upscroll’ navigation which you get to by scrolling up after the page has loaded.
Visit ➔Robyn launches 3D, interactive video
Swedish pop star Robyn has launched a 3D video, complete with Twitter integration, for her delightfully titled new track, Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do...
Pretty nifty, although it’s not the most amazing bit of computer animation I’ve ever seen.
It is though a good signifier of how the music video really has transitioned to being based primarily on the internet, and how it’s changing because of it.
Visit ➔Cross-browser kerning-pairs & ligatures
Improved handling of kerning pairs and ligatures in modern browsers using the text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; declaration.
Nice and simple, although presumably their must be a performance hit of some kind otherwise it would be on by default.
Visit ➔Levi’s Sales Page has individual like buttons
Levi’s Sales Page has individual like buttons for EVERY pair of jeans. I can instantly see what everyone else thinks is cool (sea foam skinny jeans) and what sucks (jorts).
Veeeeery interesting – great user experience.
Visit ➔Firefox 4: CSS3 calc()
Firefox will support the CSS calc() value, which lets you compute a length value using an arithmetic expression. This means you can use it to define the sizes of divs, the values of margins, the widths of borders, and so forth.
Oh god, it would be so awesome if all browsers would adopt this – most importantly WebKit, which on the sites I look after has a majority share (!).
Visit ➔Finally, a fluid Hicksdesign
I’ve been wanting a fluid layout on this site for about 5 years. I had a brief redesign back in 2005 where I flirted with it for a few months, but it was soon switched back to fixed as I couldn’t get it right.
Lovely stuff – I’ve been a long proponent of fluid width designs, and now with the rise in smaller-screen browsing and media queries now seems the time to really start getting stuck in.
A List Apart – as ever – is leading the charge, this is all you need to know on the subject.
Visit ➔W+K: Honda commercial
Great new ad for Honda from W+K, love the photography style
Well isn’t this beautiful:
While we’re on the subject of adverts, I really like the new Cadbury’s Flake ad as well:
Visit ➔Say Hello to My Little Friend
The other day, after spending my usual ten to twelve hours in front of this laptop I decided to restart my machine. I checked my email. I refreshed my Tweetie. I double-checked Facebook. I loaded Google Reader to make sure I was entirely up to date on all the news from Helen Thomas’ Middle East snafu to the number of gallons of crude still bubbling into the Gulf to the latest legal wrangling over Gary Coleman’s will to Sandra Bullock’s backstage reception at the MTV Movie Awards. Finally, after a quick check of my realtime blog stats, I took a deep breath and pressed the restart button.
Within five seconds, I picked up my iPhone and checked my email.
Suddenly self-aware, I paused. I looked at my sweat-beaded reflection in the still darkened laptop screen and I realized that yes, I am high on my own supply.
Well, this certainly rings a little too true.
I’m not sure it’s a problem, though, just a product of modern culture.
Visit ➔Safari 5 has implemented geolocation
Steve Jobs mentioned in his D8 interview that they take location privacy very seriously, and the ‘don’t ask for 24 hours’ checkbox is nice evidence of that; there’s no ‘Always Allow’ option.
Of course, I’d still like to see disclosure granularity at the source—ala Fire Eagle—but this is an improvement on the ‘OK/Cancel’ interface that the iPhone throws up.
I think the lack of an ‘Always Allow’ on this is a serious omission; yes privacy is important but there’s a bunch of sites – like check.in for example – that I go to solely for the purpose of using geolocation features. Having to say ‘yes’ every time you go there is fairly pointless, and breeds geolocation dialogue-box blindness (if you see it all the time, you’re quickly going to start clicking ‘yes’ all the time without thinking about it).
Visit ➔No cloud-based iTunes in Apple’s WWDC keynote
As you’ll know if you read our earlier liveblog, the rumours that Apple would have an iTunes announcement during CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote at its WWDC show today were inaccurate. No cloudstreaming iTunes, and no web-based iTunes.com store. Sorry folks.
I would have been very surprised if Apple had announced a cloud-based iTunes service yesterday - it was always going to be about the new iPhone, and it's worth remembering that this is a developer conference; new features for iTunes aren't very interesting to developers.
My bet is that we'll see iTunes 10, complete with some form of MobileMe-based over-the-air library functionality, in the traditional music/media focused September event they normally do. Same goes for a new version of the Apple TV, which will tie in to all that cloud malarky.
And the new iPhone? My only question is whether to get it in white or black…*
* Although it will be my second new Apple gadget in the space of a month, which makes me feel like a consumer whore. A happy consumer whore, though, with lots of nice shiny things.
Tools of a different trade
Photoshop and Fireworks are great tools …for tweaking photos and creating icons, gradients and textures. When it comes to laying out web pages however, they are worse than substandard. They are actively harmful. They reinforce the incorrect idea that there is a way of representing the browsing experience in anything other than a browser.
It’s always nice to see yourself quoted somewhere, and it’s also nice to see this issue gain a bit more relevance now we have devices like the iPad.
However, I do disagree with the idea that you should forego Photoshop and other such tools for the most part and design in the browser. Yes in the browser it’s much easier to see how a design will react to different window sizes and the like, but – certainly for me, at least – I think it can lead to unimaginative design.
It’s just too easy to make things simple when designing in a browser, and be lead by the code as opposed to being lead by the design. It is hard to visualise how a page will behave when designing it in Photoshop, but I find that’s better then trying to visualise design from within a text editor.
Visit ➔Of 3G iPads and MiFis
Today I asserted on Twitter that a 3G iPad is far superior to a WiFi iPad paired with a MiFi device. To save myself answering the "why do you say that" question twenty times, here's the tl;dr version.
I disagree with Fraser on this – I’m incredibly happy with the combination of my WiFi iPad and a 3 MiFi. I think a lot of the problems he’s encountering are down to being in a poor signal area; for example, he says he gets around 2 hours battery life whereas I’ve used mine for 6 hours without it running out.
I’ve also been very impressed by the speed of it as well; maybe I’ve been dulled by the combination of O2’s poor coverage but I’ve always assumed that mobile broadband could never approach the speed of fixed broadband; the MiFi proves this is not the case. For normal browsing, it’s pretty indistinguishable from a normal connection, which is pretty amazing I think.
Sure, he’s right in that you do have to take a little bit of time to turn it on, but when I’m out and about I’ve just left it on without any problems so it’s not much of a big deal.
In short, I’m very happy with the £50 I saved going the MiFi route rather then then built in 3G route.
Visit ➔