screenedit - what does interaction design mean?

We have moved!

2007-09-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

From now on please visit this blog at http://screenedit.com/Blogs.aspx

Relaunch of screenedit.com

2007-09-09T02:35:00.001-07:00

This weekend we re-launched the screenedit.com website. With a lot of hard work from the whole team, but especially Dr. Neil, we have massively improved the website in time for Mix, Microsoft’s premier web design/ development event on Tuesday 11th-Wednesday 12th September. We really hope to see you at the event, I especially hope that you will visit the ‘community’ area that we are supporting, and more importantly attend my session on ‘Branding’ and ‘User Experience’ on the Wednesday ;-)
The screenedit site is built by the community, for the community and is constantly being enhanced so look out for some amazing features being added over the next few weeks. One of the technologies that we are demo’ing at Mix is ‘member portfolios’, which gets your design portfolio online in minutes, it usies ‘live spaces’ as a back-end management system. This part of the site will be refined over the next few weeks, so sign-up now to be one of the first members to try the release candidate! (Check out Dr. Neil's blog post about beta portfolios here...)
Features of screenedit.com include:
Competitions: We are currently running 3 competitions...
- ‘Join Us’: Simply register for a screenedit account before the 12th September using your Live ID and be entered into a raffle to win a state-of-the-art graphics tablet.

- Ex-Factor: ‘In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes’ Andy Warhol
“Enter the ‘Ex-Factor’ competition!” Sign up for this 15 min ‘open mic’ session taking place in the main auditorium at Mix. This is your chance to wow the audience with anything related to Microsoft Expression, or anything else you might want to share!
To take part - email tricky@screenedit.com, or sign up on the day. The best speaker voted for by the audience will win an Xbox 360. There are six places to fill so don’t delay in signing up!
Don’t want to speak? Everyone who has voted will be entered into a raffle for another great prize!
- Designers and Developers: As we helped Microsoft put together an outstanding line-up of speakers for Mix UK, they’ve given us an Xbox to give away ! We’ll be taking photographs at teh event, and all you have to do is guess whether the ‘stars’ of the photographs are designers or developers, should be easy enough.

Videos: We are always uploading exciting interviews with key evangelists to our videos section! If you can’t get to an event, don’t panic, we’ll post interviews for you to check-out. Soon you’ll be able to post videos too...
Exposure: Check out the exposure area to see who’s pushing the boundaries of design.
Events: We’ll be posting information about up and coming events, and keeping you informed about ‘what’s going on’.
Blogs: Our members are already bloggin on the site, find out what they're talking about.
Forums: Coming very soon!
This blog is moving to: http://screenedit.spaces.live.com/

Sneak preview of MixUK 07 speakers!

2007-08-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

Allof us are a design team who create interactive projects in every kind of medium. We went to London to check out their offices, see what they do and find out what they will say at MixUK 07.

Click here to hear to meet Nick Cristea and Orlando Mathias.

Sneak preview of MixUk 07 speakers

2007-08-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

We caught up with Chris Kempt from KillerViral to find out what he will have to say at MixUK 07.

Click here to view

Neville Brody @ Adobe Live

2007-08-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

We were extremely excitd about meeting typography legend Neville Brody at Adobe Live, who offers advice, inspiration, and his views on Daleks and dead people in lifts!

Click here to see his interview

Mix UK is coming! - and we are going to be a part of it!

2007-07-29T05:59:00.000-07:00

Mix:UK 07 is the premier event for web designers and web developers to:

Get creative inspiration from design and development gurus, web agencies and innovators
Discover how technologies like Silverlight, Expression and Live Services are already being used to create a new generation of rich media experiences and RIAs (Rich Interactive Applications)
Connect with others in the industry who, like yourself, have a passion for innovation and creativity and have built personal and business success on that passion.

Shane Morris Interview Uploaded!

2007-07-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

Click here for some Shane inspiration!

Shane Morris is a "User Experience Evangelist" at Microsoft, based in Melbourne, Australia. He has worked as an interaction designer / information architect / usability specialist since 1991.

Dave Kinsella Interview Uploaded!

2007-07-26T09:37:00.000-07:00

Click here to see Dave's Interview!

Dave Kinsella is - Experienced web software creator. Focused on standards based delivery of content for usability and accessibility. Innovative approaches to creating value within established web frameworks. Accomplished designer and developer of streamlined management systems for applications and services.

Daniel Wilkes Interview Uploaded!

2007-07-26T09:33:00.000-07:00

Click here to view Daniel Wilkes

Daniel joined JANET, previously UKERNA, in March 2004 as Web Administrator. His role includes creating and maintaining company web pages, as well as assisting with the new Web Hosting service.

Andy Budd interview uploaded now!

2007-07-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

Check out Andy at FOWD!

Andy Budd is the managing director of Clear Left, a user experience consultancy based in Brighton, England. He runs a project called Skillswap which organises free web design training for his local community, and helped set up the Web Standards Awards.
Check out his interview while he was at the 'Future of Web Design'.
Andy Budd is also the organiser of dConstruct, a one-day conference aimed at those designing and building the latest generation of web-based applications.

Frank Gocinski @ Mix07

2007-06-25T06:26:00.000-07:00

Frank's role at Microsoft is to drive Technical Evangelism. His focus is the Tablet and Mobile PC Developer.

Check out what he had to say at Mix07

New Exposure Uploaded! - Etsy.com

2007-06-25T05:43:00.000-07:00

Etsy is an online shopping site with a difference. Experience using colours to choose your purchases and take an adventure along a timeline to see what other Etsyers have recently bought.

Vista Las Vegas

2007-06-14T03:55:00.000-07:00

There were a lot of techies at Mix 07 but only one King! We can't believe what an avid fan of Microsoft Elvis is, you don't wanna miss this one! Click here to view.

Sony Blu Ray added to Exposure

2007-06-14T02:57:00.000-07:00

A nice Flash site from Sony explaining why Blu Ray is so cool.

Moo Interview Is Here. . .

2007-06-13T04:47:00.000-07:00

Moo are a company who print business cards from your images and/or designs. All you have to do is upload your stuff and within ten business days you recieve a package with 100 special little cards. How exciting!
Tricky and Simon visited them at their studio to experince the specialness of it all! Click here to view the interview.

Audi concept cars added to exposure...

2007-06-13T03:24:00.000-07:00

It's not always about interactivity! Just have a look at the amazing designs of all the concept cars Audi have come up with. The RSQ from the film irobot looks so pretty still and also there are some great others to enjoy. Click here to view.

Julie Howell interview goes live...

2007-06-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

Julie joined Fortune Cookie after 12 years campaigning for web accessibility at RNIB and working with most of the big public service providers and corporates, including BBC, Cabinet Office, Tesco.com, Interactive Media in Retail Group, Disability Rights Commission and British Bankers' Association. Watch her interview here.

Deisel 'Cult' site added to exposure

2007-06-12T05:18:00.000-07:00

Diesel have a great cult section on there site which includes art, music and style. Some really nice gallery submissions for all who want a little eye candy! Click here to check it out.

2012 Olympic Logo

2007-06-07T02:15:00.000-07:00

It was fantastic to go to Adobe Live on th 5th and 6th of June and meet inspirational illustrators such as Jon Burgerman. He had his own take on the 2012 Olympic logo.

New team member!

2007-05-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

We are extremely excited to welcome Cassie Smith to the team; our new resident Designer. To date, Cassie has been designing 'real' products, but she is a fantastic graphic designer and keen to make an impact in the world of interaction design. Add Cassie's blog to your favourites, and follow her interactive adventures. Cassie says that she's most looking forward to learning all the new tools such as 'Expression Blend' and 'CS3', and also talking to all of the exciting people that make our industry so colourful.

The good news for screenedit regulars - you can expect daily updates in the near future!

Interview with Simon Collison

2007-05-25T00:48:00.000-07:00

Watch the interview here.

Simon Collison has been working with web sites since the late nineties. In October 2006 he started Erskine Design, a full service web design and development agency based in Nottingham, with offices in Skipton and Leeds.

As lead web developer at Agenzia from 2002 to 2006, Simon worked on numerous web projects for record labels (Universal, Vertigo, and Poptones), high-profile recording artists (The Libertines, Dirty Pretty Things, and The Beta Band), and leading visual artists and illustrators (Jon Burgerman, Black Convoy, and Paddy Hartley). He also oversaw a production line of business, community, and voluntary sector web sites, passionately ensuring everything was accessible and complied with current web standards.

Popfly...

2007-05-21T06:46:00.000-07:00

Is a cool new product from Microsoft, built in Silverlight, it is a tool for creating mash-ups that requires zero programming knowledge. It boasts an interesting UI and exists entirely 'in-the-cloud', check out the demo here.

Steve Burnard, (Adobe) on interactivity...

2007-05-21T05:03:00.000-07:00

Watch Steve's interview here.

Steve Burnard is a Business Development Manager for Adobe Systems Europe Ltd. Steve is primarily responsible for driving the technical sales and positioning of Adobe’s products for web, video and e-Learning products and solutions for the UK & Eire.

Before joining Adobe, Steve has over 10 years experience in pre-press and digital video production. These have been for a wide variety of customers and industries in the UK and mainland Europe.

Edna, Future of Web Design event...

2007-05-17T07:09:00.001-07:00

We met Edna at The Future of Web Design event, she kindly gave us this fantastic interview,but we didn't get her details - Edna, please post a comment and credit yourself!

Event next Friday: BD4D

2007-05-17T05:51:00.000-07:00

Short notice - but this event is extremely good value, the quickfire speaking schedule should ensure some good content.

book at ica.org.uk

Scott Guthrie’s interview is LIVE!

2007-05-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

Scott is a General Manager within the Microsoft Developer Division. He runs the development teams that build the following products/technologies: .NET Compact Framework, ASP.NET / Atlas, Windows Presentation Foundation, and many more…

Be sure to check out his video here.

We thought that we would put some of our newly found skills to the test, and set about creating a new Silverlight movie player for this video, using the May preview of Expression Media Encoder and Blend 2. The workflow was pretty smooth and mirrored the MIX demos.

This is also the first movie that we have deployed using Microsoft’s ‘Silverlight Streaming’ technology, having blogged about the service we thought that we should give it a test-run.

Jason Arber - Pixelsurgeon and Wyld Stallyons

2007-05-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

Watch it here.

Jason is currently co-founder and senior editor of Pixelsurgeon, a digest of the creative and strange on the web. Pixelsurgeon is also an arts magazine featuring news, reviews and interviews with designers, artists, musicians and filmmakers. Jason is also senior designer at Now Wash Your Hands.

Michelin Man added to exposure...

2007-05-14T05:49:00.000-07:00

Michelin's 'Better Mobility' site added to exposure - find out more here. (Prepare yourself for some gratuitous use of 3D in Flash.)

BBC Silverlight demo added to exposure...

2007-05-14T05:07:00.000-07:00

During the keynote on the second day at Mix, the BBC demonstrated what for many was one of the highlights of the show. This was an extremely complex project, the team comprised of people from five companies, Microsoft, BBC, Siemens, Ioko and AKQA.

Find out more

29th May: Adobe's inspired media events

2007-05-10T11:06:00.000-07:00

We'll be at Adobe's inspired media event - more info here.

Silverlight Streaming now live...

2007-05-10T09:24:00.000-07:00

Head over to silverlight.live.com to create yourself a Silverlight Streaming account key and begin uploading your Silverlight applications and media. Silverlight Streaming allows you to upload up to 4GB of media content, with videos of up to ten minutes in length. The storage is "in the cloud" and files are globally cached.

For more info check out Tim Sneath's blog.

Expression Media Encoder...

2007-05-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

This was definately one of our MIX highlights - get your hands on a copy whilst it's free...

Download a free trial version here

Expression Blend 2 May Preview...

2007-05-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

This new preview allows you to start building with Silverlight today.

You can get the download from here:
Expression Blend 2 May Preview

MIX highlights:

2007-05-09T04:41:00.001-07:00

We had an absolutely awesome time at MIX; we met literally millions of fascinating people and have lots of very cool interviews and features to share with you over the next few days. There will be lots of feedback on Silverlight, (if you haven’t heard enough already), and the implications that this announcement has on the interaction design community.

Perhaps most impressive for us was the general vibe surrounding the event. There is a social stigma that surrounds most of Microsoft’s attempts to engage with designers, however, for 3 days in Vegas this disappeared. Those folks at Microsoft deserve credit for creating an engaging environment; this was a BIG event on so many levels.

I’m not for one minute forgiving Microsoft for Internet Explorer, and the associated hassles for Creatives, but I find Silverlight refreshing. The keynote demos were awesome, (look out for these in our exposure section), and everybody at the event witnessed a vibe reminiscent of the early days of Futuresplash/ Flash. In summary – we think that Silverlight as a competitive – but very different - product to Flash can only be a good thing.

If there is a tipping point for Silverlight in the near future, I’m confident that MIX has taken us towards it in leaps and bounds – most impressive for us was the video workflow using Expression media encoder, blend, design and web. For anybody intending to publish video online, (in a more professional fashion than youtube allows), this set of tools is going to be incredibly useful. And good value compared to CS3. You can check out the keynote along with all of the other MIX sessions at: http://sessions.visitmix.com

Wayne Smith’s demo of the media encoder was show-stopping, we grabbed him straight after his presentation, and you can see his interview here.

Stay tuned and we’ll introduce more demos, interviews and features from evangelists at the event. As mentioned earlier, perhaps the most important feature of MIX was the vibe – summarised here in this interview with Jon Harris (User Experience Evangelist, Microsoft), conducted by John Davey (Flash on the Beach).

John Davey has just announced Flash on the Beach 2007, this was easily the best UK event in 2006 – book early to avoid disappointment!

More to follow...

Viva Las Vegas!

2007-05-04T09:19:00.000-07:00

It certainly looks like MIX has been a success, we've had an awesome time here in Vegas, and want to say a big thank you to all of the people that we connected with at the event!

Once we get back to the UK we'll be posting our highlights, look out for some fantastic interviews and some interesting out-takes.

Go to http://www.visitMIX.com for more information and demos of silverlight.

Todays WACOM winner: John Bruce

2007-04-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

John - make sure that you come visit us at the Electric Avenue, you must collect this prize during the event.

Congratulations!

Electric Avenue...

2007-04-30T12:23:00.000-07:00

...on the fifth floor of the Venetioan, is where you can find the screenedit film crew. We're the guys with the camera.

Please connect with us and give us a short interview, remember - one lucky participant will win a WACOM tablet every day!

Interview with Andy Clarke...

2007-04-29T16:03:00.000-07:00

Click here to see our interview with Andy Clarke

Andy Clarke has been working on the web for almost ten years. He is a visual web designer based in the UK and started his design consultancy Stuff and Nonsense in 1998. As lead designer and creative director, his clients include local and national businesses, charities and government bodies and he has designed for The British Heart Foundation, Disney Store UK, Save The Children and WWF UK.

Andy is a member of the Web Standards Project where he redesigned the organization\'d5s web site in 2006. He is also an Invited Expert to the W3C's CSS Working Group. Andy regularly educates web designers on how to create beautiful, accessible web sites and he speaks at workshops and conference events worldwide. Andy also managed to find time in 2006 to write a critically acclaimed book, Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design.

Screenedit @ MIX:

2007-04-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

This week we're in Las Vegas at Microsoft's MIX 07 event, we will be talking to the key players about interaction design, including most of Microsoft's User Experience Evangelists. We will also be gathering feedback and reaction from attendees, we're looking forward to seeing if the event lives up to the hype!

Competition:

If you've managed to get your hands on a ticket, please come and find us. We are filming interviews across the 3 days, and looking for potential stars! We have lots of swag to give away, anybody who goes in front of the camera will be entered into a prize draw and each day we will be giving away a fantastic WACOM tablet, thanks to the Expression team ;-)

Winners will be anounced on this blog at the end of each day.

Watch this space and we'll post our location so that you can find us!

More to follow...

Joshua Hirsch and Nike Air... ...plus more reaction from FOWD.

2007-04-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

We are really pleased that Joshua Hirsch managed to speak to us at the FOWD event, you can see his interview here, if you haven't already checked out our homepage.

Josh is responsible for the Nike Air site, check it out in the exposure gallery. It is an awesome site and really demonstrates what Flash is capable of, in the right hands.

We've also got more reaction to the FOWD event from; Andy Clarke, Mike Downey and Steve Burnard in our features section.

Next week: MIX '07 - Don't miss it!

Interview with Mike Downey

2007-04-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

At FOWD we caught up with Mike Downey, he is the Sr. Product Manager for Apollo at Adobe Systems. Mike has been passionately involved with web technologies since the late 90s when he began working with software like Macromedia Flash, which became the standard for motion and interactivity on the Internet.

Click here to watch his interview.

MOO.COM added to exposure...

2007-04-23T01:25:00.000-07:00

Click here to visit the exposure gallery

Rei Inamoto

2007-04-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, at FOWD, we were extremely lucky to get an interview with Rei Inamoto. Rei is AKQA’s Global Creative Director, delivering solutions for clients such as Nike and Xbox. This guy is really slick - click here and watch his interview right now.

We'd also like to say thanks to John Allwright and the Microsoft Expression team, I think that everybody will agree that the 'lounge' was really quite cool - nice to see Microsoft getting it right! John also gave us a great interview - you can see it here.

Over the next few days we'll upload further interviews and features from the event so that you can get your daily dose! Watch this space for: Mike Downey, Joshua Hirsch, Andy Clarke, Andy Budd, Steve Burnard, Jason Arber, Jeff Croft & more reaction from the event.

Future of Web Design

2007-04-19T06:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we were fortunate enough to attend The Future of Web Design event in central London. We just wanted to say thank you to Ryan Carson and his team for organising the event and allowing us to shoot some fantastic interviews with speakers, designers and developers throughout the day.

Watch this space, we'll announce the videos on our blog as we release them!

A bit of silliness...

2007-04-19T06:34:00.000-07:00

...but something that desingers should relate to!

http://www.underconsideration.com/MaketheLogoBigger.mp3

This was hunted down and forwarded by http://www.eviljeanius.com

Hillman Curtis in the UK (Manchester)

2007-04-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

Not to be missed: http://www.dandad.co.uk/buy/presidents-lectures/curtis.html

CS3

2007-04-17T05:45:00.000-07:00

Oh, and just in case you didn't realise, Adobe have launched Creative Suite 3, more to follow...

http://www.adobe.com/creativelicense/

Silverlight...

2007-04-16T09:46:00.000-07:00

...is the new name for wpf/e:
Visit http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/ for more info.

Getting started with the wpf/e samples using expression blend

2007-04-11T11:54:00.000-07:00

If you have downloaded the wpf/e samples from Microsoft, but you're struggling to get them working in Expression Blend, because you're NOT a developer - then this video fix might be useful - simple but effective, and gets you started.

A designer's overview of Expression and the Windows Presentation Foundation

2007-04-06T03:28:00.000-07:00

There doesn't seem to be a simple, non-technical explanation for this yet, so
I'll stick my neck out and try to explain what I think it is. Hopefully somebody
'more cleverer' than me will add some comments and 'fine-tune' this description.

WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)

This is Microsoft's new presentation format. From an audio-visual perspective
it can do most things that Flash can do but is based on a mark-up language,
whilst Flash is a binary file. It is very much in it's infancy however, and
working with the mark-up, (XAML), can be a crude experience as the tools,
(Expression Blend & Design), are very much 'unreleased'. Programmers are excited
about the fact that WPF gives them access to .NET features, which enables you to
harness the full power of the desktop on Vista developments.

XAML

This is a mark-up language based on XML. Don't be afraid, it really isn't
much more sophisticated than HTML, and like hyper text it relies on 'proper'
code like javascript, (Online apps), and .NET, (Desktop apps), to actually do
anything clever.

WPF/e

This is a browser plug-in, the name will change to something more user
friendly, and the install process will become 'smart'. The plug-in means that
anything created in XAML can be run through any browser, regardless of operating
system, hence the 'e' for 'everywhere'.

interaction design in the natural world...

2007-04-05T02:19:00.000-07:00

creative review - interaction design special

2007-04-05T01:40:00.001-07:00

Inside the cover of this month's Creative Review,I found this photgraph, on the subject of designers and developers working together, and the role of the interaction designer, I think that this picture really is worth a thousand words…

Photograph by Nicolas Zurcher, IDEO

version 1 or version 2?

2007-04-05T01:37:00.001-07:00

Just in case you are struggling to get your head around the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 technologies, O’Reilly Media have conveniently put together this simple but effective table:

Web 1.0 --> Web 2.0

DoubleClick --> Google AdSense
Ofoto --> Flickr
Akamai --> BitTorrent
mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation --> search engine optimization
page views --> cost per click
screen scraping --> web services
publishing --> participation
cms --> wikis
directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --> syndication

You can read more about O’Reilly Media’s opinions of Web 2.0 here.

web 2.0 glossary

2007-04-05T01:34:00.000-07:00

It is easy to dismiss a term such as ‘Web 2.0’ as hype, Dale Dougherty of O’Reilly Media coined the phrase back in October 2004, when he was describing how the dot.com world had crashed so spectacular three years earlier. The phrase took hold and the developer community are ‘into it’ so why aren’t interaction designers?

The name itself is reason enough for designers to steer clear of anything ‘Web 2.0’, it is a spectacularly techy choice of name, and is clearly reminiscent of the early days of ‘Web 1.0’ when designers were scared away from switching to interaction design with words like ‘JavaScript’ ‘html’ ‘gifs’ and ‘jpgs’, we remember the web before designers were invited to the party, the most exciting pages consisted of tiled brick backgrounds with lots of text (Times New Roman) and big grey buttons.

No wonder the design community were happy to stay at home and play with Quark, an old buddy that they were completely familiar with. However, with risk came reward, and the designers who made the leap to interaction design were more than rewarded! They also had a lot of fun along the way. So the real question is: Can you afford not to believe the hype?

It is my intention to fully investigate everything about the web mk II, and I will be publishing a series of articles that are related to the new ‘WebTop’ experience, beginning with a glossary of Web 2.0 terms so that designers have no excuse to stay away.

Ajax:
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. A group of technologies that shift the burden for processing information from the server to the local PC. This allows a browser to download all of the information it needs to render the page, including database variables, and lets the visitor use and manipulate that information on their PC without having to refer back to the server. This is clearly closer to running an application, reducing site-traffic.

API:
Application Programming Interface. A frame of reference that allows third-party developers to produce sites or applications that draw on data presented by the other site. An example of this is the Microsoft local.live.com API lets you embed the maps on your own site and overlay your own data, almost as if the maps were stored on your own local server. To see a number of examples of this visit the gallery at ViaVirtualEarth.com.

Blogroll:
A collection of links, often stored in a database, so that it can be manipulated in an intelligent manner.

RSS:
Really Simple Syndication / Rich Site Summary. An XML-based document structure that presents the content, but not the formatting of a website. Tags within the file define the purpose of each piece of information in the structure, allowing it to be re-used in other pages.

Ruby on Rails:
Application framework developed by 37Signals that allows for the rapid development of MySQL –based applications. Could be the most important language in the development of Web 2.0 applications, a logical progression from PHP and a good first step for programmers.

Tag:
A descriptive term applied to any kind of data to make it easier to find. The most famous example are the tags applied to images in Flickr that allow you to search for and categorise images stored in the site.

Tag cloud:
A visual representation of the number of times a particular tag had been applied to objects in a given database.

Trackback:
A special kind of link that joins an original piece of content with derivative works, or new pieces of content that refer to, or were inspired by, the original. This is most commonly found on blogs.

Wiki:
A special kind of site to which users can add their own information, or change the information that is already stored there. Most famous example: Wikipedia. Wikis were the initial idea for how the web should run but technology limited this.

an online time and place for everything

2007-04-05T01:30:00.001-07:00

I noticed an interesting article in The Guardian newspaper this morning, written by Jack Schofield, it talks about last weeks launch of Google's new calendar. This is an interesting follow-on from my Web 2.0 articles:

'Google Calendar is faster and easier to use. Like Gmail, Google's email service, Google Calendar downloads and runs JavaScript code in the browser (Internet Explorer and Firefox only), which makes the user interface much more responsive. Google has also exploited the iCalendar internet standard, which has superseded the old vCal, and XML, the eXtensible Markup Language. The first makes it much easier to share calendar data; XML makes it easy to add a button to a web page, which users can click to add an event to their Google Calendar.'

View the full article here.

Ways to get creative with software development

2007-04-04T17:03:00.000-07:00

Listen to this morning's Podcast with Dr. Neil Roodyn: Click Here

Show notes:

'Ways to get creative with software development'

Fantastic brands have a unique point of view, if you can establish your brand-alignment your product will become a circle that people want to join AND tell others about.

If you make branding a part of your product development you will: Increase the perceived value of your product, make your software easier to learn/use and broaden your market, increasing sales.

3 Goals:

1) Don’t set out to create a software tool – ‘Make a Place’
This creates an emotional tie between your product and your customer, great brands have practised this historically, an obvious example is the Apple iPod experience.

2) Keep usability at the forefront – pay special attention to buttons and navigation, Keep It Simple Stupid. Model techniques that the big software developers have used for navigation, they have invested millions of pounds getting it right. Where possible test your product on non-techies.

3) Stay focussed on your brand alignment and what your product is trying to achieve, take every opportunity to get your message across, this could include the packaging –even if it is a downloadable product it can have packaging – an installer screen for example.

Most importantly stay passionate about your products, all brand leaders have this in common!

Have a fantastic day!

Tricky