This Is Locomotion - Design, Code, and News

I just spotted the new Philips: Drag & Draw Technology on Youtube today. A very interesting laser based technology that will allow kids to draw all they want on a wall, then point their magic wand at their drawing and watch as it comes to life. The best part is that unlike pencils or pens, these drawings won’t require you to paint over them.

I wonder if there are any practical business applications for a tool like this. I could see it being an efficient way to flowchart thoughts in a meeting if it was articulate enough – say goodbye to that whiteboard and eraser. Interesting.

This video has been removed by YouTube. Sorry

Following the tradition of spotting simple websites that I love, Virb was announced this weekend.

Virb puts all of the things that make you you — photos, videos, blogs — in one place. So you can find friends (and friends can find you).

Apparently it only takes 30 seconds to get started and signed up for an account too!

After taking a look through the site. I was really struck by the sheer beauty of it. The typography is great and I love the media player. Not only does this new social networking site boast some great features, but it also sports much cleaner code than its competitor myspace.com. One of my pet peeves with myspace is that is has introduced a whole new level of terrible coding practice and bloat to the internet. Virb certainly has the potential of cleaning this up.

Virb’s Media Player

Lately I’ve been thinking about what makes good and bad design. I always strive for and embrace simplicity in my design style. Frustrated by years of navigating poor web sites I have realized that the net should be about finding information, second it should be about good design. The two components can work harmoniously, but it takes a good designer to pull it off.

Recently Joshua Porter wrote a great article on 5 principles to design by. He states:

The litmus test. When people enjoy Art, they say “I like that”. When people enjoy Design, they say “That works well”. This is not by accident. Good Design is something that works well.

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After just pouring through Cameron Moll’s blog this morning, I came upon this tidbit of wisdom that I just couldn’t help but pass on. Graphic designers, photographers, web-designers — enjoy!

Cameron Moll:

Fear is the Adolf Hitler of creativity killers. It is responsible for supressing and destroying more brilliant ideas than all of the other creativity killers combined. It is a core ingredient of the most potent creative poisons. Fear limits the volume and dilutes the quality of the ideas we generate. It radically constricts the judgement of creative directors, bosses and clients.

Kodzis identifies top creativity killers, some of which include casting premature judgement upon ideas in their infancy, establishing unrealistic deadlines, dealing with managers whose moods change with every iteration, committing creative suicide through lack of discipline, and doing more of the same.

Whenever I hear someone utter the rationale “…because we’ve always done it that way,” I am forced to suppress the urge to throttle them. For creative professionals, it is both insult and injury wrapped in one backward reaching statement. The essence of creativity is the pursuit of something different. The antithesis of creativity is to keep doing what has always been done.

I’m reminded of Greg Storey’s confession upon turning thirty-five:
There is no secret sauce to what I have done with one exception, I never stop working on my confidence.
Hear hear, brother. In my book, there’s no better tranquilizer for fear than confidence.

This video from Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, explains the basics of Web 2.0 in 5 minutes. It’s a little fast paced, but for those of you needing a true crash course, this may help you wrap your head around it.

Well I just reserved my spot at An Event Apart in Boston. It looks like it’s going to be an awesome conference and having never been to one, I’m really excited. They have an awesome lineup of speakers, including some of my personal favorites: Steve Krug, Dan Cedarholm, and Cameron Moll.

Here’s your hCalendar hookup:

• An Event Apart Boston
  March 26-27th 2007 · Marriott Copley Place, Boston

Boston here I come! If you’re in the area and would like to meet up let me know.

I just watched this great video on Google today of Seth Godin giving a speech at Gel 2006 on marketing mishaps. It’s about a lot of the “do not do’s” of marketing. Enjoy

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This image is from the New York Times. Do any of these Microsoft marketing gurus seem excited about the launch of Windows Vista? If you take a close look, not a single one is smiling, and they certainly don’t look as though they’ve been “wowed”. As Seth Godin (marketing guru extraordinaire) said on his blog this week in response: “Just because a marketer says something is amazing, exciting or just plain wow doesn’t mean it is.”

I’m very inclined to agree. While Vista will be a evolutionary step from Windows XP, it certainly is not doing anything nearly as innovative as Apple is doing in it’s next iteration of Mac OS X codenamed Leopard. Perhaps the “wow” refers to the fact that they’ve finally managed to make a copy of Apple’s Dashboard, or Expose technology and bring it to a new version of Windows. I bet all these guys own a Mac and are loathing giving this presentation.

There will be some routine maintenance performed on our server on January 23rd (today) at 10:00PM that will result in all client sites being down for 20-45 minutes.

The recent announcement of Apple’s iPhone has caused a massive amount of buzz on the net. After watching the keynote last week all I could say was “I want one” with one of those jaw dropping expressions that I’m sure the majority of the global geekisphere was performing. It is very clear that the phone will be revolutionary and I can only imagine what the CEO’s of Blackberry and Palm stated after watching Steve’s keynote. I believe it would go like this:

Well there goes that… what the [insert old-English curse word here] do we have that can compete? How long is it going to take us to get something similar out there?

Luckily it doesn’t look like Apple will be targeting enterprise users with this initial glimpse at the iPhone (so Blackberry and Palm may be able to hang onto that market for a little while longer), but it sure will blow away the competition in the personal pda phone arena. The combination of Mac OS X + Movies + iTunes + Camera + WiFi + Bluetooth + GSM + Multitouch screen will definitely put Apple substantially above the competition on a number of levels. This phone will also be a web designer’s dream, since it will run Safari, and with any luck it will spark a revolution of devices that utilize modern browsers (I’d love to see Firefox run on an iPhone competitor). Wouldn’t it be great if you never had to design a separate CSS stylesheet for cell phones?

There are a lot of positives about the iPhone, but I think there’s been so much buzz about how awesome it is that there has been very little coverage of some of the potential down-sides (and Apple’s potential solutions). The first thing I thought of while watching the keynote was: What if you are driving? (more…)