“Your Time is limited. Don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs
Category filter: Tech
Ready Steady Bang
Theres a new minimalist game app. in town. Ready Steady Bang is a simple cowboy shootout game for the iPhone that has a really awesome user interface. This little promotional video for the game is really funny and tad morbid.
(via Public School »)
How I Give Presentations With the iPad
Self proclaimed “writer who draws” Austin Kleon has made this fun little illustration to demonstrate how he uses his iPad in place of a laptop when giving presentations.
Tomahawk Hair Dryer
I can’t say that I use a hair dryer very frequently let alone ever, but I am aware of the overwhelming lack of design in most household electronics and appliances. These designs by Jean Baptiste Fastrez incorporate beautifully hewn wood handles, melded with simple cords and futuristic blowers. The project is called Tomahawk. The name derived from the hatchets carried by Native American tribes, applies to the design as well as the element of craft that goes into creating a wood handle.
(via NOTCOT »)
Plic Ploc Wiz
There seems to be a multitude of awesome iPad apps sprouting up all over these days. Not that this is an original observation by any means, but I think many of these are helping to redefine that categorization of something as an app as well as what it can and should do. Plic Ploc Wiz is a wonderful example because it steps outside of the predictable user interface and creates a blank canvas sort of workspace for you to create unique little works of art with a selected toolkit. Granted PPW is marketed for children. I am definitely going to shamelessly download it regardless.
(via NOTCOT »)
FontBook on iPad
FontBook recently released their amazing new iPad app, which looks like the single best type related resource ever. You can easily search and view by either foundry, designer, year or class and look through amazing type specimen sheets. Clicking through to purchase is also flawlessly integrated for those of you looking to expand your type library.
(via SpiekerBlog »)
Motiv Makes the Times
My friend Russ Maschmeyer, who many of you may know by the name Strange Native made the New York Times today in the personal tech section. The project they covered was one he created over the past year as a student in SVA’s Interaction Design MFA. Russ created an application called Motiv, which uses the Xbox Kinect hardware to track motion and allow users to create music out of ether. Russ would probably disagree and say people would be creating music out of his hard work and sweat. Congrats Russ!
You can check out the whole Times article here.
Urbanflow Helsinki
To think about and begin to design a true modern city we need to understand the uses and implications of current technologies on the landscape. This amazing video is a summation of a project by Nordkapp called Urbanflow, which has laid the groundwork for what the future city will look like and how we will interact with it. Not so much the physical landscape, but more the digital landscape. How data will be visualized, created, manipulated, interacted with and then used to develop and benefit the city and it’s infrastructure.
(via ArchDaily »)
The President’s Budget for 2012
Even though Obama’s term in the White House has been rocky at times how can we not commend someone for taking our countries government into the new millennium. Obama has made it a keep point of focus to integrate new technologies and web tools into the everyday operations of many departments in the government. We may not be at the point where the department of defense tweets every time they launch an apache missile with the target geo-tagged.
We have seen a massive improvement in the level of transparency surrounding government decision making, and it may not yet be a completely collaborative process, but we are moving towards a new type of democracy. Government information is now being offered up directly from the source as opposed to being cobbled together by some media outlet or put forth in the cryptic tongue of a press release.
To explore the interactive 2012 budget head over to the White House website. See where you money is going.
Nosh
Nosh seems like a nice fresh view both on social and food related apps. It’s downloading as I type this and I am super excited to see what it can do. The app was created by a new startup called Firespotter Labs, which is funded by Google Ventures and has a seriously stacked list of staffers.
(via iso50 »)
Leica Lenses
Anybody who knows even the smallest bit about cameras or photography knows that Leica is at the top of the game. That is mainly due to the fact that their optics are second to none. This video detailing the process for me just confirms what I already kind of knew. Leica is serious about their product. Putting it through thorough testing at every stage, assembled, and hand finished by specialists is just another testament to the level of excellence their product exudes.
(via idsgn »)
Google Web Fonts v2
In the web font game services like Typekit and MyFonts reign supreme, but I find as a designer working with an array of smaller clients that sticking to the open source fonts offered by Google Web Fonts is a better fit. All the fonts in the GWF library are 100% free and can be easily integrated into almost any site or web app, and is compatible with an increasingly large number of browsers. All this great stuff has gotten even better with the launch of Google Web Fonts v2. The new release has added increased search-ability, which is more necessary now because the new version currently has 185 families all including multiple variations.
Wall of Rocker Switches
I think everyone has already said most of the poignant stuff about this piece, but I still wanted to share it. Such a simple idea that become so much more once it had been executed. The orange glow has a beautiful warmth to it. Artist Valentin Ruhry had the idea to compose 5,000 electrical rocker switches into a blank canvas. The possibilities with the result are pretty much endless.
(via swissmiss »)
Booki.sh
The state of affairs of ebooks and the integration of reading with the web and the advances in media purchasing has been in a bummer place for a while. In comes Booki.sh. A cloud based ebook library and reading platform, which is accessible on most mobile devices and web browsers. This is a decisive step forward for reading and media related applications, both for it’s thoughtfulness and it’s singular vision. Not attempting to cover too much ground. Booki.sh has restricted their focus to ebooks and the related interaction, and consumption chain.
All the beautiful branding and web design is the work of A Friend of Mine. The project also included a custom typeface applied to the logotype based on a pair of eyeglasses, which adds a playful, yet scholarly identity to the branding.
(via Design Work Life »)
Manhattan in Motion
I posted about Josh Owens aka Mind Relic once before, also for his amazing time-lapse shots of New York City. You can view my previous post here. I think the same stuff I said last time is still entirely applicable, but now he has achieved an even higher level of awe. Using a Stage Zero Dolly Josh was able to smoothly and seamlessly shift the angle of the shot giving each one of clips an even greater amount of depth.
(via Cameron Moll »)
The Natural Speaker
Studio Joon Jung have attacked the problem of creating a speaker system from a far different angle and with far different goals from your typical speaker designer or engineer. The Natural Speaker creates a softer more natural sound using a wood, ceramic and porcelain construction for the casing and transmission components. This gives a certain resonance or echo that makes the sound quality softer and more natural feeling. I also really love the more organic qualities of the design, most speakers stick out in a home, and rarely do they match the lived in aesthetic of our other things.
(via The Fox Is Black »)
Feedly Mobile 2.0
I am not and have never been a big supporter of RSS Feeds and accessing blog content outside of it’s native environment. Then in comes Feedly 2.0. Feedly’s interface and features are urging me over to the feed side. Their app works beautifully on iOS, Android and most tablet devices. Take a look at their blog to learn more about the app.
(via swissmiss »)
Don’t Fear the Internet
Today seems like the perfect day to post about possibly the most perfect collaborative couple, and one of their side projects. Don’t Fear the Internet is a side project put together by Jessica Hische and Russ Maschmeyer in the hopes of demystifying the internet for us feeble designers and creatives. Also little side note, as of yesterday Jessica and Russ have officially announced their engagement, check out their super cute announcement site/page here. Congrats you two lovely love birds.
Calvetica
Calvetica by Mysterious Trousers is an awesome minimalist calendar app for the iPhone. The application is built on the iOS native calendaring APIs and syncs seamlessly with the iOS Calendar app. At $2.99 this calendar is a definite steal.
(via Minimalissimo »)
New Twitter Homepage
I want to start off by saying, the new twitter homepage is a vast improvement. Despite their steps forward mainly simplifying and invigorating the design. Like so many other sites and services in their sphere they still fall victim to flat, lifeless, and infinitely uninspired homepage experiences.
Sites like twitter and facebook, second to second and minute to minute provide users with a platform to generate such a beautifully vast and unique amount of content. Yet are we still battling with designing homepages that balance the tasks of leveraging the sites interior content and not overwhelming the visitor upon arrival.
The NY Times website, and news sites in general are a good place to look for inspiration. Most frequently with periodicals they use the cover in print or the homepage in web to engage the viewer or catch their eye. Services like twitter owe it to themselves to offer up a more profound and enticing homepage. Arriving on their homepage and seeing a few favicons of famous people is not enough of a reason for me to signup and become a user if I were not already using their service. Lets look at Evernote for a moment. They are different because their product functions in a completely different space and purpose, however almost immediately upon arriving at their site I know what the application is, what it does, and I have pretty good understanding of it’s interface.
So one major argument that comes to mind is, how many people still access twitter through the web? Since the release of new twitter the number of users of the browser based application have definitely risen and I know I am not the only person of the opinion that new twitter is the most rich and intuitive way to access your stream. This statement goes for third party apps as well. Sorry guys.
As more and more people shift over to using mobile technologies is this a change or area worth exploring? Any chance to more directly or thoroughly engage a new or potential user should be exploited. And if that means finding new ways of displaying content, whether it be some javascript trickery or something simpler. The solutions are out there.
