interactive design & code exploration

Phone manufacturers need to focus on making the best product that works for them, not on copying what works. But I don't think they should be afraid of getting sued for having the same idea r gesture or shaped solution. I hope we get to the point that we can have different options that are each different but still good, and not just different for the sake of being different. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

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Apple’s Big Verdict: Bad For Usability, But It Won’t Stop True Innovation
On Friday afternoon, a jury of nine delivered a swift verdict in the Apple-Samsung patent infringement case, ruling overwhelming in Apple’s favor. Samsung, they said, had copied Apple’s designs, infri…

It's great to see this rebranding and repositioning redefine the company! The Jones Group has certainly changed since it started 15 years ago. This rebranding is not so much changing the company, but realigning the perception of what the company is, and it calls attention to the company's strengths and creative talent that has matured into what is now Brand Fever. 

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Rebrand Yourself. We did! – Brand Fever | Brand and Marketing Firm
Why Change? Marketing has changed immensely since we opened our doors in 1997. The most dramatic change came in 2008, when the floodgates opened on new channels and opportunities for our clients to pu…

Projecting webcam video onto a webgl 3d mesh and maps depth from the pixel brightness. Then applies a perlin noise to the depth and gives you the controls! 

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WebCamMesh Demo — Airtight Interactive
WebCamMesh is a HTML5 demo that projects webcam video onto a WebGL 3D Mesh. It creates a 'fake' 3D depth map by mapping pixel brightness to mesh vertex Z positions. Perlin noise is used to create the …

It's been true for a while: We are needing less and less of a piece of paper that tells potential employers about us. The net is making our work much more transparent. Candidates are googled. A resume can say something about us, but not with the clarity of work. Looking at a developer, check the code in what they've developed, designer, check the designs online. Github is a great example, open code online for all to see, fork and even patch. Ryan proposes that we should judge a github repo success by it's patches and commits rather than it's forks. That means it is an active project and is converging into a community effort rather than branches or ideas.

I add that our website and blog should act as a resume too, a big reason to why I even started blogging: http://circlecube.com/2007/01/welcome-to-circle-cube-studio/

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Even for Companies: Github is your Resume | Ryan Stewart – Mountaineer Coding
Ryan Stewart – Mountaineer Coding. Just an average guy trying to drink above average beer. adobe-brackets-impact. Search. Main menu. Skip to primary content. Skip to secondary content. Home · About Ry…

Now as we get the width of an element, jQuery will detect which box model we are using, although it does slow up the getting a lot. To keep it fast use .css('width') rather than .width() and it will just grab whichever width the css is using. A nice alternative

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jQuery Blog » jQuery 1.8 box-sizing: width(), css(“width”), and outerWidth()
One of the great new features in jQuery 1.8 is a built-in understanding of box-sizing: border-box which is supported by every modern browser. (Sorry, IE6 and IE7, please take one step back; I said mod…

Photographers focus on interstates and interchanges as truly interesting subjects.

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The Surprising Beauty Of America’s Crumbling Interstate System
It’s hard to oversell the impact of America’s largest public works project, the 47,000 mile Interstate Highway System, which is tied to some of our best and worst attributes as a country. For aerial p…

I'm still unsure how I feel about flash leaving. I'm a fan of a consistent experience across every device. I think that at time goes on that devices are getting better and better too, but I do see the reasons behind these decisions to focus on flash as a tool to build apps rather than browser plugin content. As a user though, I dread having to download an app for everything, I had hoped that the mobile web and the desktop web could converge into one and the same. I'd rather hit a url and do something than have the split. Hit a url on my "real" computer but on my phone or tablet have to download an app in order to do something. I think this segregates web users. So technically I agree with the farewell to the mobile flash plugin, but on principle, I don't like where it seems like it will take us.

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Flash set for mobile exit | News | .net magazine
Users angry as Adobe finally exits mobile plug-in market

Is there anything better than good computer generated design? Maybe good computer generated design that looks like faces!

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Pareidoloop – algorithmic face generation
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you took an MRI scan of a person’s skull, created a 3D model of it then passed that over t

We've got a couple nav icons out there, the three lines and the arrow. I prefer the three lines but I've also seen that it's not a common character. I've even use a two line icon (the equals sign) so it wouldn't need to be an image. An icon font is a good way to get around this, but is the three stripe the best icon for a menu? It's also used in browser apps for the settings button, so then you get the same icon in the same space, although if they serve the same function then perhaps (although it looks odd) this could be seen as a good thing, no? What do you think?

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Adactio: Journal—Navicon
Three lines.

Usability consistency is needed in the wordPress community. Plugins and themes should both be as usable as wordpress is. The best way to make things usable is to do REAL usability testing with REAL people. Don't worry about what's supposed to be usable. See what ACTUALLY works.

Code is poetry. So should be your user’s experience.

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Help Us Help WordPress | Smashing WordPress
Learn how to improve the WordPress user experience with some practical usability wisdom.