Yoda Breakdancing
Check out Yoda groovin’ it to The Roots a day before it becomes a household Easter Egg.
UPDATE: Since I get so much stinking traffic for this link, if it breaks again just search “Yoda” on video.google.com. You’ll find it…
Farewell, Safari. Hello, Shiira
Choice. Isn’t it nice?
It looks like the browser wars are heating up again. While this means that I’ll have to test more browsers for my sites, at least these new browsers are built on solid foundations; if we’re all lucky, less people will use Internet Explorer (or IE will decide to fix ALL of the bugs in Longhorn) and Web users will become less apathetic toward their browsing experiences.
Well, it seems like everyone else has had the chance to blog about Flock, the new Mozilla-based browser, but that doesn’t mean I can’t too 
Flock’s creators are approaching Web browsing a little differently–by integrating the functionality of Web sites into the browser. It’s pretty easy to plug into my del.icio.us links with the click of a button, although I’ll admit that I haven’t tried blogging with it yet (that’s built-in too). I have also, for the record, never been a big Flickr fan, so I can’t say that I’ve tried the built-in utility for that, either.
What really turns me off about Flock, though, is that there’s no stop load button, which is a convention on other browsers. Also, why just have my bookmarks imported/shared with Firefox? Why not have my del.icio.us links sync up with the menus instead? I guess time will tell how successful this browser becomes.
For awhile I was using Safari because it was just so darn fast, but alas, Firefox caught up in speed with it’s beta 1.5 version. As I tell anyone learning CSS, test in Firefox first, then fix the bugs in everything else. The other reason I prefer Firefox is because it’s open source (Open source is taking over the online world! Watch and See!). Some of the extensions are worth the download alone.
Well, now there’s Shiira, an open project based on Apple’s own Web kit.
It’s nice. Really nice.
Aside from the speed and features of Safari, it has colored source view (both HTML and DOM), Exposé for tabs (right click the tabs to try), and a preferences menu that’s as packed as an all-you-can-eat buffet. While I’m still testing this out (and, I’ll admit, missing my Firefox extensions), I have to recommend this browser. Even their new icon looks cool (coming out for Shiira 1.2).
Blog + Advertising
So, I set up a myspace.com account primarily to see my friends’ myspace accounts, and while it’s a great sandbox for group interaction, I prefer posting on one of my own domains. It wasn’t long before I started getting friend invitations from acquaintances. Then, what I could call a “company” that I had little ties with requested to befriend me.
This reminded me of a new marketing strategy called “double loop marketing.” The key behind the strategy is to create a company-sponsored blog to generate a feedback loop between the company and its customers. This approach uses the Internet for what it was truly made for, connecting people. Having corporations invade this blogging world might not be something that the community really wants, though.
Macromedia has succeeded in using blogs as a tool by aggregating the blogs of their customer base and employees into a news aggregator. Macromedia’s customers are a little different than that of Tide detergent or Irish Spring soap, though. Customers are seeking development answers at Macromedia’s site. These customers use Macromedia software day-in and day-out and come across a variety of problems (“bugs”) that they have little or no experience with. These bugs may have been generated by the software, but are most often generated by the users. Bugs don’t generally arise out of most household products, though. Can anyone imagine interacting with a blog for dishwasher detergent or apple juice?
Ultimately, a company is interested in providing you with the sales pitch, regardless of whether it’s using a blog, a billboard, or a television commercial. Most blogs are generated by individuals, though, ones that aren’t trying to sell something for the good of their stockholders. As we’ve seen with Mazda, attempting to gain access to this community of viral ideas can fail miserably when the attempt isn’t genuine.
Celebrity sites prove that the particular star has moved away from being an individual and has been converted into an institution that’s selling something. Many celebrity sites have “online diaries” or blogs, but the posts are impersonal (to prevent any cracks showing in the celebrity’s image)and doesn’t allow for feedback. Granted, it would be difficult for a celebrity to keep up with all the fan feedback, but I still like what Wil Wheaton said in the book “Blog!: how the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture:”
“I don’t think of my site as a celebrity site, which tend to be very disingenuous and are usually trying to sell something. Reading them is more like watching Entertainment Tonight rather than actually getting to know someone.”
In contrast to all these attempts for advertisers to penetrate the blogging community, companies like hosting provider TextDrive. create a blog to share knowledge between its employees. Naturally, the company’s internal conversation is available for us to read or comment on as well. Whether or not it works as a soft sell, I think this form of company blogging can be permitted so long as it stays genuine to the goal of connecting people within a company first.
Flash Motion DriveBy is Up
Just another plug: I just gave a presentation on creating motion in Flash at ITP. In particular, I covered some of the tween libraries that are available to developers.
Prior to coming to NYC, I was always wondering how such organic motion was being accomplished in Flash movies–particularly in what seemed to be such a short amount of time. I ended up finding out that 1) big bad advertising Flash sites are funded by a big budget and plenty of time, 2) there’s more than one developer working on the site (hey, I was from a small market where we did it all!), and 3) Developers were using coding libraries like this.
Ultimately, this site is piggybacking on the valuable resources of others, but hopefully it’ll help somebody out. Enjoy.
Who’s Left Holding the Weapons of Persuasion?
No, I haven’t gone to bed in three days…
When you approach the beverage shelf and are confronted by a variety of brand names that you’re unfamiliar with, which drink do you reach for? If you’re me, a distant factor behind flavor is the quantity of the drink remaining on the shelf. That may sound strange, but less bottles of one particular beverage says that the demand—the fact that other consumers like the drink so much to deplete the supply–automatically makes the product more favorable than its neighboring drinks. Fortunately, I have the research of social psychologist Dr. Robert Cialdini to inform me that I’m falling for scarcity, one of the six “weapons of influence.†Shame on him, though. Read More
RIP Anti-Smith Site.
I’m sorry to see that anti-Jason Smith site, http://timetogetoverit.typepad.com/, has come down. I think the online Harrisburg community agreed that it was time for Mr. Smith to generate conversation with a blog rather than a post-election mail campaign, but I thought the site was somewhat amusing. If anything, I’d say it made Jason look good (through his responses). I still wonder who the site’s author was…
Personalized Autographs?
Yesterday I ran over to Books of Wonder to get a signed copy of Alan Lee’s new book, The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook. While there, I discovered that I used to own one of Lee’s earlier books, Faeries (what I get from hanging out with hippies in high school). Overall, I’ll just say that waiting in line with a old guy dressed up in full authentic Aragorn garb made the trip in the rain totally worthwhile.
I’ve found that living up here makes it a lot easier to collect signed books, although I always momentarily freeze when asked if I want a personalized copy or just their John Hancock. I suppose having authors ink in my name authenticates the meeting to anyone I want to brag to and completes the product “experience” that advertisers strive to create, but something about it feels a little ingenuine. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Lee was exceptionally polite (like all authors are on book tours), but I don’t really know him personally, and having something addressed specifically to me artificially creates that feeling.
Oh, if anyone’s wondering, I always do get signatures personalized. I usually keep books I purchase, and I guess I’m ruining my potential eBay inventory by doing this.
Code Tree
So, after posting in desperation to the ITP listserv and going through a list of potential project names, I settled on Code Tree. I think the title represents the idea well; multiple programmers/artists submitting ideas (the “roots”) to generate more ideas (branches). Granted, I didn’t put any branches or roots in the logo design, but hey, it’s colorful! I’ve got a splash page up, but have plenty of work to do, like designing the pages, building the site, structuring the database, getting beta testers, and writing a big ole paper on the whole thing. Yummy.
Flash and Sparkle: Closer to the Message?
I recently watched this video on Sparkle by a group of its developers. Sparkle, Microsoft’s supposed answer to Macromedia Flash, first surfaced in 2003 but has remained pretty hush-hush until recently. Okay, so it could easily encourage a bunch of office spacers to migrate their monstrosities from PowerPoint, but Sparkle actually looks pretty good. The developers in the video really emphasize how authoring can be done effectively without coding (although a code panel is available). That really made me wonder if working with Flash has gotten me farther, or closer, to what I’m really interested in—clearly conveying an idea.
I once read a 1986 article “The New Workstation: CD ROM Authoring Systems” by Marc Canter (found in this book), founder of Macromind (yes, later Macromedia) and I was amazed at what an innovative concept this creative software started as—there was no XML, ECMA, Lingo, ActionScript, etc. It was simply a way to convey a “music score,” a “composer,” a “stage,” and a “director.” These simple analogies were easy for anyone to relate to, especially artists. I remember starting with Flash 4 and the simplicity of the timeline. Now, I don’t even use the timeline; everything is code. ActionScript has slowly started to mimic into the class structure Java and C++, places I’d never thought I’d have gone (or wanted to have gone) before.
Granted, the community asked for this. We all remember Adobe’s failure with LiveMotion. When the coding structure was removed from Web animations, it eliminated the possibilities and the created a glass ceiling of learning. Macromedia has successfully converted generations of artists into programmers, but are we any better off?
Out Again
Do extended breaks make us more productive? If so, is there a formula, like x number of hours working versus y number of hours taking a break? For some reason, I felt compelled to go out to the bar for a friend’s birthday Saturday night–despite a thesis looming over me (my poor wife’s sick, but she doesn’t seem to display this urge when she’s healthy), hundreds of pages of reading this week, and tons of code to review. Maybe it’s because I’ve been staring at composition, encapsulation, and inheritance models of object oriented programming all night. Maybe it’s because I haven’t left my apartment all day. Or, maybe it’s because I like to see Times Square minus tourists at 3 am on my way home. Either way, the bar was pretty cool.
About Me
I'm a designer, developer, and teacher based in Harrisburg, Pa. I run Hauck Interactive, Inc.
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