Everyone needs desktop images

When you’re looking at your computer all day, you need something framing your windows that looks good.

Everyone needs cool desktop images. After awhile the ones that come with your computer just don’t cut it. One of my favorite sites go hit when looking for something fresh is Mandolux. He’s an awesome photographer and has a way of making really nice images work for the desktop. Usually he has them cut up for dual or even triple(!) displays, but has quite a few for us single-display people too.

My second place I hit is David Lanham’s. He’s a stunning artist, and creates some of the most creative things I’ve seen. While not all of his work is available in wallpaper form, a lot is. He also sells prints. (which I keep meaning to pick a couple up…)

Two sites you should seriously check out, their work is not only beautiful, it serves a purpose. Removes boringness.

The Knowledge Navigator

I recently saw one of the coolest things ever. Watch.

Let’s deconstruct this video, which, by the way, was created in the 1980s. Before basically any of this was invented. Apple’s team that made this video was brilliant.

1) Computers that talk. This is here now, both in Mac OS X and the latest versions of Windows. Not quite as nicely spoken as this, but the Mac one is quite good. (Not sure about the Windows one)

2) Animation to make the guy’s face talk. This is basically here too. I’m not 100% that it can be done automatically, but I’m pretty sure it’s possible. (VS. manually created)

3) Time aware calendars: Yep.

4) “Let me see the lecture notes from last semester”: Well, in a roundabout way really. Searching (on mac anyway) is pretty much amazing.

5) “Pull up all the articles I haven’t read recently”: Not really. Unless you count RSS readers, or Queues like on Hulu.

6) John Fleming article: Again, searching. With keywords, this is fairly possible.

7) Multi-Touch functionality: That is, touching to do things rather than a mouse. It’s in millions of people’s pockets now.

8) Video Chatting: Completely here.

9) Video Chatting with screen sharing. It’s possible in iChat.

In the end, we’re extremely close to this reality. There’s a pretty new system called Siri out now. I watched a video of one of the guys who is making it discussing the way it works and how they built it the other day. The hardest part of these things is the context-aware system. Humans are so smart they’re dumb, they leave things out expecting the other person to figure it out. “I booked a ticket to London for tomorrow”…”Wonder what the weather is like”, etc. Well, a human realizes that they mean the weather in London. However, a computer has no clue. Enter context-aware. Siri has the ability to “remember” previous queries. So, ask it about movie times in Evansville, and then ask it the weather for tonight. It’ll assume you mean in Evansville.

We’re getting really close to this reality. And I can’t wait for it to happen.

when is it too much? (Or: random babbling at 11pm with a pseudo train of thought)

The web is a wonderful thing- connecting us with long lost friends, far away family, or meeting new people from places you’d never be able to visit, it has allowed communication and collaboration on a scale never before seen. You can go and check out reviews for a restaurant in New York while planning your trip from your couch (or bed, or wherever–though I must caution you, don’t use a computer in the bath… It could go bad really quickly), or watch six people living in a house with 60 high-definition cameras, live 24-7, aspiring to become actors, musicians, and models (If I Can Dream). If you brought someone from even the 1980s to now and showed them what’s possible, they’d go crazy. I mean, I have a phone which can browse the web, take pictures, check weather in London, and holds thousands of songs, and videos, and, oh yeah, makes phone calls. But when is it too much?

When is there too much connectivity? When does it get to the point that too many people know too much about you? I mean, do your 600 so-called friends on facebook really need to know that you slipped in the shower and crushed the cat? Why am I compelled to pull my phone out and check facebook status updates at least three times a day?

First off, I think it can be pretty easy to move from the “this is cool” to “my grandmother just called me because she saw that one of my friends’ moms posted that I went to a pool party with booze and now she’s yelling at me”. And I haven’t said anything at all about the possibility, nay, the reality that the government(s) are watching what you’re posting, not to mention the companies that own facebook/twitter/youtube/wordpress/etc. Or how incredibly easy it is to stalk someone now because of these things.

Secondly, why am I compelled to pull out my phone to check facebook 3 times a day? Why am I not checking out the new york times or CNN? Probably because the real news is too real- it’s too sad and depressing and overwhelming. The world, if all you do is listening to the news, is going to hell in a handbasket..Or actually, it’s already there but the damn taxi hasn’t picked it up from the airport yet. So we turn to social media stuff, like facebook and twitter, because the “little people” (and not the dwarf and midget kind) don’t have problems that big. Sure, they might seem that big to them, but in the grand scheme of things, you falling and crushing the cat, while it sucks, isn’t nuclear war. It’s more like a very, very small genocide (they do have 9 lives after all. You’re a serial killer now.).

In the end, (and I’m not exactly sure where I was going with this) it’s a balancing game. Don’t rely on facebook too much, it might be gone tomorrow. Don’t post things that could get you in trouble, because they very well could. Think before giving a company your information, don’t ever use the same password at a bank that you do at facebook or AIM. And for god’s sake, don’t let your boyfriend video you having sex. It WILL end up online.

Why using Flash is bad for your portfolio

If you go looking for a photographer for a wedding, senior photos, well, whatever really, you’ve probably come across a lot of sites that use flash for the portfolios. Most likely, you go to the site, and you sit there waiting on a loader animation for at least 5-10 seconds, or at worst a minute or two. Then you get to see the photos, but what happens if you want to send someone a link to a particular photo on the site? It’s usually not possible. You’ve just been to a portfolio made in flash.

First, a bit of statistics.

Studies have shown people will, on average, wait on a site to load for 8.5 seconds. Which means, after about 8 seconds, if your potential client hasn’t seen any images, they will leave. Poof. Gone. You’ve lost what could be a big chunk o’ money due to a slow loading site.

Second, usability.

People have become used to normal websites- where the address bar, back & forward buttons work. It’s been that way since the web began, and flash sites generally screw that up completely. People WANT to send their friends/coworkers/family links to things (and chain letters, but that’s another rant). Unless the flash site is extremely well created (and let’s face it, the majority aren’t) that simply isn’t possible.

One study that I found very interesting was done by dack.com. It found that on Tiffany’s website (in 2000, but still extremely relevant), where they had a normal HTML shopping site and a flash version, that participants could find out simple things, such as how much an item was, comparing multiple items, etc 40% faster on the normal HTML site than the flash version. One of the major things that tripped people up? The normal back button didn’t work. And as far as I know (and I make websites for a living, but I could be wrong…) it’s simply not possible to make that work with flash.

Third, Apple.

There’s 50 million iPhones out there. Surely one hell of a lot of iPod Touches, and they’re on target to do well over 1 million iPads by the end of the year. None of which have flash. People are using iPhones and such a lot more than they used to, and that’s only going to go up. Don’t expect flash to come to iPhones/iPads/iPod Touches any time soon, since Apple and Adobe are basically in a holy-war still.

Why should you care? Well, iPhones account for about 25% of the smartphone market. That’s a LOT of people to exclude.

Finally…

Why should you use a technology that forcefully excludes a huge portion of your potential clients and will annoy the rest of them? It’s just bad business sense.

Regular sites simply work faster, better, and in the end really have the upper hand on any flash site. Especially with really cool stuff coming out of JavaScript development at the moment, flash is really, truly, (hopefully) dying a nice, slow, painful death.

Of course, I’m guilty of it too. However, the only reason for that is I simply haven’t had time to fix my site.