The other day, a colleague alerted me to an article on techcrunch about a new cloud-based search service, Algolia. Algolia will index your site and then provide an API to integrate search into your site with millisecond response times. The promised effect is not unlike OS X's Spotlight, including thumbnails and categorized results. I decided to check it out on this blog. I … [Read more...]
Adaptive Reading » Example
Based on my last post, I thought I'd provide an example of what I meant. Here's a short piece of writing that can adapt to a specified level. None of the levels are accurate, just an example of what I mean: Let me know what you think. … [Read more...]
Pity Parti – A Designer On A Soapbox
Back in the day, there was a partner who would send me PowerPoint presentations and ask me to add some "sizzle." He knew I'd been to design school and had worked with me on a number of web development projects, so he figured I could add some lipstick to content we were going to share with clients. The problem was that in many cases, the flaws with the decks were structural and … [Read more...]
Signal To Noise & The Demise Of Facebook
Facebook is in trouble. Not because of the questionable success of its IPO or difficulty finding ways to commodify its services (although, the latter may be significant contributor to the issue). Google+ is in trouble for the same reason, albeit at the opposite end of the spectrum. The reason Facebook is in trouble is because of the fact that it's signal-to-noise ratio is … [Read more...]
Ifttt This Is Wrong, Then I Don’t Wanna Be Right
Every once in a while, something comes along that makes me hit my head like the star of an old V8 commercial, then reminds me why I'm so optimistic about technology. Ifttt is one of those things. Ifttt, while a funny domain name, stands for "If This, Then That," and that's the simple beauty of this free web solution. I haven't been this geeked up about a solution since … [Read more...]
Reply All… Hilarity.
A recent email exchange at work left me laughing and wondering if people lacked a basic understanding of how "Reply All" works. Occasionally, those of us who work a little too much get nastygrams from HR informing us that we've hit the limit on vacation accrual and will begin losing time if we don't take some vacation soon. On November 30th, just such a note went out. Today, … [Read more...]
The Immovable User Meets Irresistible Design
There's a nice article over at all tech considered about the symbiotic relationship between Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive. Ive has designed Apple products since the fruit colored iMacs, and Steve Jobs is, well... Steve Jobs. The article describes the intimate working relationship between Jobs an Ive since The Steve returned to Apple in 1992. The big takeaway from the … [Read more...]
Facebook Adds New Status Privacy Features
Facebook released some new status privacy features. It allows you to tag other users in your status, add location (I think this is what happened to Places), and determine who gets to see each status message. This is all handled in a series of controls at the bottom of the status pane: It allows you to choose Public, Friends, Friends of Friends, or even create custom … [Read more...]
Melting Rock with RockMelt
I've been using RockMelt for a week or so now. For those of you unfamiliar with RockMelt, it is a new browser that functions as a social desktop. If you're wondering what that looks like, consider a browser with social functions built right into the chrome of the application. The far left border displays the profile pics of your Facebook friends online, while the border to … [Read more...]
Toward a More Usable City
A B-Cycle kiosk was just installed in front of the John Hancock Center in Chicago. It's good to see bike sharing make its way to this side of the Atlantic. I've already seen bikes being rented from the kiosk. I think the fact that the bike can be grabbed from a kiosk is critical to the success of the program. If people were forced to go into an office, fill out paperwork, … [Read more...]