Notes from Prof. Dipl.-Des. Oliver Wrede
ScoutPress
Tobias Jordans finally finished his diploma thesis: ScoutPress. It’s a system based on weblog software (WordPress) that allows foundations and fragmented organisations to effectively communicate and organize the scattered and distributed information. Tobias used the German Scout Association (DPSG) as a live example (therefore the project name) but it is in no way limited to…
Mnemomap
Tim and Simon from send|recieve presented a verly early alpha version of Mnemomap one week ago on the Webmontag event in Cologne (which happened to be the first one in Cologne I couldn’t attend). I am sure they’d love anyone to try Mnemomap and drop some feedback about it. The About page states: mnemomap is…
Gapminder
Search statistics about human trends through Google and watch it move with Gapminder. This is an interesting Flash application allowing to see changes of data over time. [via Tim Bruysten] There is also a video of the presentation. I especially found interesting what the presenter was saying about designers. He was showing this slides like…
‘Ladies and gentlemen, Flock is on fire!’
Paul Stamatiou wrote a long review of the first Beta release of the »social web browser« Flock. I have tested the prior releases (up to 0.5.X) and decided these versions are not ready for daily use yet. The 0.7.0 release (the first Beta) seems to be much better, but it still consumes a lot of…
GK VanPatter at Zollverein
GK VanPatter (co-founder of the NextDesign Leadership Institute) will be speaking at Zollverein Design School in Essen next Saturday. I can’t be in there that day, but I am sure here are others that would like to attend that event.
The missing tool for the long tail business
Shopify.com let’s you create an e-commerce shop in minutes.
Alahup CMS
The CMS Alahup! seems to endorse a lot of the interaction design techniques of Web 2.0 applications (blind ups & downs, yellow flashes, spinning activity icons, etc) even though it appears to be a desktop application. The website states that the interface is based on Flash. So this application may well be an example what…
An inconvenient truth
After Al Gore didn’t make it to presidency in 2000 he now fights for public awareness of global warming. There is a movie coming that covers this topic.
Webmontag flair?
Look at these two impressions from two different Webmontag events: Which one would you like to attend more often?
Learning vocabulary? ProVoc!
If you are currently learning a foreign language and you own a Mac then you might want to look at ProVoc.
Flickr/Ajax application with Ruby on Rails
If there is one word, that could describe what happens in the Ruby on Rails context then it is »elegance«. Just click on the image below to see an elegant screencast of an elegant development framework (Ruby on Rails) with an elegant text editor (TextMate) using an elegant JavaScript technology (AJAX) on an elegant service…
Pavel
This is very interesting: a multi-user note-taking web-application. Click on this screenshot to get to the 5 minute screencast: I’d describe Pavel as some kind of “JotSpot Live with tinderbox-ish Notes” (see JotSpot Live and Tinderbox). The secret of the synchron updates of web pages between users is some code called LivePage. It is part…
Design switch
Just a short note about the design tweaks.
New Webmontag events…
Tonight there are two Webmontag events in Berlin and Bielefeld. Next week there will be one in Cologne (which I will attend), Stuttgart and Karlsruhe. There is already a bunch of interesting presentations in the pipeline — as always. And interesting people too: Tim Bruysten, Tobias Jordans, Mario Sixtus, Oliver Lauer. A very good way…
The JavaScript Accessibility Problem
James Edwards from Sitepoint.com looks at AJAX and Screenreaders: There doesn’t appear to be any reliable way to notify screen readers of an update in the DOM. There are piecemeal approaches that work for one or more devices, but no overall approach or combination that would cover them all. The Mozilla Developer Center offers some…
Spry framework for AJAX
Adobe Labs (former Macromedia Labs) offers a framework called »Spry«. It is a JavaScript library that offers easier construction of AJAX applications. Drew McLellan from the Web Standards Project reviews the framework and concludes: As it currently stands, the framework is certainly not ready for prime-time, and if it’s the sort of framework you’d otherwise…
Flickr facelift
I just noticed that Flickr.com recieved a slight facelift. They added dynamic HTML pulldowns and revamped the structure. The new Organizer is excellent.
Switching this site to a CSS-based layout
I am currently switching this site to a CSS-based layout. So broken pages/links (esp. with Microsoft Browsers!) may occur.
Exchange economy?
The diggnation guys are now also sponsored by Barterbee.com. It is some kind of rag-fair online for Movies, Music or Games. You can put stuff in that you want to get rid of. But instead of trading items for real money you get points which you can use to shop new items on Barterbee. The…
USA on the verge of a dictatorship?
Jack Cafferty points out a problem with the NSA spying on US citizens.
Got any book recommendations?