I regularly use the beautifully crafted application Axure RP for making wireframes and prototypes of web pages. I do it on my pc at work, which is fine. But sometimes I would really like to be able to work on wireframes on my mac too. This however is not possible because the wireframe app is not made for Mac OSX.
This seems rather strange since a lot of UI- and IA-people tend to use Macs. So dear Axure, let's have a version that will run on an Apple computer, please :-)
New York Times today reports that newspapers are in for even tougher times. Revenue from web advertisement is stalling:
"...the advertising glut, particularly in display advertising, on which companies had based their optimistic projections, has shrunk. As newspapers keep adding pages, they are forced to sell ads at cut-rate prices."
Speaking on painkillers, too much coffee and sans power point presentation Ben Hammersley really aimed at provoking his audience at New Media Days 08.
"Web 2.0 is the longest suicide note in the history of media as such," Hammersley said and then set out to argue for the abolishing of user generated content in traditional media.
"As the generally accepted argument goes: Old media is dying and new media is very successful. Therefore we should stop what we were doing before and convert everything into a Facebook application. So that’s what every media outlet is doing," stated Hammersley.
His point was that the content users create isn't very good and that it can never reach the quality of content written by professional writers.
"Stop moderating the crappy writing of a myriad of users who don't have anything to offer. Looking at user generated content is like taking a trip to the mental hospital to look at all the sick people who think they are Jesus in the vain hope that one of them for once turns out to really be Jesus," Hammersley said comparing web 2.0 to Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital in 18th century London.
If anything Web 3.0 will really be about writers finding themselves and for once concentrating on the art of writing, he noted.
While I do think Hammersley has some interesting points and isn't entirely off track - I also think that he is fundamentally wrong in the sense that web 2.0 and user generated content has never been about good writing. Accusing web 2.0 of bad writing is like accusing a horse of not being a dog. User generated content is about social interaction and relationship. It is not about creating a fine tuned, fact checked reading experience. That is and has always been the task of traditional media. If some of its practitioners have lost focus, I don't think web 2.0 is to blame. In stead blame lack of editorial vision and leadership and perhaps even laziness in tradtional media.
Contrary to what you might have read on various blogs and news sites, there is no way to buy the iPhone 3G without a contract (i.e. plan or subscription) in USA.
I recently spend my summer holiday in the States and went to an AT&T and an Apple Store in Boston. At both places I explained that I wanted to buy an iPhone without a contract since I live in Europe and have no need for the AT&T-hook up.
The answer I got at both places was: No can do! The iPhone is not purchasable without a two year AT&T contract - which according to the sales guy at the Apple Store comes to a total of a couple of thousand dollars.
The Apple Store guy even looked at me all puzzled and said: But Sir, the iPhone is available in Denmark, why don't you buy it there?
heh, heh...
Well, Telia which sells the phone here in Denmark seriously over-prices the damn thing - and even charges you extra for unlocking it. All in all the gadget winds up costing around 1200 dollars compared to the rumored 400-600 dollars for the American zero-contract iPhone. Besides... the Danish iPhone has been sold out for more than a month now.
You have to do a little digging on the the AT&T corporate Web Site but then you'll find a press release indicating that in the future AT€T does plans to sell the phone without a contract. But there is no saying if "in the future" means tomorrow, in the next couple of months or next year!
A couple a weeks ago, I attended the conference An Event Apart in Boston, MA.
There I heard a presentation by Jason Santa Maria who talked about the narration of design. He briefly touched upon the french engineer Charles Joseph Minard and his Carte Figurative (from 1861) showing the progression of Napoleon and his army to Moscow and back in the
campaign of 1812.
The chart is famous for it's clear and simple communication of something incredibly complex, difficultly graspable and horrific (i.e. the progressively lower number of soldiers in Napoleon's army in relation to temperature and location).
Thereby the chart has become quite a guiding light for designers everywhere trying to communicate complexity with simple measures.
Another presenter at the conference Jeffrey Veen also referred to Minard's Carte Figurative. He pointed to the fact, that Minard himself said this beautiful thing about the chart:
"The aim of my carte figurative is ... to convey promptly to the eye the relation not given quickly by numbers requiring mental calculation."
Veen - a former designer at Google Analytics - has this insight to offer:
"Well designed sites "convey promptly to the eye" what's possible, while doing so intuitively as to avoid "requiring mental calculation." That's not to say we should treat people as stupid. Rather, we should help them focus on what they're trying to do, rather than struggle with the means for achieving it."
Anyone working with on line communication should check out James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore's Co-creation Rules. The two guys eminently sum up what building a relationship with your customers is all about.
In traditional marketing the aim has been to create a finished piece of work that people will enjoy or find useful in some way. In the modern marketplace it’s more effective to invite people to participate. In practice that means making an offer that is sufficiently enticing for the customer to want to become involved. With modern marketing, you let the customers do more of the talking.
Right, you are.
The new iPhone brought Telias Danish webshop to its knees today. Customers were simply told to wait in line. At 1 pm I got the message: You are number 879 i line pLus a message stating, that all black 16 GB iPhones were sold out.
What a bummer :-)
Swedish owned Telia is the only telco in Denmark selling the the Apple hot phone.
I wouldn't normally praise an online music vendor for offering DRM files to its users. It is downright irritating to be bound to one or two music players. Music wants to be free (i.e. mp3) and should be playable on whatever player the consumers wants to use. This is my stance - and has been for a long time.
But then I find myself happily using the latest offering from Danish phone company and broadband provider TDC. PLAY is the name of the service that lets TDC-customers download all the music they want from TDC's music store. It's all free of charge and (alas) DRM-encoded.
There are more than a million songs in the vault and the artists are many and varied. From Backstreet Boys to Beatles over Manu Chao to Marilyn Manson. All download-able in CD quality. The site works smoothly with an intuitive and responsive interface.
So, all in all I'm a happy camper. Only catch is the DRM-thingy and the fact that the music will play on your computer or phone only as long as you are a customer with TDC. Still, I see this step from TDC and the record companies as a decisive embrace of a new, more innovative business model. And the good news is that it is spreading. This week Danish phone company Sonofon announced that it will probably launch a similar service in near future.
Apple rules. Or at least that's what 2000 brand and marketing people from across the globe think.
When asked (by Brandchannel) to point out their favorite brands the marketing pros rated Apple first in 6 out of 10 categories. Microsoft by comparison was rated first in 2 out of ten.
The survey didn't rank the brands in any traditional manner. The respondents were asked questions like :
"What brand would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party? Why?" and: "What brand, if sent back 100 years, would have the biggest impact on the course of history? How?"
Apple scored well on both those questions. Microsoft however was front runner when the respondents were asked: "If you could rebrand any brand, what brand would it be?"
Now, I am not a zealous Mac-fanatic - I only begun using the OS about a year ago - and I am convinced that there is indeed a substantial amount of hype in the whole Apple brand phenomenon. But when looking at the Apple brand it must be recognized that it is in fact more than hot air out of the old marketing steam pipe...
Apple products work.
My Mac boots up in no time, never crashes and it does its job in a strikingly user friendly and aesthetically pleasing way.
Yup, I am fond of windows. But I love my Mac.
Best personal blog. That Webby Award went to the ingenious site Post Secret, where where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. I often visit the site which continues to supprise me. The prize is well deserved.
On the other hand I am not sure I understand the winner in the category Best Navigation: www.ted.com. Can somebody explain how this contraption which I really have to think about to understand, is worthy of the award. Shouldn't good navigation be fairly intuitive.
More at www.webbyawards.com
