distinctive quality

Thoughts about design and technology


Search


Archive


Archive

Articles categorized ‘Articles’.

Tech trends shaping habits and social interaction

November 29th, 2009

Two kinds of technologies have in recent months changed my daily habits and how I interact with people: web-based apps and smartphones.
Let’s start with web-based apps. For email I’ve been using Gmail for over three years now and is in my opinion the best email app around, web-based or desktop-based. For keeping track of appointments [...]

On Web Standards and rounded corners

October 25th, 2009

I think I agree with this article written ten years ago when the web was still in its infancy. While general web practices make sense, the need for having formal standards seems unnecessary. Website-building technologies have in a lot of ways standardized themselves because of individual developers deciding what is appropriate to use. Looking at the reasons [...]

Evolution of storytelling and technology

April 3rd, 2009

Since the beginning of humanity, storytelling and our ability to learn is what has set us apart from other species. It almost seems that our interest in stories is in our genes and is what makes our brain work the way it does. I really don’t know if that’s the case, but for the sake [...]

The self-evolving website

March 6th, 2009

 
An idea I’ve been thinking about for a while now is self-evolving web design. The self-evolving website would be a combination between having dynamic database-driven content and something similar to smartphone technology where the presentation of content changes based on specific user interaction. It’s difficult to really describe at this point, so I figured I [...]

What you should know about the GTD method

May 19th, 2008

The GTD method is basically a method for increasing personal organization. To me it meant somewhat more than that as it taught me about how just by changing my thinking about something could lead to really powerful results. If you’re not familiar with the book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity“, or its [...]

Subscription-based media

October 22nd, 2007

In the last couple of years, I’ve gotten used to subscribing to blogs as my main source of news and information. Mix that with listening to most of my music through a portable player and it’s gotten me thinking about how I consume media.
My primary music player is a Zune, both as a portable device [...]

Targeted advertising and rich content ads

July 19th, 2007

While going through some of the presentations given at this year’s Mix Conference from Microsoft, I realized that while there was a good amount of effort put into showing how Microsoft is paying attention to the interactive user experience, the main focus seemed to be on advertising and what tools Microsoft provides for advertisers for [...]

Are you pod/audio/video-casting?

April 19th, 2006

“No one is podcasting.”
— Old Media (Newspapers)
“Everyone is podcasting.”
— New Media (Web, generally tech geeks)
Well, both sides are right. The confusion seems to be with the perception of what podcasting is. Podcasting is audio or video content recieved through a subscription, or feed, and then synced, or downloaded, to an iPod.
Now, if you’re like me, [...]

Design plus animation equals ‘design-imation’

February 16th, 2006

Macromedia Adobe Flash continues to bring a lot to the web in form of interactivity and animation, which seems to be in demand more and more recently. Since I started using Flash, the ability that attracted me most was the use of animation.
We’ve seen all kinds of animation on the web done in Flash. Online [...]

The Widescreen era

February 8th, 2006

Did you know that movies originally started out in the same format as the television? But after a short time, they went to being filmed in the widescreen format we are used to today. This was due to a combination of being a more creative way to film and better for presenting to a theater [...]

Older Entries