Mr. W
A cleverly directed clip.
Dilbert’s take on Twitter
Dilbert’s take on Twitter and how it can be smartly used to keep himself at a safe distance from the boss.
From dilbert.com
Nerd Venn Diagram
Infographics is a short of information graphics, which are visual representations of information, data or knowledge. A great infographics summarizes a chunk of text in a simple elegant visual graphics which tells the story itself. Here’s an example of an alternative way to explain the terms Dweeb, Dork, Geek, and Nerd done by Matthew Mason.
Need I say more?
Smart ads
I saw this photo of smart advertisement which cleverly make use of its medium to communicate the message across. Notice there’s not even a single word necessary to communicate the designers’ idea to the ads viewer. This reminds me of some creative ads I posted last year where a tangled electrical wire is smartly used to illustrate messiness.
Aviary
There were plenty of web-based graphic editor/manipulation sprouting a couple of years ago. The choice was pretty much limited to a few web applications offering free account with adequate image editing. Things developed rapidly and what seemed cool on a particular moment could be quickly transformed to the thing of yesterday.
Enter Aviary, a web application suite offering integrated image manipulation, color scheme composer, vector editing, and more. Comparably capable–if not more–than most web-based applications for image editing, Aviary is growing rapidly and gaining popularity. It beats desktop application like Adobe and Corel in terms of portability and availability, allowing its user to save the files at Aviary’s server and work on them from any computer with modern web browser.
Check out this video for a quick intro to Aviary. Better yet, try Aviary yourself!
Grad School and Kindergarten
Another brilliant illustration of graduate school by phdcomics.com. Amusing. (click the image to enlarge)
What’s in my bag?
I stumbled upon this interesting project of “what’s in my bag?” where random people around the world take a snapshot of their bag contents and collate it in a slideshow. Interesting!
From the creator of this project:
Its intriguing what people have in their bags. Use your discretion to veil sensitive info. Please join in, and you don’t have to just be creative individual that takes part. Anyone can do it and take part.
Interested to take part? Get your bag, camera, and head over to this page.
Electric cars and charge challenge
Japanese giant manufacturer Mitsubishi motor sell its first mass-market electric car in showrooms today. This electric-powered vehicle technology is one of the key answers to international calls for emission reduction in the automobile industry. And the great thing in 2010 is the affordability of this technology to reach the mass.
The electric car can travel 160 km in a single charge which takes about 14 hours using household electrical outlet or a quick 30 minutes charge using designated charging station at public places. Presently, there are about sixty public charging stations in Japan and the government is planning to increase the number in the coming years as more electrical cars hit the road and demand for such charging station increases.
Other car manufacturers like Nissan, Toyota, and Ford are preparing their electric cars for sale in the next 1-2 years. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Ford are collaborating to develop smart technology to manage and tackle the charging challenge which is likely to happen when there’s a surge of electric car ownership in a neighborhood.
Certainly, the automobile industry, electrical and utilities board, information-technology player, and our society in general are progressing towards a cleaner transportation mode which put less strain on our planet.
The iPad paradox
A recent (hmm.. not so recent actually) seminar I attended discussed what it means to formulate and sculpt an experience. The answers encompassed broad spectrum of perspective ranging from those closer to psychology, to ethnology, to art, and everything else in between. It is certainly not a concept which comprised of identifiable discrete factors, nor an easily formulated recipe that works for everyone. If it’s that complicated, then what it means to design the experience that people wants nowadays?
Observing design-scape in the recent years, since I delved into visual design that is, one branch of the trends is going deeper into minimalism where plain, basic, simple design is treasured as much as a heavily adorned piece of artwork. Minimalism sprouted in interior design, architecture, product design, visual design, and everywhere else in design-scape. Do people appreciating these plain and bare designs try to escape from hurdles and complexities in their life? Perhaps. Well, at least that’s what works for me.
I ditched the operating system that bog me down with weekly and monthly maintenance.
I pass on a feature-packed organizer which gave me an overly complicated synchronization problems.
I tossed away that overly confusing scientific calculator, packed with arrays of buttons, opting for a less scientific version.
All those overly complicated but feature-packed devices were replaced with something simpler. Less features, less bells and whistles, but works like a charm. Hey that works better for me! Relating this back to the minimalism, designing something with less feature can possibly be a must-have feature!
Recently, I stumbled upon this iPad paradox which echoed my thoughts! Have a look at it if you have five minutes to spare; it’s a nice article.
Customizable friendster profile page, low-level customization of WindowsMobile-based smartphones, and feature-packed MP3 players are some of the things of yesteryear.
Now I’m pretty sure there are plenty of people out there who are hungry for products with less feature, locked-down services, and minimalism in general. Yes, one size doesn’t fit all. Minimalism isn’t the only way to go. But the popularity of twitter, facebook, and Apple’s “i” products certainly show a sound trend towards simplicity.
Tips: Writing a paper
Ha! I found this brilliant tips in writing a paper from phdcomics.com. Certainly useful for my due-soon paper! (click to enlarge the comic)
