Jul 20
Posted: under Mobile marketing, Mobile Web Design, Web Tech.
Tags: android, app store, blackberry, book, css3, David LaFontaine, Design, Dummies, html5, iphone, Janine Warner, mobile devices, mobile web design for dummies, WAP, web design, WML, xhtml mp
UPDATED WITH NEW COVER: Like any project, the last 5% takes 50% of the effort. So here is the new&improved cover of the book, which shows the essence of what we want to communicate — that it is possible (if you take the time and know what you’re doing) to achieve a consistent good design [...] [...more]
UPDATED WITH NEW COVER: Like any project, the last 5% takes 50% of the effort. So here is the new&improved cover of the book, which shows the essence of what we want to communicate — that it is possible (if you take the time and know what you’re doing) to achieve a consistent good design look&feel, even across a variety of mobile devices.
While this does not quite rank up with “Our long national nightmare is over…” I assure you that the relief that
Janine and I feel over finally putting the finishing touches on
the book we’ve been co-writing for the last six months is truly special. We knew going in that writing about designing web pages for mobile devices was going to be a difficult and intense task — but we didn’t know it was going to be THIS difficult.
Contrary to what you might see on Amazon.com, this is what the cover of our new book will look like.
But the upheaval and changing standards in the mobile web space in just the last year have been, from a designer’s perspective, a real handful. What was once the conventional wisdom – create a dumbed-down, simple website that will work on any device – has been supplanted by a much more nuanced approach, involving using sophisticated scripts to detect what device is accessing your site, looking up what technology that device supports in a vast (you hope) database, matching your content to the capabilities of the device (that means video in Flash, 3GP or MP4 formats), and then assembling a site on-the-fly and delivering it quickly and cleanly.
If the struggles of Apple with their antenna (see the Mobile Web Design Blog for more on this) have provided us with a stunning example of how even the market-leading mobile device company can stumble, well, trust me, we have had our moments these last few months. I’ve felt like the digital/authorial equivalent of Dr. Stanley searching for Dr. Livingstone, hacking my way through the dense underbrush of acronyms like WAP, WML, 3GPP, LTE, GIS and many more guaranteed to make your head spin.
We have worked extremely hard to ensure that the book is as current and accurate as possible; re-reading it one last time before it went to the presses last week was a real moment of pride for us both. We are going to deliver some real value to both designers that want to figure out how to jump on the mobile bandwagon, and for business owners who want to look beyond the “Gotta get an App!” frenzy that is leading so many down what is increasingly apparent as a blind alley.
By the way – the cover illustration above is only the placeholder – we redesigned it to feature our grinning faces. At least in Janine’s case, it should help spur casual walk-by sales (cue soundeffect: “Awwww…”).
We now return to your regularly scheduled online media-commentary snarking. The last six months have kept me hopping so much that I’ve really had to de-prioritize my blogging. I’m looking forward to being able to devote some more time to writing about all the developments in the content monetization & distribution space.
Jul 06
Posted: under Mobile Uploads, Travel.
Tags: London, Thames River, tourist shot, uploaded from iPhone
Dave at the Tower Bridge, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. Walking around London, I was struck by how much I recognized from old episodes of Dr. Who and Monty Python. Also, by the helpful little painted warnings at every intersection, warning the no-doubt “thick as two planks Yanks” to look in the proper direction for oncoming [...] [...more]
Walking around London, I was struck by how much I recognized from old episodes of Dr. Who and Monty Python. Also, by the helpful little painted warnings at every intersection, warning the no-doubt “thick as two planks Yanks” to look in the proper direction for oncoming traffic.
It was quite chilly in the morning when I began my stroll around the Old City; by the time this picture was taken, I had been walking for more than eight hours, and my feet were throbbing. Still, the blue sky and fleecy clouds were so cheerful that I almost discounted all the griping and grousing that the Fleet Streeters had always filled my ears with, when justifying their move to L.A.
Jul 06
Posted: under Digital Migration, journalism, Mobile Uploads, new media, Online Video, Travel.
Tags: certificates, frustration, Georgia, group shot, Premiere Elements 8, State Department, students, Tbilisi, video training, YouTube
Tbilisi Journalist Graduation, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. These are the journalists from the smaller cities & towns outside of Tbilisi, Georgia. They’re all grinning happily, because they’ve managed to survive my intense one-week course, where I set them all up with their own blogs, and then sent them into the field to shoot, edit and [...] [...more]
These are the journalists from the smaller cities & towns outside of Tbilisi, Georgia. They’re all grinning happily, because they’ve managed to survive my intense one-week course, where I set them all up with their own blogs, and then sent them into the field to shoot, edit and post online news videos.
A crucial part of every learning process is making mistakes. They learned not to try to take on too ambitious a project when using makeshift multimedia tools. I learned not to use Adobe’s Premiere Elements 8. That has got to be the buggiest video editing system ever inflicted on an unsuspecting public. I use Premiere Pro all the time and love the rest of Adobe’s various iterations of the Creative Suites … but Elements is Satan on a CD. My students were throwing their headsets across the room in frustration as it crashed … lost work … necessitated a hard reboot of the system … crashed again … corrupted the footage … (rinse, repeat).
I finally installed Sony’s Vegas Video on their systems; not as user-friendly for beginners as the “Grandma-ware” that Elements is known as … but it at least would make a J-cut or an L-cut without locking up the system. Unfortunately, Vegas Video wouldn’t import the footage from the Flip cameras with the audio attached. So we had to export the audio tracks from Premiere, and then import them into Vegas and sync the audio with the visuals.
I was told that this was actually a quite valuable experience, because real-world conditions for indie journalists in Georgia are pretty much like this. Working on cobbled-together secondhand equipment in sweltering offices, where the electrical power is subject to sporadic outages. And when the wind shifts to blow in over the nearby market … well, you want to close the windows, no matter how hot & humid it is.
I just noticed – my arms look inordinately long in this photo.
Jul 04
Posted: under Online (Multi)Media, Online Video, Video, Viral Fame.
Tags: animation, double-dip recession, economic meltdown, explanation, great depression II, illustration, marxist, oecd
Not sure if I agree with all the theses, but at least the intro really accurately runs down all the flak-catching targets for what was known as “The Subprime Mortgage Meltdown,” and is now about to be known as “The Great Depression II.” Man, I wish I could draw as good as this guy. Reminds [...] [...more]
Not sure if I agree with all the theses, but at least the intro really accurately runs down all the flak-catching targets for what was known as “The Subprime Mortgage Meltdown,” and is now about to be known as “The Great Depression II.”
Man, I wish I could draw as good as this guy. Reminds me of the UPS commercials where the guy with the whiteboard is illustrating in realtime what he’s talking about. Give me that guy at a board meeting, and I could sell those rubes bags of dirt.
Happy 4th of July, America. Not sure the clock has quite yet struck the hour for another Lexington & Concord, this time with the targets being Goldman-Sachs CDO traders …
RSA Animate – Crises of Capitalism
