Fairwell LinuxWorld
October 9, 2008
The annual festival of nerdy-ness LinuxWorld will be changing its name and focus next year. Here’s a snip from Eric Brown’s post RIP LinuxWorld:
The largest conference devoted to Linux technology is changing its name to embrace open source software on other operating systems (OSes). Next August, LinuxWorld will relaunch as the OpenSource World Conference & Expo, but will retain existing LinuxWorld features, says show organizer IDG World Expo.
LinuxWorld has been going on for about 10 years and I attended several of the San Francisco ones with my techy cohorts at Clear Ink. It was always a great relax, check out geeky gizmos and pick up tons of free t-shirts. One year we even got to see a great keynote presentation by Lawerence Lessig about “Free Culture”.
Over the last couple of years attendance seemed to be dropping but I’ll miss LinuxWorld, but I’ll always be able to relive it with this touching montage video of my last trip, assembled by Jim Kwak with music by Ric Seaberg.
Project Launch: Sons of a Gun Movie Website
September 3, 2008
I recently got to work on a great web site for a new, independent film called Sons of Gun produced by Rivkah Beth Medow and Greg O’Toole. The film is a documentary about the lives of three schizophrenic men and their alcoholic caregiver / “dad” as struggle to find a new place to live.
The site is built using Flash and the Drupal content management system.
Project Launch: Cisco Small and Medium Business Flash Piece
September 3, 2008
A little while back I got to work on a fun project for Cisco. I worked with the folks there and at Clear Ink to create a Flash piece that acts as a video librarian, interviewing visitors with a series of questions and then putting together a set of suggested videos. My role was to help plan the project, then do the Flash coding and production.
Go to the Cisco Solutions for Small and Medium Business page and click on the “Let’s get started” button to see the live piece.
Video: The story behind Google Chrome
September 2, 2008
Just in case you missed the news. Google is releasing a new, open source, web browser called Chrome to compete with Firefox and Internet Explorer. I haven’t installed the beta yet (it’s Windows only) but the interface looks really nice and minimal. Here’s their overview video:
fMAME – Arcade Game Emulator Built in Flash
August 6, 2008
I’ve seen some really cool stuff built in Flash but fMAME is the one of the most awesome things I’ve seen. An unnamed web developer from South Korea has rebuilt the MAME arcade game emulator in Flash. So far you can play a variety of classic arcade games including Donkey Kong, Galaga, Mario Brothers, Pac Man and a bunch more. It does of course have a few technical problem (like no sound) but it’s still an amazing technical feat.
Smashing Magazine did a great post called A Small Design Study Of Big Blogs.
They compare the top 50 blogs’ layout and typography using about a dozen different criteria. Here’s their summary in bullet points:
- large blogs require a multi-column layout solution (usually 3 columns suffice) (58%);
- layouts are usually centered (94%),
- layouts usually have a fixed width (px-based) (92%),
- the width of the fixed layout varies between 951 and 1000px (56%),
- 58% of the overall site layout is used to display the main content,
- CSS-layouts are used (90%),
- the background is light, the body text is dark (98%),
- the most usual (not necessarily most user-friendly) line length lies between 80 and 100 characters,
- Verdana, Lucida Grande, Arial and Georgia are used for body text (90%),
- the font size of body text varies between 12 and 14px (78%),
- Arial and Georgia are used for headlines (52%),
- headlines have the font size between 17 and 25px.
Silverback – Simple Usability Testing Software
July 25, 2008
Clearleft has officially released Silverback.
Silverback is a Mac desktop application designed to make website and application usability testing easy to manage. It captures everything that is happening on the screen and uses your web cam and microphone to record users’ reactions and comments. Usability test can be very expensive and time consuming, but now designers can conduct tons of casual, quick tests with out having to hire an outside firm. I can’t wait to start playing with it
…And it’s only $49.95.
Check out this video for a demonstration:
Cincinnati’s Barefoot Aquired by BBDO
July 14, 2008
Yesterday Cincinnati agency Barefoot made a press release announcing that they have been acquired by New York-based BBDO. Doug Worple, Barefoot’s Founding Partner and Chief Creative Officer will stay on as the head of Barefoot and join the board of Proximity (which is apparently part of BBDO). BBDO has 287 offices in 77 countries is owned by the giant holding company Omnicom Group.
I think I got that right. Following all of the “who owns who” of the media and advertising world can get a little confusing. I think it means Barefoot and Budweiser are now owned by the same company. 
Project Launch: The Learning Kitchen
June 30, 2008
The Learning Kitchen is cooking school and kitchen boutique that will be opening in West Chester, Ohio on July 19, 2008. They will be open to the public and with hand-ons and demonstration classes by local and celebrity chefs. They also will have a high-end kitchen boutique with fancy kitchen gadgets and professional cookware that will make any food geek salivate.
I had the opportunity to help develop their web site, coding all of the pages including a class calendar and registration, mailing lists and integration with their point-of-sale system. It was a fun project and I can’t wait to get over there and try some classes.
Video: Empower MediaMarketing President Brian McHale talks about the Future of the Advertising on Public Television
June 14, 2008
Here’s a 9 1/2 minute public television video of Brian McHale (president of Cincinnati’s Empower MediaMarketing) talking about the future of the advertising business and the current state of Cincinnati’s economy.
