It’s been surprise after surprise since I’ve gotten back from my trip. Quite amazing how much changes within two weeks. I was standing on the subway platform today and I thought, “Wow, the new Bell Canada ads are such a dramatic change from their previous image.”
What does the change tell you? What sort of impression does it make? (Top: Old Logo, Bottom: New Logo)
What I thought was most intriguing about the new logo is that the letters are tracked so tightly together. I rarely have seen a logo with its letters like that — at least, not in the way that the newly privatized Bell Canada has made it.
I do like the clean and straight-forward look but I can’t help but miss seeing the golden-yellow human-like logo and of course, Frank and Gordon — the Bell Canada Beavers. The new logo just seems a little cold at the moment
2. Taking three part-time courses (with a hearty amount of homework!)
3. Still lots of ideas in my head but no time to blog about them.
That’s probably why I like my twitter account. The blogosphere continues to evolve as a population’s behaviour shifts and twitter allows me to share my findings or short ideas.
What I’d like next? An Amazon Kindle so I can read whatever book I want (and surf the web) in a convenient, wireless way. Maybe even blog wirelessly.
Two words to describe my initial opinion of Kidd’s response: wow and stubborn
When the printed book was first introduced — people were skeptical. This is to be expected for change in general. To dismiss the fact that there are actually many people who want to read books in another way is just a silly way of saying that you just don’t like it.
I’ve been tied up with a lot of issues at work and I’ve been working on a new website (i’ll speak about it later) lately so I haven’t had much time to blog.
Nevertheless … I am happy to hear that GM has picked up on blogging with a site called GM Next and powered by Wordpress too! I’ve always enjoyed checking out Dell’s Ideastorm and watching what features they end up implementing in their products so I am interested in seeing how GM will interact with the ideas or suggestions that users will provide.
Just as a note: I really like the photo on the GM Next site. But that’s just the photographer in me speaking.
I also noticed that Publishers Weekly posted 15 Trends To Watch for 2008. Sorry folks, but if you are merely watching then you’ll be left behind in the dust. Publishers should have seen these trends early last year if not earlier. Particularly with #4 although not necessarily “acquiring websites”. It would be more like signing a contract with a blogger to create a book of a particular value–think of Seth Godin’s books.
Of all of the trends listed, I can understand that the whole ebook transition will be painful for many publishing houses because the production process is for the most part out-of-date and PDFs are no longer considered as highly valued as they were before. Nowadays, XML is the key term for the future. Unfortunately the investment required for XML is massive and the return for ebooks has yet to truly solidify.
For designers, I think ebooks will force a revolution — not in terms of design itself, but the technical and workflow process. Unfortunately designers and production artists will be required to learn how to convert those production files into XML.
Well, it’s finally done — this week’s challenge. This was something that I had to do for work. About one and a half days (probably less due to # of interruptions) from concept to final creation with lots of interruption and other issues (non-website related) to deal with at work. NO tables — only CSS although it was a pain getting IE 6 to work until I finally let it simply sit on the left hand side of the browser. From what I can tell so far, Safari, IE7 and Firefox no problem. Only need to add a little form and it’s finito! Have another one coming up soon! According to warpedvisions.org’s ultimate flow chart concerning websites — this ranks as web 2.0 fluff — as it was meant to be. Let me know what you think.
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) has launched their sales initiative to introduce a new type of laptop (XO Laptop) for children who are less fortunate and are living in developing countries. They are encouraging people in Canada and the United States to purchase a laptop for a child and they will receive one as well. I am quite excited about this initiative and the laptop is amazing!
The question I want to pose is … why hasn’t anything like this been introduced in the normal consumer market? The idea is brilliant and the cause is worthwhile. I realize the Linux operating system and many other aspects of the laptop’s technology have not been around for very long, but it still puzzles me as to why very little initiative was made to develop such an efficient and effective little laptop for children or tweens with regards to the common consumer market.
Sure, there are the Fisher Price or Fisher Price-like pre-school laptops and some other edutainment software/hardware that has been put together for the older children, but they lack the real substance that allows children to explore and learn. These are also incredibly expensive for what they are capable of whereas something like the XO Laptop is around $400 for two laptops that are solidly built and were designed for children to experiment, learn and expand their minds.
I would like to believe that ultimately the cooperation and goodwill of numerous tech companies and the collaborative hard work of people from around the world allowed for a solid product to be brought to fruition. If that is so … then it can be a prime example of how innovative business can be performed while truly helping others.
In between work, school and all the other stuff I do, I just finished coding a friend’s website. She is an amazing graphic designer and I encourage everyone to check out her work. When she asked me to code her website, I was honoured to help showcase her work. The design of it was pretty much her idea … she simply asked me what was possible and watched as I flinched or scowled as I listened to all the minute details involved — she is a graphic designer after all! I just knew what was painful and what was not
Overall the website was not complicated to code. I only wish CSS wasn’t such a pain to configure as all the web browsers out there seem to have their own quirky personalities for interpreting CSS. In some cases, I am forced to make compromises. At the moment the rollovers are just javascript, but I hope to switch them over to pure CSS rollovers in the near future for efficiency’s sake. I also implemented Lightbox 2 into the website with a little editing in the javascript and CSS files in order to modify some tiny details to Carolyn’s specifications. The only browser where I think this may cause an issue would be the infamous Internet Explorer 6 that is horrible at supporting standardized code. Let me know what you think!
MacromediaAdobe Flash has been around for quite some time. If you began using the Internet since the mid-1990s on a dial-up connection, you would have noticed the introduction and gradual rise of Flash technology in proportion to the number of Internet users that have broadband connections. Nowadays we don’t usually think of how long a Flash animation will take to load unless there was a Flash developer/designer that created a poorly made piece of Flash.
I’ve been toying with Flash more and more as I see it becoming a more relevant part of the Internet and that Google will soon introduce a version of their Analytics software that will make it easier for web content managers to be able to monitor how users interact with Flash components or a website completely designed in Flash. They’re already helping …
Regardless, I’ve been playing with Flash, Actionscript and hoping to design my own first site in Flash soon! I know, nothing spectacular these days but I consider it one of my firsts.
My uncle sent this over the other day and I absolutely love this animation. I’m not sure if it was done in Flash but it definitely illustrates how users/designers using the program Adobe Flash Professional can feel when things just aren’t working out … or are they?
Kudos to Alan Becker for creating something awe-inspiring in a setting that Flash users/designers/developers see on a day-to-day basis. Go visit his DeviantArt site for more great creations!
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