links for 2008-09-08

Links to iTunes applications. Useful.

I second everytihng except numbers 4 and 7. Number 4 would preclude OmniFocus on the iPhone, which I loves.

GnuSTEP, (Cocoa) implemented as a web framework. Holy. Fucking. Shit.

This is awesome. Why have I not found this before?

"TouchOSC is an iPhone/iPod Touch application that lets you send and receive Open Sound Control messages over a Wi-Fi network using the UDP protocol." "This allows to remote control and receive feedback from software and hardware that implements the OSC protocol such as Pure Data and Max/MSP."

Vannevar Bush's seminal article about the memex envisioned the support of two forms of thought, in order to gain perspective on the world and the huge problems we face. These are "ratio" (gathering, abstracting, sorting, tagging), and "intellectus" (reflection, creativity, contemplation, mindfulness). Current information technology supports the former, without providing a space for the latter. Dr. Levy calls for the design of physical spaces for contemplative time, as well as the design of information spaces that better support the creative and mindful forms of thought.

"At first I wanted to design a PCB that connected to the Arduino through a series of cables. After some thought however, I realized that a shield would be better because it would eliminate the need for cables. This tutorial assumes an understanding of Cadsoft Eagle."

Blueprint is now on GitHub, which is awesome.

Used in the latest Make magazine to create a set of RFID tiles to pull up URLs when a chit is placed on a reader.

"Note that I’m not talking about charging IKEA more than you’d charge a local bakery for similar project, just because IKEA is a big brand name. Rather, I’m talking about doubling or tripling the project management hours or design hours when, say, the client stakeholders amount to a committee instead of a single individual. Different contexts require different considerations."

Based on the languishing CocoaMySQL client.

Substroke is a language for drawing dynamic (data-dependent) pictures. The description given here was intended as a brain-dump of a work-in-progress. It is a poor explanation of the language, especially lacking in the motivation for each of the features.

iPhone application that turns the phone into a Bonjour file server for mac and PC. Like a wireless jump drive.

Photoshop document with elements from the iPhone interface builder, for doing comps and layouts for iPhone development

"A web service that allows you to share snippets of information from the minutiae of daily life in the form of simple statistical graphs" The entries shown on the main page are mostly silly. But the tool is actually interesting: you can access it through SMS or email. You create a dataset, and then can add information to it on the fly. This makes for a simple tool for lightweight information visualization. Basically, it's a tool to track little things, which can be used for good, evil, or trivia.

Suggests that maps are a better conceptual framework for websites than architecture. "What we often forget is that the blueprints from which we construct a site are themselves maps of processes and flows that already exist, from verbal dialogues to the exchange of money for goods and services." "Space, according to Lefebvre, is created by the flows and movements of relational networks—such as capital, power, and information—in, across, and through a given physical area."

icodeblog.com's tutorials are pretty cool. I so don't have the time to learn to write native apps for the iPhone, but wish I did.

Replace old-school image slicing with CSS (an old bookmark, updated now that the Sprites2 article is up on ALA)

"Companies are beginning to take these problems seriously, although the "no email days" favoured by Deloitte and Intel have not proven effective. Deloitte's "no email Wednesday" was abandoned after a month and Intel found that there was a "clear incompatibility" between the need of the pilot group to communicate asynchronously with colleagues and the avoidance of email for a whole day. No email days don't work, says Stafford, "because they don't help people to change their behaviour while they are actually using email. Once your email is back, you're going to respond to it in the same old ways unless you replace your bad habits.""

Blog from the developers of wundrbar

A language-based internet integration system, similar in many ways to how Quicksilver works with the delicious plugin, or ubiquity. Right now, a Firefox extension, but an iPhone app, quicksilver plugin, etc. are promised "soon." Bears watching.

Some discussion around ways to brainstorm on the Interaction Design mailing list.

Bookmarking the SSH-secure connection to GMail as my preferred way of accessing it, because I lost the old bookmark.

Discussion of the quicksilver/Enso-alike in-browser extension for Firefox.

"pocketMMaps is software for creating PocketMod-style books for a map image too large to fit on a single page. Maps are generated dynamically and then sliced in to (PocketMod) page-sized pieces and re-arranged on multiple sheets of paper so that when printed and folded you get a little book with the map laid out in handy 2-page spreads. Just like the maps you see in the back of travel guides. It may seem as though I have an obsession with destroying the travel book industry but I don't, really. It's just that their maps suck and their books are too big to fit in my back pocket."

"sketchnotes from UX Week 2008. All 37 pages."

Instructables has a large number of multitouch display howtos using the FITR method. IDEO also has a FITR system that they've open sourced. This instructable has a video that mirrors the original Perceptive Pixel / ITC demo video by Jef Han. Interesting to note the resolution and resonsiveness differences.

"Long story short, you can now write plugins for Acorn in the same manor that you could with Python, only with Ruby." Woot!

Photosynth demo from SIGGRAPH 08 = holy crap. The path selection for moving and panning between selectable canonical views is amazing.

Games are best in small groups; Hard Fun vs. Easy Fun; massively singleplayer online games, played in relation to others in a tight social circle or the rest of the world; adapting games based on little games made up by players

Viaual explanations of concepts, using sketching and paper animation. Very worth watching.