From the category archives:

Design

Windows 7’s Groovy Desktop Backgrounds

April 26, 2009

Among Windows 7’s Release Candidate 1’s Best New Surprise Features in Gizmodo are the funky (and quite unexpected!) new desktop backgrounds that come with “the Vista that should’ve been”. I have a couple of favourites. One is the one below, which is reminiscent of one of my favourite videogames of all time, Katamari Damacy:

I also [...]

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“It’s Alive!”: Sheridan College’s 2009 Interactive Multimedia Open House

April 22, 2009

This afternoon, I’m going to be at what I consider to be one of Accordion City’s best toy stores: Function 13 (156 Augusta Avenue), a place in Kensington Market that is part tech store, part art shop and part gallery.
I’ll be there for It’s Alive!, an open house featuring the work of Sheridan [...]

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Microsoft’s “2019” Video

March 5, 2009

This article originally appeared in Canadian Developer Connection.
One of the things we saw at the behind-closed-doors, Microsoft-eyes-only TechReady 8 conference was the “2019” concept video shown to us by Business Division President Stephen Elop. Since then, the video’s gone public, with his showing it recently at the Wharton Business Technology Conference and its appearance on [...]

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Leah’s Tattoo

January 30, 2009

At CUSEC 2009, some of the attendees attempted to psychoanalyze the speakers out of concern for what seemed to be obsessions. The IRC backchannel during my presentation expressed concern for what they believed to be my fixation on butts, what with mentioning the movie Deliverance and showing the “Bottle Rocket in the Butt” video from [...]

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Wooden Laptop Case

January 18, 2009

Here’s a laptop case designed by designer Rainer Spehl that should work for the techie who wants to mix a little F. Scott Fitzgerald with his William Gibson. Designed for the 15” MacBook Pro, it’s made of wood and features a leather lining and a magnetic latch. I couldn’t find a price anywhere, but [...]

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Some Thoughts on Interface Design

January 13, 2009

This article was originally published in Canadian Developer Connection.
Comments on “The Device/Desktop” Opportunity

The Device/Desktop Opportunity got a number of comments, both in the “Comments” section and sent directly to me via email. First, I’d like to say “please keep those comments coming!” One of my intentions was to start some discussion.
I got a number of [...]

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Turning Ho-Hum Colour into WOW! with Photoshop

December 2, 2008

My old co-worker Darren “Problogger” Rowse IM’d me to let me know about a new article on Digital Photography School titled Turn Ho-Hum Color into WOW! with Photoshop written by guest blogger Helen Bradley. The “before and after” photos show some pretty impressive results.

This technique makes use of the Lab colour space, which people [...]

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Salmagundi for Friday, November 7th, 2008

November 7, 2008

Interview with Chris Slemp, MSDN

Here’s another video interview featuring Yours Truly at the PDC: it’s with Chris Slemp, Program Manager for the Server and Tools Online group at Microsoft. In the interview, we talk about MSDN and its new social bookmarking feature.
Click here to watch the video.
“Grim Fandango’s” Puzzle Document

If you’re looking to [...]

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Herman Miller’s “Embody” Chair: Aeron++?

November 4, 2008

Gizmodo has a photo gallery of Herman Miller’s follow-up to the popular (and very comfortable) Aeron chair: the Embody chair, which was designed by Aeron co-designer Bill Stumpf. They declare that it’s “The Best Chair We’ve Ever Sat On”:

This is supposed to be an extremely comfy chair. Its backrest is described as “a matrix of [...]

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Pair Programming Chairs

August 28, 2008

The development tool company Cenqua have a cute gag ad for a pair programming chair called the “PairOn” — an Aeron built for two:

They list the PairOn’s “key features” as:

Fully unit-tested in our ego-free ergonomics lab
Essential office furniture for any eXtreme XP Pair (XXPP)
Fully adjustable via individual or pair control
Can be levered to standup-meeting height
40-hour-week [...]

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Great Showdowns (of the 8-bit Era)

August 17, 2008

Can you identify the ’80s-era games depicted in Scott Campbell’s piece, Great Showdowns (of the 8-bit Era)?

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3 CSS Image Tricks

June 16, 2008

Instant Fundas has an article featuring 3 useful image CSS tricks: 1. Make it so your images can’t be saved using the “save image” option in the context menu, 2. Label images with hovering text and 3. Making a background image clickable.

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Great Free Fonts via Smashing Magazine: Anivers, Fresco and Gentium

June 16, 2008

Smashing Magazine’s “Free Fonts of the Month” for this particular month arereally, really, really, good. Grab ‘em while they’re still up!

Here’s a sample of Anivers, a font created for Smashing Magazine’s first anniversary. It’s been updated for “extended language support, improved glyph shapes and improved metrics and kerning.” Note that only Anivers Regular is free:

Here’s Fresco Semi Bold, “just one member of a large and flexible type family by Dutch design legend Fred Smeijers:”

And finally, Gentium, designed by Victor Gaultney:

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Gamasutra’s on Lessons from Atari Games

June 9, 2008

Game Design Essentials: 20 Atari Games is a long (23 pages!), thorough but incredibly fascinating look at games from the time when Atari mattered as a videogame company. Back when they were something, they weren’t afraid to bust out of the genres of the time, take chances and come up with some innovative, experimental [...]

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What Hath OLPC Wrought

June 6, 2008

According to the Economist, “The $100 laptop has been a success—just not, so far, in the way its makers intended.” The success is that OLPC inspired the development of machines that are expected to be bigger successes, such as the Asus EEE PC and the Classmate.

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