Jeckecko » links http://www.jeckecko.net/blog Precious little about anything… Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:22:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Enduring tabs http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/08/16/enduring-tabs/ http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/08/16/enduring-tabs/#comments Sat, 16 Aug 2008 13:26:35 +0000 James Box http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/08/16/enduring-tabs/ Continue reading →]]>
  • Lion or Bear? Self-Tracking and Social Identity
    Users can change roles over time – the device vibrates when your state changes, but you can only see what role you’ve taken on by “mating” your device with another person’s device, giving the opportunity for conversation and interaction. For “complementary” roles, the animal icons will glow gold.
  • The Quantitative Peace: The Dark Knight and Game Theory
    Game-theory influenced post focusing on the final scene of The Dark Knight. Awe-inspiring stuff on both counts (film and post)

    • After a blip, Sport Monthly has regained it’s place as the cream of sports-journalism. Here’s some of my personal favourites:

    ]]>     http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/08/16/enduring-tabs/feed/ 1     Diversions 81 http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/03/28/diversions-81/ http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/03/28/diversions-81/#comments Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:12:06 +0000 James Box http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/03/28/diversions-81/ Continue reading →]]>
  • Bean
    “Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor (or more precisely, a rich text editor), designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is Open Source, fully Cocoa, and is available free of charge! MS Word, OpenOffice, etc. try to be all things to all people. But sometimes you just want the right tool for the job. That is Bean’s niche.”
  • VaryWell
    Inserting (whoops!) Interesting Flash interface.
  • Letters & Numbers
    Nice design work. Some nice interaction as well.
  • Alan Cook
    Really like the simplicity of Alan Cook’s photography portfolio. Eschews conventions in favour of getting the focus on the work itself.
  • SeeShell
    SeeShell is an augmented Oyster Card (the RFID-enabled Underground ticket) holder which displays, over time, the journeys a rider has taken. Great stuff. Love the way this blends seamlessly with existing behaviour.
  • Viget Inspire
    Not often I get excited about CSS/standards driven design these days. Viget’s Inspire blog is an exception though. The typography and overall look-and-feel is wonderful.
  • Moodboard
    Some nice interaction design on this stock photography site (especially the ‘add to moodboard’ feature). Also good attention to detail on the visual design (my fave being the overlapping arrow on the add to moodboard prompt).
  • GotoChina
    Just nice.
    • ]]>     http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/03/28/diversions-81/feed/ 0     Diversions 201 http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/02/14/diversions-201/ http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/02/14/diversions-201/#comments Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:31:24 +0000 James Box http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/02/14/diversions-201/ Continue reading →]]>
  • An Easy Way to Earn an MLB Salary
    This is interesting. Meta-betting of sorts. I guess it’s only the same as buying a share in a racehorse.
  • What Don’t We Know About the Pharmaceutical Industry?
    Four doctors give insights into: “What’s something that most people don’t know, pro or con, about the pharmaceutical business, whether from an R&D, economic, or political perspective?”. Pharmaceutical companies get a bashing don’t they? Citizen regulated even?
  • Shelf
    A glance at the potential of the Google Social Graph API, Tom Insam’s Leopard app looks rather cool. Note: If you’re uncomfortable pinging your address book in to the cloud, you might want to check over the prefs.
  • Problem Playground
    Playful little Flash site from Honda. Cute.
  • Where Game Meets The Web
    Raph Koster tells the game industry they’re doing it all wrong. And then tells them that to fix it, they need to be more like the web. Entertaining stuff (if slightly rhetorical), especially as Koster deals with a lot of familiar subjects but from a new perspective. Is it me, or does Koster sound (and look?) like Richard Dreyfus’ Matt Hooper? P.S. Don’t know if my download was borked, but the audio file seems to have the second half of the talk glued on to the end — it’s actually only an hour.
    • ]]>     http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/02/14/diversions-201/feed/ 0     Diversions 111 http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/28/diversions-111/ http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/28/diversions-111/#comments Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:02:52 +0000 James Box http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/28/diversions-111/ Continue reading →]]>
  • The Long Now Foundation
    Every now and then, you discover something ridiculously good and wonder how you’ve not managed to find it before. This is one of those things (thanks Sophie). I’ve only listened to two of the podcasts so far, but both were first-class. Firstly, the ridiculously talented Steven Johnson talks about long zoom thinking and references some of his exquisitely crafted books. Secondly, Will Wright and Brian Eno collaborate — or should I say chat — about generative systems, and the eagerly awaited Spore.
  • Fluid
    I’m always intrigued by apps that break the traditional browser model. Actually, I’m not sure ‘intrigue’ is the right word. It’s part trepidation, part excitement and then a sense that this is probably a sign of things to come.
  • Link to a specific point on Google Video
    This is old, but still useful. Love the way, it’s handled in the URL.
  • Feltron Eight
    Another year, another brilliant piece of design from Feltron.
  • There’s only one Barack Obama
    Who would have guessed it? Barack Obama is a hammer! This is the last time I link to The Sun (honest).
    • ]]>     http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/28/diversions-111/feed/ 0     Diversions 109 http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/05/diversions-109/ http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/05/diversions-109/#comments Sat, 05 Jan 2008 10:02:37 +0000 James Box http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/05/diversions-109/ Continue reading →]]>
  • Dynamic traffic simulation
    Love this (from Interconnected). I’m no programmer, but I see this as a useful model for expressing the concepts/benefits of OOP. In fact, when I was studying for my MA, I tried to build something like this in Director (I didn’t get anywhere). Think I wanted to experiment with intelligent traffic lights.
  • Paper CD case
    Horrible looking tool for creating foldable paper CD cases. That said, I quite like the whole idea of online nonsense being used to create offline ephemera. In fact, in a different skin (less app, more experience), I could actually see this site being a cute little social space.
  • Schematic
    Like the spatial thing going on with this interface. Same genes as Relevare and Sofake (two old favourites) which don’t seem to be alive as I post this.
    • ]]>     http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/05/diversions-109/feed/ 0     Diversions 7 http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/04/diversions-7/ http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/04/diversions-7/#comments Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:22:38 +0000 James Box http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/04/diversions-7/ Continue reading →]]> Happy New Year people. I begrudgingly stayed in this evening (it’s Friday). Here’s the guff I looked at:

    • Star Wars and UX
      Okay, I freely admit to being lured in by the Star Wars thing but there’s some great material here. I’d really like to see Stephen Anderson talk sometime. In case you’re wondering, the Star Wars thing is used to draw parallels with entrepreneurship. P.S. Did you know that George Lucas only decided to kill off Obi Wan during filming!
    • Elmwood
      Yes, this is fancy-schmancy Flash. And may be a little pompous. But it has got nice-ish URLs. And nice content. And big pictures. Oh and I quote like the idea of language workshops.
    • The Small Stakes
      Lovely illustration. Great bands.
    • Fixed-price contracts don’t work
      Well put. Certainly something close to my heart at the moment.
    ]]>     http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2008/01/04/diversions-7/feed/ 0     Diversions 6 http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/12/04/diversions-6/ http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/12/04/diversions-6/#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2007 12:08:49 +0000 James Box http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/12/04/diversions-6/ Continue reading →]]>
  • Google My Location
    Old news obviously. But great news. Lots of interesting (which led to this) follow-ups.
  • Interaction 08.
    Hmmmm, this looks rather good.
  • Edenbee is coming
    Shameless nod to a project we’ve been working on. Super excited about this one.
  • WebKit now has rudimentary support for specifying transforms through CSS
    This could make things interesting.
  • Mob rules
    Wonderful presentation from Mark Pesce at this years Web Directions South. Highly recommended.

  • The Experience Stack
    The podcast of Matt Webb’s marvellous dConstruct talk is now live. (or here via iTunes).
    • ]]>     http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/12/04/diversions-6/feed/ 1     Diversions 5 http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/11/15/diversions-5/ http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/11/15/diversions-5/#comments Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:44:09 +0000 James Box http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/11/15/diversions-5/ Continue reading →]]>
  • Social Network Transitions
    Fred Stutzman with a well-written post highlighting the relative strengths/weaknesses of object-centric and ego-centric networks. I completely agree.
  • Do pretty people earn more?
    An oldie but a goldie. This confirms it, I’m investing in male grooming products. Incidentally, this was plucked from the brilliantly written Etre newsletter.
  • Cunning little Grid overlay bookmarklet
    No idea when I use this, but still a very clever little tool.
  • Sweet business cards
    Always wondered why people wibbled on about letterpress printing so much. Now I know.
  • Feelscript
    Alejandro Paul has released another extraordinarily beautiful typeface.
  • Weewar
    As I write this, I’m waging war on colleagues and Brian Suda alike. Nice social features in there.
  • The Reinvention of the Self
    Fascinating article on the (re)discovery of neurogenesis (essentially the idea that brain cells regenerate) and it’s relationship to stress. ]]> http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/11/15/diversions-5/feed/ 0 Diversions 4 http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/08/10/diversions-4/ http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/08/10/diversions-4/#comments Fri, 10 Aug 2007 21:12:48 +0000 James Box http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/08/10/diversions-4/ Continue reading →]]>
  • I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with Kars Alfrink recently. Kars writes a highly recommended blog for anyone interested in the convergence of gaming, social software and mobile.
  • Liking Flickr’s new photo upload page — multiple file uploads and a welcome absence of ugly & unstylable file-upload fields. Seems to be using something like SWFupload. Now if someone could build-in drag and drop…Ben I’m looking at you.
  • Stumbled across Accept and Proceed whilst checking out Loop Brighton. Not a great fan of the Loop Brighton site, but there’s some lovely work in the portfolio.
  • Happy Birthday Indexed
    • ]]>     http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/08/10/diversions-4/feed/ 1     Diversions 3 http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/07/26/diversions-3/ http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/07/26/diversions-3/#comments Thu, 26 Jul 2007 09:20:07 +0000 James Box http://www.jeckecko.net/blog/2007/07/26/diversions-3/ Continue reading →]]> Too busy to post at the moment. Here’s some random guff:

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