Chris Bray

Posterous Just Mobilized Your Posterous

2010-04-25T09:30:00.001-07:00

I spent a moment today adding a viewport meta tag to my Posterous so that it would show up nicely on a mobile device. What I saw when I went to test it on my iPhone was unexpected!

Looks like Posterous finally added some much needed mobile formatting. Unfortunately I host most of my images off-site, so no pics in the image gutter.

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A Not So Easy Way To Add Bookmarklets To Safari For iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch

2010-04-25T09:29:00.007-07:00

Let me tell you something you probably already know.

Bookmark management in Safari for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch completely sucks.

Yes, you could manage your bookmarks with whatever version of Safari you happen to be running on your desktop or laptop, and then synchronize the bookmarks to your devices through iTunes. That works great if you're one of the 2% of crazies that actually use Safari or pay Apple $99 a year for MobileMe. You could also import all of your bookmarks from IE or Firefox or what-have-you into Safari and then synchronize to your devices. Knock yourself out. I'm sure that will be a great use of your time and that you'll really enjoy regularly maintaining your bookmarks across browsers and devices.

None of this ever really bothered me, though. I don't use browser bookmarks anyway (does anyone anymore?) There's browser history and address bar autocomplete, not to mention there are more than enough online tools to keep track of where you've been, where you want to go back to, and what you want to remember. All of this eliminates the need to load up your browser with thousands of bookmarks.

What I do use, however, is bookmarklets -- those tasty little bits of Javascript that masquerade as bookmarks but add actual functionality and convenience to your everyday World-Wide-Web experience. Unfortunately, getting these bookmarklets into Safari on the iPhone is an extremely painful process. But that didn't bother me either... until I got my iPad.

Once I got my hands on the pad, I quickly realized I could no longer function without my beloved bookmarklets. I found myself surfing in a way that mimicked my desktop browsing behavior much more closely than when I browsed on the iPhone. This meant that I now needed to have my bookmarklets for sharing, posting, tagging, saving, look-ups, etc. But the steps for adding a bookmarklet on the iPad was the same as with the iPhone -- an awful one.

The process is far too painful to describe in detail, but Marco Arment of Instapaper details the procedure nicely in his step-by-step guide to adding the Instapaper bookmarklet to an iPhone or iPad.

Basically, you first need to add a placeholder bookmark, and then edit that bookmark by renaming it and pasting the bookmarklet's Javascript into the field reserved for the bookmark's URL. That doesn't sound so terrible until you realize it involves somewhere between 10 and 13 taps as well as typing and pasting.

It goes something like this:

Of course that's only IF you managed to find a way to copy a bookmarklet's Javascript to your clipboard.

And that, for me, is the part that goes beyond pain and crosses over into torture territory. Bookmarklets are created by putting Javascript into a URL. This enables you to drag the snippet to your browser's bookmark bar like any other link. Unfortunately this just wont work in Safari for the i-Devices. And if you think you can take a gander at the page's source in mobile Safari and copy the Javascript from there, you are mistaken. Furthermore, it isn't standard practice (thankfully) for bookmarklet creators to put the bookmarklet's Javascript on the page for you to copy and paste into a bookmark. In most cases that would be fugly. And stupid.

So I took a few minutes to copy the Javascript from all my Chrome bookmarklets and made myself a little iPhone/iPad formatted page with all the Javascript in a selectable textarea for each bookmarklet. I opened up the page on my gadgets, and in about 5 minutes had all of my important bookmarklets loaded into Safari on both my iPad and my iPhone.

I know this is far from ideal, and even further from anything resembling a solution, but until some smart person comes up with a way around this, or until Apple adds some better bookmark management or add-on capabilities to mobile Safari this will have to do for now.

I'll leave this page up for anyone who wants to add some of these bookmarklets to Safari on their own iPads or iPhones. Just visit http://static.chrisbray.com/bookmarklets on your iPad or iPhone and start tapping. I hope this takes at least some of the pain out of the process.

Here is the list of somewhat popular bookmarklet Javascripts that I have on the page. Note that bookmarklets that utilize selected page text (Wikipedia lookup, dictionaries, searches, etc.) wont work due to the way that Apple has implemented select/copy/cut/paste on i-Devices, so I haven't included any of those.

Share on Posterous

Shorten with bit.ly

Add to Google Reader

Bookmark on del.icio.us

Instapaper: Read Later

Let me know if you'd like to see other popular bookmarklets added, and I'll do my best to throw them in there when I have the time.

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Schematic Launches FreshDirect iPhone App, New Yorker's Waistlines Expand

2010-04-25T09:29:00.005-07:00

In New York, you can't walk down the street these days without seeing a FreshDirect grocery delivery truck. A recent addition to the list of beloved Gotham institutions, FreshDirect's online grocery service quickly gained a cult following after launching in 2002. Customers were drawn to FreshDirect because of its incredible convenience, fresh food (including organic and locally grown items), customer service, and prices that are substantially lower than most Manhattan supermarket chains (cough, Whole Foods). Today, FreshDirect has delivered about 10 million individual orders to hungry New Yorkers (and to some of those Jersey people too).

When a 2009 survey revealed that 50% of their customers with smartphones have iPhones, the web-based company asked us (Schematic) to partner with them in creating a mobile strategy, and to build an app that would make buying groceries even easier for their customers on the go.

So that's exactly what we did.

Perhaps the most complex transaction-based commerce application available in the App Store to date, the FreshDirect iPhone app delivers about 90% of the same functionality available on FreshDirect.com.

Partnering closely with FreshDirect, we designed an experience that enables users to access FreshDirect's entire inventory of food and brand-name groceries, while promoting their proprietary website features such as nutritional information and daily produce and seafood quality ratings. We also implemented the site’s Quick Shop feature, which makes it fast and easy to shop from previous orders, favorite items, or curated lists such as "President's Picks" and "Featured Deals". The app enables their customers to start a new order from scratch on their iPhones, as well as modify an existing order or delivery time.

FreshDirect customers can now do all their grocery shopping in just a few short minutes wherever they happen to be — in a taxi, on a bus, or, if you are like me, staring mindlessly into the refrigerator.

Check out the video below that highlights the key features and functionality of the FreshDirect iPhone app, then go download it for free. If you have time, you should also check out the Wall Street Journal's article on the app in today's Digits blog. Lastly, don't forget to celebrate the release by entering for a chance to win a gift card worth $500 in FreshDirect food, plus a $500 gift card to the Apple Store. Nine lucky second-place prizes will win a $200 Apple gift card, plus $100 in FreshDirect food.

On a personal note, I have to say that it was deeply satisfying to have been part of this particular project, and it was a pleasure to have worked with all the talented and dedicated people both at Schematic and over at FreshDirect. You all know who you are, so congratulations to everyone involved with this terrific product launch!

UPDATE: Our good friend Alex over at EveryDayUX has some additional background info on the making of the app, and why it was a dream project for him.

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Doing It For The Kids

2010-04-25T09:29:00.003-07:00

Millennials. The "Trophy Generation". "Trophy Kids". The generation where no one loses and everyone gets a "Great Job!" medal. The tattoos, the lack of shame, the overbearing sense of entitlement. Whether or not these generalizations are accurate, one thing is certain: Millennials are deeply connected to technology.

Plenty has been written about Millennials. There are books on how to contend with them in the workplace, there are countless articles about how to market products and services to them, and there are hundreds of studies rich with data about their sexual behaviors, the causes of their ennui, their politics, and their favorite monster breakfast cereals.

Yesterday, the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project released yet another report in their ongoing series about Millennials entitled, oddly enough, "Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next". The study examines trends in Millennial attitudes toward identity, work, education, family values, politics, religion, and of course technology.

Millennials are so connected to tech, apparently, that about 1/4 of them cite it as the most unique characteristic of their generation compared to other distinctions such as their fashion.

Over 90% of these creatures are active online, with over 60% accessing the internet via wireless and mobile networks. Their connectivity is their lifeline -- an umbillical cord that remains unsevered even when when they go to bed (83% of them sleep with their cell phones! Creepy.)

Millennials outpace all other generations in technology hardware and services usage, with a heavy emphasis on texting and other wireless related activities. 75% of them are social network users, with over 50% of them claiming to be daily users. This, compared to Gen-Xers (another fairly connected group), of whom only 50% claim to have a social network profile at all.

Millennials use Twitter more. They post more videos of themselves online, not even stopping to consider that kind of thing is just a little weird. 40% of them have no landline phone, they watch less TV than any other generation, and increasingly are getting their news from online outlets, citing Yahoo! and CNN.com as their top sources. Yes, Yahoo! No wonder that Yahoo! is moving forward with tighter Facebook and Twitter integration.

So yes, Millennials are connected to technology like no other generation before them. We probably didn't need another study to tell us this, but I'm not sure as technology developers, innovators, and digital marketers we've completely grasped it.

The trend will continue. The next generation will not merely be very connected. They will be completely connected. The services we build and innovate today will need to operate in a world without technology borders, where digital will be completely ubiquitous, expected, and taken for granted. Users will not distinguish between such novel concepts as mobile and desktop, or blog and portal content. Marketing that is not sociable will be irrelevant. A fourth "R" (Retrieval) will be added to the foundation set of basic skills (Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic) and absolutely everything will require a sophisticated approach to discovery and findability. There will only be online. Offline will be a memory and embraced only, perhaps, by the Amish.

We tend to break apart our approaches to digital marketing into separate bolt-on components. Client A needs a social strategy. Client B needs search. We suggest to Client C that they consider mobile in another phase. But the Millennials, and all subsequent generations, will demand portability, sociability, digestability, and findability from all of the content and services they consume. Services that are deficient in any one of those key elements will be neglected. The experiences we build and the strategies we develop will need to be comprehensive and inclusive, and the successful digital marketer/strategist will need to stop thinking about their services in terms of narrow specializations.

The kids, they'll want it all. And for better or for worse, we'll have to give it to them. They are, after all, entitled to it.

Want to know how in touch you are with the Millennials? Pew set up a quiz to give you an idea of how much you have in common with them.

My results?

Wish I had never gotten those tattoos and piercings.

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Visualizing the Mundane: Your Meaningless Point and Click Routines Become Art

2010-04-25T09:29:00.001-07:00

Image: A Day In The Life of A Knowledge Worker

On his website, Antatoly Zenkov's claims he can do anything. That's a bit of a stretch, but what he certainly can do is make an awesome little Java app. Mouse Path (Mac version | Windows version) runs in the background while you work and tracks all of your mouse movements throughout the day. Just launch the .jar file, minimize it, and go about you business. The lines represent the mouse's movement, and the circles represent the mouse at rest. The longer the mouse is idle, the larger the circles are. Mouse Path doesn't recognize multiple displays. It will only track movements on your main monitor, but it will continue tracking as you change Spaces.

In a few hours you'll start to see some terrific patterns emerge. The image above represents about 10 hours of my activity at work on Thursday, Feb 12. The large dark circles were meetings or phone calls, and the smaller circles indicate reading, typing (Mouse Path doesn't capture keystrokes unfortunately), or trips to the bathroom/kitchen. The thick horizontal scratches across the top are obviously from clicking across browser tabs. I've also learned that I spend a lot of time in the upper left quadrant. No real surprise there.

Even if you're not a fan of the action painters like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, there is something rather satisfying about unwittingly creating a personal piece of abstract expressionism while you point and click your way through your dull, digital day.

Art from meaninglessness. No mess, and no cleanup.

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Another installment of "What you sold, what you built, and what they needed"

2010-04-25T09:28:00.003-07:00

What you sold...

What you built...

What they needed...

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South Korean Educators R Serious About Dangerz of teh Internets

2010-04-25T09:28:00.001-07:00

The following are images of internet warning signs in the halls of a South Korean grade school. I grabbed them from this week's Frontline: Digital Nation. Well worth the watch.

This one says "Constantly playing computer games shrinks your capacity to think"

Here, "Slanderous comments on the internet hurts my friend"

And the popular slogan "Our ancestors were known as the politest Eastern state, now we are the kingdom of internet etiquette"

Finally, the young children sing the Internet Song!

Lyrics:

While chatting, first greet happily / Use polite words in a cordial way / During the game always be open, honest and do the right thing / Be careful on the keyboard / I know who did it (be careful) / I know I am the internet guardian angel / I will be the first to protect / I want to be the first to protect / Though faces are unknown, it's a warm neighborhood / Precious Internet friend / Precious Internet friend (friend!) / Netiquette!

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Collaborative Design in a Multi-Touch Environment Using Virtual and Real Objects

2010-04-25T09:27:00.001-07:00

Microsoft's Surface is capable of recognizing items placed onto the tabletop, but with Pictionaire -- a project from Microsoft Research and the University of California, Berkeley -- digital media and common everyday objects found in a designer's arsenal are combined in a way that promises to innovate new ways of productivity-based collaboration in multi-touch environments.

Pictionaire (yes, it's a silly name) promises a system for design teams that introduces interactions for capturing physical artifacts and organizing their digital copies with functionality for retrieval and annotation. It enables multiple designers to fluidly move imagery from the physical to the digital realm; work with found, drawn and captured imagery; organize items into functional collections; and record meeting histories.

The setup is not much different than most large projection style multi-touch tables, and in fact the rig is rather simple and looks like something you might find over at Instructables.

But the key feature here is a high resolution still camera suspended a couple of meters above the surface. The camera takes shots of objects such as magazines, books, sketch pads and white boards and digitizes the content. Once the item is removed from the table it is replaced by the digital version. This allows notes, photos and other items to be captured and then shared in the collaborative environment like any other piece of digital media. It even allows the digitized media to be overlaid onto real paper, notepads or white boards so it can be annotated or marked up.

Additionally, the table recognizes input devices placed on the surface such as wireless keyboards, mice and pen-based tablets.

When a keyboard is placed on the table, a text box appears, allowing the operator to write, notate the media, and add text to other people's documents. Digital objects can be "linked" to keyboards by simply pointing and clicking with a mouse, and two keyboards, when brought into close proximity to one another, allows the operators to share the document being created.

Check out the vid.

via youtube.com

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Letters to Santa brought to you by Projected Capacitive Touch

2009-12-22T10:09:00.001-08:00

I came across this during some VERY last minute holiday shopping this week. As part of Macy's "Believe" initiative they are donating $1.00 to the Make A Wish foundation for every letter to Santa children drop off at a Macy's postbox this holiday season. To augment the program, the Macy's flagship store in Herald Square has installed three interactive touch displays that entice children to construct and send their own letter to Santa while standing outside in the freezing cold. Children are taunted instructed by on-screen elves to write their letter by scrolling through a grid of gifts and a couple dozen pre-written sentences such as "I only pulled my sister's hair once this year".

These thru-window installations are gaining popularity with retailers, and becoming more common in displays throughout the city. From the looks of it, this displays uses what's called "Projected Capacitive Touch" (PCT) technology.

Here's how it works. A transparent material is etched with two parallel layers of conductive Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) foil. The material is installed between a window and an LCD screen or a rear projection setup. By applying voltage to the material, a grid of capacitors is created so that when a finger is brought close enough to the surface it will change the local electrostatic field. The change in the field can be measured on the x/y axis of the grid, and the exact location of the change in capacitance can be determined relative to elements on the display screen. So, for example, if a 100 x 100 pixel button appears on a screen with the coordinates of (50,150,150,50), a touch registering anywhere on the ITO within those bounds can be recognized and trigger an event. Some foils, such as the ViP Interactive Foil from Visual Planet, can even be programmed for various glass thicknesses and is sensitive enough to be used with gloved hands, which is evident in the video above.

The challenge in building interfaces of this type is twofold. First, the grid needs to be calibrated so that any change in capacitance corresponds as closely as possible to the same area on the display with the interactive elements. Second, and more difficult, the interface design needs to provide touchable areas that are large enough and spaced enough apart to provide an experience that seems responsive. Most of these screens fail in that area. Too many complicated elements are crammed onto the screen and you are left with an interface that registers incorrectly or doesn't respond at all. In the video above you'll notice the difficulty the woman has with entering the child's initials at the end. The letters on the wheel are simply too close together and too small to provide a consistent and accurate mapping of the field change to the button.

Overall, the technology involved to build one of these displays is getting cheaper and cheaper. Eventually the real clever interface developers will be able to elevate these installations beyond the novelty phase with smart experiences designed around the limitations and constraints of the technology. People will embrace them. They will rejoice. They will scream it from the rooftops, and businesses will eventually find ways to use these screens to provide additional value to their customers.

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Beautiful concept eMag reader will give you goose bumps

2009-12-19T10:14:00.001-08:00

In 1804 Gerhard Bonnier opened a small bookstore in Copenhagen. Since then the Bonnier family has promoted high-quality media products and now, after over 200 years of sustainable media entrepreneurship, they are now a multi-channel media company with experience and knowledge from a full range of media companies across 20 countries.

Berg is a design consultancy in the UK, and works with companies to research and develop their technologies and strategy, primarily by finding opportunities in networks and physical things

Together, Berg and Bonnier have developed this amazing concept video in which they attempt to reinvent the digital magazine for a world in which interactivity, abundant information, and unlimited options are often intrusive and overwhelming.

Of particular note is the elegance and simplicity of the gestural interaction model utilized across all of the examples. Notice how a high degree of interactivity is achieved with a minimal amount of intuitive gestures. The effortless interface combined with a highly intelligent informational architecture will leave you wishing you could go to sleep tonight and wake up sometime in the world of tomorrow.

If after watching this you want more (and I know you will) you can watch an extended narrated version of the video here

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Untitled

2009-12-15T14:27:00.001-08:00

Well that didn't take long --> http://bit.ly/8NvyOq (Chrome passes Safari)

via Ping.fm

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The man responsible for all those impossible application interfaces in movies that make you roll your eyes

2009-12-15T13:04:00.001-08:00

Coleran Reel 2008.06 HD from Mark Coleran on Vimeo.

Mark Coleran has an impressive body of work. It may also have the distinction of being the most ridiculed. At least in the highly opinionated, sardonic, and ego-driven tech developer world. Sure, we all roll our eyes when we see these imaginary (and super responsive) applications being used for detective or spy work in these movies. However, we shouldn't forget that the science fiction of today is one of the primary inputs that help guide and inform the real technological advances of tomorrow. In fact, I work for a company whose CCO is largely responsible for one of the more imaginative film interfaces in recent memory: The pre-crime computer interface in Minority Report. And damn, we actually came close to building it this year. Okay. Not quite. But still...

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Super slick Augmented Reality app enhances online shopping experience

2009-12-10T14:20:00.001-08:00

The "Fashionista" application uses AR (not the mobile kind, but the kind where you hold a printout up to a webcam) to overlay images of clothing on the shopper.

The application also has a nifty navigation feature whereby the shopper can stand back from the computer and navigate vitrual controls with their hand. A Facebook sharing feature that allows for immediate feedback from friends and family.

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The Future of Magazines?

2009-12-07T16:35:00.003-08:00

This has been making the rounds lately. It's vaporware a vision piece from The Wonderfactory and Time, Inc. giving us a glimpse of how the collapsing magazine publishing industry intends on saving themselves.

Conspicuously absent is any ad content.

One thing’s for certain. A re-platforming of this nature won't be cheap. Then of course there's the small matter of the hardware.

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Schematic work takes Balkans by storm!

2009-12-07T16:35:00.001-08:00

Our work on the 39 Clues site wins a Bulgarian Web Award for “Internet Advertising”, beating out some bank and a hosting company. We’re looking to conquer the Republic of Macedonia next.

Linky

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All Porn Android App Store

2009-12-07T16:34:00.005-08:00

One of the few advantages of Android’s open application framework over the iPhone is that it allows for competition with their own Android Marketplace. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before an ALL-PORN app store popped up.

Linky

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What is good information design?

2009-12-07T16:34:00.003-08:00

At the junction of interestingness, function, form and integrity we may find successful information design.

Linky

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Latest from Google Labs - Image Swirl

2009-12-07T16:34:00.001-08:00

Google Image Swirl organizes image search results into groups and sub-groups, based on their visual and semantic similarity and presents them in an intuitive exploratory interface.

What makes this compelling is that ability to explore a concept from different visual perspectives.

Linky

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