While rummaging through my folders… while transferring and backing up files because my hard disk is already complaining, I stumbled on this file. It was the original design, didn’t look like the final product because the printer said it would be too hard to print the gradients.

lights on from thesystemis on Vimeo.

“Lights On” audio visual performance by ‘thesystemis’ created for the Ars Electronica museum in Linz, Austria

Watch it… so hypnotic… how I wish I could make something at this scale… This is sorta what I tried to do with my MMDA entry. Makes me cry when I think of the possibilities.. and how the judges missed the chance!

It’s flattering to see people wearing your design. Even though it was a gift, I saw that the people genuinely liked the shirts that we handed out to them. Although I was just limited by 3 colors, I had the freedom of designing what the shirt would look like. I made the logo of Novare act like a sports brand and did my liberties with the circles and lines.

Ironically, I saw this link on top of Gmail: “Wired Top Stories - Google’s Data Culture Drives Designer Crazy, and Out.” Of course I had to click on it. It turns out that Stopdesign founder Douglas Bowman is leaving Google as its Visual Design Lead. According to his blog at stopdesign, he had “grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions” like whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide:

When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.

I have heard similar stories of designers, some of whom I know personally, that work inside big corporations having similar gloomy outlooks. I cannot clam to know how that might feel like… but I guess it would suck. But personally I think Doug has to see his contributions, no matter how minuscule, as world changing. He helped designed Google Calendar… now, can you imagine how the world would be without the great work he put into it?

Microsoft Sustainability from Kray Cédric on Vimeo.

Pretty awesome view of the future according to microsoft.  I’d love to be a part of the team that will make that real.

You’ll know that the world of interaction design has reached mainstream if a banker sends you a link asking you to look a this cool new technology in a video he saw on TED… and he saw it before you did!  That’s what happened to me, my uncle, a businessman and banker sent our family egroup a link pointing to “Sixth Sense” presentation on TED.

Pattie Maes of MIT Media Lab Fluid interfaces presented a demo of their Sixth Sense project at TED recently.  The project is about bringing more information about anything at your fingertips, literary.  

‘SixthSense’ is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

Pranav Mistry, who is spearheding this project, is shown during the demo with a camera/projector necklace which captures images that your fingers point to then projects more information about that image.  For example, when you are at a grocery, while deciding which product to buy, you hold up that detergent then your necklace gets information from the web and projects it into the box.  Now you know if the detergent is really as environment friendly as they say it is.  Although it is slightly clunky (you wouldn’t catch me wearing colored rings at the ends of my fingetips) the concept is very solid and very likely to succeed.  I hope to see this in the market in a couple of years.

Although this may not be something new, I’m impressed at the fact that Wordpress came out with an app for iPod Touch and iPhone for free. I’m testing it now and it looks very east to setup and use. The keypad takes getting used to of course. Now I wish that I have an iPhone or iPod to use.

Cue intro credits

Cue sound 
http://www.moviemusic.com/audio/gattaca_1.mp3

I spent about 2 hours this late evening/early morning looking at CSS and HTML code, tweaking colors and fine tuning little elements that make the page.  After 2 hours and countless debugging, I gave up.  I looked at what I had finished and just saw something so plain that I can’t believe I spent so much time in it.  I just wasted time and effort to come up with a so-so design.  Back to the drawing board… but at this late a stage, where do I get inspiration?

I rummage through my files, looking for that spark.  I stumble upon the opening credits for the movie GATTACA.  This hits the spot.  Aside from being one of the more well made visual motion graphics out there, it reminds me of the movie.  The sound is so haunting and moving that it brings me back to the first time I saw it.  I am inspired.  GATTACA is a move about the triumph of the human spirit.  Even when all odds are against you, with passion you succeed.  It touches me.  I get inspired… but not to go back and code.  But to think about bigger things, things that I am passionate about.

First off, Merry Christmas to you. :)  

But this post isn’t about the holidays where people are rushing to buy gifts nor is it a scrooge post saying how Christmas makes us melancholy.  Nope.  This post is about how prevalent the web is in our lives that some of us, present company not excluded, are spending some precious time online during the eve where we should be spending it with family.

One family in our clan tonight had to rush home to Skype with a family member from abroad.  Of course this is still time spent with other family, albeit through a screen.  Even my mother recently joined Facebook, I caught her changing her profile picture while preparing dinner.  We are not absolved from this either, upon coming home, we automatically sit down in front of our PCs and “facebook” to check photos of the parties we’ve missed tonight.  Yup, gone are the days where you have to wait for the line at the local photo store to have your film developed. Gone are the times where we pass around sheets of pictures and make remarks… now we just comment on a photo posted on facebook or flickr. You even see a friend logged in facebook and start chatting, sending Christmas cheer. 

Blogging, twitting, plurking is no exception.. I am doing it now.  Has it improved communication between families and friends? Or has it replaced valuable face time with virtual time?

There are rumors in the mac news blogs now of a new iPhone: a Nano version. I’m really curious to see the price point that they will make this at if it is true. There are mockups of 3.5 inch screens here. I thought of mocking up another version using 2.5 inch screens instead. Similar to the one here. Same size of the “home” button. Although it will be hard to use the on screen keyboard on a 2.5 inch screen.