May 2010
1 post
1 tag
A Psychologist's view of UX design →
Really great summation of UI/UX design considerations.
April 2010
3 posts
1 tag
Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Flash →
We have a few discussions going on in the office over this declaration by Steve Jobs. Our resident Flash expert is trying to collect his professional thoughts enough to give us a solid post about the ramifications of what Jobs is saying. Stay tuned.
2 tags
March 2010
5 posts
WatchGreat TED talk from Jane McGonigal about how gaming can make a better world.
I’m not a gamer. Every week the guys in the office play Call of Duty and I never join them. I consider social networking to be my ‘game’ (despite the lack of competition involved, it’s more about sharing information and building relationships for me). This video is making me second guess my...
WatchJoe Hankin on CNBC!
A Day in the Life of Joe Hankin, iPhone Developer! →
One of our iPhone Developers, Joe Hankin is interviewed by CNBC about his job as a mobile application developer at Fuzz. Pay attention you can catch glimpses of Brian Hayes, Nat Trienens and Chris Luu.
Don't worry about this, it's just a little tablet... →
Y Combinator weighs in on iPad applications.
Watchdascola:texburgher:jacobjoaquin
Games: Designing for the “unexpected” - with a little psychology thrown in for good measure. Very very very cool things are going on behind social media platforms that have ridiculously lucrative implications. The last 8-10 minutes will blow your mind.
February 2010
3 posts
Le Grenier NY!
.
legrenierny:
I’ve been lax in posting press for Le Grenier, but here are the 2 most recent write-ups:
http://nymag.com/listings/stores/le-grenier/
http://www.atticmag.com/2010/02/le-grenier-antiques-and-housewares/comment-page-1/#comment-1802
And if you’d like to write a Yelp review, it would certainly be appreciated!
http://www.yelp.com/biz/le-grenier-brooklyn
Our client, Le Grenier...
2 tags
Design Frameworks →
This link brings you to two very coherent articles by Joshua Porter and Liz Danzico on understanding the importance of design frameworks. The articles remind us of a well known yet continually fleeting concept that’s paramount to the success of any interface design.
WatchWired Magazine’s iPad Tablet App
January 2010
3 posts
RoR Problem[SOLVED]: rake vlad:deploy aborted with...
term$: rake --trace vlad:deploy RAILS_ENV=production
(in /Users/me/Sites/thesite-public)
** Invoke vlad:deploy (first_time)
** Invoke vlad:update (first_time)
** Execute vlad:update
ssh thesite_admin 'cd /var/www/thesite_public/scm && rm -rf /var/www/thesite_public/scm/repo && git clone git@github.com:username/thesite-public.git /var/www/thesite_public/scm/repo && cd...
On a Scale of 1 to 10, How Weird Are You? →
Tony Hsieh, CEO at Zappos, talks about company culture, and how it can make or break a company. At Fuzz, we all have a little ‘weird’ going on. We’re still fine-tuning our culture, but the idiosyncrasies in the office make for interesting days and better working relationships. This is definitely worth a read.
1 tag
Quality Fonts on Web Pages
Fonts on the web are tough, balancing between standards and style. Some designs rely on beautiful typography, which cannot be covered by the 18 standard fonts available to windows, mac, and linux. In order to meet design requirements, there are several solutions: image replacement, sIFR, cufon, and @font-face are all viable and have advantages and disadvantages.
Fuzz has been using image...
December 2009
4 posts
“Everything is a project, even this”
– Everything is a project, even this « Scott Berkun
7 tags
Searchlogic, Postgres, and Case Insensitive...
Unfortunately when using postgres the default ordering is case sensitive such that all Capitalized values come before all lowercase values. This seems counter intuitive and certainly not desired in my project. As far as I can tell there is currently no support for case insensitive ordering with searchlogic. I was able to solve this by adding two new named_scopes in...
November 2009
3 posts
History of the Internet, in a nutshell →
Cambridge lab guys were ahead of the times in 1991 - the guys in our office have contemplated rigging up a coffee cam for quite awhile now.
October 2009
10 posts
Google Announces Free Google Maps Navigation →
Garmin & Tom Tom stock are tanking because you just can’t beat free navigation from Google. It’ll be interesting to see how this actually plays out, but in the meantime I have my fingers crossed for better navigation on my iPhone.
This is Slagsmaalsklubben. A Swedish electro group...
Find your focus! →
This links to an article on how good design needs a focus. It details that orchestrating viewers properly is a question of how clear the purpose is, and how the extra things you add should only exist to strengthen your guidance. Otherwise, it may be worthless and hinder your goals.
1 tag
Proper Use of the Gradient!
I was thinking about writing an elaborate post on how to properly use the gradient tool in the context of webdesign, but I’ve found a tutorial over at 9rules that provides you with the basic concept.
They describe for you how the human eye scans any shift in color/value and how to make what they believe is a better gradient. I support their idea and plan on posting an in-depth tutorial on...
"Since time immemorial, man has sought to blow up...
It amuses me to no end that pretty much every media outlet is describing tomorrow’s LCROSS mission as “Bombing the Moon”
Update! Watch the horrific moon massacre from the comfort of earth.
4 tags
3 tags
Flash on the iPhone
Well somewhat, with the release of Flash Professional CS5 developers will be able to export their AS3 projects to run natively on the iPhone. CS5 beta is set to be released by the end of the year and publishing / testing apps will require you to sign up for the Apple Developer Program. This release will open the doors to any flash developer looking to get their games in the App store, assuming...
2 tags
Cheese or Font? →
How well do you know your fonts?
September 2009
18 posts
1 tag
3 tags
5 tags
Those damn field with errors divs
It seems to be a common issue where css developers are battling with the <div> tags that rails drops in when there are errors in a form. In searching for a solution to this I came across this one:
ActionView::Base.field_error_proc = Proc.new { |html_tag, instance| "<span class=\"fieldWithErrors\">#{html_tag}</span>" }
placed at the end of your config/environment.rb file. This...
Tom Fauls makes the metaphor for type to be as a... →
Watch
Making the most of a networking event →
Networking is simply socializing with a purpose. For most people, socializing either comes naturally, or it doesn’t. If you’re not a social butterfly but still need to network from time to time, this article from Michael Arrington has some great tips.
“Either we take our chances with the ghosts, or we become ghosts ourselves.”
– Name the movie…
High Stakes Typography, Pt. I
There’s a uniquely American product category which is marketed to us with an astonishing level of focus and raw capital. It’s an abstract, intangible category, where the marketers draw on every level of our society and identity to craft perfect packages that they think we’ll be willing to buy. In 2008, for the first time, 1.5 billion dollars were spent in this category, all in...
Is it normal to drink 4 cups of coffee a day? I like to think so.
5 tags
Rails, Postgres, and Snow Leopard
Upon installing Snow Leopard I found that my postgres installation was no longer working. Turns out a newer version of postgres (postgres84… I was using 83) was released and is compatible with Snow Leopard. My postgres installation for Snow Leopard using macports looks like this:
sudo port install postgresql84-server
sudo mkdir -p /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb
sudo chown...
6 tags
Vlad with Git
So I just got a new computer and I was installing all my gems and downloading all my repos onto it to get my new system up to speed. I did the standard
sudo gem install vlad
and then tried to deploy with
rake vlad:deploy
only to find that for some reason vlad was refusing to read my config/deploy.rb file. Instead I got the error “Don’t know how to build task:...
“Built with typographic standards in mind, Baseline makes it easy to develop a...”
– Baseline - a designer framework by ProjetUrbain.com
3 tags
Up Late. Hostage to the Storm.
I’m awake. I don’t have a very strong reason… but there is this one: I’m inside the office. It’s raining outside.
Yes, my friends bailed on our weekend trip to hike 40+ miles on the Appalachian trail, all because of this rain that has coincidentally trapped me in the office. “No woodsy enjoyment for you!” says the rain hard pressed to the roof.
...
Wanna hit a guy in the face with a fish? →
Had fun with this this morning.