Last week I relaunched Kimora Lee Simmons’ website.
The amount of content on this website was rather challenging. And there are a still a few rough edges that need to be sanded down, but over all I think it was a pretty successful redesign and relaunch.
I bought a Kindle about a year ago. And honestly I used it for about a week, then the novelty wore off and it became of piece of the shifting landscape of my apartment. And there is stayed in a stack of stuff for about year.
In February, I went on a ski trip in Italy and I only packed one book with me for the trip, Game Change. I often don’t have the luxury of laying around and reading for pleasure when I am not on vacation so I thought one book would be enough. But between the compelling narrative of the Game Change and my jet lag in Italy, I had hours to do nothing but read and wait until everyone else wake up. Needless to say, I finished Game Change in three days, much to my surprise and disappointment.
I was disappointed because I didn’t pack another book and I was staying in a small ski village with one book store. The English language section of the store was so bad I couldn’t find one book worth reading. It was an Italian book store after all. I laid in bed wishing I had packed my stupid Kindle.
A few weeks later my dad and I went on a three week tour of Europe. Before I left, I loaded up three books on my Kindle. And I spent a lot of time laying in bed reading with jet lag again. I read on plane and trains and airports and train stations. My little Kindle always had a good story to share. And I really felt like I had discovered the beauty of owning a Kindle, but my Kindle had one more trick up its sleeve.
When I came home, I was half way through a book. So I downloaded the book into my Kindle iPhone app and read it my phone on the subway. Then one night I picked up my Kindle to read some more of the book and the Kindle synced to the page I was on in my iPhone. And there I fell in love with my Kindle.
For me, the beauty of the Kindle isn’t about it’s storage capability or the portability of the device itself, the true beauty is having a book freed from it’s physical limits. I can read the same book on either device at the same time. And the book will always open to the place where I stopped reading, regardless of which device I used the last time.
Real books are better than eBooks for a lot of reasons; but I found one good reason to celebrate eBooks.
I’m not buying an iPad. It pains me to say it, but I’m boycotting. I’m not buying an iPad because iPads don’t support Flash.
I don’t believe Apple doesn’t want Flash on iPhone and iPads because Flash is unstable or drains battery power. I believe Apple doesn’t want Flash on iPads because Flash would allow people to completely circumvent the iTunes store. Flash would allow any website to serve video and music to an iPhone or iPad, not just Apple or its partners (such as YouTube, Pandora, Netflix). Flash would also allow anyone to create a web-based apps that could rival the apps currently distributed from the iTunes store.
Apple wants to keep their iron-grip on their products. On some level, I admire that. On another level, it feels like this is against the spirit and nature of technology and the Internet, which I imagine in my naive way, as always inevitably pushing towards more openness. I am perplexed that other people don’t see this as a huge problem.
John Gruber and others have been gleefully dancing on Flash’s grave because iPads and iPhones don’t support Flash. I won’t try to understand the motivation, but while I do see the iPad as a brave step into the future. I also see it as a $500 prison cell where I am locked into an environment wherein I can’t even decide what parts of the Internet I would like to see or use.
Apple, who once told me to “Think Different”, is now censoring my expression with information purification directives. Where is that woman with the hammer when we need her?
I could go on. I previously wrote a tirade, but I’ll try to remain calm.
I was willing to accept that my iPhone didn’t support Flash. When I bought my iPhone I was amazed to have access to the Internet on a mobile device that was attractive, legible and usable. I went from trying to type web addresses on a number pad to the iPhone. It was a huge step. I could forgive my iPhone if it didn’t support Flash, my old phone didn’t either.
When Steve Jobs says the iPad is “the best way to browse the web” and “it’s like holding the internet in your hands” he flat-out lied. The iPad might be the best way to browse a censored web, but that’s it.
Commonwealth Utilities is having their latest fashion show today. I’ve been racing the clock to update their website with a new look to match their new season. I spent a good deal of time making the site a richer experience and focusing the design more on their products.
The New York Times updated the T Magazine site today. I love the fixed-position elements on the page. The liquid / fluid grid layout moves beautifully. The confluence of the two techniques creates a huge impact.
T Magazine also uses Flash effectively and sparingly. The update introduced a new system for displaying slideshows of images. I’ve dreamed about the NYTimes shifting its slideshows from the cramped, dank slideshows it currently uses to something much richer and bigger.
I hope the NYTimes main site follows in T Magazine’s footsteps and integrates into its own site the breath-taking, full-screen slideshows T Magazine uses.
I’m such a fanboy. The only thing that would make the redesign better is if the featured article were about Maureen Dowd instead of Ryan Seacrest.
The Oatmeal has a great little comic about the pitfalls and pratfalls of web design. I used to have a client that asked me to make his web design *pop* so I can relate to this comic. A lot of my web designer / developer friends were passing this link around this morning. I wanted to preserve it here so I could find it in the future.
I noticed that The Oatmeal also has ASCII art in their source code. I love this idea and I’m totally going to co-opt it.
The guys at Commonwealth Utilities and I launched the redesign of their website yesterday. I built the site in Flex for a variety of reasons.
One of the more interesting aspects of the site to me was integrating the “Join the CWU” page with MailChimp. I would really like to thank Christan Cox for the publishing some sample code on how to do this in Flash.
After trying a few different ways to replicate Christan Cox’s code in Flex, I eventually decided to customize his sample code in Flash to match the design, export the code as a SWF, and load the SWF into Flex at run time. It worked like a charm.
We still have some big plans for this site. I will keep you posted as we flesh out the site more over the next few weeks.
I love the new Basic Maths WordPress theme by Khoi Vihn and Allan Cole. I have admired the design of Subtraction.com for years and I have been unhappy with the WordPress theme I was using for this blog. I didn’t hesitate to buy the theme and upload it to my site. I’m sure I’ll use it until I have the time to integrate my portfolio and blog into a single CMS system.
Awesome Interactive (my company) launched the Baby Phat Cam, our first iPhone application, this week. David, Chandelier Creative, and I spent a several months working on it. It was a great learning experience and I am very proud of the app.
