Celtic look alikes
Tristan 7th July 2010 Add comment
The Future of Video on the Web
With all the talk in the technology world as to how the new iPhone’s antenna is performing (not to mention the World Cup, a new Prime Minister, blah, blah), some may have missed this…
YouTube software developers posted on their YouTube API Blog on Tuesday a detailed, balanced an informative article about the pros and cons of using HTML5 vs Flash for video playback. The article backed the use of Flash saying that — in reference to the HTML5 video tag — “We need to do more than just point the browser at a video file like the image tag does – there’s a lot more to it than just retrieving and displaying a video.”
In addition to pointing out technologies that Flash video has over HTML5 video such as streaming, embedding, protection and camera access, they also claimed that the web should have an open video format, namely Google’s recently acquired video codec VP8 and WebM technologies.
This adds to arguably realistic, yet enraged sentiments expressed by popular video player software company LongTail Video as well as Adobe et al. It also brings us back to reality from the distorted hyperbole that is Steve Jobs’ perspective. Keep in mind that Google, the owner of YouTube, has a vested interest in both HTML5 (having one of their employees as the ‘creator’ of the specification) and Flash (being a close partner with Adobe in projects such as the Open Screen Project and Flash playback on the Android platform).
Simon 2nd July 2010 Add comment
Help BP redesign their logo
Interesting online crowd sourcing competition running at the moment over at logomyway.com. For those of you who haven’t heard of it before, it’s a design crowd sourcing (freelancer) site similar to 99designs.com.
Anyway, back to the competition at hand. The folks at logomyway.com have posted a job to redesign the BP (Beyond Petroleum) logo, in light of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The key concepts the logo should communicate are given as:
#1 Oil spill disaster – Toxic
#2 Death of wildlife
#3 Incompetence
The prize awarded to the winner will be $200 and so far 163 designs have been submitted. The contest will be open for another 8 days and some of my favourites so far are:
Simply change to the existing logo, but sums it up nicely.
This one is a great adaptation of the existing logo. And nicely visualises how the ocean will need to have the oil 'wrung' out of it.
This logo is fitting given the 13% collapse in the market capitalisation of BP. Will the company crumble as a result of this?
I don't think BP is evil, but I like this logo 
.
P.S. For anyone interested, you can view live video feeds of the underwater operations on the BP website.
Tristan 20th June 2010 1 comment
Trend Watching
No, I’m not writing about those other seer-like trend watchers, I’m writing about Google Trends.
I’d known about Google Hot Trends for a while, but never found it that fascinating. What I do find fascinating is Google Trends. Google Trends allows you to search a database of search-terms people have put into Google between 2004 and 2010. I thought I’d have a play and post some results.
Search term: Apple (blue line), Microsoft (red line)
As shown above, searches for Microsoft have been steadily declining since 2004, with searches for Apple steadily increasing. I wonder if there is a correlation with market capitalisation?
Search term: iPhone (blue), iPad (red), Android (orange)
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For my next search, I thought I’d try the iPhone, iPad and Android to see how they’re going.
As is to be expected, the iPhone has the early movers advantage, having been released in June 2007. It’s interesting to note that the ’social buzz’ for the iPhone appears to have begun 6 months prior to launch, around December 2006. We can also see a significant spike in searches corresponding with subsequent releases of the iPhone 3G in July 2008 and the IPhone 3GS in June 2009. You’ll notice too that the trend takes a staircase like pattern (my term), jumping up each year, rather than being linear.
In 2007 and 2008, Android arrives on the scene, to little fanfare, much like somebody arriving late to a party and being too cool (or nervous) to announce their presence. 2009 marks the year when Android becomes more well known with handsets powered by Android starting to hit the market, the first of which was the HTC Dream. In 2010, the Android appears to be trending upward at a fast rate and well on it’s way to catching up with the iPhone, although another ’step up’ come July – and the release of the new iPhone – and “Android” may still be a way behind “iPhone”.
As for the iPad, it’s still the early days but Apple’s media magic seems to be working, with a huge spike in searches for “iPad” at the start of 2010 and another smaller spike occurring recently with the launch of the iPad.
Conclusions
Since i’ve written this much, I thought i’d put in some closing remarks.
Firstly, Google Trends is fun, although aspects of it require further work, such as the data displayed below the chart (not shown in this post) listing Regions, Cities and Languages. The bars look good but there is no scale or index like the chart. Anyway, have a go yourself and comment on any interesting comparisons you come across.
As for the results of my searches above, I’m particularly intrigued by the second chart. We all know that Apple are masters of media and ‘buzz’; and this shows in the chart. A familiar pattern seems to be that they ’seed’ some information about six months prior to launch using events such as MacWorld. They then get huge amounts of exposure at the actual launch. I don’t know how much of this is paid as opposed to general excitement, but here in Australia, the iPad seems to be on every breakfast/lunch/evening show on TV!
As for Android, it’s clear here that nobody is steering the ship in the same way as at Apple, however, as part of the Open Handset Alliance and with over 40 phones already using Android, as well as over 10 tablets, a few ereaders – and who knows what else – the future is surely bright for this one.
Tristan 1st June 2010 Add comment
New Web Folio
Enjoy! I’ve only put work sites on here for the time being. I’m looking to expand this in future. Also, if anyone desperately wants to see my student graphic design folio from ’06, I’m sure it’s still around somewhere.
Simon 8th April 2010 3 comments
What’s (been) going on?
Jesus! Well, it’s April tomorrow and Good Friday the day after. I don’t know where the time goes… the days crawl but the weeks fly by. Anyway, I thought I’d let you know what I’ve been up to this year outside of work hours, before any April foolery. Nothing personal, just a couple of web projects on the side…
Automatik Productions
This one I designed for my long-time friend and Melbourne-based producer and DJ, Steve Mowat, aka Matik. Steve and I came up with a bold new identity which set the basis for the site’s structure. Building an HTML5-flavoured WordPress template, I’ve allowed Steve to record his thoughts, creations and findings with ease. With a photo gallery and an emphasis on connecting through social media, this is a hub for both the industry and the public to connect with Matik. A monochrome scheme and confident type makes the site feel like you can understand the professionalism, class and attention to detail that is Matik, before you’ve even heard his beats.
Marcus Cobbledick
I’ve been honoured to work with Marcus and help him to establish his presence online. He has a fantastic body of work containing iconic poster design, motion graphics and title sequences that make you sit back and simply say, ‘wow’. He also designed this site himself, pixel-for-pixel, before getting me to write the code. Alright, I’ll stop writing and let the work speak for itself.
Simon O’Shea · Web Design Folio [Coming Soon]
Yep, that’s me! I’ve finished designing a new portfolio site that is dead simple and uses JavaScript to randomly organise a grid of some of the best sites that I’ve had a chance to work on over the last three years. I just have to finish writing a few spiels, cross the Ts and dot the… lowercase Js. Should be online next week.
Simantic Photos
That’s right, after a two year hiatus, I’ve decided this March that it was time to rekindle the love of my photography… blog. Hoping to redesign the section within the coming months. Enjoy.
Simon 31st March 2010 2 comments
The Road to CS5
Adobe announced today (or Tuesday U.S. time) that Creative Suite 5 will be released soon and that they will show-off features at an event to be streamed online on April 12th. So what are we to expect in terms of technologies? — Lightroom 3, Flash Catalyst, Business Catalyst, Adobe Story — not to mention updates to the major applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Audition and Premiere with 64-Bit Cocoa on the Mac and Windows 7 support? Whatever. I don’t really care, as long as they put this into Photoshop…
[via John Nack, Adobe and AppleInsider]
Simon 24th March 2010 Add comment
Finally, True Web Fonts!
One of the major players in the type industry, FontShop, has released licenses for real commercial fonts able to be used with CSS font embedding. For those unaware of CSS font embedding, the font is gathered using the @font-face construct rather than a regular selector. To embed the font files requires no use of Flash and no JavaScript. All you have to do is specify the font-family (typeface) name and its source file.
For Example:
@font-face {
font-family: "Helvetica";
src: url(/fonts/Helvetica.eot);
}
Read the Newsletter…
See the fonts…
Unfortunately FontShop says its formats don’t yet support Chrome, Safari or Opera and licensing fees aren’t dirt cheap, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Simon 25th February 2010 2 comments
20 Years of Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop turned 20 years old on Thursday. Initially developed by brothers Thomas and John Knoll in 1987 and published by Adobe on the Macintosh in 1990, Photoshop is now the industry standard image manipulation software application used by people in various creative fields and industries. And even today, Photoshop sets itself apart from its competitors with a combination of revolutionary technologies such as layers, channels, levels, curves and paths as well as various other tools, filters and features.
To celebrate, Adobe have launched a minisite, including a video (below) featuring the creators of Photoshop — Thomas Knoll, John Knoll, Steve Guttman, and Russell Brown. There are also various other celebratory posts on John Nack’s blog, Photoshop News et al.
Personally, although I have been using Macs for the past twenty years, and Windows for almost fifteen years, I had not really touched Photoshop until version 5, a little over ten years ago. Still, like many others, Photoshop has allowed me to study and have a career in the design industry. Ask anyone in photography, illustration, fashion design, product design, automotive design, publication design, graphic design, web design, animation, film production or visual effects and they’ll almost be guaranteed to have a copy of Photoshop running on their machine.
Simon 20th February 2010 Add comment