Keep It Simple… the difficult task of paring things down

I spend my days working hard to keep things simple: gathering all the ideas that could go into a product (good and bad) and paring these down to the most effective and usable user experience possible. So, Mark Twain's quote resonates:

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

So whether it applies to a letter to your best friend, the model of an interaction with the world around you, the flow of a process, or the way you set up your living room, simplicity rules. Thanks to the folks at Zen Habits for addressing the subject directly. Here's a great nugget from Pare It Down: Cut Away the Extraneous to Leave the Awesome on things to consider when paring down:

• Spend a few minutes thinking about what is really essential. What is it that you really want above all else? What is it about your product or service that the customer really wants? What is it you are really trying to communicate? If you had to pick one thing about whatever you’re doing, what would it be?
• Be bold. Don’t be afraid to throw stuff out. You can always add stuff back in later — remember that less is better as long as you’re leaving in the essentials.
• What is blocking the essentials? Sometimes the awesome in something is being blocked by other things — can you remove those things to show the awesome and let it shine? Remove the noise to let the music be heard.
• Come back to it. Sometimes you can’t see the extraneous the first time you start paring down. So do your best, and then come back later and try again. You might be able to pare down even more this time. Keep coming back as long as you can — the more you pare, the better in most cases.

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Multitouch Comedy

Via Engaget

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Surfing Boosts the Brain

This is great truly great news. Scientific research suggests that surfing the web may be good for your brain health.

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Adobe CS4 - Content Aware Scaling

I'm really looking forward to CS4. Audio Transcription in Premiere, importing 3D layers from Photoshop into After Effects, new motion editor in Flash (thank you!), an my fav - Content aware scaling.

Content Aware Scaling in Photoshop CS4 from arturogoga on Vimeo.

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The Battle of the Smart Phones

I've been biding my time. Waiting... You know when someone tells you that your cell phone looks like it belongs to a construction worker, something is wrong. Not that I have anything against construction workers, but I do fancy myself a bit of a geek. It's difficult to walk around with a bulky, grungy, big hunk of plastic that I speak into from time to time. I operate methodically, though. I don't jump on the bandwagon and buy into the next big thing. I wait.

I've been very tempted to purchase an iPhone. Must wait to see and touch the Android and the Storm first.

Luckily Gizmodo has broken down the Smartphones OSes for us. I'm a step closer to making the decision.

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52 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Google

1. Browse the classics without opening a book
2. Never wake up your Australian relatives at 3am again
3. Convert £ to Yuan instantly
4. See the Cerne Giant in your bedroom
5. Automatically save every draft of your wedding list/seating plan
6. Flight arrival and departure times in real time
7. Say 'I don't speak Italian', in Italian
8. Are you big in Uzbekistan?
9. Settle trivia disputes in the pub
10. Watch your favourite YouTube clips in high-resolution
11. Stargaze on a bright sunny day, or on a cloudy afternoon
12. Get directions when you're on the move
13. Find out who's free for lunch without asking
14. Keep your family videos in the family
15. Know not only when the FTSE moves, but why
16. Find local cinema times
17. Make your homepage YOUR homepage
18. Inspiration, insight or information for your essay, dissertation or thesis
19. Turn your email into a conversation
20. Show your kid where the Komodo dragon lives
21. Go back to work without going back to the office
22. What Coleridge actually wrote was…
23. Have your daily schedule sent to you every morning
24. Map out the local sights for visiting friends
25. Share your YouTube favorites on the bus
26. Get the latest weather forecast for Hyderabad, or anywhere else on Earth
27. Search the web Elmer Fudd style
28. Fill in web forms with one click
29. Add comments directly into your videos
30. Star or label important emails for easy reference
31. See tomorrow's storm coming a thousand miles off
32. Multiply 27,334.56 by 21.3 without a calculator
33. Tart up your holiday snaps before sending them out to mates
34. Read a newspaper written in a language you don't speak
35. Learn a new skill in a minute
36. You are here. The pub you want is there
37. Work on the same document from four corners of the Earth
38. Know when to take the high road or the low road
39. Make yourself feel better - convert your weight from pounds to kilos
40. Translate your website into 13 languages with a single line of code
41. Glam up your YouTube channel
42. Find the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything
43. Find the email in the haystack
44. DJ at your friend's party...take your playlist with you
45. See the effects of climate change for yourself
46. Survey your mates to conclusively agree on the best film of all time
47. Be famous for 15 seconds, minutes or days
48. Travel as the crow flies, or go right around the houses
49. Work on your online documents even when you're offline
50. Love this video? Don't miss the sequel
51. Preserve instant message conversations
52. Add a YouTube player to your website

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Collection: Design Patterns

For those of us who daily design and build the things that work on the web, a great deal of our time is spent seeing how other folks do things, whether we like to admit it or not. A lot of the great ideas have already been done (not all, but a lot), so it often helps to take a look at those ideas, evaluate what you like and what you don't like, evaluate what you need and what you don't need, and determine what nuggets of beautiful design wisdom you can glean for your own project.

I know I've spent many hours surfing the web (billed as "competitive analysis"), looking at who does what well. So I ran across factoryjoe's Flickr account where he has compiled a valuable collection of interface and design elements found across the web. You could also call these elements "design patterns". So next time you're mulling over the perfect tagging interface - take a look at ways other folks have blazed that trail.

I do like the mantra factoryjoe has included with this collection - "Reuse, recycle, but don’t reinvent the wheel unless necessary." Thanks factoryjoe. You've just made life a little bit more fun for me, in a disturbingly geeky way.

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Mr. T

Awesome. This kid's been in a coma since the '80s and the only thing that could bring him out - Mr. T.
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There’s Something in the Air?

The rumor-mill is working overtime today. Tomorrow, Apple will announce exactly what is in the air. Is it the Macbook Air? Is Apple gobbling up Adobe? It should be an interesting Macworld Expo tomorrow.

I personally hope the rumor is true that Apple will be releasing the Macbook Air, which is said to be an ultra-portable laptop driven by flash memory and as cute as a button. Okay, I added the last part but it's Apple. What else would you expect? I'd be glad to have a small, lightweight machine to carry around and leave my hefty Macbook Pro at home. Probably most useful for surfing the web. Of course the price will have to be right. And it will have to be real. Some folks are pointing out bogus specs, claiming the Airbook's a hoax.

This is what Macrumors is reporting:

• A slim notebook, but not a "sub notebook"
• 13.3" screen
• Not a "Pro" machine
• External Optical Drive
• It will be called the MacBook Air

And if Apple's buying Adobe and it's AIR platform... that works for me too. Somehow everything Steve Job's touches turns to gold (wait, what about the Apple Cube?), so I'd guess we'd see some out-of-the-box improvements. I guess we'll see tomorrow.

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