Hello! I’m a H3 Header

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Hello Again! – i’m a H4 Header

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Hello Again! – i’m a H4 Header

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Got what it takes to be a web designer?

Consult the chart:

Found this one at Six Revisions

A LEGO a day…

Just found this: Dan, another wordpress blogger, decided to take a LEGO-themed photo everyday for a full year. This has given birth to some really funny and creative images.

Day 342: The World was angry - Except for Leon

Day 355

Day 258: Braaaaaaiiiiiiins!

Anyway, take a look for yourself at Dan’s blog

The Quicktime Conundrum

Ever since Quicktime 7, there’s been a wierd bug when encoding h.264 videoes using Quicktime Pro. The gamma is being offset and the colors get washed out as shown below

Actually, in Snow Leopard, the entire system gamma has been shiftet to 2.2 from the old 1.8, which means this problem, along with a bunch of other color-related ones, have been mostly fixed for people running that OS – More about that here…

However, this does not fix the gamma problem if users with Mac OS 10.5, or god forbid, windows, were to see your videos. That’s because the system gamma only affects how your monitor displays content it doesn’t actually alter the content.

How to fix it?

There’s a couple of ways to do it. One way is to change the videos transparency settings to “Straight Alpha” (Windows) or “Composition” (Mac OS) – And then save the video again.

The problem though, is this method disables fast playback, i.e. the ability to start playback of the video before it’s entirely downloaded. It also seems like too much of a pain in the ass to have to remember to re-save each and every video you’ll ever encode with the h.264 encoder.

You could also change your monitor color profile, but once again that only changes your own perception of the video, not everybody else’s.

Yesterday i ran into this annoying problem again, and decided it was time to kill that bug once and for all. That’s when I found this nifty little encoder. It cured all my gamma and color problems entirely. -And it even turned out to be a much easier work-around. than those mentioned above.

Step by step

1: Go to http://www003.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mycometg3/ and download the latest x264 encoder. (Current version is 1.1.2)

2: Inside the disc image(.dmg) you’ll find the following file  ”x264Encoder.component” The icon looks like a Lego block.

3: Place the file in: MainHarddrive/library/QuickTime. You’ll see a bunch of other .component files there.

4: Now open a video in the QuickTime Player. (If you’re running Snow Leopard you need to find QuickTime Player 7 under applications/utilities as QuickTime  Player 10 has been stripped of the ‘pro’ export features).

5: Go to File > Export(cmd+e) and chose ‘Movie to QuickTime-Movie’ as you normally would.

6: In the encoder drop-down list you’ll find a new one, ‘x264Encoder’. Pick it and render your video as you normally would.

Now your exported movie should look just fine. Easy as pie

7 (Optional): Now, if you want to go the geek-route, and really get messy with the video settings, you can. The x264 Encoder adds a neat little ’settings’ button below the ‘quality’-slider.

That’s it!

I hope this relieves some headaches and confusion around the QuickTime gamma bug. Do leave any comments below if  you need something elaborated or i’ve provided wrong info of any kind.

The technology behind Google Street View

When i first saw a link to this one on twitter, i actually hoped to get some insight on the way they run this incredible technology over at Google. Even though that wasn’t the case, it kept me smiling all the way ’till the end

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQGrIsYUm4c]

- Great work by whoever made this for Google Japan.

Simple, and does little more than what you’d expect!

It’s not a technical wonder, nor is it a mindblowing design or a big bubble of creativity, bursting in front of you, with all the colors of the universe.

- It’s just a simple way of displaying their autumn line-up, with minimal effort required by the user, but still spiced with exactly the right amount of creativity, to make you smile  and enjoy looking around.

Why is this worth writing about?

When you come across as many websites as i do (I’m a graphic/interactive designer), it’s nice to stumble upen something, once in a while, that’s just excactly what you’d expect. Don’t get me wrong; i love AR, alternative navigation and full browser Hi-Def-blow-you-away experieces as much as the next guy (probably more, since i chose to make excactly that kind of thing my living …).

- But this time i was really pleased with a website basically telling me: “Oh, hello Sir. Here’s our collection – You navigate with the arrow keys. If you find something you want a second oppion on, we’ve made a share function, and if you want to check out a combination of garments we’ve got a place for that – Oh and btw here are some fluffy leaves and slow music to set the ambience.” It took me around 5 seconds to understand every function of the website, but i stayed around for around 10 minutes and chose to write a blog post on my experience.

Anyway, take a look around for yourself – This one was created by the talented people at Perfect Fools, the award winning studio, who also made Mentos Kiss Cam among a lot of other very cool websites.

Still think social media is a fad?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsoshable%2Ecom%2Fstill%2Dthink%2Dsocial%2Dmedia%2Dis%2Da%2Dfad%2F&feature=player_embedded#t=263]

Saw this little video over at Soshable. Figured it was worth sharing

From the video:

• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year met via social media
• Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million people, TV took 13 years, facebook had 100 million users in less than 9 months.
• If facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest, yet it wouldn’t even be as large as QQ, which is mainly used in china.
• Online students out-performs those recieving face-to-face education
• 80% of twitter usage is on mobile devices
• 76% of perople trusts peer recommendations. only 14% trusts advertising
• Youtube is the worlds 2nd largest search engine
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.
• Studies show, that wikipedia, on average, is more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica.

Facebook Lite

Earlier today Facebook announced the following to a select few:

“We are building a faster, simpler version of Facebook that we call Facebook Lite. It’s not finished yet and we have plenty of kinks to work out, but we would love to get your feedback on what we have built so far.

Check out Facebook Lite now at http://lite.facebook.com.”

Facebook Lite

What is Facebook Lite?

It’s a simplified version of the Facebook platform. It definately looks like their take on micro-blogging and it also looks like a direct attack on Twitter.

Facebook Lite displays little more than the most recent updates from you and your friends. Actually, it kind of seems like Facebook without all the “noise and clutter”.

Is Facebook trying to be too many things?

You might very well argue that Facebook is attempting to cater to two different groups of people.

The first group of people enjoy the constant, global, live-streaming “twitter-way” of doing things. This includes public status updates from all over the world and real-time search.

The second group of people are more locally engaged. They are mostly interrested in their friends. Be it insider-jokes, relationship statuses, vacation photos or just frivolous updates about their breakfast. It’s important to remember that this was also Facebook’s starting point.

However, the most recent updates to Facebook have all been focused on the first group of people, and Facebook actually  tried to buy out Twitter some time ago. Then, just recently, they aquired FriendFeed instead (A service somewhat similar to twitter).

What will the outcome be?

The big question then remains; if Facebook starts looking, and feeling, too much like twitter, will the second group of people leave for another service – or will Facebook eventually be able to establish a solid foundation within micro-blogging without losing too many users in their change of direction?

Please share your opinion below.

It’s wrong to be right!

Being right is based upon knowlede and experience and is often provable. Knowledge comes from the past, so it’s safe. It is also out of date. It is the opposite of originality.

Experience is built from solutions to old situations and problems. The old situations are probably different from the present ones, so that old solution will have to be bent to fit new problems – And possibly fit badly – Also, the likelihood is that, if you’ve got the experiance, you’ll probably use it. -This is lazy..!

Experience is the opposite of being creative. If you can prove you’re right, you’re set in concrete. You cannot move with the times or with other people.

Being right is also being boring. You mind is closed. You are not open to new ideas. You are rooted in your own rightness, which is arrogant. Arrogance is a valuable tool, but only if used very sparingly.

Worst of all, being right has a tone of morality about it. To be anything else sounds weak or fallible, and people who are right would hate to be tought fallible.

So: It’s wrong to be right, because people who are right are rooted in the past, rigid-minded, dull and smug.

It’s right to be wrong

Start being wrong and suddenly anything is possible. You’re no longer trying to be infallible.

You’re in the unknown. There’s no way of knowing what can happen, but there’s more chance of it being amazing than if you try to be right. Of course, being wrong is a risk.

Prople worry about suggesting stupid ideas, because of what ofthers will think. You will have been in meetings, where new thinking has been called for. At your original suggestion, instead of saying, ‘that’s the kind of thinking, that leads us to a novel solution’, the room goes quiet, they look up to the ceiling, roll their eyes and return to the discussion.

Risks are a measure of people. People who won’t take them are trying to preserve what they have. People who do take them often end up by having more. Some risks have a future, and some people call them wrong. But being right may be like walking backwards proving where you’ve been.

Being wrong isn’t in the future, or in the past. Being wrong isn’t anywhere but here.

It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be.

Paul Arden - Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi for 14 years

The two viewpoints above are heavily inspired  by Paul Arden and  page 54-57 of his book It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be.

It’s a pocket-size, fast read, filled with subjects as diverse as the value of being fired, clients and how to get past mental blocks.

- And of course i’d suggest it to … pretty much anyone, anywhere.

My first encounter with this cool new technology

Browsing the FWA, as i do from time to time, i ran into this little browser-based 3D game. I was so impressed with the performance and over-all quality i had to share it.

The Robin Hood Showdown game - Made with Unity3D

Adobe flash + Papervision3D performance trouble

Browser-based 3D has been around for a long time now, but the rich internet applications(RIA’s) that utilize it has mostly been flash-based with the help from ActionScript libraries such as Papervision3D, Sandy 3D and others.

One problem with these websites though, is performance tend to be a drag. Especially on older machines!

What is Unity3D?

Unity3D was used to create the Robin Hood game above. It’s a multiplatform game develoment tool with a lot of cool features.

Unity3D's advanced graphics engine

Editing a terrain with Unity3D

Deployment

Content created with this application is not only available for web deployment, but also as stand-alone applications for both Windows(2000/xp/vista) and Mac OS X.

iPhone publishing

Yes, it can even works as a publishing platform for the App Store, so you can download and run the content from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

- A big knock-out to flash, with the iPhone not supporting it.

Graphical Fidelity

Unity has a graphics pipeline that supports both DirectX, OpenGL, animated meshes, particle systems, advanced lightning and shadows and a bunch more.

Developers and 3D Artists will be able to create beautiful, online, 3D-experiences well above what we’re used to seeing today.

Unity3D graphics engine

I, for one, can’t wait to see more websites beginning to implement this technology. But until then, have fun with the game.

Read more

• Bartek Drozdz of Everydayflash.com wrote a great post about Unity3D. He also talks about Unity vs Flash.
• Unity3D’s official website