Category: Design

Categories
Business Design Development

Fresno Co-Working; @Hashtag_Fresno

HASHTAG Fresno: “A new collaborative co-work, hackerspace in the crazy Tower District. Caffeine, internet, and people like you. 24 hour access. Pizza across the street. Coffee next door.”

Makes me wish I were an Indie Developer! For $29.00/month you get a space to work with other creative people. Absolutely brilliant idea! Sure, I know it’s not new, but it’s needed in Fresno. There are a lot of creatives and developers there, they’re just hiding. Hopefully this brings them out into the open.

I know I’ve called Fresno a Technology Black Hole, but that one post made me realize Fresno has a large collective of great designers and developers, and probably generated more great reader commentary than any other post on my weblog.

I ♥ HASHTAG Fresno, just for taking the leap of faith and giving this a go.

Be sure to follow them on Twitter and Facebook, and don’t miss the 59 Days of Code kickoff tonight, 10PM at HASHTAG Fresno.

Categories
Design Development

Gowalla for Android

Gowalla ButtonGowalla: “Gowalla 3 for Android is a completely new vision of using Gowalla. While it features many of the things that people love about its iPhone counterpart, we wanted to make the Android version something both uniquely Gowalla and uniquely Android. Every screen has been rethought and reworked. No stone was left unturned.”

It looks like the boys and girls from Texas took a page from their iOS playbook and ran with it. The result, a beautiful mobile application for Android.

Well done.

Categories
Design

Woo

WooThemes has an amazing collection of WordPress Themes, as well as a nifty plugin that gives you a Tumblr-like interface called WooTumblog, you can even use it from your iPhone.

I’m always on the hunt for my perfect theme, I still haven’t found it, but Woo had a bunch I really like. I’ve been looking for one that will let me create a great CHUNKY FOOTER. Looks like they have a few that do just that.

Here are some I like, not all of them have the big footer capability, I just like the styling.

Categories
Design

Great Design Tips

AHHHHHH!Mike Rundle: “The main light source comes from the top but that doesn’t mean you can’t introduce a secondary light source for emphasis. Below I’ve created a custom navigation bar for an iPhone application that uses a subtle radial highlight for added dimension and detail. The Blend Mode has been set to Overlay to brighten and saturate the overall color and the transparency has been knocked way down to keep it realistic. Also note the edge highlights to make it look more like a raised surface.”

My advice to any budding software developer, work with a great designer and UX person. It’ll make you look like a million bucks. I know from experience, having worked with a few GREAT DESIGNERS.

Mike is the author of Design then Code.

Categories
Design Development

Mini Giants

Hundred10: “We were excited to work with the Grizzlies on their iPhone app because of their position as marketing innovators in within MiLB. We threw some crazy ideas at them (some of which will have to wait for version 2.0) during the design phase and not once did they tell us to leave the room, which was a nice bonus. And all the app goodness is served up in delicious Retina Display high-res glory.”

My favorite feature is Card Me. It’s easy to use and you can publish your pictures to Facebook. Neat.

Here’s to many, many, more Hundred10 mobile applications.

Categories
Apple Design iPhone

Smartphone Evolution

Marco Arment:“Fans of the former types of smartphones and much of the tech press declared this smartphone useless or not capable enough because of its lack of a keyboard, its non-removable battery, its lack of expansion slots or ports, and other hardware features in which Apple chose differently from what most other manufacturers were doing.”

I was just talking to a co-worker about this the other day. Apple managed to wake up the smartphone market. Now we have such great choices; iPhone, Android, and Palm.

Categories
Design

Designer Mike Rohde on iPad

Mike Rohde: “Drawing works well on the iPad with a variety of useful drawing apps. I especially enjoy Adobe Ideas, Sketchbook Pro and Penultimate. The biggest issues are stylus options. I have the Pogo Sketch stylus and it works, but feels like drawing with a mushy pea on a stick. I’ve heard good things about the Dagi stylus but haven’t bought one yet. I hope more, better styli appear over time that feel like actual pens and pencils.”

If you haven’t caught The Conversation #20: Visual Thinking I’d recommend you do. Mike is a very talented designer and you owe it to yourself to listen to what he has to say. If the name sounds familiar it’s because he’s the designer of all those cool sketch style drawings in REWORK by 37Singnals, and SXSW Sketchnotes.

Categories
Design Life

Where’d the apple core go?

I’d added my apple core friends back to the weblog a few weeks back, I like ’em, and I missed ’em. But not being a CSS/HTML guru my decision to add it to the background, in CSS, wasn’t the proper decision. You see, it looks crummy on small displays, like the iPhone, and even on desktop displays that can’t display at high resolutions.

So, for the time being, they’re gone again, until I can figure out how to properly display them in the header of the page.

I'll be back!

Categories
Design

Should I?

Remember, April showers bring May flowers.I’ve been running at the new site, with a new look, for a while now and I’ve had a little feedback on the look. It’s been described as “Ugly”, “Baby Poo colors.” I’m being nice using the word poo.

That brings me to my point. Should I bring back the look of my original site?

Do you like the apple cores?

Categories
Design

Addy Boy!

Hundred10 Chronicles: “We were pleased to learn that all four earned Gold ADDYs this year (hey, those entries aren’t free, we might as well get our money’s worth). But the icing on the cake came when it was announced that GetJules.com also was named Best of Interactive and Best of Show (the Big Daddy ADDY, if you will). It’s the first time an interactive entry has ever taken home that award over the best of TV, radio, or print, which makes it doubly gratifying.” – I couldn’t think of a group of folks more deserving than the gang at Hundred10. They’re a class act and they deliver the goods. Well done!