Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits etc for Mobile Apps

To mock-up the user interface of a website, software or any other product, you’ll need some basic UI elements. And this is where wireframing kits and UI design kits come in handy. When you want to create a low-fidelity prototype for your projects, you can use these kits to give your idea a certain shape, keeping it abstract and not losing yourself in details.

In this post, we’ve prepared an overview of useful web and mobile user interface kits, handy PDFs and resources that you can use in your projects. We’ve carefully selected the most useful kits and resources to get you going in the early stages of a project.

Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits, PDFs and Resources - Smashing Magazine

20 Apps that Help Freelance Designers Be More Productive

Enhance your productivity through the use of some great applications. Here are twenty essential applications that will make your output soar.

iPad Magazines: The Pros & Cons

More at RWW

Top 10 student mobile apps

Target audience: Students, educators, nonprofits, social change organizations, mobile diehards
Article here

How to Create Your First iPhone App

This how-to guide is supposed to walk you through the steps to make your idea for an iPhone app a reality. This post presents various ideas, techniques, tips, and resources that may come in handy if you are planning on creating your first iPhone application.
More at Smashing Magazine

Monday, August 23, 2010

Visualizing the Creative Process


"Creativity is like a snake swallowing a series of tennis balls."
More at Lost Garden

Deconstructing Creativity

Do you want to be fully creative? To not only have wild ideas, but to actually create and bring remarkable things to life?

There are four distinct roles to be performed for the creative process to be as effective as possible. Each one requires that you play different characters, with different mindsets and skills.

The roles are: Explorer, Artist, Judge and Warrior.

Learn how they help unleash your creativity and how to master the skills each one requires here.

Joseph Campbell Rising

“The old gods are dead or dying and people everywhere are searching, asking: What is the new mythology to be, the mythology of this earth as of one harmonious being?” - Joseph Campbell Joseph Campbell often pointed out that Western culture is in a mythological free fall. Literal interpretations of the Judeo-Christo-Islamic tradition do not universally match the individual’s experience of today: to use another Campbellism, the science of 2000 B.C. does not belong in the world of 2000 A.D. We have no current universal myth that rings true in our experience, so the individual – and the culture-at-large – is adrift on a sea of conflicting beliefs and mythological images. This spiritual chaos is reflected in cultural turmoil and existential angst: violent crimes, drugs, rampant materialism, superficial values, instant gratification, constant overstimulation, and on and on. Hungry ghosts are loose in the land, though just what they hunger for, no one can quite say.

Into this void steps the artist.

More at PlanetShifter.com Magazine

15 Inspirational, Motivational Tips to Help You Dream Big

What's your big dream? What's getting in the way of making it come true?
Psychology Today

What They Know

Marketers are spying on Internet users -- observing and remembering people's clicks, and building and selling detailed dossiers of their activities and interests. The Wall Street Journal's What They Know series documents the new, cutting-edge uses of this Internet-tracking technology. The Journal analyzed the tracking files installed on people's computers by the 50 most popular U.S. websites, plus WSJ.com. The Journal also built an "exposure index" -- to determine the degree to which each site exposes visitors to monitoring -- by studying the tracking technologies they install and the privacy policies that guide their use.

More at the Wall Street Journal

The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet

You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times — three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix’s streaming service.

You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone... more at Wired Magazine

The Web Dies, the Hype Lives: What Wired left out of its eulogy

Maybe you heard: The web has been declared dead, and everybody’s mad about it.

I’ll get to checking the web’s vital signs in a moment, but one thing is clear: The hype and hucksterism of packaging, promoting, and presenting magazine articles is very much alive.... more at The Nieman Journalism Lab

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Is "Free" the Right Price for Your Product?

Certainly "free" - and by extension "freemium" - has become one of the most popular pricing models for web companies. Evernote, Pandora, and as of yesterday SlideShare are among the companies that offer customers some version of their product for free, with additional features and services for a premium fee.

But just because a freemium model works for one company doesn't mean that it's right for all. And in a recent blog post, the Foundry Group's Seth Levine offers some advice on pricing, including as the title of his blog post suggests, "why you may not be charging enough for your product."

More from RWW

Catalogue of Mobile Phone Performances, Installations & Artworks

An Informal Catalogue of Mobile Phone Performances, Installations and Artworks - Golan Levin and Collaborators

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Psychogeographic Audio Tour

In the Audio Tour, there is nothing to tell you when and where to listen to any particular entry, except your own moods, inclination, and place.

The Audio Tour is a form of psychogeography, a type of conscious wandering developed by Guy Debord and the Situationist International. Psychogeography attempts to reveal the 'real city' underneath what Debord called The Spectacle, which can be generally described as the flashy and seductive commodification of ideas. The real city represents your own emotional experience of something, before it has been sold back to you (which in today's Spectacle, can happen even before you experience it).

Specifically, the Audio Tour draws on the concepts of the dérive and détournement. The dérive, or, "to drift," involves walking around and trying to follow the emotional and psychological trajectories of an urban environment, rather than the ones planned out for you (the main highway, the shortest commute from home to work, etc.) To pursue a dérive was ". . . to notice the way in which certain areas, streets, or buildings resonate with states of mind, inclinations, and desires, and to seek out reasons for movement other than those for which an environment was designed," explained Sadie Plant in 1992. It is the perfect approach to Burning Man, and what many of us do there already.

The Audio Tour and Peggy Nelson's other work

Working artfully with online communities

It has been said that the post digital age is the age of participation. Some arts and cultural organisations are recognising that people want to contribute to the making, be included in the creating and see behind the scenes....more from Arts Queensland

Friday, August 13, 2010

Cyborg Anthropology

The compression and experience of space and time are becoming increasingly important. As technosocial humans we are no longer living in one place at one time. Time has compressed itself so far that we now have time within time, and space within space. While you sit in your apartment, you are experiencing your local time and space but also the digital time and space. By opening up the terminal or browser window, you can experience an entirely different time and space. Geography can be rapidly switched with the touch of a button. This 'fractal time' annihilates geography, allowing the punctuation of one space with another space, one piece of time with another. My iPhone collapses multiple social geographies into one. Facebook, Twitter, SMS, Voicemail, websites, news, incoming calls, notes to my future self, apps, ect. Each digital geography has a different set if natives, some imports, and some immigrants. Each space has different social norms and different ways of presenting oneself. Each space has different social classes and entrance requirements. But with a computer or iPhone, the travel time between those different geographies is almost instantaneous.

In the same way that a cell phone opens up a wormhole between two users for a limited amount of time, social networks open up wormholes to each other through text, creating invisible, 4th dimensional wormholes from person to object to person to object through text. People begin to become hyperlinks, text begins to become social objects, developing personality and having social value.

In the end, all text becomes linkable, all history becomes linkable to the future, every moment capable of being saved, reported, commented on and played back in slow or fast motion. Each reported moment becomes social capital, increasing the amount of embeddedness that networks and nodes have with each other.

As node distance decreases, communication becomes more liquid, and digital geography between two people, thoughts, ideas, or groups becomes more instantly traversed. There become a range of those who are connecting more tightly together and a series of those who remain loosely connected in the analog space. Envision a conical basket whose weave is becoming tighter at one end while the other end remains loose and unconnected, fibers sticking out of the unfinished side of the basket. As time progresses, even these loosely connected fibers begin to weave themselves together, finishing the basket at some point in the future when almost evereything is connected. As in real life, the most connected points of the basket are the strongest.

Time and Space Compression - Cyborg Anthropology

Net Neutrality is Critical for Innovation

The level playing field of the net today allows small companies to grow very quickly and to challenge larger players. With everyone operating on the same bandwidth (for example), a startup can theoretically compete with large established companies. Without net neutrality, the larger companies with bigger budgets could position themselves to wedge out any smaller competition, stifling innovation.

More...

Thursday, August 12, 2010

The Edge: Catalyst call out

The Edge is calling for Catalyst applications from professionals in writing, music/sound, digital visual arts and sustainability.

Edge Catalysts are people working where creativity meets technology, pushing boundaries and generating ideas. Catalyst positions are paid, temporary part-time roles for six months.

During this time, Catalysts contribute to happenings at The Edge, running workshops and forums, performing at events and providing their particular brand of skill and expertise.

Applications close 5pm 27 August 2010.

Download the position description here

Digital Culture Fund v2.0 - call for applications

The Australia Council’s Digital Culture Fund initiative supports artistic projects exploring liveness, connectivity and participation made possible with new digital platforms.

This is an exciting Australia Council initiative open to artists from all artforms, so please promote to your networks.

We encourage proposals for innovative digital culture projects with:

· Artists and audiences co-creating new forms of live experience

· Experimentation across platforms and to engage diverse communities with creative practice

· Inventive strategies for live collaboration, presentation and distribution of artwork.

The Australia Council invites proposals from artists who are experienced working with digital technology, who may work with visual, sound, performance, literary or interdisciplinary arts, artistic games or transmedia experiences. Applicants can be unknown, emerging or established makers, applying as an individual or a collective.

Your project timeline may include research and/or creative development, but must include a public presentation of new work in 2011. You can apply for up to $40,000 from the Digital Culture Fund. Securing co-funding and establishing partnerships to make your project viable would be an advantage.

This initiative is managed by the Inter-Arts office on behalf of the Australia Council as part of the ‘Arts content for the digital era’ strategy.
Digital Culture Fund v2.0 - call for applications | artsdigitalera

The Future of the Internet

The Internet is a medium that is evolving at breakneck speed. It’s a wild organism of sweeping cultural change — one that leaves the carcasses of dead media forms in its sizeable wake. It’s transformative: it has transformed the vast globe into a ‘global village’ and it has drawn human communication away from print-based media and into a post-Gutenberg digital era. Right now, its perils are equal to its potential.

The debate over ‘net neutrality’ is at a fever pitch. There is a tug-of-war going on between an ‘open web’ and a more governed form of the web (like the Apple-approved apps on the iPad/iPhone) that has more security but less freedom.

So what’s the next step in its evolution, and what’s the big picture? What does the Internet mean as an extension of human communication, of the human mind? And forget tomorrow — where will the web be in fifty years, or a hundred? Will the Internet help make the world look like something out of Blade Runner or Minority Report? Let’s just pray it doesn’t have anything to do with The Matrix sequels, because those movies really sucked.

This article will offer in-depth analysis of a range of subjects — from realistic expectations stemming from current trends to some more imaginative speculations on the distant future.

From Smashing Magazine.

Fractal Art

60 Beautiful Fractals created with Apophysis : Part 1

Action Research

A Learning tool that engages Complexity. Think digital media maker attached to art Catalyst's participatory project... how media making becomes the tool for reflection and learning. Can this process contribute to the Living Arts policy?
Action Research - A Learning tool that engages Complexity

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Web 3.0+ and Collective Intelligence

The ancient Chinese curse or saying — “May you live in interesting times.” — is upon us. We are in the midst of a new revolution fueled by advancements in the Internet and technology. Currently, there is an abundance of information and the size of social interaction has reached a colossal scale. Within a span of just one generation, the availability of information and our access to them has changed dramatically from scarcity to surplus. What humans will do or try to do with such powerful surplus of information will be the main topic of this article. First, let’s understand what brought us to this current state....

More from Mysimpleprocesses at Forecast 2020: Web 3.0+ and Collective Intelligence

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Creative Commons publications

Agonising over copyright attribution? Check out these publications.

Open Content Licensing: Cultivating the Creative Commons, brings together papers from some of the most prominent thinkers of our time on the internet, law and the importance of open content licensing in the digital age.

The Blog, Podcast, Vodcast and Wiki Copyright Guide for Australia examines copyright issues which impact upon creators and users of blogs, podcasts, vodcasts and wikis in the Australian legal environment. In doing so it provides practical examples of how these issues may arise and be resolved.

Legal Aspects of Web 2.0 Activities: Management of Legal Risk Associated with Use of YouTube, MySpace and Second Life. The report identifies the practical legal risks associated with activities conducted in online participatory spaces. Encompassing Copyright, Privacy, Defamation, Breach of Confidence and other areas of law, the report outlines the main considerations that arise when engaging in the online environment.

Download these reports here

Monday, August 9, 2010

The Future of Media

Media, entertainment, and related industries are positioned at the center of massive global growth. There are 7 driving forces at play:

1. Increasing media consumption
2. Fragmentation
3. Participation
4. Personalization
5. New revenue models
6. Generational change
7. Increasing bandwith

Download the Future of Media Report

The Use of Mobile Phones in Citizen Media

In this report we explore the dynamics of the role of mobile phones in enhancing access to and creating information and citizen-produced media. We explore trends in the use of mobile telephony with a focus on software and platforms that make content creation and broadcasting easier.

Download the report at MobileActive.org

Mentors: Now in New Flavors!

Let’s consider mentoring as being possible along a spectrum—from heavyweight to lightweight. Heavy is the one most of us are familiar with. Its coordination costs are high. The mentee must know the right person and be able to schedule the appropriate time and place where they can meet. The mentee often has to agree to the terms put forth by the supervising institution, whether it be a workplace, school, or some other organization. Commitment levels are high for both parties. Violations of agreements (formal and informal) can, and do, result in the relationship dissolving. This type of mentoring can be fragile, complex, and hard to come by.

Lightweight mentoring, on the other hand, uses today’s social media, avoiding many of the difficulties associated with traditional mentoring. While it’s not necessarily better than traditional mentoring, it provides opportunities that many people would otherwise not have. It allows you to connect with a variety of minds and is very dynamic, easily adapting to your changing needs. Let’s look at some possible ways to get involved in lightweight mentoring, both as a mentor and mentee....

More from Education for Well-being

The Shape of Thought

Across cultures and throughout time, certain shapes have carried the power to inspire, intimidate, delight and inform. A spiral, a pentagram, a labyrinth may invoke momentary longing, fear, or curiosity, although we may not know why. Over the millennia, many mathematicians, artists and scientists studied the secrets of timeless symbols—shapes that seem to resonate with Nature and the human mind. But only in modern times, with the explosion of new tools and technologies, has science enabled us to experience the profound truth...

Shape of Thought

Friday, August 6, 2010

A Content Strategy For Audience Engagement

CULTURE HACKER focuses on how tech impacts storytelling. Media consumption is changing and Culture Hacker looks at how the collision of gaming, music, film and technology is changing the way stories are told and delivered to audiences.

Culture Hacker