kbignell / May 14, 2010, 5:18 pm
For the first time ever, the amount of data – text, e-mails, videos, music and other services – has surpassed the amount of voice data. “Originally, talking was the only cellphone application. But now it’s less than half of the traffic on mobile networks,” says Dan Hesse, chief executive of Sprint Nextel. In the past year the number of text messages sent has increased nearly 50% per user and the average local call length has dropped to 1.81 min, compared to 2.27 in 2008 (via nytimes.com).
So, what has caused this change? In my opinion, there are a couple of reasons that have led to this change:
1) Accessibility. Everyone is now online all the time. By tweeting, texting, or e-mailing you can talk to multiple people at a time, thus saving you – and the people you’re communicating with – time.
2) Intrusiveness. Calling someone seems much more intrusive then sending an e-mail or a tweet. It allows people to respond when it is convenient for them, and does not impose of anyone’s schedule.
2) Devices. It can take 2 to 3 steps to make a phone call on a cell phone these days. Smart phones with qwerty pads and touch-screens make it much easier (and more preferable) to send an email or text.
So next time you reach in your pocket to grab your phone stop and take a minute to think: what are you using your phone for?
Heather / October 30, 2008, 10:27 am
Earlier this week, on behalf of longtime client Backbone NYC, Blenderbox launched the newly-redesigned backbonenyc.com.
Back in 2005, Blenderbox created a compelling Flash-based website to showcase Backbone’s high-quality retouching and pre-press capabilities. In the intervening years, Backbone’s already robust portfolio grew by leaps and bounds, eventually outgrowing their portfolio section.
With the 2008 redesign, Blenderbox used updated Flash technology to bring Backbone’s portfolio front-and-center, revamping the organization and navigation scheme to allow easier access to their work.
Iain / October 20, 2008, 4:39 pm
This past weekend was the Rails Rumble and a team of intrepid blenderbox developers hunkered down in our Brooklyn headquarters and, in a mere 48 hours, produced a slick new web app: Compost.
Compost is the simple way to post, share, and present your design comps.
More than just a slideshow, Compost allows you to control your presentation and your message. Now your clients see what you want them to see, when you want them to see it.
Sharing comps is easy:
- Post. Give your gallery a name and upload your comps. Upload as many images as you need – all at once.
- Share. Invite people to view your new gallery. Emails are sent to your clients with a unique URL for their gallery.
- Present. Control your viewer’s experience in real-time – remotely! With complete control of your presentation, you decide when, and for how long, each image appears on-screen. The viewer – your client – sits back and watches the show.
Try it yourself.
Caleb / July 1, 2008, 8:26 am
Adobe has finally publicly acknowledged their very important problem with SEO and Flash and has made an effort to make Flash content easier for search engines (specifically Yahoo! and Google) to index by collaborating with both Google and Yahoo!.
From the press release:
Adobe is providing optimized Adobe® Flash® Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines.
Read more in the press release
While I do see this as an great thing, I would still recommend developers use SWFAddress to ensure deep linking to your content. I can see how both search engines would be able to pick up the content properly, but it would surprise me if the indexing is able to tell a user where that content lives within the site. It will be interesting to see how the content is indexed.
Caleb / May 22, 2008, 11:13 am
A really nice interview with one of the flash player engineers. They talk about ecmascript 4, the future of the web browser, silverlight, actionscript 3, web politics, etc. It’s really worth a watch (or listen in my case).
watch it on the FITC site
via colin’s blog
Caleb / May 9, 2008, 10:16 am
John Resig just ported over the Processing project to Javascript. Some really cool demos are coming out of it.
live molten pie chart
springs
It’s some pretty amazing stuff.
via kottke.org > via waxy
Matt / March 13, 2008, 8:11 am
An Opera developer writes up a comprehensive overview of the state of the mobile web design industry. Let me summarize, since it’s a long article:
- The iPhone is one slice of a much larger mobile market
- Mobile browsers are divided into two categories: full-featured (Opera Mobile and Safari) and constrained (WinWAP, Pocket IE, Blazer)
- Javascript support on mobile devices is uneven, always provide a fallback
- Design for 240 x 320; assume you’ll have a limited color palette to use and limited control over typography
- Plan for two distinct user experiences: Don’t ever assume that your web-based user experience will be the same on a mobile device
- Build one site that degrades well on mobile devices instead of building a second website just for mobile users
- Make use of the “handheld” media type for CSS
Matt / March 10, 2008, 11:27 am
They seem pretty impressed:
Apples sniffed out an industry that was divided into two disfunctional factions. The carriers, who are making the exact same strategic mistakes they made as long distance providers 20 years ago, and hardware manufacturers – also repeating old mistakes. The carriers are still caught up in creating barriers for consumers to maximize profit. Hand set makers are driving with technology first, the user second.
The iPhone is fundamentally changing the functional, developmental, and the business landscape of the mobile phone industry.
Matt / January 28, 2008, 5:58 pm
You may have seen this linked in several other places already: “The Autumn of the Multitaskers”:
This is the great irony of multitasking—that its overall goal, getting more done in less time, turns out to be chimerical. In reality, multitasking slows our thinking. It forces us to chop competing tasks into pieces, set them in different piles, then hunt for the pile we’re interested in, pick up its pieces, review the rules for putting the pieces back together, and then attempt to do so, often quite awkwardly. (Fact, and one more reason the bubble will pop: A brain attempting to perform two tasks simultaneously will, because of all the back-and-forth stress, exhibit a substantial lag in information processing.)
This idea isn’t new, but it’s always good to have incorrect conventional thinking challenged. Think of all the different ways software interrupts and asks you to multitask: IM conversations, Outlook & Gmail email notifications, not to mention temptations to interrupt yourself such as RSS readers or, uh… posting to the company blog.
37signals wrote a good post awhile back about the productivity benefits of disconnecting.
