[Updated a few hours later to add a couple details I left out in the first draft.]

I just followed the live step-by-step blogging of the iPad release over at Engadget. The device looks pretty much like what I expected and its functionality is pretty much what I expected. It's basically... a giant iPod Touch. (I had expected a camera, though.)

Predator drone firing a Hellfire missile (source: US Air Force)

(This is a posting I started a while back (on my brother's b-day in May) but didn't publish at the time... don't remember why.)

I know this isn't RIA-related, but I just have to post this.

I'm currently re-reading Fahrenheit 451, an awesome book where Ray Bradbury (living legend of American litterature) displays his incredible ability to predict the social/political path the world would eventually take. Anyways, the gentleman author deserves every accolade/income-generating opportunity that he can get, which brings me to one of the strangest, off the wall commercials that I've ever seen.

It is like a compilation of an Ad agency list of what not to put into a commercial:

• Self-referential humour sticking it to the company that's vying for your money -- CHECK
• "Bada-bing" sound-effect after a bad pun is thrown out there -- CHECK
• Giant disembodied head of bespectacled sci-fi writer (who isn't in a bikini or ogling someone who is) -- CHECK
• Stock footage of NASA geeks turning dials and pushing buttons -- CHECK
• Mentioning the wrinkles on prunes -- CHECK

I give an A+ for boldness to the people at SunSweet. It's a wonder they're even still around. I guess those must be some good prunes.


A thought:

Why is it that I sincerely doubt that in this day and age, any modern advertisement agency would waste their time creating a commercial featuring a best-selling author of fiction (other than perhaps Algore, inventor of The Internets).

An early morning distraction...

Dial down your MyPods for a message from the luminary genius CEO/guru/deity of Mapple: Steve Mobbs.

Here is an excellent presentation (slides with audio) on "Generative UX Design" by Leah Buhley of Adaptive Path. She gave this presentation at the IA Summit 2008 (i.e. the Information Architect Summit). It is entitled "How to Be a UX Team of One" and goes over her personal best practices for Lone Ranger UX professionals.

One of Leah's key points: Business Needs + User Needs = Design Principles. In other words: software needs to be more than purely functional (i.e. business-focused). It also has to be personal (i.e. user-focused). I'd put it this way: "If all food were nutritious but tasteless, people would be no better off because they wouldn't eat enough to stay healthy."

Leah presents her ideas well and with a lot of passion and provides great food for thought. What more can I say, really? Check it out.

My take-aways (e.g. Leah's points mixed with some of my own ideas):

• Generate many ideas. The more the better. Sketch a lot. On paper, even. That said, you should still brainstorm within constraints. This is the real world, after all.
  
• Use a continuum (e.g. from beginner to power user), 2X2 or larger grid to organize your mock-ups. Experiment with word association, combine ideas, extract concepts from an idea. Build up, break down, re-organize.
  
• Compile an "Inspiration Library" by taking screen grabs of inspirational sites and applications. It incorporates competitive analysis but also provides mnemonic cues (Rorschach) for things that just plain work.
  
• Assemble an ad-hoc team at which to throw ideas and out of which to draw new ideas. Use sketchboards (i.e. butcher paper) on a wall to post up ideas and display low-fi mock-ups. If your ad-hoc group needs some guidance, use basic templates into which they can draw their own ideas.
• Abandon the ideal of the Artiste -- the beret-wearing holder of all design knowledge. Decorate your workspace with mock-ups, ideas, sketches. Get people's input. Be proud of incomplete/in-progress ideas. Share them and get people's impressions.
  

If you want to know what's new and ominously pending in the world of Flash and Flex, you owe it to yourself to check out these videos from Adobe Developer Connection, post haste!

They cover such mouth-watering topics as an intro to Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder 4 and provide a lot of information about Flex 4 as a language (including advanced CSS, skinning, animations and effects). They also describe the road ahead for AIR on the desktop, which frankly is something I'd like to know more about.

Click on the image below to watch the joint keynote by Kevin Lynch, Adobe's chief technical officer and David Wadhwani, the general manager and vice-president of the Flash Platform Business Unit (i.e. two very important dudes):

Adobe recently planted the seed for improved cooperation within the scattered LiveCycle community. In an effort to leverage the social web to combine our collective efforts to get the word out about LiveCycle and build up buzz and a shared base of common knowledge from which we can all benefit.

This "seed", as I call it, is LiveCycle Café, a social AIR app that provides all the tools to start sharing and gaining knowledge on the power of LiveCycle, leveraging Adobe corporate documentation, forums, live chat and various community contributions via a built-in RSS reader. The premise is that beginners and experts alike from across the globe (is that a contradiction?) will use it to connect with each other. LiveCycle is a very powerful but large set of tools, so gaining access to the many experts who are out there toiling in obscurity (some of them are toiling a few cubes away from me, here at 4Point) is a great asset. As we well know, we can only succeed by standing on the shoulders of giants, so having instant access to the cream of the LiveCycle crop can do nothing but make us better at what we do.

After the success of Tour de Flex (which just recently celebrated its 5,000,000th sample viewed) the fine folks at Adobe have released Tour de Livecycle, a one stop shop for discovering the many, many facets of the Livecycle Enterprise Suite. Hopefully this initiative will help put this powerful yet underrated offering from Adobe onto people's radar screens.

There's no point in me going into what Livecycle is, but suffice it to say that any self-respecting enterprise Flex developer owes it to him/herself to seriously consider gaining some Livecycle-related experience. "There be gold in them thar skills."

You know Ottawa has arrived when the Flash Builder 4 / Flash Catalyst Launch Tour announces a date at Adobe's offices here in Ottawa! Aside from the upcoming Flash Builder and Catalyst (if you haven't seen it yet, slap yourself now), there'll be a tutorial for PixelBender (which is freaking awesome), as well as a show off session for CartoVista (no clue).