Smartphone Market Heats Up

From NPR.org, "The newest iPhone goes on sale Friday. For many, so-called smartphones like iPhones and BlackBerries are more than gadgets, they are a necessity. And as demand for the products has grown, so has competition. It's now an epic business battle." Listen to the story.

This piece was produced in Seattle for national broadcast today. The mobile device market (hardware and software) is on fire. Seattle seems poised for the next great media revolution...massive computing power in everyone's pocket.

Fun Family Video

My daughter Skylar and friends decided to take her 10th birthday party on the road to Bainbridge Island. Beach fun, touring the shops and eating the food. I attended as chauffeur and videographer. Above are the results.

My Favorite Design Blogs

Many online resources exist for today's designers. Check out my list below for sites that review tools, showcase products, provide tutorials and link creative people to other creative people. Even if you are not a designer, these sites are just plain fun to look at.

Web Designer Wall: A wall of design ideas, web trends, and tutorials.

Creative Nerds: Tutorials, news, inspiration and freebies.

Smashing Magazine: Hacks, tips, freebies, tutorials, fonts and more.

Uselog: The product usability weblog.

WeFunction: Web design company that posts links to free themes, inspiring before and afters and tutorials.

Design Reviver: Providing web designers with valuable information such as tutorials, free downloads, sources of inspiration, and articles covering a wide range of web design related topics.

Fuel Your Creativity: Articles, links and samples for designer block.

Boxes and Arrows: Devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design; including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture and the design of business.

Core 77: Articles, discussion forums, extensive event calendar, portfolio hosting, job listings, a database of design firms, schools, vendors and services.

Design with Intent: Design for sustainable behavior. How do people use products, systems and environments? How can designers influence interaction?

Doors of Perception: Starting new conversations on design and innovation.

Photoshop Star: Free Photoshop tutorials.

Outlaw Design Blog: Free resources, product reviews, tutorials and a guide to passive income.

Vandelay Design: Provides helpful and informative posts that meet the needs of web designers or online entrepreneurs.

Noupe: News for designers and web-developers on all subjects of design, ranging from; CSS, Ajax, Javascript, web design, graphics, typography, advertising & more.

Devlounge: Design, web apps, interviews and code.

Just Creative Design: Designer Jacob Cass posts articles about graphic design, logo design, web design, advertising, branding, typography, and icons.

Jhames: Seattle designer James Elliott shares insights about techniques and about the design industry.

Spoon Graphics: Tutorials, techniques, links and inspiration.

Six Revisions: Practical, useful information for the modern, standards-compliant web designer and web developer.

Emily Chang: Award-winning web and interaction designer, technology strategist and entrepreneur.

Web Designer Help: Tutorials, interviews, competitions.

Elite by Design: A design community dedicated to providing helpful and insightful articles in the fields of web design, web development, and Photoshop.

My Experiments with Self-Publishing

I've just launched an experiment in self-publishing. I've used the service Lulu.com to create an online store for my picture books. It's called ClayBot.com and it takes advantage of on-demand technologies, only printing a physical book when someone orders from the store. No inventory. No overhead.

I chose Lulu after researching a bunch of services that are available. So far I like it, but I am definitely going to experiment with some other sites. Some similar services include: Blurb, iUniverse, Xlibris, Trafford, Gorham, Amazon's Booksurge, Amazon's CreateSpace, CafePress, Scribd, and AuthorHouse.

Online Video Mega List UPDATE1

Below are recent additions to my Online Video MegaList. This list is intended as an overview of video websites that are significant to digital content creators and digital content consumers. Learn where to upload your clips, where to find online video entertainment, where to find progressive multimedia, how to monetize your content and more. See the full list which is organized into categories such as Infrastructure, Upload Sites, Entertainment, Tools, and more.

• PLYmedia: Development, design, manufacturing and deployment of an interactive, multi-dimensional web video platform.
• jetvision: Jetvision provides immediate access to all your content in a single web video player that’s customized to match your existing website.
• VideoClix.tv: VideoClix’s original clickable video authoring software segmented, tracked, tagged and categorized objects within videos.
• VUVOX: VUVOX is an easy to use production and instant sharing service that allows you to mix, create and blend your personal media – video, photos and music into rich personal expressions.
• LANDLINE TV: A comedy video site that is "comically relevant...for about a week or so."
• Syndicaster: Syndicaster is adding several online distribution options for local TV stations, including the ability to publish video clips to YouTube, AOL (via Brightcove), Yahoo and other sites. Syndicaster is an online editing and video-clip management service that allows TV stations to broadcast any news clip and repurpose it for the Web by publishing it to their own Websites or through its sister service ClipSyndicate (both Syndicaster and ClipSyndicate are divisions of Critical Media).
• VidPay: A white label platform for sponsored video campaigns, helping video advertisers reach their intended audience.
• ActiveVideo: ActiveVideo Networks brings the full Web-media experience to TV, using well-established Internet and On-demand infrastructure. With 24 issued patents, ActiveVideo provides a mature, stable platform with infinite programming possibilities.
• Intruders tv : The leading provider of valuable insights through their unique approach to capturing Innovators on video.
• Kyte: Kyte is an end-to-end, online and mobile platform for the production, distribution and monetization of video content.
• ffwd: This video recommendation engine has just released its API to developers.
• Sling Media: Cool digital settop boxes that stream cable from your house to your computer. They will soon release an iPhone app that gives instant access to Cable TV and Tivo while roaming.
• Another settop box is Roku who will soon have a new product to Stream Netflix and Amazon video on demand.
• The Fancast Store: Online video store with a respectable selection of modern films.
• STRIKE.TV: Born out of the writers strike, designed to challenge members of the Writers Guild to create original programs for the Internet. The ad revenue profits go to the Writers Guild Foundation Industry Support Fund.
• Dailymotion: Video upload, sharing and categories.
• Heavy: Early-comer online video company focused on creating entertainment experiences for various demographics.
• Mixpo: An online video advertising technology company based in Seattle.
• mywaves: The largest free mobile video destination for consumers, attracting over 5 million unique visitors monthly to its free mobile video service.
• VideoSurf: A site for users to search, discover and watch online videos.
• Ooyala: Manage, monetize, syndicate and analyze your online video. Founded by two seasoned Google veterans.

See the full Online Video Mega List.

PBS Launches New Video Portal

PBS has just launched their new video portal. They've learned from sites like Hulu and are offering tons of free content in streaming, full-screen HD format. It seems they are not allowing bloggers to embed video, but they do have a bunch of social media features that allow users to post to FaceBook, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.

Check it out for full length videos of FrontLine, Julia Child, NOVA, Nature, The NewsHour, American Masters and more. And no ads!

The 100 Most Iconic Internet Videos

If there is one thing the internets are good for, it is stupid video clips. URLesque.com has recently posted the 100 Most Iconic Internet Videos list. You may agree or disagree with their choices, but you will certainly waste a great deal of time examining their rankings.

Notable videos on the list include: The Landlord, Lonelygirl15, Guys Backflip Into Jeans, Miss Teen South Carolina, Dramatic Chipmunk, Exploding Whale, Don't Tase Me Bro, The Evolution of Dance, Diet Coke and Mentos Eruption, Charlie Bit My Finger, OK Go Treadmill Video, Lazy Sunday, Where the Hell Is Matt?, David After Dentist, Leave Britney Alone, Christian The Lion, and of course, The Star Wars Kid.

Digital Paper, eBooks and Multimedia Storytelling

Although I still subscribe to two newspapers and I love to read magazines and books, I am nonetheless excited about all the new eBook readers and digital paper technologies becoming available. With so many newspapers in trouble, many writers and readers are going digital.

The Kindle has really sparked a firestorm of recent interest, but there are a ton of other fascinating projects going on. Soon I hope to be digesting blogs, watching video, and reading articles and novels on a paper-thin, flexible color screen with tiny hi-def speakers. Bring it on!

Check out the links below for info on eBook technology, digital paper and what all this is doing to storytelling.

Watch Richard Archuleta, CEO of Plastic Logic demonstrate the world's first electronic reader aimed specifically for business users:
(Also see some other video from Plastic Logic.)

Both Plastic Logic and Kindle were recently mentioned on NPR's Marketplace (April 13, 2009): "New e-readers get a big push. E-readers allow users to read books digitally, but sales of the hand-held devices have grown slowly. That may be changing as Amazon and Sony, along with some well-funded start-ups, push a new generation of e-readers. Mitchell Hartman reports." (Listen to the MP3)

Kindle is Cool, But Color Ebook May Save Civilization
Is the digital savior of the sagging magazine industry finally in sight?

Flexible Displays Closer to Reality, Thanks to U.S. ArmyImagine a screen so thin, light and flexible that it can be rolled up and carried in your pocket, while consuming almost zero power. Phillips electronics is also working on a similar epaper technology.

The folks at TechCrunch are working on a great potential product that will be "a very thin and light touch screen computer, sans physical keyboard, that has no hard drive and boots directly to a browser to surf the web." Ladies and gentlemen, The CrunchPad.

Check out the review of the eSlick eBook reader that was announced before the Kindle2.

Samsung ready to roll out Papyrus touchscreen ebook reader Will the touchscreen make this a Kindle killer?

Readers and writers are also starting to develop technologies and communities to adapt and support this new way of publishing (or is it broadcasting?).

Wattpad is called "The World's Most Popular eBook Sharing Community." Self-publishing is also flourishing in this new world at places like WEbook. A company called Vook.tv is in private beta, but promises to be a site to promote and distribute a multimedia hybrid of books and videos.

Is This the Future of the Digital Book? Read about Vook and many other companies in this great NYT article.

The New Storytelling: Multimedia Children's Publishing Kids' publishing houses lead the way in developing multimedia platforms.

Fujitsu shows off colour e-book display. It's new, it's Japanese and it is almost ready for prime time.

Intruders TV Relaunches

Intruders TV has re-vamped their site and posted a bunch of new video interviews with musicians, tech wizards, filmmakers and cleantech pioneers. They are a truely global operation, posting in multiple languages. Some great interviews are available...check 'em out.

They describe themselves as follows: "Intruders tv is the leading provider of valuable insights through their unique approach to capturing Innovators on camera. Interviews are conducted by well known, experienced and international industry editors, hand picked by Intruders tv to convey credibility and respectability both with the innovators being interviewed and the audience watching the interview."



"The mastermind behind Java, James Gosling created the programming language that brought the Internet to life and can be found in everything from smartcards to cell phones. In the interview above, James talks about Java, embedded systems, the iPhone and sensors in the middle of the Pacific!"

Aptera: Electric Gadget Car of the Near Future

I want one of the space-age electric cars. Supported by such groups as Idealab, Google.org and EssenJay Investments the Aptera has moved from R&D and is beginning pre-production. You'll actually be able to own one of these suckers soon. It is being built in California and meets all road/highway driving requirements. It will cost between $25k and $45k depending. And it looks cool. And you can plug your iPhone into it.

Of course, Tesla Motors is rumored to be coming out with their new all-electric sedan soon, too. I guess I'll just need to get one of each.

MIX09 Conference: We Are Leaving the Desktop

We just got back from Las Vegas where we attended the Microsoft MIX conference, an event focusing on the intersection of technology and design. In place of actually writing insightful comment, we'll just post a bunch of our observations. John Lim was my cohort on this journey and we explored it all and lived to tell about it.

This is the new web. We are leaving the desktop behind. We are saying goodbye to the broadcast paradigm. We are getting free steak from Steve Ballmer. The cloud awaits.

• Silverlight 3 Beta released to much hoopla at MIX09. Many naysayers are warming up to Silverlight and we got to see tons of neat multimedia demos. Netflix demonstrated their video player which, now that it's been converted to Silverlight, works on both Mac and PC platforms.
• Convert Flash files to Silverlight with SWF2XAML
• There were multiple demonstrations of how Silverlight is time-based (like After Effects) and not frame-based like Flash.
• Silverlight 3.0 allows for something called the Out-of-Browser experience (OOB) which allows you to detach a Silverlight application from a browser instance so the app can rest on your desktop.
• See this cool video: "Seattle radio station KEXP discusses their use of Silverlight to engender listener loyalty and support. The KEXP application allows you to interact with live media, as well as store media for playing on the bus or plane when disconnected." DJ Riz was in Vegas mixing beats each morning as conference attendees filed into the keynote speeches.


• Conference attendees were lucky enough to see the new film by Gary Hustwit called Objectified. (See the trailer below.) "Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them."

• Microsoft's Expression Suite had some announcements at the show. Expression Blend 3 Preview is available with some cool new features. Also check out the Expression Web SuperPreview for IE available now. It allows developers to test websites on multiple browser versions while on same box, with no virtual machines needed. Sketch Flow is a great new rapid prototyping tool for Blend 3. A really cool way to turn a mind map into a storyboard into a prototype. The work flow promise of Expression seems to hold true according to Blitz, an agency that presented. They talked about a best practice of making a “Shadow HTML version” of your site so that all plug-in content (flash and silverlight) can be crawled.


• In direct competition with open source tool sets, Microsoft has started the BizSpark program where they give away tons of software for free to qualifying start-up companies for the first three years of their new company.


• "BlogEngine.NET is an open source .NET blogging project that was born out of desire for a better blog platform. A blog platform with less complexity, easy customization, and one that takes advantage of the latest .NET features."


• Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 officially released at MIX and I've downloaded it for my PC (but of course not my Mac cuz they don't make a Mac version). It's definitely worth the download. They kicked off the talk with a pretty funny movie starring some famous comedians talking about the Internet. (see below)
• The Add-Ons gallery at Microsoft allows you to extend the functionality of IE8. One add on that was released at MIX09 was the OneRiot Video Search.
• Some features received applause like the fact that when one tab is displaying a crashed website, the whole browser doesn’t crash.
• IE8 Accelerators are an easy way to right-click info on a page and act on that info via a new pop-up floater.
• Instant Search is a visual search that lets you compare, side-by-side, results from Google, Live.com, Wikipedia and other sources without leaving the current browser window.
• Web Slices allow IE8 users to keep track of a “slice” of the web that you visit frequently.
• IE8 seems to adhere to W3C standards much more than previous versions.

• Stack Overflow is a programming Q & A site that's free. They gave an overview presentation about how they used Microsoft tools when creating their site.


• The ZAAZ presentation was well done. It was called Measuring Social Media Marketing (Measuring Meaning, Creating Value: From data to action in social media). See the video and slides. Jason Burby is the Chief Analytics & Optimization Officer for ZAAZ and Ryan Turner leads ZAAZ social media efforts. They talked about quality vs. quantity in analytics. Human-centric, not tool-centric. Participatory. People are not going to the web to meet people. Really they are looking for value. Social objects and portability are super important. Entrepreneurs should ask what service they can offer that will take advantage of what is already online today. The year of the API. Remix, reuse.


• Bill Buxton spoke about experience design, creating products that people connect with and have positive experiences with. He joined Microsoft three years ago and has brought much street cred to the UX design team there. I liked when he was discussing prototyping and storyboards. He stressed that representing the transitions is as important as representing the states...what happens between the elements. He explained that successful experience designers must understand working on all platforms. His book Sketching User Experiences is great and conference attendees got free copies. See his keynote video below.

• I saw Lemmy from Motorhead in the Venetian casino. My shoulder rubbed against his leather jacket. He looked healthy and purposeful. Ace of Spades! Lemmy the movie coming soon.


• SharePoint was omnipresent.
• Visual Studio 2010 will allow you to open and edit SharePoint sites from within VS.
• Tony Jones presented "How Razorfish Lights Up Brand with Microsoft SharePoint" where he showed their creations for clients such as Kroger and Dell Financial. See the video.


• Microsoft Live Labs: Scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs doing research and experimentation and displaying the results online including Photosynth, Web Sandbox, Seadragon, Thumbtack and more.


• "Microsoft PlayReady is a new content access technology that enables business models for a wide range of digital entertainment content.”


• Bondi Digital Publishing is a company bringing print media online in a smart way and utilizing Deep Zoom to allow exploration. They've created Cover to Cover, 40 years of Rolling Stone Magazine plus a free online gallery of 50 issues of Playboy Magazine at PlayboyArchive.com. Also presenting was Vertigo who worked with Bondi on the Playboy site. Vertigo also built the MIX09 site, the Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia site and the CBS Obama Inauguration site. Vertigo has the BigPicture tool for making DeepZoom experiences. See the fun 3D cloud example. Get the code for BigPicture.


• There was a Rock Band video game competition during the conference. Everyone wants to be a rock star, but no one wants to learn the chords.


• The Windows Web App Gallery: Tons of free apps to install on your server including IIS versions of popular open source tools. The Microsoft Web Platform is "more than just a powerful set of tools, servers and technologies, the Microsoft Web Platform offers a complete ecosystem for building and hosting web sites, services, and applications."



• Azure is Microsoft's platform for the cloud. The cloud consists of SAAS, PAAS and IAAS (software, platform and infrastructure as a service). The Cloud Pyramid, as described by GoGrid, represents apps on the top of the pyramid (like Gmail), platform in the middle (Azure is a platform) and infrastructure on the bottom (server farms in the sky like Amazon Web Services or GoGrid).


• Forrester says that every dollar spent on UX research will return $100 over the life of the product.


• Links about MIX09
• Official MIX Site
• Flickr Photos of Mix09
• MIX09 Twitter feed
• Microsoft tweaks Windows Mobile 6.5 UI for the haters
• Microsoft Rocks the Web at MIX09

Pomegranate Phone Is Too Good to Be True

This new phone is amazing. It has GPS, an MP3 player, a video camera and a voice translator. Oh yea, and it can also make coffee and be used as a harmonica.

Check out the cool Pomegranate Phone website which is actually a $300,000 ad campaign for the province of Nova Scotia. Yup, you heard that right. It's Canadian travel propaganda. And I love it.

It appears to be attracting a great deal of interest with it's high-quality video and slickly produced graphics. I wonder if this type of branded entertainment functions well as marketing. My gut says that it does work. Even though I wasn't looking for Nova Scotia, it pulled me in. I've thought about Nova Scotia several times today because of this site...which is several times more than I thought about it yesterday. And now I'm blabbing to my blog about it.

Not everyone agrees that this attempt at deliberate viral marketing is effective. Some even call it the Pombomb.

My Deep Zoom Comic and a Busted Narrative Structure

How is Narrative Structure Influenced by Presentation Format?

I just drew a comic about something that happened to me in the dot com days. I've posted it online in three different formats, partially because I wanted to see how different forms of presentation might change the overall feel of the story. I like the Silverlight Deep Zoom version the best by far. It allows the reader to scroll left and right and up and down. Plus it allows the reader to zoom deep into the image, seeing all the detail and even finding images within images. This "resolution independence" has allowed authors and creators to create unique new modes of storytelling.

Does it destroy the integrity of the story line and plot? You tell me. Perhaps our scattered, divergent, web-era minds crave stories where multiple plot paths intersect and overlap. It's often how we read the web, leaping from story to link to picture and back. Are these narrative asides just bad habits of an internet-infected mind? I actually think that, done well, these techniques can free creators to tell a multi-dimensional story like never before.

Above is the Microsoft Silverlight Deep Zoom version. This allowed me to tell the story the way I really wanted to. It allows for the best resolution and easiest user controls. Hover over the image and you'll see the controls to zoom in and out. You should also be able to use your scroll wheel. Go Full Screen!

Don't miss the hidden images. Some are easy to find, but some are much harder. The whole "resolution independence" of Deep Zoom allowed me to overlay images. If the reader zooms into a tiny spec on a photo, that spec may reveal a full-resolution photo that itself can be zoomed into. Theoretically infinite.

Find the following hidden images:

1. A Thai food menu.
2. Three pictures of Hawaii.
3. Another entire comic.
4. A pixel farmer farming pixels.
5. A spreadsheet.
6. Tripod.com home page.
7. A picture of me during the dot com days yelling at a phone.

You'll need the Silverlight plug-in which is a very quick install.

Sorry, I can't get it to work on the Mac yet. Silverlight is totally cross-browser and cross-platform, but the Deep Zoom composer tool is still a young product and the output is not fully optimized (which means a lot of tweaking of the XAML which I'm not an expert with.)

This is the Flash version. I bet with a little extra work I could simulate the Deep Zoom effect, but I'm just not a Flash guru. I want to spend time making stories and not doing multimedia development. This version works pretty good, but it forces the reader into one linear path.



This is the HTML version. This is so old school! Just some big-ass JPEGs stuck in a table (about 4.5 meg). I like this because it is simple and it works cross-browser, but ultimately it's kind of a pain in the butt to scroll around using the browser controls...too much effort.


All this makes me think about traditional narrative structure and the "The Freytag Pyramid." Gustav Freytag was the German writer who described a system for dramatic structure back in 1863. It's a mighty nice structure and I use it often. But, I also strive to bust that sucker up.



Check out the recent Wired magazine article by Scott Brown called "Why Hollywood Needs a New Model for Storytelling" to learn about Freytag deviants.

If you like this stuff, then check this out:

Video Below: Scott McCloud, graphic novel guru, talks about infinite canvases and digital comics at the TED conference.


This is an ancient interactive story I made back in the mid-90s. I was experimenting with the choose-your-own-ending storybook concept.



Download Microsoft Deep Zoom composer and make your own infinite canvases.

Learn how Deep Zoom works here and here.

View more of my dot com comics.

Massive Online Collection of Canadian Videos

NFB.ca is a Web site where you can watch films produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Their mission is to make these films accessible to all Canadians (and the whole world) via the web.

It is an amazing collection of over 13,000 productions from the last 70 years including animation, documentaries, experimental films and alternative dramas.

For example, check out "The Cat Came Back" (above) by Cordell Barker from 1988. "This hilarious Oscar-nominated animation is based on the century-old folk song of the same name. Old Mr. Johnson makes increasingly manic attempts to rid himself of a little yellow cat that just won't stay away... Also won the 1989 Genie Award for best animated short film."

Black Cab Sessions Music Videos

I'm a big fan of great music and I also love online video so imagine my delight when I was turned onto Black Cab Sessions. It shows what you can do with a simple concept, a camera, a microphone and talented artists.

The producers bring a band into a London taxi cab and have the musicians record one take of a song while driving around town. The results are fun and intimate. Check out great acts such as Brian Wilson, Ryan Adams, Death Cab for Cutie, My Morning Jacket, Daniel Johnston, The Futureheads and more. Wow!

TV on the Computer

2009 is shaping up to be a huge year for online video. Check out the audio story and associated web page from All Tech Considered, the weekly segment on NPR's All Things Considered.

"Web video is growing up -- we're way past one-shot silly videos on YouTube -- and as more content grows online, we're seeing a real convergence between what's available on TV, what's available online and what we'll be able to stream back to our TVs from the Internet."

I notice many people in the media addressing the issue of watching video on the computer vs. watching it on the TV. The fact that is emerging is that many viewers are searching for good programming with their computer and watching it on their TV. Increasingly they are either connecting laptops to their TVs or using other media center devices. 2009 will see many more options such as the new LCD TVs with built-in Netflix coming soon from LG or other web-enabled TVs from the likes of Apple and Yahoo.

Also, don't miss the NPR.org All Tech Considered section.

Online Video is Bright Spot in Dark Economy

The business of online video is growing. Numerous recent articles are pointing toward encouraging trends for those of us who are in the business of digital entertainment on the web.

Video advertising appears to continue to sell well according to a recent article in The Economist. Internet advertising will be relatively unscathed in the downturn.

A recent MediaPost article by Mark Walsh seems to support this. "Market researcher eMarketer maintains that video ad spending will buck the downward trend. It expects the category to increase 45% in 2009 to $850 million, or just over 3% of the $25.7 million total projected in online ad spending." See" Video Expected To 'Buck The Downward Trend'

Online Video Predictions for 2009

Mashable has published an optimistic set of predictions for online video in 2009 including the following:

• Record year for video content consumption


• Video monetization becomes reality


• On-demand video platforms gain as the economy slumps


• Mobile video finally breaks out

Check out the rest of the predictions from Alex Castro, CEO and co-founder of Delve Networks.