BlobFisk.com

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Video: The amazing John Cleese shares his wisdom… – (37signals)
  The amazing John Cleese shares his wisdom on writing, creativity, getting in the zone, and interruptions. It’s great to see advice that we hear all the time reaffirmed from outside the tech industry.
• Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits, PDFs and Resources – Smashing Magazine
  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.
• How to Make the Most of a Small Workspace
• The Top 5 Qualities of Productive Creatives (And How to Identify Them!) :: Tips :: The 99 Percent
  A recent BusinessWeek article reported that, “According to a new survey of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM's Institute for Business Value, CEOs identify ‘creativity’ as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.” While the study’s results will come as no surprise to hard-working creative professionals, they do raise an important question: How do we identify – and hire for – the qualities that add up to creativity? 
• Evom – Convert and Download Videos to iTunes

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Iceland’s disruptive volcano
  Today, British civil aviation authorities ordered the country's airspace closed as of noon, due to a cloud of ash drifting from the erupting Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. The volcano has erupted for the second time in less than a month, melting ice, shooting smoke and steam into the air and forcing hundreds of people to flee rising floodwaters. The volcanic ash has forced the cancellation of many flights and disrupted air traffic across northern Europe, stranding thousands of passengers. Collected here are photos of the most recent eruption, and of last month's eruptions, which were from the same volcano, just several miles further east. (17 photos total)
• Top 10 YouTube Videos About Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs
• Designing for Interaction: Design Research
  If only a small bit of the typical time, money, and resources used to make and market a product or service were put towards design research—observing, talking to, and maybe even making artifacts with customers and users—the products and services we use would be greatly improved. Dan Saffer explains.
• The Secret to Designing an Intuitive UX
  Imagine that you’ve never seen an iPad, but I’ve just handed one to you and told you that you can read books on it. Before you turn on the iPad, before you use it, you have a model in your head of what reading a book on the iPad will be like. You have assumptions about what the book will look like on the screen, what things you will be able to do, and how you will do them—things like turning a page, or using a bookmark. You have a “mental model” of reading a book on the iPad, even if you’ve never done it before.
• Watch Air Traffic – LIVE!
• Why You Need A Content Strategist?
  Are you investing in your content? Do you have a strategy? If not then help is at hand. You need a content strategist, but who are they and what do they do?

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I have to say, I think that I may be hooked! Even after I had bought my Mac and I was waiting it for it be designed in California, manufactured in Shanghai and assembled in Cork and shipped to me I was having moments where I was wondering if I was doing the right thing. But then it arrived…

It was as if I had reverted back to my childhood opening up a new box of Lego. Like Lego, Apple seems to have put thought into the packaging of their merchandise. Not only have they excelled in industrial design when it comes to their products but they have also designed their packaging to compliment the product.

More

The what? The Macarati! A term dubbed by my friend Will Harris (a Macarati member himself) which refers to people that own an Apple Mac.

You see, I have been drooling over the sleekness and sexiness of that pinnacle of industrial design that is the MacBook Pro. Its brushed metal veneer which labels the owner as cool and trendy, its User Interface (UI) which Apple tout as the best thing sinced slice bread and its hefty price tag that puts it in the realm of must have expensive goodie.
More