propstm.net

RIP Steve Jobs

Matt — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:17:17 +0000

Steve you were legendary. You will be missed.

Why NOT signing up for the BalanonNation may be your biggest mistake of 2011

Matt — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:17:47 +0000

I’ve known Henry Balanon (@balanon) for about the last eight years. I’d met him when we were both Microsoft Student Ambassadors while in college. Aside from considering him one of the brightest people I know, he also has a way of engaging folks. I’ve had more than a few conversations with him where by the end of it I walked away saying “Wow I never thought of [conversation topic] like that.” I’ve had conversations with him ranging from food, to beer, to technology trends, to career and life aspirations and Henry always has insightful things to say and also just plain old good advice.

Now there was a time a few years back a group of us who were all unemployed used to meet up at Biggby Coffee in Royal Oak, MI to collectively look for jobs, talk, or just pass the time. While most of us were desperately looking for work it was Henry who decided he wanted to become his own boss, and start his own company. Since then he’s started Bickbot and grown it into a bright company with some great possibility.

Now a few weeks back I found out Henry was starting his own newsletter. When I first read this I IMMEDIATELY signed up. Yes he’s a friend, but I signed up without hesitation because I know, from knowing Henry, that his newsletter will contain some of the most useful and insightful content anywhere. He’s now a father, an entrepreneur, a self-proclaimed foodie, a guy who loves technology, and a great conversationalist. It’s simple to me, if you do NOT sign up for his newsletter you gain nothing, and you do yourself a disservice. So do yourself a favor and sign up for his newsletter.

Catching up to the iPads

Matt — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:59:39 +0000

I don’t own an iPad. I wasn’t interested in owning an iPad.

I was intrigued by Android. The concept of creating apps written in Java makes MUCH more sense to me than writing in C (but this is another conversation entirely). I own a MacBook Pro and an iPhone, but would prefer to own an Android Tablet mainly because I already have an iPhone and want to see what Android has to offer.

Apple’s announcement yesterday for the new iPad forced the tablet market to shift.

The iPad is a quality product, and the iPad2 only adds to this product. By heightening the specs, that was to be assumed, but to see Apple create the entry price at $499, and announce they are lowering the price of the entry level model of the original iPad to $399 there is NO reason not to get an iPad unless Android based tablets can lower their prices to compete.

Working under the assumptions set forth by Steve Jobs’ iPad2 presentation, and reviews I’ve read of the Xoom and GalaxyTab, in order to remain viable competitors against the iPad, Android tablets MUST slash prices. Here is the scenario that makes sense to me:

A base model WIFI only iPad is $399
A base model WIFI only iPad2 is $499
A base model Android tablet with Honeycomb could come in at $350 — and if it doesn’t have Honeycomb, the user experience will be lacking so drop the price further.

The ease of use provided by Apple at this point makes their iPad products huge favorites over Android. Android’s lack of solid store and ever changing software make many folks seem lost when comparing devices. Also based on current news of compromised Android applications in the Android Market makes me more hesitant to use Android tablets.

If Android wants to compete, tablet makers need to cut prices NOW, and until the software is built to a point that it can fight against able in the tablet form factor it needs to be priced lower. The companies need to take their losses and Android needs to put all tablets on paths to get to Honeycomb soon to stay competitive.

How to use RGBA + Examples

Matt — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:14:13 +0000

Today I wanted to talk about RGBA color a bit. Before I launch off into the post I first want to note that this will not work in all browsers. As RGBA is something for CSS3 you may want to check this chart to see if your browser of choice is supported. RGB color is a way of displaying color other than using hex values. With the CSS3 specification designers and developers get to take RGB one step further and define an alpha or transparency value. RGBA is a great new way that CSS3 deals with transparency.

Here’s a quick example of defining a value to red in both hexidecimal values and RGB

em { color: #ff0000 }           /* #rrggbb */
em { color: rgb(255,0,0) }

There are several sites that already use RGBA to create some very interesting and dynamic effects.  24ways.org uses RGBA to create a layered overlapping effect.  Other examples such as Sam Brown's site uses RGBA to once again create a level of depth, and after glancing at the CSS Sam uses RGBA to change the alpha value of many of his various textual elements.  In addition Dan Cedarholm, who writes at simplebits.com, and who spoke about RGBA as well as other CSS3 features in his talk on Progressive Enrichment using CSS3 at FOWA last November, uses RGBA for some of the textual elements on his site as well.

Below is a small bit of code i put together just to show how RGBA can be used. The page changes background color and alpha value when you mouseover the paragraph.

This is a sample paragraph that shows how RGBA works. This is a sample paragraph that shows how RGBA works. This is a sample paragraph that shows how RGBA works.

From my standpoint, the thing that I really like is the fact that by replacing a normal hex value with RGBA, I define a color just the same, however I’m also given the alpha value which seems as though it could be a jumping point to many great new uses. I think I may be doing a few more posts in this style, so let me know what you think. Hopefully this sort example helps, and don’t be afraid to leave a comment or reach out to me on Twitter.

Why Client Revisions Shouldn’t Be Allowed

Matt — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:00:27 +0000

This past week The Oatmeal had a post called How A Web Design Goes Straight To Hell. The post got quite popular, getting on Digg and became a trending topic on Twitter. After reading the comic and finding it quite amusing, one thing went off in my head; that post makes one thing obvious to me, client revisions are bad. Normally these revision occur after you’ve delivered the product to the client and they want to make “tweaks”. I’ll say I HATE that!

If you are doing your job correctly as a designer you a developing a creative brief for the client outlining a solution, or solutions to their problems. By the time deliverables reach the client they should meet all requirements of the creative brief. If the client is paying a designer to create something because the client cannot. The client needs to know that the end product will meet the creative brief and that the designer’s work is in the best interest of the customer.

Client revisions should not be needed if the project is planned correctly and all requirements of the client are addressed when the designer creates the end product.