I’ll be honest, I felt like a fish out of water. Both Retha and Jean are pros, so I was the rookie on the team. Plus, most of the photography I’ve done has been candid, due to the fact it usually involves children running around. So working with models was a stretch for me. Lucky for me though, Joey and Gina were easy going and a pleasure to work with. After watching Retha jump in and make a few shots happen I found enough courage to make a few of my own.

I had such a great time shooting this weekend that I’m going to organize something similar on the west side of the state for late February. If you’re interested, please let me know!

Event Photos

Horsing around in Photoshop

Major thanks to Retha for putting this event together and to Joey and Gina for standing in for us!!

Be sure to visit:

Moments Captured by Retha

Mathewson Photography

Krow Photography

Click here to view the iTunes source.

If you missed the holiday giveaway, then click here.

Switchfoot has been my favorite band since they’re debut album “Legend of Chin“.

There is a different vibe this time around. This album feels more personal. It tires me out when people try and inject meaning into art that may or may-not be there – but this album is incredibly deep.

Love seems to be a growing theme in Jon’s lyrics – the idea, theology, practicality, loss, hope… however you want to pin it. I first noticed it in his solo albums, and was pleased to hear it echoed in this new record. It’s not for pop radio and way too deep for church radio to grasp.

There are some albums in life that are better left un-diluted by pop and church culture. This is one of them.

I hope you buy this album. It’s an investment into yourself you wont regret, and shouldn’t live without.

Mess of Me

Context was there before the chicken or the egg

There is an inherent set of influences on context that must be considered, and those are the ones that the user brings to the experience. The user establishes, albeit hard to accurately measure, the initial context in which your site/app/content is interpreted through. They have a unique background, geographical region, life experience, and world view that shapes the way they move about your work.

Understanding, thoroughly, your own message goes a long way in effectively bridging the initial gap that inherently exists, but that’s not enough. We must also be sensitive to the cultural, social, and individual influence, each user brings to the experience. ¹

Context starts before your content is loaded

One of the major assumptions we tend to make about context is the media device our content is going to be rendered on. Understanding the device aught to drastically influence the way we design the user experience.

Be mindful that the user may not have much of a choice in the technology your content is delivered on. If you’re building an application that helps farmers regulate or monitor their water use, then you have to consider that many rural areas don’t have broadband, and may not have internet access apart from their cell phones. If you’re working with a non-profit that provides resources for those with disabilities, you must consider screen readers, brail machines, and large font displays. On that note, if you’re working with anyone in the education and government sectors you need to pay attention to 508 accessibility laws. ²

Context has history

When we present content it’s important to understand where the user has been. In some cases, this can have an immediate affect on the types of content we deliver. For example, if someone enters your site via Google, and they land on part 3 of a 3 part series on “The Political Climate on Social Networks” it would be extremely beneficial to the user to be made aware of that, as well as direct them to what they’ve missed.

Understanding their history can also be used to help float useful and meaningful content to the surface of your site as the user moves about. For example, if you know your user has been shopping for children’s books for the past few clicks, it may be helpful to surface a book to a featured section of the site that just won an award in children’s literature.

Context a future

Understanding where a user is headed is crucial to delivering a meaningful user experience. If you know a user is going to end up in a registration process, or a checkout process, or some sort of “next step”, we can affectively guide them in that direction, and inform them along the way. ³

Context matters

Understanding context helps us close the loop in a users experience. Being mindful of this helps build trust and loyalty, as well as differentiates a quality experience from an average one.

1. It should go without saying that your message needs to be culturally, socially, and individually relevant based on your target audience. The more specific you can be, the more gracefully you can communicate.

2. I’ve worked in university and government life for over 10 years, dealing exclusively with the Web, and I’m convinced we all need to pay attention to 508, whether we’re mandated by Congress or not. IMHO.

3. I recently bought a pair of boots from the “world’s leading provider of apparel and accessories for the country/western lifestyle” and was annoyed that nowhere in the purchasing process was I made aware of how to take care of these boots. Even after they showed up at my door there was still no care instructions.

I work for one of the largest media outlets in the US (albeit a sub-sub-sub company) and I know there are a lot of great minds dealing with the subject, but I thought I would toss in my 2 cents.

I love The Wall Street Journal. I’ve always considered it a publication worth paying for. I know they have taken a lot of heat because they have locked away pieces of content that’s been reserved for paying customers. I’m not here to debate whether or not that pay-to-play is the future of the internet (37 Signals seems to be doing just fine with a pay-to-play model). What I want to offer up is a different approach to the established subscription model.

I’m not going to dive into what I think is wrong with the age-old model of media subscription. Instead, here is an idea that might be worth kicking around.

News the iStockphoto.com way – but less complicated.

Option one: Give me unlimited access status. Charge me a monthly fee or even annual. Give me a discount for doing so.

Option two: Let me buy news credits in quantities of 10, 20, 30, etc. Each “locked” news story is 1 credit. The more credits I buy, the cheeper the price-per-credit becomes.

Option two explained

iTunes pioneered the “buy only what you want” way of doing business online. I think one of the driving success factors behind that is because the experience is controlled in iTunes. Each micro transaction is pretty seamless – which would be harder to pull off when consuming news. Do I really want to hit my VISA or Pay-Pal every time I want to read a news story? Maybe?

BUT, if I could set myself an allowance, or buy credits, I could still be in control of the news I was willing to pay for! I could see my available credits and choose whether or not the news item I’m about to click on is worth the money. I am in control!

While I’m there buying news, be sure to keep track of the news I’ve purchased so I can refer to it later. Oh, and make sure it’s easy for me to gift a story to someone too!

Once I’ve used up my credits, make it easy (like iTunes and iStock) to get more.

Take it a step further

What if I could buy an unlimited subscription across news networks? OR what if I could buy credits I could use across news networks? I have 50 Fox credits and can use them on Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Sports, etc. (maybe even local news?)

I would pay to get quality news, and I think there are a lot of people that would be willing to do the same. The threshold has to be low; both with commitment and cost.

Kick it around.

Then I moved back to my hometown, Nashville. Nashville, Michigan. One thing we don’t have here in Nashville is broadband. Ok, so they have broadband in town, but not on the outskirts.

Now that I’m officially back in rural America, and connecting to the Internet with my cell phone, I acutely feel the legitimacy of having a mobile version.

It’s more than just stripping down the graphics, JavaScript, and CSS. It’s about delivering a feature set and content that is relevant to a mobile device.

Gmail is a great example. The full browser version of gmail would never load on my cell phone. The mobile version, however, is perfect for my cell. It utilizes my phone’s number pad for the keyboard shortcuts. I can quickly delete, archive, and send email. It’s simple, light and re-factored into an ideal mobile web application.

I’m currently working on a massive undertaking at work and trying to get my head around the relevant aspects of this project as it pertains to the mobile world. Without the lack of broadband I would have never considered such an undertaking.

Don’t get me wrong though, connecting to the WWW via my cell phone still sucks. It just sucks less when it’s designed and built for a mobile device.

First of all, how long can an ecosystem support that amount of spam and narcissism? At some point, I think the emotionally mature will abandon that environment for something a little more authentic. Or maybe not. Personally, it seems hard to maintain.

Of course, there are those that say it’s a great source of timely information. Which may be true. I can’t help but wonder though, why do we put our trust in the mob (crowd, masses, etc). Just because it shows up on Twitter doesn’t mean it’s important OR true. Not even if it gets retwated 1000 times. How many celebrities have died and then not died and then had a death do-over on Twitter thus far? It tiers me out.

It’s a lot like Macaulay Culkin; entertaining in the early 90s… and then you realize you’re not 12 anymore, and neither is he, and you just want it all to stop… before you hurt someone.

Until the Fail Whale eats us all: @kedrhodes

Enjoy!

Enjoy!

Download and enjoy!

Johnnie Walker is pioneering more than just a brand of scotch. This ad, if you can even call it that, is entertaining, creative, intriguing, as well as a micro history lesson. To top it all off, it’s 5 minutes long – and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Cheers!

1. Brushes: Can we get a brush browser? I am constantly downloading new brushes and there is no real way to tell them apart or know what you’re getting before you load them up. Yes, there is a brush browser for the ones you have loaded, but I’m talking about a way to browse what you don’t have loaded – that way I can know whether or not I should even bother letting that brush dog PS.

2. Styles: Again, some sort of browser. I like the preview once they are loaded, but knowing which ones to load is like Russian roulette.

3. Auto-Select: I never check the box to have the pointer auto-select. I always use the keyboard shortcut for that. What would be nice though is to be able to click and drill down through layers or groups. So, if layers is selected, the more I shortcut/click the deeper it would drill down to layers beneath the one that is on top. This would come in handy for groups too. You currently cant click a group within a group – which is rather annoying.

4. Remember me when saving: I love the “Save for Web & Device…” feature. What I don’t like is loosing my place in the workflow when I alt-tab out of Photoshop to check on a naming convention or a piece of markup. See, when you alt-tab out while saving a file (I often leave PS to check a naming convention) it doesn’t leave your cursor in the filename field. I have to click back into it – which means leaving the keyboard. Drives me bonkers! Maybe thats an OS issue though?

5. Remember my rules: This gets me in trouble. When you open a PSD you have to be sure to lock the guides – because PS doesn’t remember if you’ve locked them in your prior session. When I’m working on a file, I set up my guides and once I’m ready to design. I don’t want to mess up my guides, so I lock them. I just wish PS would remember that the next time I opened the file, so I don’t have to relock them when I accidently grab one.

Photoshop, I love you.

If you know much about me, you probably know I’m a Google fan. I’ve been using their apps for a few years now, and they are virtually integrated into my entire day. So why not have a blog that feels like the majority of my online experience? Unlike Gmail, this is still beta though. I’ll be tweaking things here and there… maybe even broadening support for IE users. Ugh.

So here are my favorite Google apps:

• Gmail – I use it for ALL of my email accounts. One interface to rule them all.
• Calendar – I have several calendars. I share calendars with my wife, integrate them with my contacts, and push them to my iPhone.
• Tasks – Love the Gmail and Calendar integration.
• Voice – I use this a LOT. SMS the easy way, and I love the transcribe feature.
• Reader – I burn through roughly 10,000 posts a month, star, share, and email all the time.
• Contacts – had a rough spot with Contacts early on when my iPhone nuked them all… but they’ve since been restored and I can’t imagine living without it! CRM, my size.
• Talk – I plug it in with Adium. Beautiful.
• Maps – I have several custom maps I use to scout areas for photography and such.

Less trafficed Google projects:

• Blogger – my first blog. Love the service.
• Docs – Because I hate MS Office… I’m a designer – I’m allowed to hate it.
• Alerts – Catches what Reader doesn’t.
• News – I dig the service, and really enjoy this interface for it.

So there you have it. My tribute to the apps I love and live by. Thanks Google.

If you haven’t heard Jay-Z’s newest album “The Blueprint 3” (iTunes link) I think you’re missing out. But hey, he’s not for everyone.

Whatever you do, don’t miss the “Blueprint 3 Outtakes” album though.

First of all, it’s free.

Second, it’s beautiful. Alex Goose does a fantastic job putting these tracks together. If you love brass, beats and a little 808 then download this now.

I tried all sorts of therapy to try and address the pain; strength training, stretching, icing, etc. Nothing seemed to work. I couldn’t get past 2 miles without knee pain – for days.

At the beginning of summer I asked a friend who is the epitome of fitness if she had any recommendations. She asked around to a few of her fellow athletes and came back suggesting Vibram’s Fivefingers. I had never seen or heard of them, but I was willing to look into it. I had read several articles about runners getting closer to nature (or pavement) by opting for either no shoe at all or a very low shoe as a cure for knee pain (along with a host of other reasons).

I didn’t pull the trigger until a month ago, and regret waiting so long. I’ve been running in Fivefingers for a couple of weeks now and so far, no sign of knee pain.

Speaking from my own experience, here is why I think they are solving my problem: Because the shoe has NO soul my instinct is to not run the traditional heel-toe stride – and because of that, I have a LOT less impact on my knees and other joints. I’m landing on the fronts of my feet and my ankles are absorbing the initial contact.

I’ll admit, the first couple of weeks my legs were KILLING me. My stride was working muscles I didn’t know existed and on top of that I gained a couple of blisters (no socks). Blisters and muscle soreness go away though – and they did. I ran six miles the other day and everything felt wonderful!

For the first time in over a year, I am enjoying running again!

Thank you Fivefingers!

If you’re apprehensive about reading something in the Buddhist way of thinking, then this book is the perfect book to dip your toe in the water. Mr. Ferrucci doesn’t dive into the afterlife or higher powers or anything of the sort. He simply walks you through 18 chapters of learning/living the aspects of kindness. It aught to be required reading for every man, woman and child.

If you only read one new book this year, I can’t recommend this one enough! Read. Enjoy.

My own world view would replace the word kindness with the word love – kindness has less contextual baggage to unpack, but the point is the same.

(In the middle of corn fields, Kurt (pictured) and I found a bridge that had been tagged - if you could call it that)

Kurt, Ken (my brothers – twins) and I went camping last weekend despite the cold wet weather. Ken and I went for a quick 5 mile jog and Kurt and I went on a quick scavenger hunt for something interesting to photograph. It was dreary, wet, cold, and otherwise boring scene – which was what made this hunt interesting.

As creatives we often get assignments that inspire about as much enthusiasm as that cold wet photo hunt. Yuck. As much as we like to tell ourselves that we’re only going to do the “fun” projects we inevitably have to do the boring ones as well.

When we’re faced with projects like that we can either piss and moan about it or we can look for something interesting to bring to the surface.

I think this is a mark of a seasoned creative. Pulling the interesting out of the mundane often takes hard work and special attention to subtleties.

I wont go on about how the creative industry is flooded with shallow, lazy, copycats – rather, leave you with this:

The next time you’re tasked with a boring gig – dig in and make it beautiful. Find it. It’s in there. It will make you a better creative. I promise.

Flickr has had the “Blog This” feature for quite some time. It’s a handy feature that allows you to post to your blog from a photo. They have taken that same thought and applied it to Twitter. All you need to do is connect your Flickr account to your Twitter account.

1. Log into Flickr and head to your account page.
2. Click the tab “Extending Flickr”
3. Add or edit “Your blogs”
4. Choose Twitter from the “Add a blog” helper
5. Authenticate your Twitter account – head over to your Twitter settings on Twitter.com and make sure you approve Flickr in your “Connections” tab

You are all set to start tweeting your Flickr photos! To do this, just jump over to the photo you want to send out. Above the photo you’ll see all the things you can do with that particular photo.

Click on the “Blog This” button and choose your Twitter account. Flickr will then grab the short URL for you and put it in a Twitter post.

Nice and easy!

Most of the time your Web content is being referenced visually via an active link or something in print – but that’s not always the case. Sometimes we need to communicate a piece of content through spoken word. This transition is considerably harder to make for most users, unless they are in front of the computer when they hear the information you’re trying to direct them to – even then it’s not nearly as foolproof as something they can read or click.

I became acutely aware of how awkward this transition can be several weeks ago when I heard a radio personality point the listeners to a piece of relevant content by saying over the airwaves: “Visit the site and search for xyz.” I instantly felt my anxiety level go up! It was content that was interested in finding, but the idea of being left to a site search left me feeling hopeless. Why would I trust your site search to give me relevant content? How do I know what to search for? Will the search results give me the most up to date article on the subject matter? The list goes on!

There are better ways of directing people to your content than sending them to your URL and telling them to search.

The 2 standards offer much more direction and give the user considerably more hope.

The oldest of the two methods are giving out your URL and suggesting the user search for a specific keyword. This eliminates most of the anxiety for the user when it comes to searching your site, for one reason: it’s assumed that you have done what it takes to make sure that the keyword is associated with the content and will return the content you’re verbally sending them to. If you haven’t done that, then you should assume your users are now frustrated.

The second, and what I recommend, is to give the url to your site followed by a slash then the keyword. eg. www.ailema.com/localhost This method keeps the user in ONE process – typing in the location bar. Users don’t have to figure out where your search is, whether or not the results are going to be accurate, etc.

Yes, I know my preferred method requires some technical attention on the administrator side – but doesn’t all affective UI?

Several weeks ago I noticed tweets with links that used the Flic.kr as the URL base. My first thought was that there was a Flickr service at Flic.kr that would shorten my Flickr url or better yet, allow me to post a photo to both Twitter and Flickr at the same time. That’s not what you find at Flic.kr but a few short weeks later ¹ the problem has been solved.

The Twitter to Flickr thing has been worked out. Great. But what about a short URL from a Flickr photo to Twitter? That’s where flic.kr comes in. Not quite seamless, but accessible enough for those willing to invest in the integrity of the internet (more on that in a minute).

Want a short URL for your Flickr photo without using a 3rd part service? Here is how!

Flickr publishes a short URL for every photo via the tag. View the source of the page you want to send people to and look for

<link rev="canonical" type="text/html" href="http://flic.kr/p/6uYrJN" >

Grab the value of the href and you’re good to go!

OK, I can hear the non-technical people hating on the idea of viewing the page source. Like I said, it isn’t seamless. This is where you can give Flickr a pat on the back for using the tag though. Go to: RevCanonical and paste in the URL of the photo you want a short url for and it will look up the link for you!

The whole process is still NOT seamless, but it’s only a matter of time before Flickr or a 3rd party makes it so. Until then, hardcore Flickr users can take advantage of these methods – while making the internet a safer place!

Further Reading and Resources

• RevCanonical
• Chris Shiflett – Save the Internet with rev=”canonical”
• Unweary – The Security Implications of URL Shortening Services
• Joshua Schachter’s post on url shorteners
• Flickr URL shortening information
• Twitter your Flickr

Footnotes

¹ Flickr has done well to adapt to Twitter shaking things up. Twitpic may have the lead, but it lacks the depth and appeal that Flickr does long term – IMO.

ewy7g8c43i