Ben Bodien | Lifestream

link: Students

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:40:08 +0000

On xkcd.com, via RSS

link: Branislav Kropilak Photography

ben@benbodien.com — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:45:08 +0000

http://www.kropilak.com/?go=landings.02
Some of the most original and refreshing photography I’ve seen in a long time. Via Subtraction.

link: World Events - Impact on Web App Traffic

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:55:22 +0000

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/02/webops-culture-graphs-data-obama-lastfm.html
Quite telling how Flickr, Last.fm and Google all registered drops in traffic during the inauguration ceremony, but Twitter spiked.

video: The History of the Internet — an animated guide. A well produced infographic guide to the evolution of the grand network of networks. I’m not sure France was using the Euro in the days of CYCLADES
ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:56:52 +0000

link: The Feltron 2008 Report

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:37:29 +0000

http://feltron.com/index.php?/content/2008_annual_report/
Nicholas Felton is back with another beautiful and meticulously designed report detailing his activities and habits in 2008. For more background info, check out Paul Boag’s interview with Nicholas on the process behind the reports. You can also buy printed copies of his reports from 2006-2008, as I’ve just done.

travel: Stavanger, Norway

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:30:09 +0000

From 30 Apr to 3 May | map

status: consistently impressed with all the Puma shoes I've ever owned. These ones feel like thick socks. In a good way.

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:41:41 +0000

status: making a shopping list of batteries needed to power all the boy's presents. Lego wins.

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 21:24:08 +0000

photo: Arncliffe Daybreak

ben@benbodien.com — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:37:08 +0000

Flickr photo page

status: blown away by Little Snapper (http://realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper). Two minutes with the trial and I want to have it's babies.

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:42:38 +0000

status: full of Oreos. Nice iPhone respect for the Oreo with auto-capped 'o' there. Clearly the king of cookies cropped up in product testing.

ben@benbodien.com — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:26:52 +0000

status: wishing safari iphone had a "go back to the app i was launched from" button.

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 20:07:24 +0000

status: thinking that dvd/blu-ray boxes should contain a voucher for a 99p download of the same movie from iTunes

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:00:25 +0000

status: is switching back to Firefox from Chrome. The Firebug gap and total lack of RSS handling are the dealbreakers.

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 20:40:47 +0000

link: Tim Van Damme's Web Based Biz Card

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 20:35:57 +0000

http://timvandamme.com/
So elegant it just directly seduced my brain before my eyes could figure out what was happening.

link: Rocket Assisted Construction of World's Tallest Bridge

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:39:43 +0000

http://deputy-dog.com/2008/11/rockets-help-build-bridge-higher-than.html

status: noting that watching cartoon network then playing an hour of left 4 dead before bed leads to some fairly undesirable dreams

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:21:19 +0000

photo: Kettlewell Sunset Landscape

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:54:47 +0000

Flickr photo page

status: taking photos of Yorkshire landscapes in biting arctic wind while being buzzed by RAF Tornados under a stunning sunset

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:04:10 +0000

location: London, England

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:07:27 +0000

map

location: London NW5 2LE, England

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:06:21 +0000

map

link: The Big Picture

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:04:34 +0000

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/
Stunning photos gathered from the top news agencies on big stories and events. Hop on their RSS feed.

link: Twitter Follow Cost

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:31:00 +0000

http://followcost.com
A magnificent idea - look up how Twit-happy people are before you follow them, in average updates per day and the ingenious new unit of milliscobles (relative to Robert Scoble’s thoroughly ridiculous average of over 21 a day). I’m quite cheap at 0.18, or 8.64 milliscobles. Get following.

status: getting really bored of all these mediocre "10 useful techniques for <x>" style blog posts. altering rss subscriptions accordingly.

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:57:56 +0000

link: Liberty City (GTA4) vs New York City

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:15:25 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewj/sets/72157604988911230/
Side by side comparisons of locations in New York, and their modelled representations in Grand Theft Auto 4’s Liberty City.

video: Procedural Art by Glenn Marshall

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:00:56 +0000

link: Application Interface Design Guidelines

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:15:12 +0000

http://glyphobet.net/blog/essay/269/trackback
An excellent set of rules from Matt Chisholm, many of which you will doubtless have noticed if you’re a Windows Mobile user.

status: lamenting google/paypal checkout for making it far too easy to casually impulse buy

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:37:49 +0000

status: nibbling a blueberry muffin while tackling some complicated web app architecture design issues

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:33:12 +0000

link: Web Designer Cheat Sheets

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:18:35 +0000

http://sixrevisions.com/resources/cheat_sheets_for_web_designers/
Covering everything from Photoshop shortcuts to HTML entity references.

blog: Modular Wine Glasses

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:16:50 +0000

A reinvention of the wine glass set by Sherwood Forlee. Metal stems for enhanced strength and interchangable glasses for easier storage.

More photos over at Yanko Design.

status: raising an eyebrow at last.fm, which is streaming classic hip hop eclectically interspersed with Serbian gypsy folk

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:04:00 +0000

status: finding that he's having to widen browser windows to accommodate what seems to be a trend toward wider page layouts

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:41:27 +0000

blog: Good Night Firefox (Good Morning Chrome?)

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:34:16 +0000

Some exciting times may be just around the corner in web browser land, as news of Google’s rumoured foray into the browser market is “leaked” in the form a rather spectacular Scott McCloud drawn comic strip.

Here are some highlights:

WebKit based: debatably the best performing rendering engine out there at the moment
Tab process isolation: one process per browser tab, so one tab crashing will only lose you that tab, like having everything in Prism or Fluid (also delivering security and performance benefits)
V8 javascript VM: a ground-up rethink of a modern javascript Virtual Machine — faster better stronger
The might of the Google server farm being put to work on software testing, including tests of rendering bugs

The obvious question that remains unanswered by this lovely graphic medium for product introduction is; “can I get my Firefox extensions into it?”. The extensions I use on a daily basis are probably all that are keeping me from switching to Safari or Opera, and I put up with a lot of crashes for those extensions. Here’s hoping there will at least be a means for extension developers to port their code to Chrome, and that Firebug crosses the gap quickly.

I’m predicting that the Google effect will kick-start a strong take up rate, but it will be very interesting to see how things stand in terms of market share a couple of months after Chrome launches.

blog: Olympic Medal Table Bias

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:56:38 +0000

Now that the spectacular events in Beijing have drawn to a close, I’ve been looking at the final medal tables and how different news sites are representing them.

There’s something suspicious about the sorting order. The official table ranks by gold medal count (but includes a rank by total medals), putting China in first place. This method is also used by the relatively neutral Reuters and the BBC.

Curious then, how the some US news sources are choosing to sort by the total medal count, which puts the USA out in front. How convenient:

link: Lost and Found 2.0

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:32:55 +0000

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/08/27/i-found-a-camera/
The power of a social network — a lost camera is found and returned to its owner.

photo: Small Talk with a Web Designer

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:44:30 +0000

status: measuring everything on screen with xscope's (http://iconfactory.com/software/xscope/) dimension tool - more addictive than bubble wrap

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:35:18 +0000

link: An Event Apart Blogged

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:17:14 +0000

http://adactio.com/journal/1504/
Jeremy Keith has very sportingly blogged (live) the first day’s sessions at the currently running An Event Apart — the conference for people who make websites.

status: correcting some horrendous typographic slip-ups. funny how they're so obvious after a few days away.

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:40:19 +0000

blog: A Bizarre Attack on Fire Eagle

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:24:04 +0000

The BBC ran an article today voicing the concerns of a couple of privacy groups over Yahoo’s Fire Eagle.

I’d love to know whether the director at the Centre for Digital Democracy actually used the service before declaring that sites like Fire Eagle are “building and collecting more data, not just about the content you like but where you go and where you are at the moment.” I’ll have to assume that he hasn’t, or he’d know just how daft he sounds implying that Fire Eagle is collecting data (it only stores the most recent location of each user), and that this data is being held for the purposes of extracting patterns in user behaviour (rather hard to do with a single location record per user).

I had reservations about using Fire Eagle at first, but after getting it set up and experiencing the extent to which its creators have gone to ensure that the information you provide is safe, I’ve been nothing but impressed and perfectly comfortable with it. There are a number of controls in place to keep your data safe. Here they are:

You can provide your location with as much or as little precision as you like, as accurate as exact latitude and longitude or as vague as your country.
You choose which third party applications you want to use, and you can stop sharing your location with them at any time.
You decide how much precision each third party application that you authorise receives regarding your location.
Fire Eagle reminds you on a regular basis which applications you are sharing location data with, and unless you explicitly confirm that you’re still happy with that, it will block all application updates for you.
You can put a temporary block on application integration so that you can go off-radar for as long as you want.
You can purge your location data from Fire Eagle at any time.

That all sounds pretty democratic to me, though it somehow fails to satisfy the CfDD’s definition of the word.

Quite honestly, if half the web applications that store personal data paid even a tenth of the level of attention to the issue of privacy as Yahoo have done with Fire Eagle, the Internet would be a better place. The Brickhouse team are doing an incredible job, and I have to believe that there are more appropriate targets for this kind of misguided assault.

video: Endanged indigenous cultures, and the extreme diversity of their realities.

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:50:34 +0000

link: Bubble Calendar

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:19:35 +0000

http://www.bubblecalendar.com/2009BPV.htm
A brilliant idea, but I think I’d struggle to resist popping a whole month away on a whim.

video: Paper prototyping interactions in an AJAX app

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:30:20 +0000

status: wading through oceans of search data with Google's Insights tool (http://moourl.com/ngmfc)

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:56:11 +0000

link: NY Times Olympic Medal Count Map

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:03:25 +0000

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/04/sports/olympics/20080804_MEDALCOUNT_MAP.html
Beautifully produced visualisation of olympic medal counts by nation, per olympiad. Plenty of trends to spot, such as the increasing diversity of nations scoring medal wins, and the enourmous effect of the home advatange. See also the 2008 games tracker from the same masterful interactive design team.

photo: On Rails

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:08:11 +0000

Flickr photo page

blog: This Redesign, Thing

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:55:19 +0000

Following in the footsteps of many others, I’m now aggregating activity from a number of websites I use into one chronologically ordered stream as you see here. Such systems are colloquially referred to as lifestreams.

Rather than use a hosted lifestream service such as friendfeed or socialthing, I decided I wanted more control over design and functionality so I’ve written an application in Ruby on Rails to talk to sites such as:

Flickr (photos)
Amazon (products I add to my wishlist)
Dopplr (travel plans)
Tumblr (blog, shared links, audio and video)
Others (keep an eye out for rare exciting items!)

If you’re only interested in blog posts, there’s a blog only RSS feed, but I’ve taken care to ensure that there’ll be very little noise on here - only items I truly deem worthy of exposure to my faithful followers will make it onto this stream.

I might blog another time about certain design decisions involved in building this, and I also plan on releasing snippets of Ruby code that may be helpful to others.

Finally, I thank the remarkable work of Yongfook whose own lifestream was a big inspiration when working on this. His PHP based implementation will soon be available for self-hosted use and further idea-borrowing (ho ho), as Sweetcron.

video: visualisations of various forms of traffic in Britain

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:23:17 +0000

link: 2008 movie box office revenue

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:05:39 +0000

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/infosthetics/~3/355205697/2008_movie_box_office_revenue.html

On information aesthetics, via RSS

status: launching his redesigned personal website (http://benbodien.com). not quite finished, but then again, it probably never will be.

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:05:31 +0000

video: Delicious redesign: before/after, animated

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:08:25 +0000

link: Pentax k10d in Space

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:25:46 +0000

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/07/28/pentax-k10d-in-space/

On Flickr Blog, via RSS

link: Volkswagen: Shift

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:21:38 +0000

http://www.ibelieveinadv.com/2008/07/volkswagen-shift/

On I Believe in Advertising | Advertising Blog & Community, via RSS

link: That Ain’t no Lazy Susan

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:21:27 +0000

http://www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2008/07/29/that-ain%e2%80%99t-no-lazy-susan/

On Yanko Design, via RSS

status: enjoying the new last.fm interface, and preparing for battle with his own site redesign

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:40:17 +0000

link: How Dopplr Learns

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:00:46 +0000

http://blog.dopplr.com/2008/07/23/how-dopplr-learns/
Dopplr reveals some of their clevers.

photo: Bad form design just begging to be punished.

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:09:00 +0000

link: O2 stuffs up Apple's iPhone 3G launch

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:25:59 +0000

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9109218

blog: My RSS Feed

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:11:10 +0000

I’ll be moving my RSS feed for this site about a bit over the next week or two, so please bear with me if you get a volley of “new” old items re-appearing.

Hopefully FeedBurner will work its magic and you won’t notice a thing.

link: Pixar's tightknit culture is its edge

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:36:26 +0000

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1127-pixars-tightknit-culture-is-its-edge

On Signal vs. Noise, via RSS

status: throwing away site concept designs, and declaring a mental block. Back to pen and paper for a bit.

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:38:36 +0000

status: noting that Mozilla Weave is a brilliant idea, but has a way to go in terms of stability

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:36:12 +0000

status: getting annoyed with FF3 crashes, six today and counting

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:59:01 +0000

link: The Fun of Getting There

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:22:26 +0000

http://dd.dynamicdiagrams.com/?p=511

On Information Design Watch, via RSS

link: caffeine usage arcs

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:06:03 +0000

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/infosthetics/~3/325100471/caffeine_usage_arcs.html

On information aesthetics, via RSS

link: Tic ciT, Tac caT, Toe eoT

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:05:49 +0000

http://www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2008/07/02/tic-cit-tac-cat-toe-eot/

On Yanko Design, via RSS

link: zoomii visual amazon store

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:48:13 +0000

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/infosthetics/~3/324021135/zoomii_visual_amazon_store.html

On information aesthetics, via RSS

link: Google learns to crawl Flash

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:54:34 +0000

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/323764470/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html

On The Official Google Blog, via RSS

blog: Cool Drainage

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:13:36 +0000

Two interesting sinks. Both via Yanko Design.

link: Image Fulgurator

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:30:53 +0000

http://www.digitalexperience.dk/?p=388

On digitalexperience, via RSS

link: NOFRKS Design

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:47:33 +0000

http://www.nofrks.com/
Beautiful site with a scroll based page navigation system. The background image you see is dependent on the time of day as well.

status: reporting bugs in the Twitter API

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:00:39 +0000

link: Jiffy Firebug Plugin: Fine grained calculation of performance timings

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:24:59 +0000

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/318133947/jiffy-firebug-plugin-fine-grained-calculation-of-performance-timings

On Ajaxian » Front Page, via RSS

link: Simple organic shapes the Illustrator way

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:23:31 +0000

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/veerlesblog/~3/318743362/

On Veerle's blog: full articles, via RSS

status: is officially declaring Amazon's E-Commerce Web Services to be really unfriendly, not helped by poor documentation

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:10:49 +0000

status: is wondering if he could survive on fresh lemonade alone

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:32:56 +0000

status: cringing at the overcomplexity of Amazon's web services, having been using those of Flickr, Tumblr and Twitter recently

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:08:12 +0000

location: London, England

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:42:20 +0000

map

status: is it just me, or do all flavours of Snapple taste pretty much the same?

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:07:24 +0000

status: D300: Let the UPS tracking page refreshing games begin.

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:29:20 +0000

status: has a Nikon D300 on the way

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:53:53 +0000

travel: Sydney, Australia

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:30:12 +0000

From 4 Sep to 16 Sep | map

status: "the only way Monfils can win this match is if Federer gets taken out by a sniper" - Roland Garros official radio commentary

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:13:43 +0000

link: Automated Phone Systems

ben@benbodien.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:16:20 +0000

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/06/should-you-fire.html
Seth Godin has some thoughts on the value of automated customer service phone systems. My personal favourite is Virgin Media’s, which seems to route your call to a different centre based on a function of your answers, and the day of the week. Only one call centre is ever able to handle your query - it’s the one that your account number is actually assigned to. Keep trying until you get that one.

status: notes that this Rioja makes for excellent wondering-juice

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:06:11 +0000

status: wondering what's so freaking cool about cucumbers ("cool as a ..")

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:05:32 +0000

status: wondering if the new loading progress bar on GMail has made the whole thing slower, or if it just seems that way.

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:03:13 +0000

photo: Gnarled Trunk

ben@benbodien.com — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:50:54 +0000

Flickr photo page

photo: Lush Blades

ben@benbodien.com — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:32:10 +0000

Flickr photo page

status: has abandoned his quest to get his mother to stop composing HTML emails in Comic Sans MS

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:56:56 +0000

link: Web Form Design

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:28:41 +0000

http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/webforms/
Luke Wroblewski’s new book on designing web forms comprehensively covers the art and science of laying out the blanks, in every aspect from design and organisation, to validation and inline help text. A fresh addition to the must-have web designer bookshelf.

status: News headline of the year: http://moourl.com/xpfx8 (http://moourl.com/0u88m)

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:51:01 +0000

status: Finally accustomed to the effects of monitor calibration, and they no longer look too cold. Thanks, Huey Pro!

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:21:44 +0000

status: desperately looking for posessions to sell to bolster the Nikon D300 fund

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:49:36 +0000

blog: DHL Non-Express Tracking

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:05:40 +0000

Expecting a delivery sent via DHL, and armed with a consignment number, I attempted to track the package.

Hilarity ensued as the code was not recognised by the fast track box on the front page, an actual pop up appearing to display an error: “Please enter a Number (only one) in the FastTrack Box.” Since my tracking number contained spaces, I stripped these out by hand, and resubmitted. This time I was redirected to the main tracking page, with a “No Result Found” error hidden away in the middle of the page.

I then turned to the On-line Tracking section of this page, which provided a drop down box to select which service the package had been sent with. All I knew was “DHL”, so I tried a couple (DHL Air Waybill, DHL Europlus), but to no avail.

Back up the page was a section titled More Tracking, with UK Domestic as the first link. I presumed that the store I’d bought from was also UK based, so I tried this. I then hit a blank page, with nothing but a retro Netscape favicon to distinguish the fact that I’d hit any kind of page at all. Was the page just broken? I dug into the source with Firebug, and noticed that it was assembled (badly) with javascript writing a frameset onto the page, with no body tag.

So that page looks blank in Firefox, but works perfectly in IE6 which doesn’t mind a webpage not having a body block. Once you’ve worked that all of this out, you can track your package with ease.

Or you could insist on UPS or FedEx the next time, which I would do, given the choice. They can both make websites that work, and have consignment numbering systems that allow them to determine the service used from the number itself.

link: Little People

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:48:09 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40878105@N00/sets/72157601887030844/show/
Art installation by Slinkachu at Nuart, Stavanger, Norway.

video: the best pop-up book in the world, ever

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:30:00 +0000

link: Designing Office 2007

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:16:11 +0000

http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=UX09
Jensen Harris, the man responsible for user experience in the Microsoft Office group, delivers a near-comprehensive talk on how the Office 2007 UI was conceived. A must-see for interface designers, and highly recommended skim-viewing for anyone who’s used at least a couple of the previous versions of Office.

link: The Second Best Firefox Extension in the World

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:49:30 +0000

http://screenshot-program.com/fireshot/
After the almighty Firebug, and just ahead of AdBlock Plus.

blog: Splash Pages can be Good Things

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:01:05 +0000

At HP, if you’re not in the USA and you don’t think to inform them as such when you hit the homepage using the dropdown at the top (not a primary nav element by any means), you’re in for a big dose of inconvenient.

Typical usage path for HP website (at least, mine, a few minutes ago):

Hit www.hp.com
Select “Small & Medium Business”, “Servers”
Happily follow the information path to find a suitable server (either by choosing a product family, or trying the product chooser)
Arrive at a server you’re quite interested in
Notice that the price is quoted in USD, which for someone who lives and works in the UK, is a problem
Try and work out how to get to the UK equivalent page, and notice that the dropdown country selector that’s typical of such companies is just flat, unbudging text.

So you have to back out all the way to the homepage, switch to your country, and then navigate back down to the product you wanted.

Some companies will force you to specify your country or region through a splash page (ABit, Asus) which would have prevented this problem. A direct competitor to HP forgoes a splash, but instead makes the default country so much more obvious with a flag icon that stands out on the page.

Presumably, differences in regional catalogues make it too complicated to allow visitors to hop between regions from any page on the site, but this would clearly be the ideal. In the meantime, things like country selectors and age verification forms justify splash pages, because if you don’t ask for that information up front and your assumption turns out to be wrong, that will be a problem.

link: Absolut Quartet - Interactive Musical Robots

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:54:00 +0000

http://www.digitalexperience.dk/?p=360

Ever dreampt of being able to play a melody and have a robot jam along with you by firing rubber balls at a giant marimba, while another blends in a haunting layer of harmonised crystal glass resonation and a third keeps the beat with an assortment of percussion?

Your day, my much disturbed friend, has finally come.

photo: Probably the best nature macro I’ve ever seen. By Martin Amm on photo.net.

ben@benbodien.com — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 11:15:00 +0000

link: Jan Von Holleben - Dreams Of Flying

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:27:14 +0000

http://www.janvonholleben.com/dreams_of_flying.php
Pure photographic magic.

link: PR Suicide

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:20:26 +0000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/7253002.stm

A free lesson in how not to put the lid on a national PR disaster for your small business, by Mr Langsdon of Lichfield, Staffordshire.

Although he could have been quoted out of context, he seems to have implied that he and his business stand by the original statement on the bill, and that, except for the exposure of the message to the customer, this kind of thing is standard procedure.

product: Between Earth and Heaven

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

product: Flight Of The Conchords: The Complete HBO First Season

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Absolutely brilliant series, in a field of its own. I love it for the deadpan deliveries of lines in NZ accents.

link: Twitter Help

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:55:00 +0000

http://twitter.com/help
Probably the best web app support form in the world.

product: Recipes from a 3 Star Chef

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

product: Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices (Voices That Matter)

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

photo: Guggenheim by Night

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:42:59 +0000

Flickr photo page

photo: Autumn Evening

ben@benbodien.com — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:41:05 +0000

Flickr photo page

product: Never Push When It Says Pull: Small Rules for Little Problems

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

product: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

product: About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

photo: Cinema Roof

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 21:27:17 +0000

Flickr photo page

photo: Havel Pier

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 21:18:45 +0000

Flickr photo page

photo: Pollen For Dinner Again

ben@benbodien.com — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:47:38 +0000

Flickr photo page

photo: Sunset Peaks

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 26 May 2007 17:15:42 +0000

Flickr photo page

product: Macro Photography Photo Workshop

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 24 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

product: What the Numbers Say: A Field Guide to Mastering Our Numerical World

ben@benbodien.com — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

product: Josef Albers: Formulation - Articulation

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

product: Typography: A Textbook of Design

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

product: Cowboy Bebop Collection Box 2

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

product: Cowboy Bebop Collection Box 1

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

product: Curb Your Enthusiasm - Series 1 - 4 (9 Disc Box Set) (Exclusive to Amazon.co.uk)

ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 09 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

photo: A Plethora

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 23:36:14 +0000

Flickr photo page

photo: West India Quay

ben@benbodien.com — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 01:13:29 +0000

Flickr photo page

photo: San Francisco Bay

ben@benbodien.com — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 13:44:14 +0000

Flickr photo page

Ben Bodien | Lifestream

link: Students

link: Branislav Kropilak Photography

link: World Events - Impact on Web App Traffic

video: The History of the Internet — an animated guide. A well produced infographic guide to the evolution of the grand network of networks. I’m not sure France was using the Euro in the days of CYCLADES ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:56:52 +0000

link: The Feltron 2008 Report

travel: Stavanger, Norway

status: consistently impressed with all the Puma shoes I've ever owned. These ones feel like thick socks. In a good way.

status: making a shopping list of batteries needed to power all the boy's presents. Lego wins.

photo: Arncliffe Daybreak

status: blown away by Little Snapper (http://realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper). Two minutes with the trial and I want to have it's babies.

status: full of Oreos. Nice iPhone respect for the Oreo with auto-capped 'o' there. Clearly the king of cookies cropped up in product testing.

status: wishing safari iphone had a "go back to the app i was launched from" button.

status: thinking that dvd/blu-ray boxes should contain a voucher for a 99p download of the same movie from iTunes

status: is switching back to Firefox from Chrome. The Firebug gap and total lack of RSS handling are the dealbreakers.

link: Tim Van Damme's Web Based Biz Card

link: Rocket Assisted Construction of World's Tallest Bridge

status: noting that watching cartoon network then playing an hour of left 4 dead before bed leads to some fairly undesirable dreams

photo: Kettlewell Sunset Landscape

status: taking photos of Yorkshire landscapes in biting arctic wind while being buzzed by RAF Tornados under a stunning sunset

location: London, England

location: London NW5 2LE, England

link: The Big Picture

link: Twitter Follow Cost

status: getting really bored of all these mediocre "10 useful techniques for <x>" style blog posts. altering rss subscriptions accordingly.

link: Liberty City (GTA4) vs New York City

video: Procedural Art by Glenn Marshall

link: Application Interface Design Guidelines

status: lamenting google/paypal checkout for making it far too easy to casually impulse buy

status: nibbling a blueberry muffin while tackling some complicated web app architecture design issues

link: Web Designer Cheat Sheets

blog: Modular Wine Glasses

status: raising an eyebrow at last.fm, which is streaming classic hip hop eclectically interspersed with Serbian gypsy folk

status: finding that he's having to widen browser windows to accommodate what seems to be a trend toward wider page layouts

blog: Good Night Firefox (Good Morning Chrome?)

blog: Olympic Medal Table Bias

link: Lost and Found 2.0

photo: Small Talk with a Web Designer

status: measuring everything on screen with xscope's (http://iconfactory.com/software/xscope/) dimension tool - more addictive than bubble wrap

link: An Event Apart Blogged

status: correcting some horrendous typographic slip-ups. funny how they're so obvious after a few days away.

blog: A Bizarre Attack on Fire Eagle

video: Endanged indigenous cultures, and the extreme diversity of their realities.

link: Bubble Calendar

video: Paper prototyping interactions in an AJAX app

status: wading through oceans of search data with Google's Insights tool (http://moourl.com/ngmfc)

link: NY Times Olympic Medal Count Map

photo: On Rails

blog: This Redesign, Thing

video: visualisations of various forms of traffic in Britain

link: 2008 movie box office revenue

status: launching his redesigned personal website (http://benbodien.com). not quite finished, but then again, it probably never will be.

video: Delicious redesign: before/after, animated

link: Pentax k10d in Space

link: Volkswagen: Shift

link: That Ain’t no Lazy Susan

status: enjoying the new last.fm interface, and preparing for battle with his own site redesign

link: How Dopplr Learns

photo: Bad form design just begging to be punished.

link: O2 stuffs up Apple's iPhone 3G launch

blog: My RSS Feed

link: Pixar's tightknit culture is its edge

status: throwing away site concept designs, and declaring a mental block. Back to pen and paper for a bit.

status: noting that Mozilla Weave is a brilliant idea, but has a way to go in terms of stability

status: getting annoyed with FF3 crashes, six today and counting

link: The Fun of Getting There

link: caffeine usage arcs

link: Tic ciT, Tac caT, Toe eoT

link: zoomii visual amazon store

link: Google learns to crawl Flash

blog: Cool Drainage

link: Image Fulgurator

link: NOFRKS Design

status: reporting bugs in the Twitter API

link: Jiffy Firebug Plugin: Fine grained calculation of performance timings

link: Simple organic shapes the Illustrator way

status: is officially declaring Amazon's E-Commerce Web Services to be really unfriendly, not helped by poor documentation

status: is wondering if he could survive on fresh lemonade alone

status: cringing at the overcomplexity of Amazon's web services, having been using those of Flickr, Tumblr and Twitter recently

location: London, England

video: The History of the Internet — an animated guide. A well produced infographic guide to the evolution of the grand network of networks. I’m not sure France was using the Euro in the days of CYCLADES
ben@benbodien.com — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:56:52 +0000