diário de campo

Envio de livros económico

2013-02-11T14:47:00.000+00:00

Já tinha publicado anteriormente um artigo sobre consumo de livros sustentável. Para os que ainda não abdicaram dos seus hábitos de leitura, apesar das dificuldades económicas que vivemos e que preferem livros em papel, saibam que existe um serviço dos CTT denominado 'Correio Editorial - Publicações Periódicas e Não Periódicas', o qual facilita a transação online de livros ou de outros produtos editoriais. O custo de envio, através deste serviço dos CTT é significativamente inferior ao de outros objectos.
Assim, por exemplo, o envio de um livro que pese, por exemplo, 700g, terá o custo de €1,64, de acordo com a tabela em vigor.
Alguns sites de troca ou venda de livros em segunda mão:

www.bibliofeira.com/

http://www.winkingbooks.com/

http://www.venderlivros.com/

http://www.olx.pt/livros-revistas-cat-215

Evernote + IFTTT = Automate note creation

2013-01-28T00:59:00.000+00:00

I'll try to enumerate here some techniques I find usefull to take notes and “Remember Everything”. Having a process or habit for capturing notes is an important way to ensure that it happens consistently.

Create a Date field on my Evernote notes.
By capturing things discretely, you can find all those things that you are looking for in an methodic and efficient way and you create unique timelines for those things. If you want to see just the short fiction you wrote last month, for instance, you can do a search in my Daily Fiction notebook for anything that has been created in the last month. That search string would look something like this:
notebook:"Recipes" created:month-1;
Instead, if I wanted to see all of the places that I’ve been in the last month, I could do a search that would result in just that:
notebook:"Social networking" created:month-1 tag:foursquare
When all of these are combined together, I get a good picture of my life in a single timeline.
Put the internet to work for you: use an automate note creation where possible using a tool like IFTTT. Create a few “tasks” in IFTTT to automatically add routine notes to Evernote. You can add, for instance, the day’s weather (use IFTTT’s “clock” widget to set up a “task” that sends my local forecast to Evernote each morning at a specific hour);
Take a picture with Instagram on your iPhone or iPad. This picture will automatically get sent to a new note in Evernote.
Whenever you add a post to you blog, that post will automatically get added to Evernote as well. This is useful to have a record of what is posted on a given day, in relation to everything else.
Send your Foursquare check-in to Evernote. It’s a useful tool for capturing where you’ve been and you don’t have to share that information with anyone else, if you choose not to.
Use Twitter throughout the day and use the information in your tweets that is worth capturing.

The point of being an Artist

2013-01-27T23:28:00.001+00:00

How can art drive us into positive emotion, engagement and meaning?

Francis Bacon
Self-Portrait, 1970

What does wellbeing mean?

Wellbeing is a subjective evaluation of how we feel about and experience our lives. Wellbeing, positive mental health and mental wellbeing are often used interchangeably, although ‘wellbeing' is also used in a broader sense to include physical health. In the sense being used here, wellbeing includes:

How we feel
How we think
Relationships
Meaning & Purpose

Source: Friedli 2009

"The point of being an Artist is that you may live." ~ Sherwood

Don’t be carried off your feet by anything because it is modern — the latest thing.
Go to the Louvre often and spend a good deal of time before the Rembrandts, the Delacroixs.
Learn to draw. Try to make your hand so unconsciously adept that it will put down what you feel without your having to think of your hands.
Then you can think of the thing before you.
Draw things that have some meaning to you. An apple, what does it mean? The object drawn doesn’t matter so much.
It’s what you feel about it, what it means to you.
A masterpiece could be made of a dish of turnips.
Draw, draw, hundreds of drawings.
Try to remain humble. Smartness kills everything.
The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
Any cleanness I have in my own life is due to my feeling for words.
The fools who write articles about me think that one morning I suddenly decided to write and began to produce masterpieces.
There is no special trick about writing or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it.

Source:Brain Pickings

Lisbon life

2012-09-25T18:48:00.001+01:00

Lisbon life, a photo by Alatryste on Flickr.

Flexslider and CMS

2012-09-24T13:01:00.000+01:00

You surely have already seen the Flexslider plugin. It's a fully responsive JQuery slider plugin.
Some of it's features are:

Simple, semantic markup
Supported in all major browsers
Horizontal/vertical slide and fade animations
Multiple slider support, Callback API, and more
Hardware accelerated touch swipe support
Custom navigation options
Use any html elements in the slides

Besides its responsiveness, it's a real creative gallery plugin.

I love this plugin, also for the infinit possibility of integrating any html elements in the slides. This is really an awsome creativity challenge. You can use a slider not only to embelish your layout, but also to support your website navigation. Truly intelligent and efficient design.

Unfortunately, the Drupal version of Flexslider, only permits to use as html elements, images. In the design aspects this reduces drastically all the potential of this plugin. It works in Drupal, as Flex Slider, but this module is not as far as straightforward as the woothemes flexslider. Too bad :(

Self-determination theory

2012-09-18T15:46:00.001+01:00

Self-determination theory. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory

The world in my brain

2012-08-26T13:56:00.001+01:00

A peaceful state of mind

2012-08-24T14:41:00.002+01:00

'Sinnerman' by Nina Simone and other inspiring and powerfull songs...

2012-07-13T16:05:00.000+01:00

The hot chip mixtape by Hot Chip on Mixcloud

While I'm figuring out how to add a PHP snippet to validate Portuguese phone numbers,

I listen to this powerful music. Thank you Nina Simone!!!!

Develop UX in the lean way

2012-06-29T18:54:00.002+01:00

This article is mainly based on a workshop presented by Diogo Terroso from nearinteraction, at João sem Medo Center, that I participated in.
My first conclusion is that this approach to the UX is interesting for its efficiency and teamwork methodology factors.

A core component is a team workflow methodology based in the build-measure-learn feedback.

Freely hand drawn mockups and not vector mockups.
Why? Because you focus on ideas and not in the look and feel of something that doesn't exist yet.

Wireframes and not flowcharts.
Why? Because the wireframe process is straight-to-the point and an absolutely non-tech stage of any web project. It requires a focus on a skeletal outline of the prototype features and interactions.

Create personnas. Tell it to someone and mesure peak moments.

A flow storytelling with a dramatic structure AIDA (Attention - Interest - Desire - Action) is an important method to define and evaluate the product opportunity and unique value proposition.
The need for a storytelling at the heart of user experience and product development can help you avoid a common set of problems teams face when they go through the product development and user experience process.

In her UX magazine article, Sarah Doody, explains: "A product is more than an idea, it's more than a website, and it's more than a transaction or list of functionalities. A product should provide an experience or service that adds value to someone's life through fulfilling a need or satisfying a desire. The ultimate question then becomes: who identifies that value? After the executive or stakeholder identifies the initial idea, who in the organization ensures that the product and experience deliver value to the user? Maybe it isn't the product manager, marketer, technologist, or designer; perhaps what we need is a new role: the product storyteller."

USP: Unique Selling proposition. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique—either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising. When you tell the product story, there must be something that differentiate it from the competition.

When you get to the stage of conceiving the prototype, there are many paths to choose. A very creative approach is the origami prototyping , as it is proposed and explained in this tackmobile.com blog article, by Juan Sanchez.

The product can be, then, validated through MVP.
Definition of MVP – “That version of a new product that will allow a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.” -Eric Ries
Another way of thinking about it: The goal of an MVP is get to a pivot in as short amount of time as possible.
Trevor Owens, groups the "MVPs into four categories (three out of the four require no code):

Survey: conversation or questionnaire with the target customer.
Mockup: visual of the product.
Concierge MVP: manual delivery of the product (ie. the value prop)
Product: functioning code

Surveys:

Better Alternative: try to sell customers of the existing market leader on why your proposed product is better.
Scene of the Customer: go where the highest geographic density of your customer or use case is.
Doppleganger: find someone already executing on your idea, do they have paying customers?

Mockup:

Decreasing Discount: with a mockup your are poised to collect money from customers, when you close your first customer be sure to offer a large discount. If the large discount is not accepted, that’s some invalidation. If they accept, continue to decrease that discount.
Innovator: there are people out there already solving the problem you’re focused on, find them and see if you can productize their tactics.

Concierge MVP

One Use Case: cut out 95% of the development time by making your product only function in under one use case. In this example, the team had a content search engine that only worked when the user searched for “geometry,” and they would guide the user through the product over the phone.
Real Life Simulation: if you’re dealing with a new form of interaction or a game, try to simulate it in real life first.
Meta: have your customer design the first version of your product.

Product

Menu: if your not sure what to build, have a bunch of fake features and see what people click on the most.
Conversation starter: the key to getting good feedback is getting your customers attention and activating their imagination. Try to use a gimmick wherever possible.

MVP vs CustDev Hack
In retrospect, many of these may be better deemed CustDev hacks. The difference between a CustDev hack and an MVP is that an MVP is a full-fledged experiment, ie. MVP includes setting assumptions, identifying the riskiest one, and deciding to pivot or persevere based on learnings. The cleverness by which you test your assumptions and gather learnings is a CustDev hack.

Just remember: MVP = Experiment, not code.

Some resources provided by Diogo, at this workshop, for MVP:
Concept feedback
Five second test

Responsive images

2012-06-06T02:41:00.000+01:00

We live in a nonlinear era. So if nowadays everything is so diverse and unpredictable, design must be adaptable, adjustable, elastic, fluid, flexible. It has to give quick and effective response to external conditions. In this context, we're talking about multiple versions of browsers and variable devices.
When Ethan Marcotte created this concept, he highlighted the importance of these three key aspects of responsive design:

a flexible grid,
flexible images and media,
and media queries.

To predict the behavior of an image, we can determine with some reliability is the size of a device’s screen. This is fundamental issue, since the scope is huge. Still, by itself is not enough.
Progressive enhancement has become an established best-practice approach to standards-based development. The mastermind of this new approach is Scott Jehl.

What Scott Jehl call progressive enhancement is a methodology he drove along with his filamentgroup team to test devices capability to support CSS and render properly the intended design elements, through a javascript function.
He actually, generously provides in one of his articles, the file with all these funcions, so we can make use of the test results.

There are three key components to a responsive images script:
    markup,
    JavaScript,
    and a server-side redirect rule.

Let's start by the markup. To differentiate the image, we need an image tag, like:
<img src="mobile-size.gif">
Then, we face a major challenge: the need to communicate this size to the server in time to defer the request for the image’s original src, if necessary. The server needs to know the client’s screen size before the images are displayed. That we will analyze on a future post.

Meetup Drupal ISCTE 2012

2012-06-02T21:06:00.001+01:00

Meetup Drupal no ISCTE IUL

View more presentations from Rui Figueiredo

Donovan

2012-06-01T18:11:00.000+01:00

Whale Fall - after life of a whale

2012-05-22T13:40:00.000+01:00

O que poderemos (ainda) aprender sobre existência, ego, impermanência.

Work Is Not A Job

2012-05-20T01:19:00.001+01:00

"Empower yourself and realise the importance of contributing to the world by living your talent. Work on what you love. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.”
Catharina Bruns

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Planing a Website* But Were Afraid to Ask

2012-05-20T00:54:00.000+01:00

The first questions we must ask ourselves when planning a web site, are:

What is the purpose?
Which objectives help us reach that purpose and in what order?

What ever may be the answers to these questions, the main point is to clarify what is a wish or well meaning and what is a real opportunity or need of our stakeholders.
Unfortunately the ones who hold the purse strings don't give a damn for our well meaning. And our wishes are not sufficient to produce any results. So, to define objectives and priorities, we really must know who the stakeholders of the project are. Who can possibly have interest in, or be affected by our web site, in some way.
For those of us who make a career out of web site planing, the stakeholders of our projects are those who hire us (the majority are business owners and middle managers).
And to these business owners and middle managers are connected many other stakeholders, such as

their customers,
their employees (like the person in customer support whose job can be made easier)
Competitors
Public at Large (Global Community)

Our scope doesn't have to be narrow. Our stakeholders determine our project viability.
So, the question that should be asked is: in what way does the web site help such customers?
Does it...

"Help them buy something they need? (Sell)
Help them find information? (Serve)
Help them save time or money? (Serve)"

Some sites focus on service, other sites focus on sales. Clarifying the key objectives, purpose or priorities helps to determine the content and structure of the site.

"To summarize well designed web sites always:

ask how the site helps their customers and
have clearly prioritized objectives".

"Consider the sphere of design. If the site’s goals are softer (e.g. brand building, entertainment, or a fashion portfolio), you probably need a solution that’s very strong on aesthetics and a little less focused on speed of use and other functional performance parameters. However, if your goals are harder (e.g. selling products online, giving access to data, providing applications), you’ll need to focus more on functional imperatives, which means going a bit lighter on aesthetic richness".

The focus of this article was how to define the purpose and objectives that helps us to plan a web site and stay focused on its priorities.

The next step to take is to write down a plan with succinct definitions about "what will happen, why, when and with whom", that you can use as base to start "the process of quickly mocking up the future state of a system, be it a web site or application, and validating it with a broader team of users, stakeholders, developers and designers".

References

"Web Site Design Objectives." MMC Learning. n.d. Web.
19 May 2012.

Hunt, Ben. "Your Web Site Goals." Web Design from Scratch. n/d. Web.

19 May 2012.

Cerejo, Lyndon "Design Better And Faster With Rapid Prototyping". Smashing Magazine. 2010/06/16 Web

19 May 2012.

How Good Designers Think

2012-05-17T19:54:00.001+01:00

For Simon Rucker, a designer has a particular way to relate himself with reality. “When good designers talk about innovation, they mean ‘the successful exploitation of new ideas.’ They don’t stop with the invention. They turn their inspirations into reality.” – Simon Rucker. If you want to know "how good designers think (and do) at each stage of the innovation process: insights, inspiration, and action", read Simon’s Harvard Business Review article “How Good Designers Think”.

Para Simon Rucker, um designer tem uma maneira particular de se relacionar com a realidade. "Quando bons designers falam sobre inovação, referem-se ao ‘sucesso na exploração de novas idéias.’ Eles não param na invenção. Eles transformam as suas inspirações em realidade "-. Rucker Simon. Se quer saber "como os bons designers pensam (e agem) em cada etapa do processo de inovação: introjeção, inspiração e ação", leia o artigo de Simon, da Harvard Business Review, "How Good Designers Think".

10 rules for Starting a Small Business

2012-05-04T18:44:00.001+01:00

Short and simple advices for startups:
Help us create the ultimate cheat sheet for entrepreneurial success. By Will Oremus - 10 Rules for Starting a Small Business - Slate Hive

Going with the flow

2012-05-02T15:27:00.001+01:00

Árvores nos Capuchos, Sintra, a photo by catarina clemente on Flickr.

A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. "I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived."

Omega: a Drupal Responsive theme I

2012-03-29T15:56:00.000+01:00

Responsive theme: a theme which design is conceived and developed to work well across the exploding number of devices people use to access the Internet.

The control which designers know in the print medium, and often desire in the web medium, is simply a function of the limitation of the printed page. We should embrace the fact that the web doesn’t have the same constraints, and design for this flexibility. But first, we must “accept the ebb and flow of things.”

John Allsopp, “A Dao of Web Design"

Omega theme: created by himerus, this Drupal 7 Base Theme is 100% configurable, for it's a HTML5/960 grid.
Each zone (group of regions) can be configured for content first layouts (push/pull classes), hidden at any time and each region can be disabled, resized, and placed easily any way you see fit.

Tutorial

1. Install Omega

http://drupal.org/project/omega (your_site/admin/appearance/install)
drush dl omega (automated download)
unpack tar.gz/zip file from drupal.org to sites/all/themes (through a file transfer server)

2. Download and install the following modules:

Ctools

A set of API’s that are required by many modules within Drupal. Chances are you already have Ctools enabled for other modules.

Omega Tools

(requires Ctools) - Omega Tools is a great set of functionality that will help you to easily create and manage your Omega subtheme

Delta

Delta is a powerful tool that allows you to create variations of a themes settings without having to create a new subtheme. When used with Context, Delta allows you to edit the omega grid, zone, and region settings and create all new layouts based on the various conditions available in Context.

Context

(requires Ctools) - Context allows you to manage contextual conditions and reactions for different portions of your site. You can think of each context as representing a "segment" of your site. For each context, you can choose the conditions that trigger this context to be active and choose different aspects of Drupal that should react to this active context, in that "segment".
Think of conditions as a set of rules that are checked during page load to see what context is active. Any reactions that are associated with active contexts are then fired.

3. Create your Omega sub-theme

Women entrepreneurs at Google

2012-03-13T15:50:00.000+00:00

Meghana Musunuri was a typical female entrepreneur in India. Born and brought up in Medak, she received a good education and spent time abroad both studying and working. Eventually, she decided to return to India and make a difference in her native country. After teaching in London for more than eight years, Meghana opened the Fountainhead School in Hyderabad in 2009. Meghana was smart, driven and passionate, but like many of her contemporaries in India, she needed guidance on how to use the web to broaden her business and her education mission. To help Meghana and the many other women entrepreneurs like her, we recently launched Women Entrepreneurs on the Web (WEOW).

Women Entrepreneurs on the Web teaches participants how to use web-based technologies to improve and grow their businesses. WEOW is divided into five different units or “circles,” all designed for women entrepreneurs with varied degrees of online presence and expertise. Entrepreneurs at various stages in their startups can enter the program through any of these circles.

1. Building an online presence: creating a website, a YouTube channel, and a business page on a social network like Google+
2. Collaborating effectively: tools like Gmail, Calendar and Docs
3. Connecting with customers: hosting Google+ Hangouts, creating and distributing targeted offers and discounts
4. Promoting your organization: online product demos, creating viral videos on YouTube, advertising through AdWords and AdSense
5. Tracking and optimizing your online presence: Google Analytics, Google Alerts, ripples on Google+, the +1 button, webmaster tools

Reference:
Mohan, Keerthana (March 9, 2012).
Providing a springboard for women entrepreneurs in India. Official Google Blog.
Retrieved from http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/providing-springboard-for-women.html

Aretha Franklin - Respect [1967] (Original Version)

2012-03-08T09:58:00.001+00:00

Celebrating Working Women: International Women's Day

2012-03-08T09:55:00.001+00:00

International Womens Day 2012 - Doodle Full HD 1080p

2012-03-08T09:41:00.001+00:00

2012-02-27T10:59:00.000+00:00

The Oscar triumph of "The Artist"

"Flattery will take you anywhere, says the American newspaper. The Artist, this love letter to Hollywood, received hugs, kisses and the Oscar for Best Film Sunday, February 26, on the occasion of the 84th ceremony . "The French film, silent and black and white, won a total of five statuettes: Best Picture, Best Actor (Jean Dujardin), best director (Michel Hazanavicius), best costume and best music.

It was indeed an amazing film. Very coherent in the style and with really great performance from the actors.

References: Courrier international - L'anticipation au quotidien 10:56