Jeremy Frank

Torch & the iPhone

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:15:06 -0400

Last week the new BlackBerry Torch was unveiled, and it was described as RIM’s attempt at an “iPhone killer.” It’s pretty commonplace for any newly announced smartphone to be dubbed a potential iPhone killer. None have yet to succeed, and I don’t think the Torch will either. Apple has amassed a following of loyal ~~subjects~~ fans, and the company is such a big part of our culture that I doubt any one phone can live up to that kind of expectation.

However, a few things about the Torch that I really like are the slide out physical keyboard and the “universal feed” feature, which provides a combined stream of updates from email, text messages, calendar items and social networks. It reminds me of a concept that Teehan+Lax put together last year for a new iPhone home screen (below). I think this would work great as an alternate configurable home screen and I hope that Apple will implement something like this someday!

These are some amazing maps of the US Interstate System done in...

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:43:00 -0400

These are some amazing maps of the US Interstate System done in the style of H.C Beck’s London Underground maps.

Eisenhower Interstate System Diagram Map Posters

A More Aggressive Yellow Jacket

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 07:05:20 -0400

A More Aggressive Yellow Jacket:

The yellow jacket mascot from my alma mater has recently been updated, by designer Jeremy Slagle. Contrasted against the previous mascot, this one is quite the improvement.

"The goal of this “state of web development” survey is to try and look behind the statistics, and get..."

Mon, 03 May 2010 08:39:35 -0400

“The goal of this “state of web development” survey is to try and look behind the statistics, and get a sense of the philosophies and techniques, as well as the technologies, that web designers and developers are using today.”

- The State of Web Development 2010 | Web Directions

Some of the results that I found noteworthy:

Few respondents use any form of Internet Explorer for their day to day web use, but IE8 is the number one browser developers test their sites in.

jQuery has become even more dominant, with nearly 80% of all respondents using the library, up from 63% last year.

Use of CSS3 and experimental CSS, up dramatically from last year.

iPad Start Experience: 4 Licenses, 21 Steps

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:07:54 -0400

iPad Start Experience: 4 Licenses, 21 Steps:

How’s this for user experience? 4 license agreements, 21 steps total. I wonder how much time this takes to complete, and how much variation there is in the level of frustration between standard Apple users and diehard Apple fans?

(via @lukewdesign)

PowerMate USB Multimedia Controller

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:42:08 -0400

PowerMate USB Multimedia Controller:

I’ve seen this device before, and never really given it much thought, but when Griffin put out a request for beta testers for updated software (optimized for Snow Lepoard), it got me thinking: “How could I use this awesome shiny aluminum programmable glorified volume knob for web development?” It says it can be easily programmed to execute any key command in any application! What could it do in say, Photoshop, Coda, or the browser? Now the gears are spinning…

CS5: An evolution of the designer’s toolbox

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:52:38 -0400

CS5: An evolution of the designer’s toolbox:

The folks at idsign recently talked with the brand design team at Adobe, and have put together a comprehensive overview of the CS5 branding. Overall, I like the updated look and new direction. Personally, I’m hoping that Photoshop performance has been improved with this release, but I won’t know for sure until I upgrade.

Goodbye Wordpress, Hello Tumblr

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 20:48:00 -0400

With the last post to this site being over 9 months ago, it’s about time for a change. Over the last 2 years of trying to maintain a traditional “blog” I’ve come to the realization that I just don’t have the time for this. Between a full time job, family priorities, and other commitments, the priority level of a blog fell pretty easily. Writing long-form blog posts takes a lot of time.

So, I decided to make switch to Tumblr that way I can do more quick and easy posts: links, quotes, photos and videos, etc. I may even post occasional traditional long-form posts, but we’ll see about that. Twitter is great for short and quick sharing, and I’ll still use it to some extent, but 140 characters is sometimes just not enough to communicate something clearly.

From what I can tell, Tumblr makes posting various content types super easy. I can’t think of an easier way to post than to use the bookmarklet they provide. For regular posts like this one, posting via email is much easier than logging into and navigating through a cms, as I did before with WordPress. Yeah, Tumblr doesn’t support comments, but my previous blog hardly got any comments any so I’m not worried about that. If I want to add commenting in the future, I’ve read some stuff about using Discus for that. All in all, I’m looking forward to this much easier to manage direction. Thanks Tumblr for making it simple.

Awesome video; an ode to classic video games like Space...

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 09:34:00 -0400

Awesome video; an ode to classic video games like Space Invaders, PacMan and Tetris.

PIXELS (via @hellohynes)

Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:17:00 -0400

Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive:

The IE team at Microsoft released a test drive version of IE9 today for developers. They’re also giving an in-depth preview at MIX10 later today. Hopefully we’ll see some really great stuff.

My mousepath (IOGraph) for 3 hours today. IOGraph is an OS X...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:47:00 -0500

My mousepath (IOGraph) for 3 hours today. IOGraph is an OS X application which tracks and records your mouse movements, allowing you to create pretty cool digital art.

IOGraph - 3 hours (via jeremyfrank)