World without end

Means and ends from Daring Fireball:

“Follow the money” is as good a way as any to define a company: the point of business is to profit. This is why Apple is not, and has never been, a software company: their profits come from hardware sales — computers, and, now, iPods. Microsoft is a software company: their profits — billions of dollars every quarter — come almost solely from software.

Judged by their profits, Google is an advertising company. They don’t profit from search, they don’t profit from software. They profit by selling ads.

Taking the dirt away IX

By telling each other about our experiences in this mutual blog, we can get the belief in a positive world back for ourselves. The mere fact that many people around the globe are trying to be “spreading goodwill“ as well as you do—isn't that already a light at the end of the tunnel?

Well, don't get mad, get even. A brand new app developed using Ruby on Rails meet AJAX is Spreading Goodwill. Made by the same people who rules mir.aculo.us.

A fresh green interface, using Verdana type, the application features a database backend (compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL), complete user management with email-based registration confirmation, password reset, RSS feeds for articles and comment Ajax-based article commenting, pagable article lists, some administration functions and so on and so forth.

Source can be downloaded here. To contribute and make a better world.

RPM

All good men gone

Mr. Robert Moog, the creator of the electronic music synthesizer that bears his name and that became ubiquitous among both experimental composers and rock musicians in the 1960’s and 1970’s, died on Sunday at his home in Ashville, N.C. He was only 71.

Mr. Luc Ferrari passed away on Monday 08/22/05, in Arezzo, Italy. As director of the Groupe de Recherche Musicale from 1959 to 1960, he worked closely with Pierre Schaeffer, who coined the term musique concrète. Luc Ferrari also founded in 1981 "la muse en circuit" creation center. He was only 76. Full details, in French, at Le Monde.

Spanish Harlem

Writing about new designs, or re-designs as you might prefer, Bitacoras.net has adcquired a brand new look this week.

Following the "less is more" attitude, people at Hipertextual,a weblog media, has conceived a clear, fresh and compact work.

Based upon a philosophy were real time blogger notification matters, ping offered by Bitacoras now is truly faster. Thanks God.

Taking the dirt away VIII

In its 4th edition A List Part presents a new design, a new structure, and a new publishing system powered by Ruby on Rails coded gently by Mr. Dan Benjamin.

From pixel to prose and code to content, choice of colors are earthly and grainy based, flavoring its intention with a favicon transporting us to the lost fields ofGreensleeves. Editors have either a fine sense of humor describing motifs for its redesign: Each issue will have its own color scheme. Imagine: Red and green for Christmas; blue underlined links for when Jakob Nielsen finally writes for us.

Since it first edition, back to 1997, A List Apart magazine has had been a pillow book all over this years for people like us who make websites.

Now, they seem to recommend us to use a fixed 1024 pixel wide layout.

For a step by step on how the site came together, check out the launch article by Zeldman.

Read it now. Maybe you can be one of them.

Some blogs are bigger than others

Server at Segonquart Studio is being re-booted this week. So, you might notice some failures in this blog during that time.
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Note: Our server rocks. On the road again


Yours, sincerely.

Changes

Visitors of this blog would have noticed I have replaced the originalflickr banner with a 80 pixels x 15 pixels GIF image link to the same place.

Reasons to do this were, first at all, to optimize this blog's weight: Now renders fast.
And second, a graceful inspiration I have had visiting this site.

Other changes done include a new RSS mini banner to allow you syndicate this blog, and a re-design of EXIT's banner.

Exit is a spanish board of data processing experts where you can find and see my skills or even download a short bio , only in case you need it...

Is honest to deserve all the glory of flickr mini banner to Markus AngerMeier. Vielen Danke Schön.

The rest is mine. Hope you feel more comfortable now.

More Humans after all

Some examples:

• John Gruber
• Todd Dominey
• Thomas Fuchs
• Roger Johansson

Hot Banners

A recent banner template done by Segonquart Studio can be found here.

An Infotainment Scanned

In recent posts it was noticed a failure in the script that renders info.com, a search platform providing with results from up to 14 search engines and pay-per-click directories.

That was days ago, today it works normal. Good done.

Meta Dating

HumanML: The Vision is an article written last June by Jay Peltz exploring the needs and future of the ability to leverage open standards to improve communications human-to-human, human-to-machine and machine-to-machine.

HumanML is a new specification being developed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards.

In Research, the area of semiotics is endeavoring to identify and understand culturally specific signs that communicate meaning in non-verbal contexts.

In my studio, I should apply again into Wittgenstein's readings. One never knows.

Accessibility or Friendship

It’s not that people are computer illiterate, it’s that computers are people illiterate.

That's hard.

Read it here.

Taking the dirt away VII

It's the same old story.

We were there standing on and expecting AJAX to change the wide world and from one of the bigger corps of the twentieth century we get this result.

It will be hard to explain young generations were it came all from. Shame.

Sensoria II

This post is not about mp3's blogs, this post is about technology.

Art meets technology

Tenori-On (sound on your palm) is a novel personal digital instrument for playing sound and ambient light patterns developed by Toshio Iwai a media artist, specially appointed professor in the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology from The University of Tokyo, and Yamaha corp.

How does it work?

The interface is an embedded system operated by a real-time operating system called ITRON that mainly controls the sound output, LEDs, and the 256 switches. The core unique technology is the algorithm that makes music visible.

The algorithm analyzes: How long one of the 256 switches has been touched, the direction of the touch and the angle of the interface with the acceleration sensor embedded in the interface.

This elaborate and highly developed technology makes it possible to receive many different types of information simultaneously, which we can't perceive with our eyes, and it expands expressive possibilities by providing an interface to the music and the LEDs.

SIGGRAPH 2005 introduces Tenori-On. There, you'll find all the data, techniques, people, and inspiration you need for succesful research, development, creativity, and production.

Sensoria

This post is not about technique, this post is about mp3's bloggers.

Nothing to do, right? Next list bring you some links to music to enjoy and listen to while doing nothing but staring at your ceiling's flat, babe.

Technical questions: One, no criteria was adopted for this links; Two, take your trousers off and put your headphones on. Three, no three at all.

• Copy Right?
• Silence Is A Rhythm Too
• 3hive
• 20 Jazz Funk Greats

Halo

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Learn More

A gravatar, is quite simply a 80 x 80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?

After 638,876,951 gravatars had been served, maybe now it's time to get one, right?

A globally recognized avatar, Gravatar, helps you to do it. Nothing seems much more easy than use brand new objects like this - again - simple.

Trust to Tom Werner when he mentions Renee DesCartes' early writings as an inspiration to his project. Nice trick.

I'm not into Descartes anymore. When I was a young man, I used to seek pleasure and read La Geometrie; a pillow book this french mathematician and philosopher wrote. We must see in Renee Descartes the man who invented analytic geometry. The first edition of La Geometrie appeared as an appendix to the Discours de la Methode in 1637.

With the years, I get more into Leibniz's handwritings - the Mole - abbandoning Descartes' books. Unjustice.

Tom Werner, the mother of gravatar's invention, is a web and print designer hailing from Oceanside California. Needless to say you, he collects information.

In the can

The Camden International Film Festival has honored Switch Off selecting the documentary for their USA premiere.

The Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) explores the independent documentary film and the artists that create them. CIFF is a weekend dedicated to honoring the independent documentary and highlighting the worlds lesser-known evils.

Two names:

Benjamin J. Fowlie is the founding director of this recent born Festival.

Director Manel Mayol made the film. He is also a well respected friend of mine.
More in Google.

Humans who cares

Blokes to geek this summer:

• Zeldman
• Mini-d
• John Hicks
• Robertdw

Grab your Bookmarks.

Marriages

Those wo are afraid of the recent marriage between Apple and Intel, shoul read and pay attention to Sharks, Fins, and the Itanium a post written by jhbrown from MIT in the year 2001.

Just commenting it.

A percentage of it

On August 3rd 2005, Mozilla Foundation announces Mozilla Corporation.

One more dot com in the jungle, you might say. In response to the great, and maybe unexpected, Firefox Browser's succes, in Mozilla becomes true everyone's dream: Get into real bussiness.

The Mozilla Corporation is legally a taxable, or in general terms, a "for-profit" entity. However, it is not a typical commercial entity. Its purpose is not to generate a return on investment in the financial sense. It is not an investment vehicle or an IPO candidate. It is completely owned by the Mozilla Foundation to promote an open Internet, where consumers have choice and innovation thrives.

President from the Corp is Mrs. Mitchell Baker. A honest person with a well-known career promoting choice and innovation on the Internet. Congratulations.

However, let me wonder::

What is to be considered a non-typical commercial entity: Cooperativism? Communism?

How will both developers' community and volunteers face up this announcement?

Will any devoted evangelist give away getting something for nothing ?

Aren't we talking about rude taxes and commerce?

The main question:

Why not spin off the Mozilla Corporation as a true for-profit company?. You can find an answer here.

Italian Jobs

The formula for computer screens (monitors) is:

(red value x 0.2126) + (green value x 0.7152) + (blue value x 0.0722)


This W3C algorithm is based on the formula intended for televisions (the NTSC North American standard) and could be a helpful value when we are developing websites.

Does color affect our perception of the message?. Sure. Maybe. Maybe not.

May, perception of colors be a matter of study whenever exposing our accessibility skills? This problem is less simple as it could seem from a first approach.

Answers to this question could be found in Contrasto Colori. A place for thinking.

A call for assistance directed towards cognitive psychologists, human factors specialists, color perception specialists, any expert that can confirm (or contradict, if more appropriate) our doubts regarding the W3C algorithm, either through experimentation or documented expertise.


Order some pizza, get a coffee and leave your best efforts for this project.

Pick me up

Today, in the first week of this August of our discomptent, Switch Off the website has been mentioned in NWP magazine with a 4 under 5 valoration. Get it?

NWP(newwebpick.com), a international digital designer union and a community of international digital designers, is one globe designing information focusing on the digital design.

If you also like to read, have a look to NWP E-zine.

NWP E-zine is a season’s topical edition issue for those who love media art in internet, It include about web design / digital art / 3D design / Illustration / photography…etc. We hope that it could be advanced for design idea and we also will collect more information about design news from all over the world. Of course it’s free and commonweal..

Thank You, kids. You're welcome.

An Infotainment Scan

Recently, a well-known friend of mine has had been rejected ( not selected , in polite terms ) were was a demand in a strong-skilled JavaScript programmer. It's hard for him to explain people younger than thirty-five how was the WWW ten years ago. He has no official degree, just experience. Ten years of everyday experience.


In fact, he hardly can remember if JavaScript - the main thing, if you like AJAX - was a matter of study in College ten years ago. It was not, believe him, at least in Spain. First generation of web developers, have had to learn JavaScript by themselves. Strange, isn't it?

An heritage from that golden years is to look at websites from the source, a strange behavior that my friend get me use to it. Away to analyze projects or its structure. We, my friend and I, became logical minds, do not forget it.

A curious example was examined las afternoon:


Info.com is a search platform which draws together the best of the Web. From one search query, we provide you with results from up to 14 search engines and pay-per-click directories, including Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo!, Kanoodle, LookSmart, About, Overture and Open Directory.


If one has a look to the source, as mentioned above, maybe will findworng something like this:

function rubar(){ document.write('/table>') }  rubar();

And notice a written

/table>

broken tag at the end of every web page result. Ahem! We're talking about business, isn't it?

Well, nothing much to say. Last afternoon, we finished our coffee making a little fun about those programmer's things.

Just for the pleasure to entertain you.