User Experience Designer, Travis Isaacs, shares his take on balancing time vs. effort, as well as sketch vs. wireframe vs. prototype vs. comp — by creating high-fidelity wireframes in Keynote. His presentation is called Keynote Kung-Fu: How to wireframe like a ninja and was given at the Big Design Conference in May 2010. He compellingly shows why an affordable, powerful tool is needed and how Keynote can fill this void.
I personally use Omnigraffle for my hi-fi wireframing needs. And it bothers me that he assumes ninjas (Japanese) practice kung-fu (Chinese). That’s like depicting a cat barking or chirping. It just doesn’t work that way.
My list of recommended must-have WordPress plugins. I have these plugins installed across all of my blogs and WordPress instances, no doubt about it.
Google Analyticator puts Google Analytics tracking information on your WordPress site to track clicks, search keywords, time on site, etc. You need a Google Analytics account for this.
Newly released WordPress 3.0 is looking both beautiful (new default theme) and functional (batch updates, custom menus, custom post types, contextual help). I’m going to upgrade one of my blogs right now!
New features of WordPress 3.0 include:
Admin features
Set your admin name to whatever you like
Unified updating – update WordPress, plugins and themes in batch, in one place
Contextual help on every screen
New default theme “Twenty Ten”
New look
Custom backgrounds
Custom header images
Custom menu system
Mix and match pages, categories, custom links
Reorder menu items, create submenus, rename titles
Sidebar widget to match
Custom post types
Built-in shortlink generator
Update a network of sites from a single WordPress installation
UPDATE: Upgrades ran smoothly. Even batch-updated my plugins.
A friend asked me for advice on apps he should download to his new Android phone and I responded with a long-winded, 27-bullet reply (a last-minute addition to this blog post makes 28). Here it is.
100% vital (and FREE) apps:
Owner – Show contact information on your lock screen
Battery Indicator – Puts an exact percentage of battery remaining in the top left notification bar
Advanced Task Killer – Android phones allow multi-tasking, unlike the iPhone which only allows 1 program to be used at a time, so some programs run in the background and waste your phone’s available memory. Use this app to “kill” all running tasks by the push of a button. Dont forget to put vital apps (ie: Battery Indicator) on the “ignore” list so that they continue to the run in the background.
Google Voice – If you have a Google Voice account, you can set it up on your phone to transcribe and play all of your voicemails right to your phone
Good to have:
Digital Clock – Put a big digital clock on the home screen
Facebook – Decent app for FB
gTasx – If you use Google Tasks, this is a standalone app for managing tasks (you can also point your browser to the mobile Tasks page but I like the app)
Personal Assistant – Check all of your bank and credit card accounts from one app
Sound Manager – You can schedule your ringer, alarm & media volume by time (ie: mute ringer from 9am-5pm while at work, etc)
Kayak – Find airline flights on your phone
Amazon – Amazon shopping app
PayPal – If you use PayPal a lot, this is a good app to monitor your usage and send money
Google Reader – To read your Google Reader RSS feeds
Listen – For podcasts
Stopwatch – Decent stopwatch app
Cool apps:
Google Sky – Points out the constellations in the sky
Pandora – I use this app for internet radio every morning in the shower
Ringdroid – If you want to edit mp3s to make your own ringtones
Shazam – Hold it up to your car speakers and it’ll tell you what song is playing
Tube Downloader – Download YouTube videos right to your phone (awesome)
Other Essential Android Tips
If you hold your finger down on an empty area of your home screen, you can install widgets or add quick-dial shortcuts, bookmarks, etc, right to the desktop of your phone. You can even create folders to hold shortcuts to apps that you specify.
Keep GPS turned OFF to save your battery life
Check all of your apps to make sure that sync’ing is done every hour or more, instead of every 15 minutes (to save battery life)
I even keep Wifi off to save battery, and only turn it on when I need it
Go to Settings > Location & Security to set an unlock pattern for your phone
Go to Settings > Language & Keyboard > Android Keyboard to “vibrate on keypress” — it helps with typing
Get a minimum 4gb microSD card to hold music on your phone
If you’re on a Mac, download DoubleTwist onto your Mac to sync your iTunes playlists to your phone
One of my designer friends at work sent this to me because I was humming a Taylor Swift song at my desk. I don’t even know how it got in my head when all I did was listen to the news this morning. Today’s incident in addition to the time I became happy when I heard a Lady Gaga song on the radio for the first time in weeks (“happy” in quotations, under the same category as satisfying an addition) makes me very afraid.
RSS Feed