Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

In User Experience development, it is a good idea to take a step back from time to time to assure yourself and the team that you are on the right path.  These UX process diagrams provide food for thought, from professionals in the field.

User Experience Sundial

I was doing a little research about online books, and found this ironic title, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Toltec Wisdom.  I suppose the publisher assumes there are far more complete idiots buying books than Toltec wise people.  Makes sense, although it seems kind of sad and pedestrian.  Simple no frills wisdom imparted without sacred ceremony or four day vision quest in the desert.

Excited to learn that my friends at Azureus aka Vuze have developed a new technology, Fanhattan.  Stay tuned!

Follow up, May 30, 2012.  Fanhattan shortens name to Fan TV, and announces new set top box technology.

Fan TV set top device

Sony releases Reader app for Android 2.2.  There appears to be a demand for other versions, as in this blog post from the Sony eReader Journal.  I’m working on a similar app for other platforms.

Congratulations to Career Element getting written up in Time magazine.

Funny what turns up on the Internet.  Today I decided to change my Facebook profile picture to Gumby, so I ran a search for “Gumby” using Google’s Image search engine.  On the first page, three of my own images appeared!

See the image above; I captured the screen and marked my images with a yellow asterisk.  You can double click on the image to see it in full size, or better yet, go to Google and run the search yourself!

The images appear in my website’s section about working on an early 3D model of Gumby at New York Institute of Technology, back in the “old school” days of 3D animation development.  I subsequently met Art Clokey, the original Gumby creator and claymation animator.  See the rest of the story and the images here.

Exciting times ahead for CareerElement, a website I took an active role in the visual design and product development beginning April 2009.  They will be hosting their first high-tech career fair Tuesday, August 17, 2010, 4:30pm at the Stanford Park Hotel 100 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA.

CareerElement is led by CEO Paul Campbell a UC Berkeley Engineering graduate, and finishing his Masters at Stanford.  He assembled a strong team of software engineers who required User Experience and visual design help from Gregg Boot of west11.com design firm and me.

As part of the design team we had to start from scratch, brainstorming the name and identity of their new job hunting, social networking website, flow charting and wire framing the layout of the entire site.

There is much more in the works at CareerElement, so stay tuned and sign up for the career fair to learn more.

Update: CareerElement has temporarily gone offline for a redesigned, improved business direction.

Shrek reaches the end of the line with the current Shrek the Fourth 3D movie release.  Let out an obligatory, exhausted, “Whoo-hoo!”

Have the screenwriters reached the end of their own creative lines?  So, why can’t Shrek lose his kingdom to a Ponzi scheme, become an alcoholic junkie in a back alley, team up with the Green Goblin to combat the Green Hornet and Green Lantern, barf out some green super slime that cleans up a giant oil spill?  Whatever happens, Shrek is really Tracy Morgan, and he will continue on just fine.