Khoi Vinh's Blog, page 166

Come See Me Speak at WebVisions New York

Come see me next Fri 20 Jan at the WebVisions conference when it rolls into New York City. I'll be appearing on stage with my good friend Alice Twemlow, chairperson of D-Crit, the Masters Program in Design Criticism at The the School of Visual Arts. Our session is called "Design + Entrepreneurship," and we'll be talking about the unique opportunity that designers have today to create the kinds of new businesses that only designers can imagine. This, of course, will cover Mixel, and I'll talk about the genesis of that product and how we turned it into a company.

Here's an added bonus: if you use this link you can get 40% off the cost of the conference as well as a free pass to Kevin Hoyt's "Web Standards Playground" workshop. Register here.

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The Miracle of WD-40

[image error]An apparently common problem that many iPhone users encounter is that, after many months of use, the home button — the sole physical button on the device's face — starts to lose its responsiveness, sometimes precipitously. When this happens, it may take several presses, or a prolonged press, to get the button to produce any results. And sometimes where one press of the button is intended, the device registers two. Very annoying.

I was surprised to discover from a friend that Apple technicians diagnosed this problem on her phone as software related, which struck me as counter-inuitive, as it seemed to me to be very much a hardware problem. There has also been talk of the button needing software recalibration. I don't know if that approach works or not, but I'll tell you what worked for me: the miracle "water-displacing spray" WD-40.

Spray and Play

In my experience, on not just my own iPhone 4 but also on my girlfriend's, WD-40 restores the responsiveness of the iPhone's home button to basically like-new condition. I just sprayed a little bit of WD-40 directly on the button, then pressed the button rapidly a few dozen times, tested its responsiveness afterwards, then repeated the process two or three times until it began to improve. Then I used the phone for a day or two to see how well the button did in actual use; I found that after a few days the problem ebbed back slightly, at which point I applied more WD-40. After the second or third application, the responsiveness remained indefinitely.

Caveat lector: I make no guarantees, and have no idea if this does any long-term harm to the device. I'm nearly certain someone will insist that it does, so anyone reading this and thinking about using WD-40 themselves should assume that this is a potentially risky fix, and I can accept no responsibilities for any damage done to your device. But for my part, I've had no problems with it, and it's been six months or so since I tried this.

(Update: A friend suggests that this will void your warranty. I have no further knowledge on that issue, so, again, use your own judgment.)

In fact, I've found WD-40 to be a reliable and enjoyably analog fix to digital hardware for years. I first discovered this many, many years ago, when I asked an electronics repair technician if it was worth trying to fix an unresponsive button on a portable stereo that I then owned. He said don't bother; just try a bit of WD-40. Since then I've used it on buttons on all sorts of hardware, always with success. The best part, of course, is that a can of WD-40 costs about as much as a sandwich and has a thousand uses.

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Drawings by Ariel Aberg-Riger

I wrote about Ariel Aberg-Riger, one of my favorite up and coming artists, back in September. Since then she's become both a friend and an incredibly prolific user of Mixel (and even a curator of standout mixels by others).

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Ariel's first gallery exhibition is opening this Friday at TODA in Brooklyn. It will showcase many of her wonderful drawings and, as an added bonus, she'll be drawing portraits of visitors to the gallery from 4 to 6:00p that afternoon. More info here.

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Carnegie Mellon University Feed Sponsorship

Carnegie Mellon University's Master of Information Systems Management (MISM) degree with a Business Intelligence and Data Analytics (BIDA) concentration is developing an elite set of graduates cross-trained in business process analysis and skilled in predictive modeling, GIS mapping, analytical reporting, segmentation analysis, and data visualization.

Students in the MISM-BIDA program acquire the skills to integrate cutting edge information and analytic technology practices with applied business methods. The program features world-renowned faculty teaching a cohesive blend of data analytics, management, strategy, and IT courses. It is this unique mix that makes our graduates highly valued by corporate recruiters. Our MISM graduates have a ten-year track record of receiving highly competitive employment offers from financial service firms, consulting companies, technology agencies and start-up organizations.

Learn more at Carnegie Mellon Heinz College.

Box Office Mojo: 2012 Movie Franchises

A roundup of sequels, prequels and franchise extensions that will make their appearance at a multiplex near you in the next twelve months. Also included for good measure in the second part of this article is a survey of the wannabe franchises debuting in 2012.

It's probably not necessary to lament the preponderance of these kinds of movies relative to the number of original ideas in movies today, but jeez, some of these get me depressed just reading their descriptions. Anyway, it all makes for fascinating reading, which is par for the course for the excellent Box Office Mojo. Read the post here.

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Now You Can Try Mixel without Logging In

Happy new year everybody! Here's one last holiday gift: there's a new build of Mixel, our social collage app for iPad, available right now in the App Store. Version 1.2 adds a few minor interface changes for existing users, but its main feature significantly improves the first-run experience for new users — and for those who have until now been reluctant to give it a try because of our Facebook login requirement: you can now open up the app and browse the entirety of the network without having to login at all.

Come on In

Previously, when you'd open up the app, what you'd see was a screen that said, essentially, "login or go home." There was no way to sample Mixel's great content or see all the terrific stuff people are doing with it every single day, much less try your hand at making a mixel yourself. Frankly, it was not a great experience at all, but there was so much for us to do to get Mixel out into the world that it was one of the unfortunate causalities of our limited resources.

Well we finally found the opportunity to fix this. With version 1.2, when you fire up the app, you're free to browse around without logging in at all — in fact, you don't need to identify yourself in any way. This version lets you browse any mixel, see how it was put together, follow its constituent pieces to any other mixels in which it might be used… you can even remix any mixel or start a new one of your own.

Right: What you used see when you opened up Mixel for the first time.

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Right: …And what you see now. No registration required to have a look around.

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What you can't do, however, are all the operations that normally require you to identify yourself: comment on, like or love mixels, or post any mixels or remixes you make to the network for others to see. There's just no way to let you do any of these things without attaching a name to them. However, any mixels that you do make can be saved to your Photos app (see the feature we enabled in version 1.1) so you'll be able to save copies of your work. And, once you register or login (Facebook is still required), those mixels can then be posted to the network, of course.

We're working on making Mixel as accessible and easy to try as possible, and we think this goes a long way towards doing that for new users. Download it today and give it a try.

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Design Staff: How to Interview a Designer

Another great article from Design Staff, the design-for-startups blog that I wrote about earlier in the month: Writer Braden Kowitz offers one approach to interviewing design candidates:

"…Set up a well-scoped design problem and ask a candidate to solve it on the spot. It can take anywhere from 15-40 minutes depending on depth and complexity. It's such a good technique because there's no faking (like showing portfolio work from a big team effort) and when moderated well, it can simulate working together."

It's difficult to craft just the right kind of challenge though, and Kowitz suggests that the trick is to pose a problem that can't be solved perfectly and therefore has many possible solutions.

"The point of the design exercise is not whether someone can get the right answer; it's to see how people think. And the best way to keep people thinking is to invent a problem that's impossible to solve."

This is a more hands on approach than I ever used to hire designers myself, though I don't doubt its usefulness (and in fact after reading this I may consider employing something like it in the future). In my experience, asking a design candidate to explain in great detail the origin, development, launch and aftermath of a project from his or her own portfolio was almost always enough insight into that person's thinking processes for me to decide whether or not they would be a good hire. Still, it's true that the problem of hiring designers, especially for startup founders not accustomed to evaluating design talent, is a tough one. I might write a bit about my own approach in the near future, but in the meantime, be sure to read Kowitz's post at Design Staff.

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Forget the Film, Watch the Titles!

I like it when a Web site chooses a name that spells out its purpose explicitly, yet still manages a bit of unexpected humor. Such is the case with Forget the Film, Watch the Titles, which showcases an eclectic array of film title design. My favorites are the ingeniously simple ones, like "The Tall Blond Man with One Red Shoe," which is nothing more than a pair of hands doing banal card tricks, and "Ex Drummer," which rolls back a long sequence in reverse. There are some duds, too, though, like "xXx: State of the Union," which succumbs to the recent trend of virtual cameras flying dramatically in and out of corny CG-animated spaces. Anyway, there are almost two hundred of these at the site for you to waste an afternoon on. Enjoy!

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OmniGraffle Feed Sponsorship

Creating in OmniGraffle: a five-step introduction attempt in less than 140 words.

Desired outcome: a new mockup of WebsiteThing.

Start it up. Download OmniGraffle here. Choose "Blank" from the template window.
Frame it. Stencils→Software→Konigi Wireframes. Designing for an iPhone? Drag out the iPhone browser. Lock object in place with ⌘+L.
Build it. Check out what else the Konigi stencil offers: position placeholders, buttons, and forms on your canvas. Turn on Snap to Grid (Arrange→Grid→Snap to Grid) for quick alignment.
Fine-tune it. Replace Konigi elements with real copy or graphics if ready. Add labels for the benefit of others.
Share it. Email, show off to colleagues via AirPlay, and more.

It's all possible on the iPad, too. If you'd like, explore a bit more.

Spielberg's "Tintin" and the State of Animation

Animation writer and historian Amid Amidi, editor at the fantastic site Cartoon Brew, takes a critical look at the "photorealistic cartooning" used in Spielberg's adaptation of the classic Hergé character.

"Animation is evolving so rapidly before our eyes that we can barely keep pace with these changes. We desperately try to apply old labels and definitions and find them insufficient. Still, 'Tintin' at its core is pure animation created frame by frame. True, it was augmented by other processes, but the end result was achieved distinctly through frame-by-frame techniques. And if the mark of a true piece of animation art is the director's control over every element within the frame, then never has this been truer than in 'Tintin.'"

It's an interesting perspective on the current artistry in animation, which is still undergoing massive change thanks to the advent of computer graphics. Amidi's take is that the film is an important milestone if not wholly successful, and that it is instructive in many ways for the future of the craft. I haven't seen "Tintin" yet, but I'm very eager to see how successful the techniques that Spielberg (and producer Peter Jackson) used are in conveying both its narrative and in doing justice to the character's roots. Read the full post here.

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