Any bank that values design at this level has my business. In an industry that desperately needs innovation and creativity, Simple is clear at the right time and the right place.
In short they are not a bank, rather partnering with charter-banks to store you money freeing them up to focus on technology, tools and customer service that will hopefully blow away the personal banking services of our parents era.
Ever since I started working in startup land, I’ve felt the need to ingratiate myself in the ever-buzzing world of *tech*. This means staying up on other companies, the blogs, and the general Silicon Valley scene. This can be very repetitive. People get funded, apps get released, and companies buy things. Sometimes a conference happens. Having spent the better part of the last few years neck-deep in this hullabaloo, I figured it was time to parody it.
A parody from the creators of Nosh and the most amazing 404 page on the internet. Read more on the ISO50 blog about the creation of the video and the 15x increase in signup for Nosh as a result of the parody social network.
A visual collection of work by Robert Hodgin a.k.a. Flight404, founding partner of The Barbarian Group and co-creator of the Cinder C++ Framework. All of the work in the reel was programmatically created with Processing and Cinder.
If you have ever turned on the visualization mode in iTunes then you have seen his work.
“Hey I have this great idea for a new startup! We’re going to launch an online dictionary.”
What would be your first though?
“Yeah right buddy. Good luck with that.” or “You know that might work.”
Wordnik proves that even the most crowded ideas still have massive room for improvement. When you look up a word on Wordnik they will return definitions from multiple sources, example usage from literature and news, etymology, related words (synonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, same context, reverse dictionary, tags), tweets using the word, visuals and sound pronunciations.
For the devs out there they have a massive API and code library and active Github repositories
Predicting the future of September 16, 2011 back in 1987, Apple painted the vision of a tablet device with a natural language voice assistant. Exactly 24 years later Apple is only one month off their fictitious September 16, 2011 date with the release of the iPhone 4S and Siri.
Via Waxy.org
“Shuush is a prototype web based Twitter reader that ranks your followers on frequency of tweets. It aims to amplify the people that don’t usually get heard, and scale back those with frequent updates.”
I’m thrilled to know that my frequency is ranked at a tolerable 5 out of 11 for @newezra. Created by BERG design consultancy
“A designer who does not write markup and css is not designing for the web, but drawing pictures.”
“It’s clear that simplifying and physically tailoring input to output with tech like NFC is a good way to enhance user experience and can lead to some unique interactions. We plan on taking this idea further by experimenting with other platforms and input devices.”
—Physical and Frictionless Input, Teehan+Lax 7 June 2011.
Digital experience agency Teehan+Lax experiments with passive interactions, along with code examples, using near field communications. “It should be about the experience. Not the technology.”
Bootstrap is a toolkit from Twitter designed to kickstart development of webapps and sites. It includes base CSS and HTML for typography, forms, buttons, tables, grids, navigation, and more.
Typically I’m not a huge fan of development frameworks like this one, but digging into it there seems to be quite a few things to learn. Another framework worth looking into is the responsive Skeleton that comes from one of Twitter’s designers Dave Gamache (also on Tumblr).
Interactive studio YesYesNo worked with Nike to create a unique retail installation for the launch of Nike Free Run+ 2 City Pack series. They developed software that created unique digital paintings based on individual runner’s Nike+ data based on their speed, consistency and unique run style.
The new mobile app Nosh, that helps find out what’s good to eat here, has one of the most epic 404 page. They’ve employed a special ops team to track down and use deadly force if necessary to take down rogue pages.
We’ve all been there; You’re at an outing or a dinner table with friends but itching to check your email or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Google+ or Yammer or what ever digital hit of serotonin you prefer. Have you ever “gone to the bathroom” in order to check email or come up with a socially appropriate excuse to pull out your smartphone just so you can check your @ replies on Twitter?
Spend a little bit of time looking around at any big tech gathering or conference and you can see this in action. Everyone is walking around with their eyes locked into their phones, oblivious to the crowds around. It’s an easy habit to pick up. Resist the urge.
One of my latest addictions on my iPad is WURM for creating experimental generative art. The developers did a fantastic job giving you patterns, colors and shapes to play with, and then you can fine tune your masterpiece with all of the controls. WURM even has a blog setup on Tumblr (gallery.wurmapp.com) that showcases all the user submitted art.
I would love to see this become a reality in the upcoming Lion release. Merge iChat, Facetime, iMessage and some type of VoIP service all into one app and the circle will be complete. Then no one will be able to claim, “I didn’t see your text”.
(via I want this slick iMessage for OS X concept to be real - TNW Apple)
Fascinating and beautifully designed infographic on the recent Stuxnet virus that was used to cripple Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities last summer. With the design of the virus combined with stolen security clearances and twenty zero days holes, Stuxnet was able to cause some serious damage and set back Iran’s efforts. Now that the virus is open-source and available for download, the question is who be the next to use Stuxnet with its capables of shutting down nuclear reactors or oil pipelines.
The direction and animation of this infographic was done by Australian motion designer Patrick Clair and written by Scott Mitchell
