Uproot

On July 2nd the Guardian UK released their Wordpress plugin. Said plugin allows bloggers to grab a feed of articles from the Guardian and re-post them on their own blogs. Of course, since this is proprietary content there are a few stipulations, however none so obtrusive as to prevent any sane news blog editor from using this service regularly. The terms of service are pretty simple, and they read as follows:

1. Changes: You mustn’t remove or alter the text, links or images you get from us.

2. Key: If you don’t have a key, get one here. It’s required. If you do have one, please don’t share it or use it anywhere else.

3. Ads: Articles come with ads and performance tracking embedded in them. As above, you mustn’t change or remove them. You can, of course, use your own ads elsewhere on your blog, too.

4. Deletions: Sometimes but very rarely we have to remove articles. When that happens, this plug-in will replace the withdrawn Guardian content within your blog post with a message saying that the content is not available anymore.

We think these are pretty fair and easy rules to follow and rule number 3 may be the answer to monetizing the online news world in a sustainable and progressive way.

Think of the opportunity that presents itself from this, the news paper / news agency can have their content syndicated to the millions of blogs that they claim have been taking readership away and still make money from it, and the readers get better news because there is that much more incentive to write news that readers feel is important and want to read. It’s really a win win!

For more information take a look at the full “Open Platform” service offering over at the Guardian’s website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/open-platform

We’re looking to add an Intermediate Interface Developer (2+ years experience) to for a 2-3 month contract with the opportunity to grow to a full-time role. Applicants must have a solid understanding of Flash, HTML/CSS/JS and show an ability to execute tight, standards-based code in an independent environment.

continue reading

You might remember that big debate during the early days of Flash. Many argued that it was hurting the standards-based movement for how we consume and interact with web content. Flash had to find its place in the web for it be successful without impeding the need for consistent web interaction paradigms.

It took a long time to get to a place where both technologies could find their niche. Essentially, Flash for presenting rich, motion-based media and interactions for game or utility-based experiences and standards-based HTML/CSS for content-driven news and commerce experiences.

continue reading

A recent Ipsos Reid poll showed the average Canadian is spending more time online than watching television. To get a clear picture on how this shift in mediums affects us as technologists, we need to question exactly what people are doing on the web versus watching TV.
continue reading

When working with web typography we have always pushed standards while trying to balance a great aesthetic, starting with sIFR and lately Cufón, however those solutions both had significant drawbacks for us as neither was perfect. That being said neither is @font-face… yet, and not because of the usual cohorts of delayed progress. However, with the announcement that type foundries are starting to offer web fonts we are encouraged that @font-face adoption might finally be realized.

For proper @font-face embedding both IE 4+ (that’s right) and now Firefox 3.6+ are ensuring that web fonts are being delivered securely through the web and not usable on desktop systems. Where the support is lacking for both Safari and to a lesser extent – Chrome as we await a announcement hopefully about their full support of Web Open Font Format. ** Chrome supports SVG as does the iPhone, but they are both painfully slow at the moment.
continue reading

Until recently, many sports fans in the US had never heard of The Score. The Toronto-based sports network is making their presence known however through their successful ScoreMobile app.
continue reading

I read a great post this morning about the Google Android Marketplace by Matt Hall, our buddy over at Larva Labs. In short, Matt used a month’s worth of their sales data to illustrate how little market share Android has at this point and why he feels Google is somewhat to blame.

However, what caught my attention in this post was the conversation about why the iPhone has had such success versus Android-based handsets, even when adjusting for Android’s late-arrival to the game. I’ve had the opportunity to play around with one and my thoughts echo the comment from Hamranhansenhansen on Matt’s post:

A good designer throws a ton of stuff away and saves engineers a million hours. For example, somebody at Apple chose a 480×320 3.5-inch screen and threw all the others away, and every developer on the iPhone platform, both inside and outside Apple, has been 100% focused on engineering for that screen…

Android, of course, is meant to scale to different screen sizes. And therein lies the issue. Designers are trained to focus on specificity, while engineers focus on scalability and ubiquity. At Google, that engineering mentality applies to their product design as well. Instead of building a great mobile device, Google is focused on building a great operating system that can be used by various mobile devices. Does any of this sound familiar?

If Android is going to be successful, and therefore a viable platform for applications, Google needs to be aware of the pitfalls when designing for ubiquity.

As Mashable’s Josh Catone aptly points out, there are a few killer features for Firefox 3.5, but the one that stands out for us (improved JS engine aside) is location-awareness. The possibility to provide truly local services, updates, media and more is really intriguing.

Location-based services are coming into their own, first with mobile (geo-tagged camera phones, way-finding with map applications, and social tracking like Google’s Latitude service are examples) and now the desktop.

We’re hoping to see (and do) some cool things with it.

When user experience professionals talk about our craft, we usually focus on one thing: the experience between the user and the system interface. But like Disney World there are a lot of things that happen behind the scenes that also impact that experience. For some time now, UX professionals have been frustrated, dumbfounded or locked-out of what makes our designs work, what I simply call the technology. Too often, I’ve seen great work thrown over the wall only to come out broken when it’s built by a separate team who were never really part of the initial design process.

Without being able to control every aspect of the experience, it has been difficult to deliver a cohesive solution. However, it’s my belief that we’re in a new era of design for web that is driven by two things. One, the decade long campaign for user-centered design has finally reached it’s tipping point; Technologists are becoming design-conscious. Secondly, web services and open frameworks have allowed creatives to employ robust, trusted technology to drive their designs for a low-cost and without a high amount of technical knowledge; Creatives are becoming tech-conscious.
continue reading