Smartphones know where we are, down to a couple of metres. Enterprising software developers are beginning to leverage the possibilities inherent in geolocation.  Besides the compelling commercial possibilities, more interesting options involve users adding huge amounts of information about their favourite locations, trips, current location, current activity, planned activities, et cetera. Maps will no longer be static, but dynamically updated and full of personalised information. Users will be able to tap into the power of crowdsourcing.  Four Square, EveryTrail, Google Maps, Runkeeper, and a host of café, restaurant and tourist-based apps are leveraging location and your linkages with other people via Facebook, Google contacts and other social media sites. The idea of your location and activities being broadcast to the web (even if only to a chosen group of friends) can seem a little daunting, but the private/public frontier is where some of the most interesting things on the Internet are currently happening.

Brian McFarlane has spent a lifetime watching and writing about movies, and interviewing many leading directors and actors. We were given the task of encapsulating that past in designing a cover for his light-hearted memoir.  A red carpet leads the reader’s eye towards the cinema as promised land, flanked by posters depicting key figures in Brian’s cinematic and personal life. The result has colour, depth and a sense of fun, accurately representing the text of the book.

The Invoice Machine has the kind of interface that will appeal to style-conscious Mac Users, but the product is aimed at freelancers everywhere. Sign in to the service, and users can generate slick looking emailable invoices straight into client inboxes. As per usual with the new breed of Internet based services, the site offers a free version (3 invoices per month) and the paid options kick in after that, to a current maximum of $48 per month for 3000 invoices.  Needless to say, if one uses an accounting package, the invoice totals will need to be double-entered there as well.

Flickr users add over 4,000 images per minute to the wildly popular image-sharing site. Over ten million images have been tagged with the Creative Commons tag — allowing for creative, and sometimes commercial re-use. Ideé Inc has taken those ten million-odd images and created an interesting little search engine called Multicolr Search Lab. The only search ‘term’ allowed is colour. Click  on the little grid of colour swatches at top right, and the main part of the screen will be filled with images primarily containing that colour. Click on another colour, and the engine locates images with both the original colour and the new colour.  The results can be quite startling, and very useful if you are looking for a background image, or a texture. Not much use if you need to refine the search by subject or theme, but an interesting pointer as to the kind of capabilities that smart search image engines will soon be able to offer.

Google’s rush to improve its Google Documents cloud-based service continues. New capabilities are being rolled out on almost a weekly basis. An interesting recent add-on is the ability to perform OCR (optical character recognition) on images of text, or text from PDF documents and save it through the docs interface. The quality of the OCR is not fabulous (which is odd, as OCR is a very mature technology and desktop applications offer a high level of accuracy and formatting fidelity). Now that the slumbering giant Microsoft is beginning to offer serious cloud-based word processor services, Google will need to make sure its product is high quality.

If you are poised to make an online purchase, stay your hand a moment and check out this site. RetailMeNot is a collation of voucher codes for 50,000 plus online retailers, many volunteered by users of those services, others by the retailer themselves. Many of the vouchers don’t work, but quite a few do, and deliver substantial discounts.  Users rate the effectiveness of each code. Australian retailers are also covered in the mix. As they say in the classics, why pay full price?

Maps abound on the Internet, but most of them are protected by copyright. If you are looking for a free, accurate maps of most parts of the world, the following two sources are worth checking out. The CIA (!) offer a broad series of maps in jpeg and PDF format of both regions and the globe. The project is associated with the CIA World Fact Book and does not seem to be part of a plot to control our minds (except by befuddling them with endless statistics). Still in North America, NASA offers the visualised data from a remarkable radar mission it flew on the Space Shuttle in 2000. The mission mapped the surface relief of the world with unprecedented accuracy, and NASA has set up a gallery of images of both individual continents and the world as a whole, in 3-D and 2-D projections. The colours are related to altitude and detail is stunning.

As part of their broad push for world domination, Google have invaded the land of online forms. The software maker Adobe offers a form solution — constructed in Acrobat, emailed out, then the data gathered via an Adobe server. The Google alternative is much simpler. Users log in to Google Documents, select ‘Create New Form’, choose an appropriate template, then start creating the questions, multiple choices, lists, etc that make up your desired form. Forms also offers logic branching, where the form recipient can jump sections of the form — eg. “if you have completed course A already, go to page 2″. The finalised form can then be emailed directly to your target audience. They fill out the form and the resultant data is sent to a spreadsheet setup in Google Docs. All very simple and very effective. So if you need to gather information from clients, wish to use a form as a sales tool or want to poll your own staff, Google Forms is a compelling offering — oh, and it is free.

Cloud-based services are able to update and refine their offerings as frequently as they like — no waiting for their user base to download software updates. However, sometimes users may not be aware of new features and therefore do not get full use from the particular service. Google’s Apps suite (Gmail, Docs, Contacts, Calendar, etc) is subject to constant tweaking and extension. Users can keep abreast of changes by visiting the Google Blog, or more efficiently, signing up for an emailed update of posts relating to Apps updates.

Designers spend an alarming amount of time scrolling through lists of typefaces on their computers, or paging through font books.  Typeface previews within layout packages tend to be tiny and not particularly helpful. MyFontBook is a browser-based application that reads all of the typefaces installed on your machine, then displays the results  in a very easy to view grid. Click on a particular typeface, and sample line of text also displays at the bottom of the screen. The site allows registered users to add their own tags to any/all of the typefaces, which for those willing to put in the time, could become a powerful time-saver when trying to narrow down font candidates. Downsides include a significant wait when re-loading your typeface selection upon relaunching your browser.

An Australian programmer has devised a neat little Java-based app for browsing commons-tagged images. Once installed, the application displays a list of public domain image libraries. Click on one of the libraries, and a cloud of tags appears, along with tiny image thumbnails gridded up below. Hover over one of the tags, and links to other tags are displayed, and images labelled with those tags light up in the grid. Click on one of the images, and a larger version appears, with the option of viewing it in Flickr. This is a really interesting app that graphically shows the power of image tagging and offers and excellent way of searching a collection. Hopefully the programmer will add more libraries and more images in each library.

After four months of using DropBox as our primary data storage channel, its viability is no longer in any doubt. 100Gb of storage space is beginning to seem a little restrictive, but with that caveat, the service works as advertised, and in an unobtrusive, reliable fashion. If Australian bandwidth was better, the whole concept would be pretty much perfect. We have DropBox linked to four desktop PCs in two locations. The need to keep track of file synchronisation and make multiple backups in both locations has vanished. At the end of each day, we save the working file folder to a backup USB powered hard drive. That, plus four identical copies of the data (one on each workstation) and the copy on the DropBox server (plus  DVD burn backups) makes the data seem quite secure. A skim of the DropBox forums hint at unmet demand for storage solutions larger than 100Gb, so hopefully additional packages will be rolled out soon.

The immediacy of Twitter is exciting, but the usefulness of it takes a little while to become apparent. Following celebrity lives is one predictable function, but more serious business uses can be found:

• tweet news of your latest products/services to your clients (assuming they ‘follow’ you — something that you can encourage)
• tweet interesting links/information in your business field (don’t just promote yourself relentlessly)
• encourage informal feedback from your customer base, or from potential customers
• listen to leading thinkers/businesses in your field, follow up on some of the suggested links/hints.
• Programs like TweetDeck can help you keep track of everyone you find interesting in the world of Twitter.

Twitter’s truncated, telegraphic form cuts a lot of the clutter found in the rest of the web. It also presents very low entry barriers, and if you only send a couple of tweets a day and read a few more, represents less of a time commitment than a blog. The web is a very important business frontier, and tweeters are often right out on the bleeding edge.

When a search engine enables users to search for images, and offers search parameters such as pixel size, aspect ratio, dominant colour and image content, they must know that many images are going to be used contrary to the laws of copyright. With the ‘everything’s free’ ethos of web 2.0, such image use seems a victimless crime. Most users don’t have the budget for expensive images from online image libraries. However, those who do suffer twinges can now choose from a new set of options relating to the kind of license attached to the image. Options range from “not filtered by license” through to “labelled for reuse (but not commercial use) to “labelled for commercial use with modification”. Choosing the latter option dramatically reduces the number of hits for a given search, but at you are probably on the side of the angels (provided the web developer who set up the site in question is the legitimate owner of the image). As more people become aware of the range of image licensing options, hopefully more sites will be set up with this kind of image labelling, and the online image feast will get a little less risky.

http://www.creativepro.com/article/safely-find-and-use-images-google

Users of Google documents (or those seeking an alternative to Microsoft packages) will be interested to note the popular Google service now allows for any file type at all to be uploaded. This transforms Google docs into a de facto online hard drive.  Google Viewer will be able to open many, though not all of the common file types people might wish to upload. Users get 1Gb of space for free, then purchase additional memory at 25c per Gigabyte.  Google is working hard to encourage third party software developers to come up with services that add value to the basic Docs product.

As people move more of their information onto the cloud and rely on servers in faraway lands, backups have become an issue. You may elect to occasionally download your online records to your own computer, but if you use a large number of cloud services, the process of backing them all up will soon become time consuming. As usual in such cases of Internet need, geeks have figured out a way to monetise this new service niche. Backupify (a rather unlovely business name) offers a one-stop backup service for all of your cloud services, including GMail, Twitter, Basecamp, Flickr and more. If you are comfortable with their pricing, then your only worry is handing all that potentially personal information on to a third party, whatever their strict privacy policies.

Tired of plain-Jane text based emails? Feeling limited by silly decorative themes and plagues of emoticons? A program called Wrapmail (available for GoogleApps customers) allows users to ‘wrap’ their emails in advertising and interactive graphics. As the programmers point out, emails are major channel of communication for most companies, and it makes sense to leverage that channel. The emphasis is on informing and interacting with clients, rather than adding pointless graphic bling.

Our client came to us with a cover photograph, and we added title type in keeping with the image and content — a ‘distressed’ stencil-style typeface emulating the traditional way of marking such crates. The result was strong and simple.

Blame Bill Gates for the dominance of Times New Roman. Designed in the 1930s and intended for use in newspapers, TNR was the default serif typeface installed on all Windows operating systems. Although Microsoft later tried to make amends by commissioning vastly superior PC and web-friendly typefaces such as Georgia, Verdana and Trebuchet, the damage was done. Times (and Arial) became everyone’s idea of what a typeface should look like, and were often selected for jobs for which they were completely unsuited. Along with the hideous Comic Sans, they helped create a world of clunky and unattractive documents and websites.

Here’s a list of ten reliable, elegant and functional text typefaces worth considering: Garamond, Adobe Caslon, Arno Pro, Cheltenham, Dante, Electra, Fairfield, Adobe Jenson, Minion Pro and Warnock Pro. Each of these typefaces has a subtly different form and is particularly appropriate for certain kinds of content, different eras and design sensibilities. Arno Pro and Minion Pro have a robust unadorned style that makes them ideal for large blocks of information at smaller sizes. Fairfield is rather more delicate and rarified, and slightly more difficult to read. New Baskerville has a more classical, pre-nineteenth century feel, along with Caslon. Warnock includes both classical and modern typefaces elements: a true transitional typeface. An interesting discussion on the subject of book typefaces can be found here.

Millions of users take advantage of Google’s free web-based apps: documents, calendar, tasks, gmail and more. Many are not aware that for a smallish fee, those apps can be operated under a custom domain name, along with substantial additional storage space. A business can have secure email running under their own domain name, a reasonably capable suite of office applications plus a calendar/tasks app — all of which can be accessed in exactly the same form from any web-connected device, anywhere in the world. All of which must be causing something akin to terror among those who traditionally overcharge the public for less flexible services (Microsoft, anyone?). Yet another instance of the paradigm changing business model Google is successfully pursuing.

Our client wanted a cover that encapsulated the iconoclastic spirit of the Enlightenment — the birth of skepticism, secularism and the full flowering of the scientific method. The natural candidates for this were Voltaire, the great French thinker and Emile du Chatelet, his intellectual equal and lover. We selected three period-appropriate typefaces for the title: p22 Declaration, based on the penmanship on the American Declaration of Independence, Bodoni, designed in 1798 and Requiem Text, based on the humanist typefaces of Renaissance Italy. The typefaces and painting formed a harmonious combination, and Voltaire stares out at the viewer with a frank air of challenge.

If you are afflicted by self-doubt, procrastination, attention deficit disorder, old-fashioned laziness or a simple inability to get things done, 43 Folders is a very useful source of advice. Completely devoid of motivational bumph and navel-gazing, Merlin Mann’s mission is to help you avoid distraction and get on with your real work. For example:

• set your email to update once an hour, rather than every five minutes.
• Writers should write, rather than read books about writing.
• Everything takes longer than you expect, even when you anticipate it will take longer than you expect
• Spend significant time thinking rather than filling up every moment of your time with activity

Many of his thoughtful and amusing musings boil down to the following nugget: “Creative work only seems like a magic trick to people who don’t understand that it’s ultimately still work.“

As someone who designs a lot of book covers, it can be inspirational (and rather challenging) to gaze upon the work of the masters of the field. Many of them are attractively displayed at the Book Cover Archive. Evocative, startling, confrontational, joyful, spare, ornate, saturated: the covers on display are all that and more. Many of them do a really remarkable job of capturing the zeitgeist of a particular time and place. With its constant fixation on the current moment, will the Internet ever produce such persistent and influential artefacts?

Located on the rural/suburban edge of Melbourne, the City of Whittlesea works hard to present an extensive series of cultural events, ranging from music festivals to heritage walks and a huge community festival. Chameleon Design was set the task of presenting this diverse range of activities in a bold, colourful and highly readable fashion. Our design incorporated images of festival performances, art installations and fireworks displays, against a graphic motif suggesting the roof of the big tent in which many of these events were held.

Though the politicians have moved on to more opulent digs, the historically important Old Parliament House (Canberra) lives on as a museum, exhibition space and function centre. In 2008 Chameleon Print Design was tasked by interpretive design specialists Convergence Design with designing a detailed wayfinding scheme for the sprawling building. Our brief was to reflect and preserve the heritage fabric of the building while at the same time projecting a contemporary, approachable aesthetic. The wayfinding signs/objects were in large part free-standing, as most of the building is heritage listed and therefore off-limits to intrusive fixings.

After two visits to Old Parliament House, extensive long-distance collaboration and many interations, we compiled a comprehensive report spelling out the various wayfinding levels, patternation, colour schemes, type selection and readability. Some samples of the report and other interpretive design may be viewed below and here.

signage and wayfinding, Old Parliament House

LiveBrush is one of the more fully featured programs available in the Adobe AIR format (see earlier post). While nowhere near as precise and powerful as programs such as Illustrator or CorelDRAW, it does have a few interesting aspects and the virtue of being free. Users select a brush from a fairly extensive list, and apply to a new page. The brush stroke is governed by the velocity and direction of the mouse, and the result is often very smooth, spontaneous and gestural — far from the quavery line many of us manage when drawing freehand. The brushstroke has a mind of its own — only notionally following the path you lay out for it. Each succeeding stroke has its own layer, and the artwork can be saved and exported at any time. Despite the many customisation options, Livebrush feels more like an interesting feature of a larger program than a standalone entity.  It’s most obvious use is as a means of producing some loose, interesting brushwork and importing same into a drawing or layout package.

Massive, extremely cheap online storage capacity and increased bandwidth are currently enabling a whole slew of new Internet businesses to carve out fresh niches. It’s like the Cambrian evolutionary ‘explosion’, this time with silicon-germanium rather than carbon. On the subject of carbon, Carbonite is one of those interesting new cloud-based businesses. Users install a small program, indicate which folders they want backed up and then sit back while their data wafts into the ether, settling in the (apparently) secure servers of said company. The program only runs while your machine is idle and only updates changed files. If something at your end eventually goes wrong, the data retrieval process is very simple.

Possible worries include the security of private data, and the rights of those from non-US jurisdictions if something did go awry. Users might also want to limit the amount they back up if their up/down data limits are fairly small. A graphic designer, for example, might balk at tagging folders with multi-hundred megabyte image files.

Assuming Carbonite is stable and here for the long term, approximately AUD$65 per year for unlimited backup seems very reasonable.

If, like me, you spend a lot of time in the cloud, you may occasionally worry about your (over?) reliance on Google’s many cloud products. You may have bookmarks set in Chrome, appointments recorded in Calendar, emails stored at Gmail, documents saved at Documents, blog posts at Blogger and so on. With the exception of fairly rare gmail outages, Google’s service provision and data security performance has been pretty reasonable, But still, but still…

A Google engineering team has set up a site called Data Liberation, aimed at providing users with clear and easy information on how to ‘escape’ from each of the Google services, taking their precious data with them. The stated (and admirable) principle behind this site is: “users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products”.

Google may be about to take over the world, but in this instance at least, they are doing so with a modicum of politeness.

‘Handwritten’ typefaces are a popular area of computer-based typography. The too-perfect edges and shapes created by layout and design packages often seem to need humanising, softening, a touch of variety and irregularity. The OpenType format has enabled the emergence of a new generation of typefaces with hundreds or even thousands of alternate characters, ligatures and other typographic goodies. For example, Liza Pro inserts a variety of different ligatures and alternate characters as the user types, giving text a warm and idiosyncratic feel.

If you’d like to go a step further and personalise a document with your very own inimitable handwriting, www.fontcapture.com allows users to print out a special form, then pen an instance of each letter of the alphabet, numbers and other special characters. When scanned in and uploaded, Font Capture uses the sheet to automatically digitise your handwriting and save the result as a typeface. If you like what you see (and the results can be somewhat erratic), the typeface can then be installed.