bouncingboomergirlgeek: fyi & fwiw

A Ten Second Type Nerd Test

Skim the snippets below and guess which OS each choice represents. One was rendered in Windows XP, another in Mac OSX, and the third with the new improved font-rendering in Ubuntu (Linux).

 

Now compare your snap impression with the fuller view in this posting at CrowdSpring. My own vote goes with "Artby Audrey" (i.e. Ubuntu is still far from the best, but it has gotten a whole lot better).

Slow Dancing in the Fast Lane While Loving XP

I am an early adapter and a quick shifter -- except when I'm so the opposite. And changing my OS or my CPU has always been in the "aww, do I hafta?" column for me, although I do succumb eventually.

My slow-mo switching is not only about the cost, but also about the disruption of deeply-etched routines. I don't want to take time to burn in a bunch of new menus and moves. My eyes and hands already know what to do without thinking twice. So when it comes to my daily work life, I'd rather be extra-adept at an old routine, if it still gets a good job done, rather than learn a new one. It gives a nice illusion of maximum ease and maximum speed.

The mental sense of hunt and peck involved in a new OS or a new GUI puts all kinds of kinks in the seamless flow I get from my old faves. Just call me the Legacy Lady.

I am so hard-over about this, that when brainstorming drafts and sketches in "Back of the Napkin" mode, I still open my older versions of Word and PowerPoint. It is so much more faster and fluid for me than squinting at menus in their '07 equivalents.

In short, I am the kind of user I am sure they love to hate in Redmond.

Stages of Servitude

The 'toon in my "Gaping Void" widget today is too big a grin not to share before it scrolls. Every itinerant creative will enjoy. Click to see the strip full size: Three Stages of Slavery.

It only leaves us to muse what phases Four and Five might be?!

What's Cool in the Clouds: CrowdSpring

With this post I am adding a new tag, "Cool Tools Web2". Cloud computing (where the software lives up on a server and you log in to get things done online) is spawning a zillion cool apps that do cool things simply, typically for free. Much of it is quite entrepreneurial too, since the ranks of the self-employed are swelling now like a mushroom cloud.

Over the next two weeks, I will be doing a series of posts reviewing Web2 sites I have sampled and like. A few don't seem quite ready for prime time, but are worth a look anyway since early adapters often gain an edge. But my first in line has been around awhile, and seems to be a hotbed of creativity. This one is less a tool and more a community, but it is very Web2 in offering great connections quickly.

CrowdSpring.com is a collaborative of artists and designers who compete for commissions from clients. Want a logo? Post a request, say what you will pay, and dozens of artists may sketch suggestions within a day. Pick your favorite, pay the tab, and everyone wins, including the perusing web surfer like me who just enjoys browsing some really nice graphics.

A bit of "web wow"

One of the loveliest web sites I have seen in a long time belongs to a high profile team of architects in NYC, the husband/wife duo of Diller & Scofidio (short bio here). Their projects are quite dazzling -- from converting old rail tracks to new linear parks in the sky to revamping a major music venue at Lincoln Center or placing a Swiss expo building inside a literal cloud -- and so is their web site, including the elegant ease with which you can browse the entire portfolio in either visual or verbal form. It's well worth the time to click around if you want to be inspired wtih stellar design both online and out in the world. Take your own tour here: dillerscofidio.com.

Bits & Bytes from the Front of My Brain

Hot out of my InBox and my RSS feeds, some potentially interesting snips crossed my path this week:

• WallStats site is "reborn"
  Jess Bachman, one of my favorite info-artists, has changed the whole look of his blog and web site. Page and web designers will enjoy this posting with his before and after pics, along with  detail about the reasoning behind his new format. (Looks to me like he's been spending time around the work of Steve (Don't Make Me Think) Krug.) While you are at the WallStats site, you might also enjoy his latest, a lightening-fast-forward video replay of how he built this one poster frame by frame:
  
     Flowcapping: Golden Parachutes
     from Jess Bachman on Vimeo. 

• Speaking of favorite info-artists, Jessica Hagy (Indexed) made me laugh again today:

Genes or grades. Or grades of genes.
Debate away.

The Creative Monkey Scale

Did you happen to see this season of Top Chef? If so, perhaps you remember contestant Jeff, and what his opponent Carla said about the  "creative monkeys" he just couldn't tame.

Jeff was very capable in the kitchen and everyone seemed to enjoy him too. But when they teased him in the post-Finale episode, it was about how often he couldn't resist pulling out every trick with every ingredient on every plate. It didn't seem to be about ego or showing off; it came across like a kid in a candy store having too much fun to rein it in.

 

Unfocused might be the kindest way to put it. Except that wouldn't be entirely accurate, since Jeff was incredibly focused while working, and he had to be unusually good at multi-tasking to produce three variations or more on almost every theme. His problem, if it was one, was that he was the King of Complexity. He was rarely content producing one thing, unlike his opposite, Carla, the Queen of Simplicity, who was also very creative, but within a narrower range.

On my "Creative Monkey Scale" below, Jeff would clearly be a 5, while Carla would be a 1. If Jeff was challenged to a banana dish, he'd be hunting for every flavor and kind, from Chiquita to plantains, then presenting small bites of the experiments that worked out the best.  Carla, on the other side, would be looking for the one best banana in town, then making a great rendition of her single best banana dish.

Drooling At New Fonts

Back in the day when I had style-conscious clients with money to spend on good graphics, it was SOP to select s separate set of designer fonts for each project, whether the output was destined for web or print. Thus I have been poring over type catalogs for years. Nowadays, I get to drool more often than I get to purchase, but it doesn't stop me from style watching. If you watch font trends too, you may enjoy the "Best Fonts of 08" list over at MyFonts.com. This screenshot contains some of my personal faves (click on the image to see it full size.)

Tip o' The Week: Turn Your Data Into 'Info-Art'

Look at the graphic below and see what it seems to suggest before I tell you.

It's a screenshot from a chart that shows the most popular names for girl babies in Austria last year. But the point of my sharing it is not about Austria, or even baby names (and certainly not that my nom de plume is on it). I share it as a great little sample of 21st century "Info Art" in which words and numbers become something much more than the sum of their parts.

If you are familiar with "tag clouds" on blogs like mine, then you know without being told that the larger words have the most weight (in this case, popular with Austrian mothers of new baby girls). What you wouldn't know unless I filled in the blanks. is that it was made by uploading a spreadsheet of data to a free public site run by the Watson Reseach Center at IBM, where an online algorithim rendered it into this information graphic (yes, you can pick your own colors). The site, Many Eyes, is another great example of the Win-Win Web in which all participants benefit. They say their goal in offering it for free is to "democratize visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis." Not to mention it's a nice public service from IBM. Word clouds are only one of the ways that Many Eyes can take your alpha-numeric data and turn it into a nifty info graphic. Use the following links to jump into ther visualizations yourself, take a tour, or read the rest of their "About" page.

The Art of Bootstrapping

The Art of Bootstrapping is a list of practical business tips for tough times by Apple Evangelist Guy Kawaski published on the AmEx Open Forum. Click here to read. Also on the same web site by the same author,  The No-Bull-Shiitake Investor Wishlist. and the unfortunate but sometimes necessary “The Art of Laying People Off.” As Guy himself said while posting that last link, "Actually, I hope you don’t have to read it."