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Communication Arts' Best of '04

Best of 2004 [Communication Arts: Interactive]

The Power of Scenarios

George Olsen has a good post over at Boxes and Arrows about creating good scenarios to help with user interface design. Definitely a must-read.

[from Boxes and Arrows]

BusinessLogs

Completely by accident, I just stumbled onto Business Logs; their corporate site isn't that interesting; but their 9rules network is quite nice looking, and seems to have some worthy content.

ForeverGeek, WhiteSpace, CSS Vault, The Roe, and Version 2 form a nice little web-dev specific network.

BEST COMMERCIAL EVER? Quite Possibly.

This Honda commercial, also known in some circles as "The Most Elaborate Rube Goldberg Device Ever Conceived", may also be the sweetest commercial ever conceived.

And to top it off, the voice-over is done by Shatner.

You may have seen the short version, or even this extended version; either way, it's well worth another look.

[Honda's 'Rube Goldberg' ad, complements of DaBoys.org]

Backsliding?

It never fails to amaze me how often people just take the current Information Architecture tools/interfaces available on the Web and assume that's it. Something tells me that UI still has some maturing to do, considering its relative infancy.

That being said, THIS might be a cool new approach/element for browser interface. It's called Backsliding, and the idea is to make it easier for a user to navigate back to previous pages, while providing them with a better idea of what was on those pages they just visited.

For those of us with sometimes-questionable short-term memory, it's an interesting concept, one I'll be sure to explore over the coming weeks.

Giant Map of Springfield, USA

This doesn't have much to do with anything (except the Simpsons), but it's too cool and you've gotta see it. Someone made a massive map of Springfield, with startling accuracy, from what I can tell.

How long before someone busts out the MMORPG of Springfield??

How to hack your ROOMBA

Yo Mikey--this one's just for you: HOW TO HACK YOUR ROOMBA from Engadget.

How to make column BG's stretch in CSS

Ever have the problem of a column background stopping short, wherever the content ends, even though the page body goes on longer? It happens all the time in my TypePad/Moveable Type CSS/XHTML layouts.

Well, if you know what I'm talkin' about, here's a good suggestion on how to fix it.

[from A List Apart]

2004 Webby Award nominees announced

Somehow the Chronicle yet again got overlooked, but don't worry, I'm not going to let sour grapes stand in the way of me presenting the list to you. So without further ado, here are The 2004 Webby Awards Nominees.

Cool Kill Bill game (from the Czech Republic)

I've said it before, I will say it again--why do Czechs get to have all the fun?

The new KILL BILL flash game on the Czech site promoting Quentin Tarantino's 2-part ode to vengeance, Kill Bill, is pretty awesome. Not the most feature-rich gameplay, but chopping the heads off the Crazy 88 sure is a nice way to unwind after too many hours of emailing/programming/flashifying.

Do yourself a favor, and try out the Kill Bill game next time you have a moment to spare.

And don't forget to go see Kill Bill, Vol. 2, in theatres now.

Media And Entertainment 2010: Open On The Inside, Open On The Outside

There is a white paper by IBM researchers on how media will evolve in the next 5-10 year cycle..the paper discusses why industry and market forces will propel media businesses to become more open to business partners, customers and consumers -- opening content reserves and formatting, production processes, packaging and sales options without opening the company to increased vulnerability.

Among the areas discussed is how movie industry would be changed with IP delivery, changes in pricing models in digital media, impact of wireless networks on digital media delivery; among other issues.

--> You can download the paper here directly

[via PaidContent.org]

MOCO LOCO

Besides having a fantastic name, this site I just stumbled upon, MoCoLoco also has a wealth of design inspiration. Mostly non-digital, but still, very cool in a wallpaper/CommArts kinda way.

[MoCoLoco - Modern contemporary design & architecture]

Microsoft's Channel 9 "blog"

After spending yesterday talking corporate blogging with JWT, I felt validated when I saw that the new corpoblog Channel 9 was just launched by Microsoft last week.

Long story short, while blogs grew into prominence b/c of personal users, the things that really make them popular are mostly universal. It's about a being able to make a personal connection, and blogs just happen to be a really good format to engage a user with, regardless if they're written by one guy in his home office or a group of developers (or any employees) working for a big corporation. The companies that make use of the opportunities presented by this new use of relatively old technology have a tremendous opportunity to develop a much deeper relationship with their customer base.

COOLEST PIECE OF FLASH EVER CREATED

This is so brilliant and crazy and cool, I am just in awe.

Someone created a Newsmap, which shows Google News' headlines as a graphical map.

I can't quite describe it--just go check it out, and try to not drool on your keyboard.

20-something men are over TV

Who can blame them? With the exception of The O.C. and America's Next Top Model, you can't see any good skin on TV anymore (thanks a lot Janet).

But more importantly, 20-something men are flocking to the Internet to find some entertainment. (fingers rubbing together)

I didn't know they could do this with Flash

This looks really cool.

Can someone else register for this, so we can play around with this really cool collaborative Flash dealio?

REGISTER FOR FLICKR HERE

'04 SXSW Interactive Awards finalists

Lots of good inspiration, from design to user interface to functionality, can be found amongst the 2004 Finalists for the SXSW Interactive Awards.