http://www.bri-lance.net Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:26:16 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I get annoyed by credit-card readers. You know, the kind used at gas pumps and ATMs. I always have to look at it and try to figure out which way I'm supposed to put my card in, because it differs from one to another. In order to ... http://www.bri-lance.net/2010/usability-and-credit-card-readers/ Another canvas-based toy, in honor of all the snow we've been having around here lately: The Snowflakerator. Lets you draw in 6-way radial symmetry. I got the idea from those folded paper snowflakes that everyone used to make as a kid. I'm liking canvas, it's easy to do some fun stuff ... http://www.bri-lance.net/2010/snowflakerator/ A couple of weeks ago, my former colleague Mike @ Meja Design released this cool visualization of the digits of PI mapped to colored dots: This got me thinking about other transformations you could do over the same set of numbers. At the same time, I've been wanting to start ... http://www.bri-lance.net/2010/canvas-the-digits-of-pi/ Is it even possible to successfully apply the principles of open-source software to design? Or does really great design require a certain level of Steve Jobs-like tyranny, a sense that one vision is masterminding everything, or at least a single point of responsibility? (By "design", I'm referring to visual/experience/industrial/graphic/architectural/service/fashion design ... http://www.bri-lance.net/2010/open-source-design/ A fascinating thing I've been noticing lately (and even more since the tragic earthquake in Haiti) is the use of social gaming to encourage people to donate. Mainly I'm thinking of Zynga, which raised $1 million for the World Food Programme in only 2 days, by allowing people to ... http://www.bri-lance.net/2010/design-brainstorm-a-game-to-maximize-charitable-giving/ This is something I've started doing to help me work on careerish stuff. I've been doing it for a couple of months now, and it works pretty well, as proven by the existence of this blog among other things. The first column lists things I want to accomplish by the ... http://www.bri-lance.net/2010/how-i-plan/ Another tablet drawing for my last post of the year. I think I learned a lot this year about what I'm interested in, and what I want to do — I won't say with my life, but I'll say with the next 5 years or so. I don't think I'm ... http://www.bri-lance.net/2009/2009-wrap-up-part-ii/ It's been a fairly decent year for making stuff. My goal at the beginning of the year was to build and launch 2 web apps, and I actually exceeded that by several. I even have some things from my day job to show! In chronological order: 1. Whatti — This ... http://www.bri-lance.net/2009/2009-wrap-up-part-i/ I. Privacy and Context People act differently in different contexts. Everyone does this. You speak to your boss differently than to your girlfriend. You say different things at a football game than you would in church. We have different behaviors that get cued by things we see, ... http://www.bri-lance.net/2009/the-google-problem/ How much specialization is too much specialization? And how much of a generalist can a person really be, and still be effective? This question comes up for me a lot, because I tend to be a generalist in an organization that encourages specialization and separation of roles. On the ... http://www.bri-lance.net/2009/generalization-and-specialization/