Latest Digital Trends

Live TV on The iPAD

web design New York City — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 12:49:15 +0000

It appears that at the start 2011 Verizon will launch an application that streams Live TV to the iPad.
So, if you are a FiOS subscriber you will be able to watch the same TV programming on your iPad. You will also be able to watch on-demand video and rent movies similar to existing services such as NetFlix.

This will work through WiFi in your home that has the FiOS subscription.

The big differentiation associated with this soon to be launched app from Verizon is that you will be able to watch Live TV, as no other service right now has that capability.

Social Biking System – New York City

web design New York City — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:57:45 +0000

SoBi is a brand new system using GPS and mobile communications allowing bicycle sharing in New York City.
You can find a bike using your device and unlock it.

Bicycle sharing is relatively common in other European cities, and we have seen NYC give a wider access to bicycles – but this is amazing… the very first bicycle share system to rely entirely on wireless technology for finding, unlocking, and locating the bikes !

I absolutely love this idea!

Track their progress here: http://socialbicycles.com/
You can also vote for them in the Pepsi Refresh Competition: http://www.refresheverything.com/

The Social Bicycle System from Ryan Rzepecki on Vimeo.

Design Inspiration-Business Cards

web design New York City — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:48:37 +0000

Design inspiration never gets old – we mostly concentrate on interactive design and motion design, however a good old fashion set of visually creative business card design can serve just as well for inspiration !

Take a look at this post from DZINEPRESS. Pretty nice stuff!
http://www.dzinepress.com/2010/08/creative-business-card-collection-of-2010/

Tethering-Phone as a Modem

web design New York City — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:30:32 +0000

Have you heard the term “tethering” lately ? It basically means using your phone/PDA/Smartphone/Blackberry as a Modem to gain internet access to the internet on another device, such as a laptop.

The technologies used for phone services include EVDO for Verizon and Sprint customers (EVDO Rev-A Capable) and HSPA for AT&T customers. It is said that you can receive the same speeds as a dedicated modem on Verizon. And AT&T’s HSPA greatly depends on signal strength.

With all the choices out there now including ANDROID and iPhone and BLACKBERRY and the providers like Verizon, Sprint and AT&T- We believe tethering will be a very big feature as more and more people become accustomed to using it. We’re also waiting to see how the additional fees play out with each service provider (iPhone 4 and AT&T have already established a $20 additional fee). And Verizon with the new Android 2.2 (FROYO) is asking $15 to enable it — but there always seems to be updated and conflicting information about this technology regarding cost, support and feasibility so always be sure check the latest features before latching onto a new device or switching providers.

WordPress Editing with Dreamweaver

web design New York City — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:12:39 +0000

WordPress might have started out as a simple, easy-to-use, intuitive blogging platform — and it still has all those essential, wonderful qualities — but it has since blossomed into a robust content management platform that is being used by Huge companies worldwide.

Here’s a nice beginner article on the editing of a wordpress theme in Dreamweaver -
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/dw_wordpress_pt1.html

XFL Flash Glossary

web design New York City — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:05:04 +0000

XFL file format has been around for some time now, but if your serious about flash website design or exchanging your flash files to work in XML format — and working between applications like InDesign or Dreamweaver. That’s right – this format can help translate into designing and developing/programming HTML5 file formats from Flash animation files. Or for translating After Effects files into flash, you should start at the link below…

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/concept_xfl.html

Adobe new software will publish to tablets

web design New York City — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:04:41 +0000

It looks like Adobe is creating a software specifically to publish animated and interactive content to tablets, and it doesn;t look like it’s only capable of publishing to the iPad… of course! It is said to bridge the gap between print and digital publishing mediums.

The new Adobe technologies will focus on mobile hardware-specific needs, including 360-degree image rotation and pinch/swipe gestural navigation for panning and zooming. This is currently accomplished through an AIR utility, the Interactive Overlay Creator. In future versions of InDesign, the Interactive Overlay Creator will be an integrated feature.

Adobe is making a new format — the .issue format. It allows designers to import layouts from InDesign, add metadata, experiment with portrait and landscape layouts, and export content to the .issue format — a brand-new, ready-to-render file for digital magazines.

This looks awesome – I hope there is support for animation, and high level interactions… it was the next logical step for print designers, and web designers taking this format to the next level and making is easier for designers to create.

The Inventor of Facebook – Social Network the Movie

web design New York City — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:07:23 +0000

Interesting to see how facebook’s history is portrayed. Not sure how historically accurate it is, or if Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moscovitz approve of the movie (I have heard rumblings that they had some negative comments about the film) … but it’s a beautiful trailer – and looks like something to see. check the trailer below.

CSS3 for IE6-8 and HTML5 support for IE

web design New York City — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:39:45 +0000

CSS3 brings with it some incredibly powerful styling features! The problem is that not all browsers support it, and many people/large corporations just haven’t updated their older browsers. Leaving a vast majority of people unable to view the content correctly.

As Internet Explorer has serious issues supporting CSS3 features so recently there have been great advances with attempting to gain support for the powerful styling features that CSS3 has including: Rounded corners, soft drop shadows, gradient fills, etc. These are the powerful elements that web designers and front-end website developers want to use to enhance the design of websites. They happen to also be difficult and time-consuming to implement, involving complex sprite images, extra non-semantic markup, large JavaScript libraries, and other hacks.

Here are a few fantastic tools you can use to make IE compatible with all these modern techniques to make the website design support these newer visual features.

http://www.modernizr.com/
http://fetchak.com/ie-css3/
http://css3pie.com/

Mobile is big – Apps are big (Android)

web design New York City — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:04:20 +0000

We all know mobile devices and retrieving information, playing games, or connecting with people is big right now and it’s only getting bigger. It’s growing exponentially as more than just a channel for content creators and content providers. Tools that help companies create the content are quickly popping up everywhere, and allowing content to be scalable and flexible enough to run on any screen is an important factor to help that technology or service grow.

I ran across this http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/ App Inventor by Google Labs. It looks very good, and giving people the power to create is seemingly the best way to grow a platform and force it to the top.