If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
(Charles Kettering)

Our product family is growing up and today we published a new free on line service for helping you bring change in company and teams though a process centered on reaching consensual change.

Give it a try and let me know your impressions.

http://yourchangemanifesto.com

“Hunt for customers on the web and duel with other agencies.
Live the life of a talented and cursed visionary creative.”

This was the last think we had to do before the Adslife game’s launch.
Adslife is a web based game, pure HTML, where you compete with others using your creativity instead of guns.
All your winning works are visible on your Adslife public page and your masterpieces will be placed at the Adslife Museum of Modern Advertising.

So take a look and play with your creativity!

Visit Adslife now!

For reviewers: Here you can find the press kit and all what you need for your Adslife review:

http://adslifegame.com/applications/adslife/site/adslife-presskit.jsp

Read this article on kitsch and browser games on Gamamoto

I’m glad to announce that the new pupunzi.com site is out!

I really liked the site as it was before, and as it happens with all the changes,  I’m feeling both sad and happy… But everything must change with time.
This new site gets advantage of all the new HTML5 features (it works great with  “modern” browsers including IE9) and gives the idea of what it’s possible to do with the new web technology generation.

Previous path to components and sections are preserved to maintain all the trackback links unchanged; the graphic is completely new and striking; there are sounds ( you can turn off)  that automatically turn off once the page looses focus; there are tree more jquery plugins published and whaiting for you:

1. jquery.mb.bgndGallery
2. jquery.mb.miniAudioPlayer
3. jquery.mb.valueSlider

Take a look and let me know your impressions.

http://pupunzi.com

We started a new project entirely dedicated to games.

Gamamoto project aims to create a series of games focused on the web and using it as main developing platform.
We are now working to the first release and we are developing a javascript (jQuery) framework engine for game testing and storytelling.

If you want to learn more you can read the “Writing your game script / storyboard in JavaScript” blog post on Gamamoto.com.

Soon I’ll post some rumors on the absolutely outstanding graphic.

For the web worker tribe

Is Licorize just another bookmarking service? …Not indeed!

It’s an innovative experiences collector (now in beta) that lets you turn any web bookmark or status update from twitter® and facebook® into an active part of any shared project you and your team are working on. You can also share ideas, todos, goals, appointments, messages and so on.
All that data is then reorganized and tagged into an environment where all project members can see how his team mates are working, what sites they have been to and which tasks have already been completed.

As Pietro Polsinelli says on his post Social and asocial bookmarking:

“[...] From the consideration that bookmarking is often a part of collecting ideas for a specific project, or a specific idea search, came the idea of building a bookmarking service that could support bookmarking quickly in a definite context – and work from there on. The input for this say “idea collection” does not come just from bookmarking, also from status updates, iPhone/Evernote photos, and so on.”

Licorize can import bookmarks from your browser and from Delicious®; it has plug-ins for Firefox, Chrome, Safari (The extensions allow you to bookmark URLs, annotate them, or share them with a team) and bookmarklet for all the others… And soon it’ll be integrated with evernote® for a 360° collecting experience. Last but not least it has a super smart interface for an exciting user experience!

If you start using it you’ll love it!

Licorize site: Give it a try!
Licorize blog: http://blog.licorize.com/
Licorize Q&A: http://community.licorize.com/

With this jQuery plug-in you can easly insert media from the most famous social media services just with 1 line of code!

Ex: [ youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLs5HN7FS0w ]

Take a look!

What’s new in 1.6.0:

• Removed the “.content” div from HTML
• Support content defined inline

Take a look!

The Navigator, Buster Keaton

I found what my friend Pietro Polsinelli wrote in his article The blurring distinction between graphic design and software development really interesting; he takes the right point view of a modern approach to software development.

As a creative code developer and as member of Open Lab, I can say that this method of working keeps is quite different from the standard approach to development: it gives people a sort of three dimensional perception of what they are doing.

Usually a programmer draws the behavior and the workflow of the app he’s developing, constraining graphic designers to adapt their creativity to what exist. This approach penalizes usability, hampering possible “Wow” effects and increasing complexity. Vice-versa no graphic designer can create a usable and comfortable interface without knowing what’s possible on the code side. Neither developers nor graphic designers can finish their work without any marketing analysis and content editing.

As Pietro says, “among the hats one startup should include in its first team, there is indeed development and marketing, but also graphic and usability design […]” and all these roles should continuously involve each other, brain storming together on all sorts of problems.
This “cross-competence’s feedback method” increases our productivity and the interface’ smartness; we needed just three month from the idea to the product for both Patapage and BugsVoice (two of our new products); it completely changes the way of working both for both graphic designers and developers, expanding each other skills and flexibility.

Diagrams for the Living Interface

I am increasingly convinced that our skills should be less specific and instead embrace everything that surrounds what we do.
The evolution of the web in the recent years is a reflection of this change, from a system composed of millions of isolated pieces, to a system in which every element is trying to communicate intelligently with others, where there is no distinction between enjoyment and action.
Users have an increasingly participatory role and often become direct authors of contents; I’m thinking to the world of blogs, wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, and how these services are able to interact between them.

All this happens just because the distinction that previously existed between technology and creativity has been broken, invading every area of communication and radically changing our lives.

Today, a web designer must also deal with functional aspects of what she/he is doing, and must have programming skills, vice versa a developer must acquire user interface skills to optimize the usability of her/his application. This confluence of roles makes the difference between what works and what does not work for the end-user.

It doesn’t mean that a developer has to do the graphics himself … it would be a disaster! This means taking part and be aware of each other’s problems to address their skills in a more creative and responsible way, getting faster innovative solutions that respect user needs.

People are not looking for full featured complex applications… people are looking for something that fills their needs in the easier way. As we can learn from some successful web applications like Google itself or Tweetter or Flickr or WordPress and so on… we should not reveal the complexity of our application, we should instead exalt the smartness and the usability of it. And this is possible only if developers and GUI designers work together to code and interface interaction.

Those considerations can be applied not only to the web but to everything that needs user interaction in the real world; lets think at cars, phones, appliances, clothes, shoes, …

So you designers and you programmers participate and share your ideas! And also hope that Pietro (a developer) will never work alone on his application GUI!

Suggested readings:

• Designing Interactions, Bill Moggridge
• About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design, Alan Cooper

We have published a new charting tool for Patapage.

based on jqPlot for jquery, it let you easily show any data as chart on your page with many configuration and a friendly tool to insert your value; it has a history manager to let you restore previous versions and it’s on the Patapage philosophy! check this article written by Roberto Bicchierai (the author of this tool): http://roberto.open-lab.com/2009/12/21/javascript-charting-tools-an-overview/

Go and try it!