brit:
10 Facebook Timeline Designs That Will Blow You Away
Several creative people have made some really amazing cover photos for the new Facebook profile page design. I love them all and am thinking about creating an interesting design for my page as well. Any suggestions?
Shoot me a screenshot of your page if you’ve done something similarly creative with your cover photo. I’ll post the best ones back on this blog.
(Source: brit)
A great reflection on the iPhone 4S event by John Gruber (unlike, say, this one). Three key takeaways. On the 3.5-inch screen debate:
Bigger is not necessarily better. Apple decided on the optimal size for an iPhone display back in 2006. If they thought 4-inches was better, overall, as the one true size for the iPhone display, then the original iPhone would have had a 4-inch display. It’s not like 4-inch screens are harder to make, or use some sort of new technology. If anything they’re surely easier to make, as the pixels are less dense.
That’s a great point that no one ever brings up. It’s not like 4-inch screens are some technical achievement that Apple can’t handle. They simply choose not to. And why? Because they believe 3.5-inches is the correct size.
Want bigger? You’re gonna love the Nexus Prime. But remember something else: bigger screen mean worse battery life. Add a 4G chip into the mix and well…
In the months leading up to the iPhone 4S unveiling, there were only two things I heard for certain: “October” and “3.5-inch screen”. No one wanted to listen on the latter, apparently.
On the form factor and timing:
The gist I get, after talking to some valuable little birdies over the past few days, is that a new form factor was never in the cards for this year’s iPhone. It may or may not have ideally launched a few months sooner, but the plan was always for an iPhone 4 successor that looked like the 4 but had improved internal components. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next iPhone doesn’t change, or doesn’t change much, either.
I also believe the original plan to launch this new iPhone in the summer but it was delayed (as was the Retina iPad that was originally due this fall). What I’m still not clear about is if Siri/iOS 5 delayed the iPhone 4S or the other way around…
Speaking of Siri:
I can’t help but see Siri as Apple’s first attack in the direction of Google’s crown jewels: search. Apple mentioned and promoted two partners for Siri’s knowledge back-end: Yelp for locations, and Wolfram Alpha for encyclopedic information and as a calculation engine. Every Siri query that’s answered by Yelp or Wolfram Alpha is a query that might otherwise have been answered by Google. The more people use Siri, and the more non-Google data sources Apple adds to it, the less iPhone users will use Google search.
Yep. And there will be more Siri-powered partners coming. And I bet they will come soon. I can’t believe Twitter isn’t one yet…
brit:
Google Flights
If I had to describe the new Google Flights interface in one word, it would be: FAST. Seriously, it makes the 20-second (or more) Kayak and Hipmunk search results load time feel like an eternity. Everything loads instantly.
The interface is great, too. I especially like the ability to click on another city on the map to change my itinerary. I think I’ve found my new travel search replacement.
Travel. Fast!
(Source: brit)
brit:
The Five Best Digital Recipe Boxes
As you may have noticed, I’ve been starting to cook a bit more lately. In doing so, I found that I needed a good place on the web to both discover new recipes, and to save some of my own.
After a week of scouring the interwebs for good online recipe apps, I’ve come up with my top five favorite sites to solve the problem.
- Foodily - I just found this one today and am impressed with the clean and simple user experience and social capabilities. Though they don’t necessarily do anything new or unusual with the social features (you can heart things, share, etc), they have a leg up on the others simply due to the fact that they hook into your Facebook account. The one thing Foodily is missing is a place on the site where users can add their own recipes. Perhaps coming soon?
- Plan to Eat - This site is great for adding recipes (both on your own and from around the web) and then mapping out your weekly meals with those recipes. Once you add recipes to your calendar, the site will auto-detect the ingredients and fill out a shopping list for you. The two big bummers about this site are: a) it’s hardly social, and b) it costs money, an obvious deterrent for a lot of people. I’m personally a fan of paying for services that I think add enough value to my life, but I’m not sold on this one just yet.
- Gojee - Yes, I’ve already blogged about this one. But, it still remains one of my favorites as it is both beautiful and useful for figuring out what you can make with the ingredients already in your kitchen. I just have to be sure to eat BEFORE I play around on this site - otherwise, the delicious food pictures look way too tempting!
- KeepRecipes - This site has the standard keep/add recipe functionality, and goes one step beyond with a Twitter-like feature that lets you “follow” popular chefs and food publishers (though there are only about a dozen so far). While there is a lot of interesting food content on the site, I wasn’t too impressed with the simplicity of the user experience. Like many of the others, they also aren’t using any sort of social integration for easy sharing among friends. Finally, the site was a bit slow for me, another hit on the user experience.
- Pinterest - Even though it’s not necessarily a food/recipe site, many people told me that they used Pinterest to track things they wanted to cook. Social? Yes. Pretty? Yes. But, because it’s not a recipe site to start with, it doesn’t have structured fields to add your own recipes or to easily follow recipe directions. Gimme Bar could be a better solution, but as I said earlier today, I still haven’t formed a final opinion just yet.
So who is the winner? For me, Foodily seems most interesting. Now, someone just needs to convince them to add a personal recipe feature to the site and they’ll win my heart forever.
Cooking digitally. 5 to check out. cc @steviedove @mzlot @tlzlotnick
(Source: brit)
9 invites left for your new favorite addiction/app, Amen.
You know what to do?
Get em while they’re hot!
My expertise is rethinking advertising so communication rings true.
