It here in the US. One less reason to get all “Japanese Envy” whenever we talk Mobile. We need to see this for all carriers.
All Posts by ‘George Chen’
LAI February 11 and 12 @ at The Independent.
Los Amigo Invisibles are coming back. Exactly what we need to forget about the cold rainy Nor Cal winter. Be there.
Helvetica. The film.
I’ve avoided watching this movie when it first screened at San Francisco. Didn’t want to show up as some design geek nor uber hipster. 😛
Now the movie is on is gone from Google Video.
To honor the designers I idolized (in school) that are in this film (Matthew Carter, Neville Brody, Eric Spiekermann, and David Carson), I have updated the blog’s CSS using Helvetica as the first default font.
Why 1.1.3 iPhone Web Clipping Shortcut is a BIG DEAL
With 1.1.3 iPhone update, users can easily add mobile safari shortcuts to the iPhone springboard screen. This is a BIG DEAL in the mobile world – especially for the designer / developer community.
Different handsets tend to have different requirements on the launcher icons or the so called “9up menu” (since majority of the feature phones can only display 9 icons at a time).
The specs of those icons usually are not very well documented either. Some support PNG. Some claim they support PNG but only in 8-bit with no alpha channel. Some support advanced SVG 1.1 Tiny (i.e. S60 Symbian) but that’s a lot more technical and requires much closeer working with the developer to have things implemented. Some follow the standard J2ME icon size and specs, but might still ended up a few pixels off (I am looking at you Samsung, and LGs). Not to mention different screen size / view could result in multiple icon files with multiple versions.
In short. It’s a mess (if you want to get premium “face time” with your mobile users / customers).
On the business side, it’s even tougher.
Getting your app / web app in front of the consumers usually means “kowtow” to the carriers or the handset manufactures. I am not saying they are “evil” or “bad”, it’s just difficult since they have different concerns on manufacturing, and distribution reasons.
The new iPhone 1.1.3 allows users to add Mobile Web apps directly on the launcher screen just like adding a bookmark. For the designer / developers, it’s super easy (60×60 PNG icon on the server). Apple even handle the reflection and rounded corner for you. Not revolutionary, but it saves developers hours of even days of trial and error and rework.
To help the Mobile Web to grow, this is one of the many of the little things iPhone is helping the ecosystem. We want more.
Herman Miller Be Collection
Not Furniture. Just well designed items one should have at home or the home office.
iPhone + QRCode
If you are looking for QRCode reader for iPhone do give the current release of iMatrix a try. Their original release (about 3 weeks ago) does not support the standard QRCode, but version 3.03 fixes that. You are still required to get a “User ID” first but it does not require the ID to decode the QRCode.
Do you need “Badass” security software? I certainly don’t.
Since when “Badass” is an acceptable terms for corporate marketing or communication?
If you live in the Bay Area, driving down 101 around South San Francisco area you will run into a McAfee billboard that said, “Hackers are bad. We’re Badass“.
I am all for creative copy writing and edgy stuff, but last I want from my security and anti-virus software is a brand that’s “looking for trouble” or try to tick off the hacker community. Bad move.
Nokia World 2007 Webcast
Watch some of the keynotes here. Of course, it’s much nicer to be there in person… Looks like S60 is getting a new UI too… Good times.
Yahoo! Japan Home Page New Look
Check it out here (flash demo). It’s going official Jan 1, 2008. The look is very much the “Spirit” layout out + look-and-feel. Note: “Spirit” was the internal Yahoo! code name. It’s interesting to note the 6 buttons (Yahoo! broadband, Auctions, My, Toolbar, etc…) were retained. That’s old school Yahoo! Design.
Why the Droid font?
People are going gargar over the Droid font – which is part of the Google’s Android release. They never border to explain “Why” Google come up with their own font in the first place. Maybe it’s so obvious that they didn’t border to explain, but here’s why:
To have complete control of the UI when you are dealing with multiple handset manufactures, you’ll need your own font. Take a look at the Samsung, LG or even a Motorola phone and you’ll notice all the handset manufactures tends to use their own propietary font – and they all look different.
Funny enough, at Yahoo! we did the same thing with Yahoo! Go. When we develop the Yahoo! Go client last year, we commissioned Meta Design to create a set of bit map font that would look nice on 128, 176, and QVGA screens.
We needed the font since we want to make sure the user experience (of the software client) is identical no matter what handset you are using Yahoo! Go on. We never name the font officially, but it’s always called the Yahoo! Go font or YGo16 as an example (Yahoo! Go 16 pixel). I once proposed to name the font family Hamburg, but no one took me seriously. 😛
I suggested that since it’s a tradition (in the tech world anyway) to name bitmap font after city names (think Chicago, Cairo) plus the good majority of the development team of Yahoo! Go’s based out of Hamburg, Germany.
Back to the Droid font. It’s a very nice looking font, but one has to wonder how the font will hold up on a 128×160 tiny screen when you are trying to read a big chuck of text. But maybe we won’t if there’s no 126×160 screen size devices.
Droid font doesn’t seems too compress to me and I am not sure about that. I am not saying all mobile font has to be a compressed font, but compressed fonts tends to work better when you are dealing with the portrait mobile screens. The Series 60 San (Nokia) fonts family is a classic case of good mobile optimized font – and clearly the Droid font took a different direction. Things you took for granted working on the Web has to be re-fector. Isn’t mobile fun?
George Chen DOT COM 
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