Sunspots: The boardwalk edition - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

Sunspots: The boardwalk edition 37signals 28 Jul 2006

11 comments Latest by Nismoto

Mousepos� 2: "Mousepos� 2 is an essential tool for everyone doing presentations or demos. If turned on, it dims the screen and puts a spotlight on the area around the mouse pointer, easily guiding the audiences attention to an area of interest."
Common mistakes in data presentation: "Too often, data presentations try to impress rather than express -- and entertain when they should explain. When you don't know what you're saying, you can always hide the fact by dressing up the presentation in flash and dazzle. Generally, data presentations filled with meaningless fluff result less from not knowing what to say than from not knowing how to say it."
Sagmeister design Q&A: At this Q&A section of Stefan Sagmeister's site, he answers questions on running a design studio, being a designer, design as a process, type and typography, etc.
The top ten shows on IT Conversations: "Four of the top ten shows are from PopTech! and only three are from before 2005. None of them are what I'd call 'hard-core IT' but rather observations about IT or interesting talks about other sciences."
Guy sells all his possessions on eBay: Using eBay, John Freyer catalogued and sold nearly everything that he owned, from kitchen cutlery to personal hygiene products, Star Wars sheets, and even the domain name of the project: Allmylifeforsale.com.

The pain we receive seems more painful than the pain we produce: Read this if you want a neurological explanation for why the Middle East is the way it is. "Research teaches us that our reasons and our pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pains of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our actions are justifiable responses to theirs."
Bezembinder's illustrations: A gallery of cool illustrations.
Refactoring portal: "Refactoring is a disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior. Its heart is a series of small behavior preserving transformations. Each transformation (called a 'refactoring') does little, but a sequence of transformations can produce a significant restructuring."
Processing: an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound: "It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool."
Logo design blog: "The logos I post are those which made me smile and think, the ones I wish I had thought of first! I like it when logos take me by surprise, either with unexpected associations or playful ideas."
"Maxwell Did It!" -- photographing of the Atlantic City Boardwalk (1920s-1950s): "These historical photographs provide a decade-by-decade look at the changing landscape of the boardwalk and its culture from the 1920s through the 1950s."

11 comments so far (Jump to latest)

Noah Winecoff 28 Jul 06

Mousepose is sweet. Simple solution to a very common problem: “What in the world is he pointing at?!”

CJF 28 Jul 06

Perhaps it’s a good solution to demoing certain (highly complex) classes of software, but certainly not for presentations. I remember when professors used acetate and an overhead light projector to present pre-prepared notes. Many of them used a piece of paper to cover the parts of the screen they didn’t want to see yet, and revealed line by line of dense text. Sometimes they used the same technique to try and guide you through an overdense diagram.

It was a poor technique then, and it’s still a poor technique now. As far as I am concerened, it is far better to divide your presentation into managable chunks, or design your software in a natural enough manner that people don’t need to guess what you are pointing at.

Jerry 28 Jul 06

Wow. Sagmeister site the ugliest thing I have ever seen.

And, no, you cannot defend that site.

Killian 28 Jul 06

Anyone know of a Mousepose for Windows?

Mary 28 Jul 06

Awesome

shane 28 Jul 06

@ Jerry

lol :) Yeah that “high end” design sometimes looks odd and amateur which leaves you with the exact feeling you had “what’s all the hype for?”.

Although, if you see his client work its amazing!

Harm 28 Jul 06

— Common mistakes at data presentation —

If you want to learn more read his (Stephen Few) new book “Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data”

Tip: you can read the book for free if you get a 14 day trial at safaribooksonline.com

Scott Hughes 28 Jul 06

And in the Sunspot runner up catagory.
http://www.aptana.com
The ScriptDoc feature is brilliant.

Bill P 29 Jul 06

The IT Conversations with Clayton Christensen is amazing.

dusoft 31 Jul 06

That Sagemeister site sucks. Unbelievable shit, no accessibility and usability at all.

Nismoto 31 Jul 06

I peeped the Saggmeister site and I now have a migraine.

Thanks. A little warning or the “epileptics beware” disclosure would have been nice.

…and DON’T RESIZE MY BROWSER!!!! It’s extremely annoying.