Daniel Dilger wrote a brilliant post on why Flash for the iPad and iPhone are simply not viable, ignoring hardware, battery and other constraints – it simply isn’t possible from a gesture perspective.
Hooray, finally someone is talking sense.
As the title indicates this post is specifically targeted at the ongoing discussions that swept twitter yesterday regarding whether or not designers should have a hand in coding their designs.
Initially this was started by Elliot Jay Stocks who tweeted:
Honestly, I’m shocked that in 2010 I’m still coming across ‘web designers’ who can’t code their own designs. No execuse.
Since I spend a lot of time working closely with designers I thought it would be interesting to weigh in on some of the points which have been floating around.
Should designers be able to code their own designs? Yes, no, maybe… I mean actually it has less to do with code and more to do with understanding the medium. In all the time I have worked with designers, the one thing I have found refreshing is to work with designers who actually understand the medium in which they are working. Unlike print, which is a very controlled medium, moving into the web is very much a different experience for designers. Without properly understanding the medium in which they work you are destined for hard to implement designs which do not make use of benefits of the web.
In order to make things pretty on the web designers need to first understand principally what is possible, how their design will work, that what they are designing can actually be implemented without too many browser limitations and that it will look as good on the web as it did in Illustrator when they were making it.
I am not advocating that designers should go out and learn HTML, CSS and Javascript and do it all themselves, unless of course you are a sole-trader, but in understand the medium you will in turn work quicker, smarter and produce designs that are easy to implement, manage and maintain over longer periods.
For those who have come from print backgrounds, this is what you already know, it’s what you have done in print for years. You first learnt the medium, its constraints and how to deal with them. Now you need to learn the new medium you find yourself working in.
Last.fm is a great service, even since acquisition, and the streaming capability through their own applications has played for hours both within the Quiqcorp offices and through my laptop whilst travelling.
SweetFM, a new application from choko moko bridges the gap between Last.fm and iTunes. Described as “Last.fm + Awesomeness” the author is not far wrong with his claim.
Not only does SweetFM stream Last.fm stations, but it also supports shuffling tags. Simply define a number of station tags you wish to hear and let the app take care of the details.
While there are a number of features such as impressive album art from Amazon.com, growl support and customised styles there are two features which make this app an absolute gem.
Do yourself a favour, go and download a trial.
There is no denying Twitter is experiencing explosive growth. With this growth and the approach of mainstream adoption comes big changes to the way Twitter has been used to date. The streams are starting to become overwhelming, the more and more people you follow, their increase numbers of tweets has become an information glut.
Richard Dale of Sigma Partners has an interesting take on Twitter as a Universal Information Stream, a stream location for publishing any type of information.
The above approach has pros and cons but I do believe it is essentially what is and will happen to Twitter. For those of us that have been using Twitter for some time we are used to just following and communicating in our small groups, a few hundred or thousand followers is fine and if people start tweeting random crap you simply unfollow them. If Twitter reaches mainstream adoption and other technology providers start to tweet then the signal to noise ratio is going to become almost entirely noise.
This means the way in which we currently interact with Twitter will no longer work. Choosing to follow people and users may not be the best way to digest information anymore, there is simply too many users, too many streams and too much information to digest at any one time.
The best way to think of this is like TV. Whilst your TV is capable of tuning into the air waves and receiving signals for hundreds of TV stations, you can’t watch hundreds of them on your screen at once. It isn’t technically impossible to achieve, and many TVs allow at least picture-in-picture, but the reason you don’t get more than two channels is you simply can’t digest anymore information at a single time. The same is true of Twitter, there is already too much information and it will only increase over time.
As Twitter continues to grow and it’s usage profile continues to adjust, we as users and developers will have to adjust with it. New tools and new methods for separating the signal from the noise will need to be developed. To think of it like a TV again, we need a way to tune into specific channels that interest us, while ignoring all that other white noise we don’t want.
Those who innovate and develop tools that allow us to search and view subsets of the Twitter information stream that focus on specific topics and channels will lead the next generation of Twitter tools. Search and discovery tools will redefine the way we work with Twitter.
Despite the gloomy outlook for many industries and the large number of development projects being put on hold, it is encouraging to see a continued growth in the media industry, at least throughout some areas of the world.
Christopher Chia, the CEO of the Singapore Media Development Authority:
“It is said that sometimes it is actually anti-cyclical. If the economy generally goes down, the media sector actually comes up and one reason we found behind this is that it (the media) allows people to be actually entertained at a cost much lower than, say, to travel somewhere else. So it does allow a lot of consumption to actually happen.”
I agree with the above statement and think that it’s something that requires repeating and continued assertion to media clients worldwide. Now is not a time to cut back on spending, pull programs or put digital media developments on hold. In fact, now is the best time to ramp up your digital media investments.
Media companies have immense opportunites to gain market share, with an increased consumer consumption and participation in their digital media developments.
In Singapore, the Media Development Authority is spending S$250 million to create and support over 2,000 jobs in the local media industry this year. This is great news and they expect to create more than 10,000 new jobs in the industry over the coming 6 years.
I have spoken with a number of media organisations throughout the start of the year, and especially in Asia there seems to be a genuine interest in digital media investment, but convincing management and shareholders that this investment will pay dividends is still not an easy sell in some organisations.
For those managers, consultants, developers and staff involved in these discussions the most important issue moving forward is education. Educating both internal and external stakeholders as to the value of investment in digital media and the appropriateness of its timing is purely an educational hurdle, everyone has a job in the sales process and its a sales process that should have been happening for some time.
I am very interested to hear of any other countries and organisations that are looking to support and invest in digital media training and job creation throughout 2009.