I ran across, of all things, a medical applications review website today, and looking at the design, I was impressed with it. Impressed enough to give imedicalapps.com a quick shout out.

There’s nothing groundbreaking (in fact, the responsiveness is lacking– try making your page mobile phone-thin…) but the design is crisp, clean, and shockingly pleasant.

Note, for example, the “Top Stories” section, and the most conversate-ed sections, with the color coding and width displaying statistical significance:

Their feeds or page transitions are really slick too, going from side-to-side. I also like the simple, flat spartan lines.
Whether or not you like the design, you can tell that there is planning and conscious design at work:

I have no idea how good their reviews are. I seriously don’t like how the entire page needs to reload on a top menu item click. But It was a pleasant surprise to come across a neat, tidy little design in an industry (medical) where design is usually an after thought.

Good on ya, imedicalapps.com, I award you….a bookmark!

-Strack

Why you should attend:
-That dude that jumped from SPACE will be there. He’ll jump on you for $5 I think.
-The Black Keys are headlining. Yes, those Black Keys.
-You want to improve your business.

Here’s a neato intro video:

It’s a Carousel, it’s an app-store slider, it’s Windows Metro, all in one slick, performant package. It’s new, it’s FREE, and it just works.

It even asks you to Touch it. How lascivious!

There are some bugs and missing API calls ( .index() and .currentSlide() need to be fixed, and you absolutely need to get to the baseSlides when params.loop = true — I’ll prob. submit the pull requests) so if you want to get programmatic you have to do a little bit of landscaping, but it’s competitive with any other HTML slider out there, works 100% with touch, and it’s fast.

Oh, and did I mention it’s FREE?

Check it out, and tell your friends.

Strack

The subject I’d like to talk about is trends. And I don’t mean what trends are finally here and available as products (multi-touch, waterproof electronics, etc). I mean the trends that are coming up just under the radar, right on the horizon.

See, I’ve been coming to CES for 3 years now, and you kind of get this…rhythm going, where, if you look back at years past and see the things that have come to fruition in the current year, you think to yourself “yep, I saw that comin’.”  You didn’t really see it coming, or you would have predicted it and blogged about it, and now be saying “see??? I told you so!”  No, it’s more like the emerging technologies aren’t a big surprise, because they are, looking back with 20/20 vision, the technologies that make sense.

It’s almost like surfing. For those of that have experienced surfing, you’re out there on the ocean, just behind the line where the waves start to crest, and you’re looking for the right wave to ride. Your body is slowly, calmly moving up and down in rhythm with the passing waves, as you look over your shoulder at the “big” waves coming in, every 7th wave or so. One catches your eye, and you start paddling, hoping it’s the right wave, and you’re in the right position. Sometimes you’ll catch that wave just right, and you’ll have an excellent ride. Other times, you’ll barely miss it, or be too early and end up hurting yourself. (yes, I’m aware that most true surfers don’t have this problem. I’m from a frickin’ land-locked state, so just go with it, mmmk?)

The real point is, the longer you’re in the water – in that specific water – you develop this sort of intuition, and you’ll end up sensing when to go, where to be, and how fast you need to be moving to catch that wave.

Welp, after 3 years at CES, I think I’m finally beginning to see those waves a little ways out. Enough so, that I can comment on them, and not look like an idiot the next year because I said something stupid like “the Notion Ink Adam Tablet is gonna be a HIT!”  (I cannot confirm or deny if that is a direct quote from me or not….yes I do have an Adam rotting in my basement.)

That’s not to say there aren’t some fantastic ideas out there that I have no idea why they haven’t taken off (the USB flipper, and the Boogie Board are two worthy examples), and if I were to get emotionally caught up in them, I’d make a foolish prediction. But, there are some things, just-under-the-surface, that wouldn’t surprise me one bit as being the “hot” tech trends for CES 2014.

The one I’d like to mention in this post is: connected Smart TVs.

Yes, there some prototypes and watered-down versions available now, but what I’m talking about is true, legitimate connectivity. True communication between devices, with your TV being one of those devices, and using them in ways that just flat out make sense. Lemme shoot you some examples:

• While watching a TV show, a side story line starts to play on your phone (maybe during commercials, or a side plot)
• A well-executed choose your own adventure show, where live voting changes the story in real time, or a blu-ray movie has alternate endings or side-plots, based on what you were doing on your phone while you’re watching
• A document shows up on your iPad, that you can review and look through, that the characters on a tv show are discussing & passing around a folder with the info in it.
• A combination of #2 and #3 above, where what you look at in the “file” affects the plot line (maybe if you don’t find something in the file, neither do the characters in the show)
• “throwing” something you’re watching on TV to your tablet / smart phone, so you can keep watching it without interruption in the bathroom (Oh come on, admit it, we all do it!)
• “quick search” options, like the IMDB page for the main character, or a wiki page for the show itself on your phone, so you can answer that question “what the heck else is she in?” as you’re watching it.
• simultaneous clips / flashbacks on mobile devices, in context with the current show’s conversation.
• SMS / other notifications pop up on your TV, similar to Growl on the Mac, if your phone is docked / connected.
• TV acts as a very very large 2nd screen for your phone / tablet app (especially during commercials)

I honestly think I could come up with about 50 more, all around the same theme— Instead of the current “trend” of using your phone as a glorified remote control, the TV and the mobile device work together, simply as different outputs for the same program, that lives simultaneously on each system (aka the Nomadic Theory).

And it doesn’t have to be limited to TVs and mobile devices. Your fridge or bathroom or garage door can be interconnected. Can you imagine your TV pausing and / or recording the next 10 minutes, just because it noticed your refrigerator open? or how about your home phone / alarm  / lamp going on, exactly at the same moment it happens during a suspense/horror flick? Talk about immersive…

Not all of those things will happen. None of them might happen. But I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see production units, or advanced concepts of more connected, smarter TV interactions at next year’s CES.

I could be completely wrong about this particularly wave on the horizon, but walking the floor and seeing the horizon, it really does feel like we should start paddling for that truly interconnected TV experience.

Happy waves, brah!

Strack

I like it so much that I just wrote a book about it.

I’m giving away a couple of copies for free, to celebrate and get the word out about Meteor.  If  you want to be entered in the contest…

Just post a comment on this thread, and I’ll select a couple at random. I’ll be picking the winners in 2 weeks.

Here’s a link to the book, if you want to give it a preview: http://link.packtpub.com/kDEOeS . It’s also available on Amazon and other fine retailers, I’m sure.

The book is meant for someone with at least some experience developing in JavaScript, and would like to find out what Meteor is all about. I walk through an entire application, and you’ll learn a lot about the major features Meteor has to offer.

No, I’m not working for Meteor in any way. I just really think the technology is solid, and deserves to succeed. Take a look, and tell me what you think!

Strack

——

Alright, I had a random-as-possible contest, and have picked 2 winners.  The process went as follows:

• I numbered every entry 1-11, and put them into a weighted elimination bracket.
• Each “battle” was the best of 3 coin flip, using a 1 euro coin – that means it had to land heads or tails 2 times out of 3 to declare a battle victor.
• There was a losers bracket, where the top combatant got placed in the semi-finals
• entry #6 got a bye in the first round, just by virtue of being entry #6
• entry #1 got a bye in the first round of the losers bracket, because I had to pick someone and they were the first to respond

Now for the play by play—

• The first round was dominated by tails. Only one combatant got through with 2-heads flips.
• The same tails luck came through in the losers bracket, with only one of the matchups going to a 2-heads.
• the 2nd round was dominated by heads. just when I thought the coin was broken, it broke 2-heads in 2 out of 3 battles.
• The final round was all heads. #6 may have gotten a bye in the first round, but was on the top part of the battle when the 2-heads rolled.
• Just to make sure #6 deserved it (even though he had already won a book) I put him to the test against the other winner, and sure enough, he won that.

Here’s a picture of the bracket(s) and how the flips went. A “top” win means heads prevailed. A “bottom” win means tails did.

Congratulations to #6 and #11:  dashouzhang and Tim Poppe!

I am sending your email addresses to my publisher as we speak, and they should be in touch with you shortly.

To all of you that didn’t win, I’m very sorry, but at least you got to see the transparent selection system. Now that I think about it, I should have made a Meteor application to do this, and released the source code…  Oh well, next time

Thanks for participating!

Strack

datavisualization.ch

My two personal favorites on that list: D3 and Raphael.

D3 is as robust as a cake-loving kid with a slow metabolism (shout out to my brother John!), and there’s a great tutorial for D3 from Scott Murray that will get anyone started. (skip/glean through the first couple of tuts if you’re already a JS/CSS junky)

Enjoy!

-Strack

I ran across this article from TNW, on facebook (of all places).

Now, I don’t want to over-plug the Creative Cloud, but the perspective from this article is really spot on.

Read the Article Here

The price really is amazing for all you get. The only real question is, are you familiar enough with all the products to take proper advantage of such a great deal?

I know for me I’ve avoided using Dreamweaver in the past for HTML / Javascript editing. It just seemed too bulky.  With DW 6, however, I’ve changed my mind. The add-on features it has make it worth learning and using. Yes, [insert your notepad-like editor of choice] will always be faster for quick editing, but the load up time is now tolerable (not the first time you open it after install– that still sucks), and SO worth it now:

• Refactoring / Code completion is top notch and customizable
• dynamic parsing of javascript libraries = most comprehensive autocomplete I’ve seen to date
• live code actually works now – no more save-put-refresh-firebug tango!
• linked files available and editable in one click (not new, but still awesome)
• helpers for building apps ala PhoneGap
• the “Code View” with a couple of tweaks is the best of both worlds: clean & simple IDE, all the bells and whistles are quickly accessible.

And that’s just Dreamweaver. The new Photoshop and Illustrator are amazing, with about 5 other products all getting honorable mention ribbons.

And then– Add the cloud services:  Storage, Collaboration, Test Servers, etc.

And if you’re a student or past customer, $360 for a full year? Ridiculously good deal. That’s less than you spend on coffee.

If you’re one of those people that uses multiple products in your everyday workflow, Creative Cloud makes today a very happy day indeed.

-Strack

Meteorjs (or just Meteor, if you want to get semantic) is a framework being built by a gifted, prolific group of scientists, which uses the binding and instant update techniques found in Handlebars, Nodejs, etc, but does it in a way that at first glance may actually qualify as magic. No, seriously.

After you watch the introductory video, you will say “how the heck did they do that??!??”

That’s the definition of a magic trick, is it not?

HA!

Betchu money if the fellas at meteor.com read the above, one of them will say, “illusion, Michael!…”

At any rate, for the love of all that is holy, go check out Meteor. It’s got some serious, serious potential.

-Strack

Well, I had such just such a moment last night at about 3am, and even though it wasn’t for Javascript, Chris’ solicitation inspired me to share it.
Nope, it wasn’t for Javascript. It was for HTML. Specifically, it was for HTTP requests, and website development in general.

So, the old school website philosophy, which is tried and true, is pretty easy to grasp. A full web application is an “enterprise” level MVC design pattern:

• You have your database and interface to that database (Model)
•  You have your web server, which processes requests, reads/writes from the database, and servers web pages (Controller)
• You have your web pages, which submit information to the server in the form of POST or GET calls (View)

Simple, straightforward, and proven.

Well, with the introduction of AJAX methodologies almost a decade ago (has it really been that long??? Man, I’m getting old…) we now have a significant portion of the processing / logic being done on the web page itself.
This is a good thing! I’m definitely not saying it isn’t. I’m just punching your ticket on my thought train that led me to my “Aha!” moment…

…as I was saying, the “clean” MVC pattern has been enhanced now, making HTML/Javascript pages become applications in their own right, using MVVM or MVP or other design patterns (I promise, I’m coming up on the point here, just bear with me).

These new patterns utilize JSON, AJAX, and Websocket calls, to interact with online services.  Meaning, the webpage itself is now the application, with its own controller/presenter/view model component, and Jquery/Javascript calls to get information from a service is now the model. There is no longer a need for the webpage to make GET/POST calls. In fact, the only thing the web server is needed for now is the downloading of the initial HTML for the web page, and serving up JS and CSS files.

And this is the “Aha!” moment:

HTML is now an application.

(The paradigm of ‘Site’ is dead)

Webpages aren’t webpages anymore. They’re applications. GET/POST should now be looked at as just-another-data-source for the Model of that application, and for “downloading” the application (FKA webpage).

That may not be an “Aha!” moment for anybody else, but the implications of it most definitely were for me:

• You don’t need Site Maps anymore.
  - What formerly was a separate webpage is now just another view / attribute of the webpage ‘application’.
  - For e.g.: Preferences (it used to be a separate page. Now it’s a panel, just like it would be in a fully-installed app)
• You can treat a webpage literally as you would a full application:
  - It’s ‘downloaded’ and ‘installed’
  - It has different modes / views (instead of separate pages)
  - It stores information locally (instead of just using cookies)
  - It consumes web services (instead of it being the View of a web service, ala POST/GET calls)
  - It can live on its own, outside a browser (e.g. PhoneGap)

So there you have it- You can start treating HTML as an application. Not a pseudo-application. An actual application. The call to the web server is now the download+installation process, and nothing else.

I’m 100% sure I’m not the first person to think about it this way, but it was definitely a paradigm shift for me, and qualified in my mind as an “Aha!” moment.

-Strack

It’s a pretty boss CSS / HTML renderer, in that you don’t have to reload the page every time like jsfiddle
And it integrates with github so you can save your code directly there, which is pretty sweet.

Here’s an example URL:
(don’t make fun of my code!!)

http://dabblet.com/gist/2363633

And the corresponding github gist:

https://gist.github.com/2363633/

Best of all, you can use Gravatar as a login.

It doesn’t do Javascript at all, so jsfiddle.net is still wonderfully needed, but thought I’d give it a shout out.

-Strack