I recently found an entirely new way to interact with a website. Last week one of our clients at Ideacodes launched a virtual showroom in Second Life. When you visit Stylehive’s virtual showroom you can see objects that users of the Stylehive website have bookmarked at the website. These objects such as furniture have been rendered in a 3-D format which you can interact with in the virtual space. You can even sit on a sofa or chair and then click on it which will launch your browser, and take you to the users bookmark page of that particular object. Very interactive and very fun.
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Stylehive's Virtual Showroom in Second Life
– March 31, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Visualizations. -
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Newsmap – News Pattern Visualizer
– March 27, 2006 - No comments - Posted in News, Visualizations. -
In most cases the news is presented in a rather boring but usable way. Newsmap show us a new way to look at world trends in news reporting through their Google News mashup. As they say on their website, “It’s objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media.” One other aspect of Newsmap that was a great user experience was the instant language translation. Newsmap will be one of my daily reads from now on.
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Feed Rinse – Easy RSS Filtering
– March 24, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Design Patterns, RSS Patterns. -
In my opinion Feed Rinse is one of the best designed products I’ve seen in a while. Their name matches the function of the application, the branding works well with the core message and the overall user interface is intuitive and stylish. The real gem is the user interaction and experience. The process of importing and rinsing your rss feed is fast and easy to use. The free version is limited to 3 feeds, however, it seems to have full functionality, except for profanity filtering. A very well designed application!
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Paguna – AJAX Powered Hotel Bookings
– March 23, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Applications, Reservations. -
Paguna is one of the first online booking sites that has gone to a one page AJAX powered user interface. After using their competitors websites for years, I find Paguna a breath of fresh air. There are many UI features I like in this site, however, the drag and drop calendar and the instant language translation are my two favorites. While I do feel there is a slight time difference in the return of information between Paguna and their competitors, for me it’s more the allusion of a time difference. The one page model really seems to work in this case as the experience feels faster than most traditional online booking services. At least to me.
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CommunityWalk – Ruby and AJAX Powered Social Mapping Site
– March 21, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Applications, Mapping. -
I once again have to caveat this post by saying my company, Ideacodes, which includes myself and Emily Chang (eHub) produced most of the front-end interaction design for CommunityWalk. For that reason, instead of commenting on the wonderful design 
I’ll focus on highlighting some of my favorite UI features. The front page has a row of AJAX powered tabs to let you view popular, recently uploaded and example maps inline, and a great live search. I find the explore page one of the most fascinating aspects to the site. The tags at the top of the page are community generated and allow you to view maps worldwide by interest. I also love the new zoom feature that allows you to zoom in on a map by clicking on it and zoom out by right clicking. These are just a few of the intuitive user interface features found on CommunityWalk. After you view the demo I would like to invite you to visit the CommunityWalk website and give it a try.
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Keotag – Search and Create Tags
– March 18, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Design Patterns, Tagging Patterns. -
The keotag site makes it easy to search for tags in multiple search engines, social bookmarking sites and gives you the ability to create your own tags. The interface has a nice tasked-based navigation which gets the user to the information they need quickly. The user interaction is seamless with fast search results from 14 search engines and social bookmarking sites. Keotag also gives you the opportunity to create your own tags at Technorati, del.icio.us and icerocket. In short the keotag search blazes.
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Attack of the AJAX Activity Indicators
– March 17, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Activity Indicators, Design Patterns. -
OK, I have to admit this demo makes me feel a bit like I’m sitting at my computer in 1997 looking at a clip art site full of spinning email buttons, however, these AJAX activity indicators are essential to web applications which use asynchronous requests. When an action happens through the use of an XMLHttpRequest the user needs some kind of indication that an action has occurred. A large percentage of the activity indicators that my company uses are custom built for the individual company, however, circumstances such as timelines and budgets often get in the way of custom indicators. This page offers an excellent array of stock indicators. Caution: starring at this demo too long will make you sick.
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The Stylehive – Web 2.0 and AJAX Powered Collaborative Shopping Community
– March 16, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Applications, Shopping. -
I have to caveat this post by saying my company, Ideacodes, which includes myself and Emily Chang (eHub) produced all of the front-end interaction design for this site. That said, I would like to point out one of my favorite UI features in Stylehive. The bookmarklet is easy to use and full featured. As with most social bookmarking sites the url and title of the page are pulled in. The difference in the Stylehive bookmarklet is the image feature and the depth of information you can add to your bookmark in the “Tag Suggestion” panel. Give it a try!
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pixoh – Edit pictures online
– March 15, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Design Patterns, Images & Media. -
pixoh is an easy to use online image editor. The user experience is tasked based and very intuitive. You can edit your first image from the by either submitting a URL, browsing your computer or you can simply play with one of their sample images – no login required. Next, you’re presented with an edit screen where you can rotate or resize your image. Finally, you can save your image to the desktop in several different formats. pixoh also includes a bookmarklett so you can edit and save images from any website. Very cool.
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flagr – Rails and AJAX Social Mapping
– March 7, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Applications, Mapping. -
I was fortunate to see a live demo of flagr a month ago and was impressed by their product. Their original signup page had a prominent distressed logo which I found very refreshing. They kept the logo, however the distressing is less prominent. The user experience is smooth, intuitive and fun. By far, the feature that sets flagr apart from the pack is the mobile connectivity. A very useful feature that I will use often.
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Fluxiom – Knowledge Management Tool
– March 6, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Design Patterns, Organizers. -
Fluxiom is not live yet and I have not live demoed it, however the fact that the script.aculo.us JavaScript library was developed as part of fluxiom gives me high hopes that the demo is just a taste of some amazing UI elements to come with the full release. Fluxiom is a web-based knowledge management tool. It is an easy and elegant way for small to medium sized teams to manage digital assets and share them with clients, partners and co-workers. Fluxiom is a product and will be available for a usage fee. Although it’s closed source, some components it consists of are available as open source. Since script.aculo.us was developed as part of fluxiom, you can basically have most of the user interface effects and controls that fluxiom uses in your application for free.
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iOutliner AJAX Idea Organizer
– March 4, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Design Patterns, Organizers. -
The iOutliner marketing website has a to-the-point task based user interface with a nice mix of gradients, icons, and high contrast large fonts. The application itself is smooth, intuitive and fast via an AJAX layer. A very clean user experience.
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BubbleShare's AJAX Image Zoom
– March 3, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Design Patterns, Images & Media. -
I’ve been interested in image galleries and slideshows since I started designing for the web in 1996. Recently AJAX and web 2.0 social features have changed the way we view and think about photo sharing. BubbleShare has just released a new AJAX image zoom feature that takes web-based image viewing to the next level. When you click on the BubbleZoom link, you’re presented with an AJAX magnifier that allows you to zoom in on any part of a image just by hovering over it with your mouse. This is an intuitive and helpful addition to any image viewing application.
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AJAX Fisheye List Widget Demo
– March 1, 2006 - No comments - Posted in Design Patterns, Navigation. -
Dojo Tool Kit has come up with a new web based non-flash menu which is easy to use, and is loaded with the “wow factor”. After ten years of designing with standard navigational constructs we finally have many new and exciting possibilities to help users navigate websites. The AJAX Fisheye List Widget is basically a javascript version of the Apple Dock. As a mac owner I love the user interaction with Apple’s Dock, however, until now this has only been available on the web through Flash. Watch out, this could well be the next Yellow Fade Technique.