College: Oh yeah?

Life: Yeah he says he wants to hang with me and blog.

Blog: Yup!

College: FINAL MAJOR FINAL MAJOR FINAL MAJOR!

To-Do lists are awesome, here’s why:

• You can take them anywhere.
• They’re disposable.
• They’re cheap.
• They help you organise.
• They give you a sense of accomplishment when complete.
• They make you more efficient, you will forget less.
• They help you break down big tasks into little ones.
• In some rare cases they give you super speed and allow you to complete tasks in 1/3 of the time.
• They’re easy to make!

How to make a To-Do list:

You will need:

• Pen
• Paper/notebook

Method:

1. Think of things you need to get done.
2. Write them down on paper.
3. Do what’s on the paper.

Helping you get things done,

Ralph.

This isn’t really a problem for a device like the iPhone, its a phone/portable gadget, it doesn’t need to do everything under the sun. The iPad is a content consumption device, it bridges the gap between your laptop/netbook and your phone. Surely it is vital that such a device is compatible with a technology that has such penetration on the web. Surely not having support for said technology would ruin a device. Well…. maybe.

Lack of flash on the iPad means you wont be able to watch video from places like Hulu and wont be able to play flash based games like farmville. As much as I hate flash, the resource hungry monster, this is quite a problem. For a device that isn’t a work machine, not being able to consume most of the rich media on the internet limits the use you will have for it. Simply put, this device is pretty much useless for content consumption on the internet as of right now.

Apple are trying to push HTML5 as the answer to this. For the non-techy among you, HTML5 is the latest version of HTML. Every page on the internet has some HTML in it. HTML5 has loads of new things but in particular it allows you to embed video on a web page without the use of flash.

Awesome, you say, lets start using it right now! There is one small problem, HTML5 isn’t supported in IE6 and IE7 and only has partial support in IE8 (the latest versions of Safari, Chrome and Firefox support it fairly well). You can of course make the older browsers support HTML5 with a bit of javascript but this isn’t ideal. It is this reason why you wont see HTML5 become widely used for a while.

HTML5 is starting to seep into areas of the web. Youtube and Vimeo now offer HTML5 versions of their sites and I would expect other video sites to be working on HTML5 implementations however this is far from being mainstream.

The bottom line is website owners do not want to cut off large proportions of their audience, HTML5 is going to have a slow but steady adoption and Flash isn’t going to die off overnight, much to Apples annoyance.

What does this spell for the iPad? To be honest, I don’t know. I can’t see much use in it for myself at the moment. Flash is important today and will be for a few days to come. If I were to predict the future I would have to mumble an unenthusiastic ‘meh’. I can’t see the device being as big as the iPod but I don’t think it will be a failure like the Apple T.V.

Sound off in the comments.

Ralph.

When I say creativity I mean being funny. It doesn’t have to be laugh out loud funny, a smirk is just enough. It makes your website more likely to stick in the mind which is a good thing, I’m sure you would agree.

Most web design is pretty boring (this blog included). Its just a load of boxes with a few shiny graphics and this makes for a boring experience. If you have something that makes your user smile, that surprises them and ultimately connects with them on a human level then they’re going to enjoy your website more.

Obviously you can’t be amusing everywhere. Banking websites, for example, need to look official, people want to feel safe putting money into them and its not going to be reassuring if you have a formal bank making wise cracks on their website. You might also have a hard time convincing your clients that this is a good way to go. With this in mind its probably best to play with this on your own site first.

So, what do you do? Where do you start? It might be as simple as having an image change when you refresh the page (click Mr Wooters at the top-left there and you will see what I mean). It doesn’t have to be a big change, it could simply be playing with a characters expression or making something move when you mouse over it. It doesn’t really matter what it is as long as when the user does it they give a little smirk.

This wouldn’t be a complete post without a few images, I’ll let you work out how to take this mentality and apply it to the web.

Ralph.

I guess that really is the difference when it comes down to it.

Ralph

Ralph.

Which wasn’t even his.

We hope Ralph will be back on form later this week but we cannot guarantee it.

Ralphs Peers.

If you are up on your tech events – after all, who isn’t – you will know that CES was this week. A week where blogs likeEngadget work themselves silly to cover all the new electronic devices we will see over the next year or two. Among the wave of e-Readers and weird looking mice, touch screen devices seem to have been a rather large trend this year.

While you can browse the web perfectly fine in your iPhone or Blackberry its not exactly a great experience. Some websites are better than others and include CSS that is  targeted at phones which is ok but you don’t get any of the benefits a touch screen gives you. What I’m talking about is gestures. I think it would be pretty damn cool to flick through a slideshow using a gesture rather than poking at a button on the screen.

Of course the addition of gestures isn’t going to make a massive difference but its the little things that make the experience better. There will be other changes, making click areas bigger and not storing important information in hover states come to mind.

So how will gestures come to the web? The iPhone has a touch API and there have been experiments with Flash and Javascript but nothing that is really mainstream yet.

Ralph.

99designs is, according to them at least, “the #1 marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design” where they “connect 55,439 passionate designers from around the globe with small businesses who need design projects completed.”

Sounds great, they follow on to say “99designs was started by designers for designers.” This is where it stops sounding great. How is this for designers? How is this for anyone except 99designs? The client is entering a lottery where they will be overwhelmed with entries, most of which either wont fit the brief or will be designed badly, resulting in the client making a poor choice.

Before I resume my rant may I state that this will not be the case for all the contests on 99designs, I am sure that once in a while a client ends up with a good piece of design. The problem is that in the majority of contests held both the client and the designer get screwed. The designer ends up thinking they know how to design a logo/whatever and the client has ended up with something that isn’t suitable and may harm their brand later on.

Here is the winning logo for a new affiliate network called Revenue COP.

I am not going to go into why this is not a suitable logo, it should be obvious and if it is not, I hope you’re not a designer.

Here are two earlier entries from the same contest that were eliminated without feedback which would be better choices.

The point I am trying to make here is that without guidance the client will just choose what they like whether or not it is even what they asked for. Here is the brief the designers were given;

Brief Overview

We are a new affiliate network looking for a solid design that differentiates us from our competition. With a brand name of Revenue COP. Looking for fresh, innovative ideas that are clean and memorable.

Brand name

Revenue COP

Target audience

this website targets Webmasters

here are some examples :

http://www.clickbooth.com

http://www.neverblueads.com

http://www.hydranetwork.com/

Requirements

• We need Innovative, sharp, tech and cool design…
• full freedom for design…
• we have a project for web page design too…
• contact me for webpage design….
• this project will come up with in 24 hours in 99designs.com. Stay Tuned!..

Not only is the brief ridiculously short but the design they picked doesn’t do meet what they asked for, they weren’t even close. So a designer that did fulfil the brief wont get a look in anyway.

The thing that annoys me most of all is that the clients are happy with the service. This is where 99designs is brilliant, by letting the client write their own brief and choose the design the client will remain happy and oblivious to the fact that the, in this case, logo might be terrible. What is more because professional designers steer clear of the place there is plenty of room for people are handy with Photoshop and have a bit of spare time.

Voice yourself in the comment section below.

Ralph.

To put it simply Creative Woot will be my space to post design related content. I will be posting typography, websites and logos with commentary as well as bashing Internet Explorer 6 users and occasionally, people who use Comic Sans for formal documents to make them “more fun”.

I will try not to post images without comment unless they speak for themselves and if I happen to do so please send angry, but not overly angry, tweets to @ralphsaunders. Upon receiving said tweets I shall respond accordingly.

Before I sign off to savour the last moments of 2009 (consuming Twiglets) I must address something. Specifically the name of the little birdy up in the top left there, that is to say he is nameless. Few names have been suggested during the development of the site; Mr. Wooters is the current favourite (suggested by @THErealFROGMAN). If you have any suggestions please @ me on twitter.

One last thing I should mention; Creative Woot has its own twitter account which can be found here. All posts and updates from the site will be linked to there.

Ralph.