We took our 3 month old girl to the Long Beach Aquarium and took a few test videos. As you can see the Pre’s camera performed pretty well considering the low light conditions.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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To find these photos you can either search by keyword, or browse on the Google-powered map. One very useful feature is the ability to navigate from one photo to another without going back to the map. Look for arrows on the photo, and click on them to instantly get transported to the new destination.

Below is a photo from Chapman’s Peak near Cape Town, South Africa. OK, so as a Capetonian, I’ll admit I’m baised. But regardless, you cannot argue with the beauty of this photo and the unbelievable immersion of 360Cities.net 

Chapmans Peak in South Africa

Related posts:

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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die | By Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Drawing extensively on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion and motivation, their study is couched in terms of “stickiness”—that is, the art of making ideas unforgettable. They start by relating the gruesome urban legend about a man who succumbs to a barroom flirtation only to wake up in a tub of ice, victim of an organ-harvesting ring. What makes such stories memorable and ensures their spread around the globe? The authors credit six key principles: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories.

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future | By Daniel H. Pink
With visionary flare, Pink argues that business and everyday life will soon be dominated by right-brain thinkers. He identifies the roots and implications of transitioning from a society dominated by left-brain thinkers into something entirely different—although at times, he seems to be exhorting rather than observing the trend. As a narrator, Pink delivers in a well executed manner, with occasional hints of enthusiasm.

Technique for Producing Ideas | By James Young
Since its publication in 1965, A Technique for Producing Ideas has helped thousands of advertising copywriters smash through internal barriers to unleash their creativity. Professionals from poets and painters to scientists and engineers have also used the techniques in this concise, powerful book to generate exciting ideas on demand, at any time, on any subject. Now let James Webb Young’s unique insights help you look inside yourself to find that big, elusive idea–and once and for all lift the veil of mystery from the creative process.

How to Get Ideas | By Jack Foster
How To Get Ideas answers the basic questions of where do ideas come from, why do some people get so many of them, and is there some secret technique to getting more of them. How To Get Ideas answers these questions and demonstrates that any reader, regardless of age or skill, employment or training, can come up with more ideas, faster and easier than ever before in his or her life. Author Jack Foster shows how to condition the mind and become “idea-prone”; how to make the child within us and our sense of humor work for us; how to develop our curiosity, visualize our goals, rethinking our thinking, combine different ideas, and overcome our fear of rejection

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea | By Sam Harrison
How do you unleash bursts of creativity, increase occurrences of spontaneity and ultimately find great ideas? Through anecdotes, interviews, quotes, tips, creative exercises and success stories from the biggest corporations in the country, author Sam Harrison shows you how to think outside the box—then throw away the box for good.

 
Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques | By Michael Michalko
Tinkertoys  will teach you how to generate new ideas for businesses, markets, sales techniques, and products and product extensions. Packed with fun and practical tools and exercises, it outlines 30 practical linear and intuitive techniques that can be used by individuals or groups to tackle and solve business problems in fresh, creative ways. An updated edition of the best-selling business creativity book, with more than 30 brainstorming techniques and hundreds of creative-thinking tips and tricks. Revision includes new techniques, examples, and sections on group brainstorming and endgames.

A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative  | By Roger von Oech
Now Roger von Oech’s fully illustrated and updated volume is filled with even more provocative puzzles, anecdotes, exercises, metaphors, cartoons, questions, quotations, stories, and tips designed to systematically break through your mental blocks and unlock your mind for creative thinking. This new edition will attract an entire new generation of readers with updated and mind-stretching material.

 
Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius | By Michael Michalko
What exactly is creativity? Why do some people seem to have so much of it? Can their secrets be learned? In this trail-blazing book, internationally renowned business creativity expert Michael Michalko answers these questions and more, bringing life-changing techniques into everyone’s reach. Michalko has researched and analyzed over 100 of history’s greatest thinkers-from Leonardo da Vinci to Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison to Walt Disney-to show readers how creative people think and how to put their secrets to use.

Caffeine for the Creative Mind | By Stefan Mumaw
For any designer or creative type who wants to quickly limber up their imagination on a daily basis, Wired helps readers get into the creative zone, from which all their best work springs. Packed with 15-minute simple and conceptual exercises, this guide will have readers reaching for markers, pencils, digital cameras, and more in order to develop a working and productive creative mindset.

Zing!: Five Steps and 101 Tips for Creativity On Command | By Sam Harrison
A five-step process for generating big ideas in business, personal, and professional contexts is outlined in this high-energy guide to the creative process. Real-world anecdotes and inspirational messages complement the straightforward discussions of exploring, being free, pausing, embracing, and enjoying life. These five steps cover issues such as how to use observation to uncover fresh ideas, how potential ideas are stymied, and how incubation allows the subconscious to find solutions.

Related posts:

1. 20 User Experience Books you should own

Visualizing search results can tread a fine line.  A fragile line that separates usefulness and gratuitousness.  To some degree, this judgement is subjective depending on the orientation of a user’s brain. The visual folks out there will  be drawn to visually rich interfaces, and in this case, search results. Take a look and let me know what you think. Useful or gratuitous?

1. Viewzi

Using Yahoo!, Google and Viddler, you can search the Web, images and videos. The results can then formatted as a power grid, a Google timeline, web screenshots, simple text, a photo tag cloud, and more. Results can be also customized as you can star or hide sites you care / don’t care about. Considering all the options to choose from, the interface is easy to use, and fun too! A robust, slick, feature-rich choice.  http://www.viewzi.com

2. Spezify

Using Yahoo!, Amazon, Twitter, Flickr, eBay and MSN, Spezify searches for text, images and video. The results are consumed on a wall, which can be panned in all directions.  What’s really practical and impressive is the ability to play video in-line, without leaving the results.  Spezify is a joy to use and might have been my first pick if it wasn’t for Viewzi’s more robust feature set. I’d also like to see Google added to Spezify’s sources.  http://www.spezify.com

3. Grokker

Grokker takes advantage of Yahoo!, Wikipedia, and Amazon Books search engines to perform its queries. The results are displayed in both a standard outline and a dynamic map; sorted by date, source, domain and then refined by selecting (or excluding) specific related keywords. Grokker isn’t the most visually appealing search engine, but it does keep one foot on traditional search engine turf. This might be good or bad, depending on your appetite for visuals being the primary means to browse or navigate through the results. http://www.grokker.com

4. Searchme

Searchme displays results in a dynamic carousel stack you can navigate back and forth. Searches are performed in multiple categories like videos, images, advertising, shopping, sport,, entertainment, news, and more. Other features include a parental filter, the possibility to play media right inside Searchme, and the sharing of your results via Twitter and Facebook.  I’m surprised that sharing and social book marking hasn’t been integrated across search engines more often. http://www.searchme.com

5. KartOO

KartOO searches the Web, images, videos and Wikipedia entries while using Google, and Yahoo! search engines The results can be displayed as visual map where related results are linked between them, which you can then use as additional search criteria.  A solid visual search engine, but does need a little help with their visual design and branding.  http://www.kartoo.com

Honorable Mentions:
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html
http://www.cooliris.com/
http://www.quintura.com
http://www.eyeplorer.com/
http://www.ziipa.com/
http://www.redzee.com/
http://www.liveplasma.com/
http://www.ujiko.com/
http://www.search-cube.com/
http://middlespot.com/
http://oskope.com/
http://www.nexplore.com/

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3. A Google Documentary

Thanks to Mapspread, you can now build your own personal Store Locator, and this doesn’t require a developer’s skills!  With this service, you import your data from spreadsheets, maintain it with fun tools, share with coworkers and friends, publish to the world. Create a FREE account now >

Highlights

• Collaborative real-time map editing
• Import your data from spreadsheets, KML, ESRI Shapefiles or MapInfo TAB files
• Geocode your addresses
• Centrally manage your geodata
• Create interactive maps with your data
• Publish your data as KML, GeoJSON, GeoRSS, CSV, ESRI Shapefile and MapInfo feeds
• Powerful access-control management
• Lightweight and fun to use
• Runs in all popular browsers
• No plugins or downloads are required!

Mapspread is a professional mapping online service built by Poly9 Group Inc. The company has been creating custom mapping applications since 2005 for a variety of clients, including Microsoft, MSNBC, and Google.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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What are your top 5 User Experience books?

1. Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World
   by Peter Merholz
2. Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning
   by Dan Brown
3. Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs (Interactive Technologies)
   by Hugh Beyer
4. Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience
   by James Kalbach and Aaron Gustafson
5. Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices (Voices That Matter)
   by Dan Saffer
6. Designing for the Social Web (Voices That Matter)
   by Joshua Porter
7. Designing Interfaces
   by Jenifer Tidwell
8. Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design
   by Robert Hoekman Jr.
9. Designing Web Interfaces
   By Bill Scott
10. The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web (Voices That Matter)
    by Jesse James Garrett
11. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites
    by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville
    
12. A Project Guide to UX Design: For user experience designers in the field or in the making
    by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler
13. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition
    by Steve Krug
14. Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics (Interactive Technologies)
    by Thomas Tullis
15. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design
    by Bill Buxton
16. Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior
    by Indi Young
    
17. Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions
    by Tim Ash
    
18. Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks
    by Luke Wroblewski
19. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
    by Dan Roam
    
20. Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research
    By Mike Kuniavsky

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For those of you who are familiar with Facebook’s social networking games like “Knights” and “Mob Wars”,  Twitter’s Spymaster is in the same mold.  It’s the typical social networking game where you recruit members to build up your clan, and simultaneously purchases weapons, buildings and revenue streams to grow stronger. And then there’s the standard mode of conflict which results in either acquiring more wealth and members if you’re victorious, or the opposite if you’re not. It’s all about leveling up and domination, and it really pays to have as many friends on your social network as possible.

And while you might not have heard of Spymaster, it was actually the number one trending topic on Twitter for a while – albeit an artificial level of “discussion”.  Essentially, game actions and events are broadcast across Twitter in the form of notifications, thus driving up the “topic” and driving exposure exponentially.  Were the developers of this game smart? Yes.  Is it spam? Many will perceive it to be just that. Fortunately, players can control their notifications and turn them off if so desired, but here’s the catch — players are rewarded with virtual money for keeping notifications turned on.

Now that’s a conflict of interest which will continue to blur the difference between game or spam. You can try it for yourself here.

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3. Football Superstars: the future of online multiplayer sports gaming

To better understand how this works, here’s a simple example. If you entered “New England Patriots” as a query, you would be returned the following sets of information:
1) AFC Season Standings for current season
2) Year-by-Year breakdown of wins, stats, etc.

In this case, the data was pulled in from sources such as NFL, ESPN, CBS, Stats Inc, etc, etc.

"New England Patriots" output

Here’s another example. If you entered “New York” as your query, you would be returned the following:
1) Population totals
2) A map with co-ordinates
3) Current local time
4) Current and historical weather

"New York" output

Visit Wolfram and try it out. I’m very curious to know what your impressions are. Is this useful? Is this for the average user or rather specific kinds of users? Would you use this on a daily basis, or only in specific situations? Is this a threat to Google or Wikipedia?

Is Wolfram hot, or not?

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Protoshare is a web-based collaborative prototyping tool that helps teams quickly build, discuss, and refine clickable wireframes.

If you’ve ever been involved in the website design or creation process, you know that it can be a pain for developers, spec creators, and internal or external clients to communicate in an efficient manner. Protoshare’s nifty web-based application provides a collaborative workspace for all project stakeholders — project manager, information architect, developers, designers, executives, clients, etc. — to smoothly transition from idea to prototype, without the typical communication challenges.

Protoshare is like Web project management in a box. You can create and manage notes and scratchpads, clickable wireframes (that simulate website functionality), specifications, and design comps, as well as collect ideas, client requirements, and monitor the progress of projects. It’s a start to finish real-time project dashboard and activity hub, where all audiences can communicate in and customize alerts for new information.

Protoshare is a subscription based service that starts at $29/mo for a personal account with up to five active projects, though most businesses will need the $99/mo plan which includes 30 active projects and 5 Gb of storage.

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Kindle 2 features:

• Slim: Just over 1/3 of an inch, as thin as most magazines
• Lightweight: At 10.2 ounces, lighter than a typical paperback
• Wireless: 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots
• Books in Under 60 Seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required
• Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and even crisper images
• Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging
• More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books
• Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns
• Read-to-Me: With the new Text-to-Speech feature, Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud to you
• Large Selection: Over 230,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available
• Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise

For reading traditional books, I won’t be lining up to get one of these things, and not because of the high price point. To me, there’s something unique about reading a book. The smell of the ink, the tactile experience of paper beneath fingers, the ability to break it in and make it your own – with “doggy ears” and all. A book develops character over time, can be given as a gift, inscribed, written on, etc, etc.

However, for reading blogs and other digital media — why not give it a try! Kindle: Amazon’s 6″ Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation)

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Buxton is a champion for design, not only as a discipline, but also as a process.  In fact, he places huge emphasis on the design process, as he believes it plays a huge role in the success of the product’s adoption in the market place.

As he constantly reinforces how critical design is to the success of any product’s conception and evolution, it was a single page that drove the point home to me. A simple list of roles and positions within a typical company:

Leadership = CEO
Stewardship = COO
Resource Management = CFO
Technology = CTO
Design = ?

The point he’s making here is one of how companies often do not consider design as a critical discipline required for innovation, and furthermore do not have the level of leadership needed to elevate this realization.

As part of the process discussion, Buxton believes that sketches can be employed to suggest, explore, question, propose and provoke in a rapid fashion. Whereas prototypes then serve to describe, refine, answer, test, and resolve.  As Buxton mentions in the book, fail fast and early, learn fast and early.  

I highly recommend this book, it’s not often that the topic of creating user experience is covered in such a holistic and practical manner.  Get the Book!

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It looks like this is the year of Messiah. First Obama, and now the Palm Pre. That’s right, this could truly be the savior for Palm, and at the same time, perhaps Sprint too.  Yes, believe it or not, Sprint has actually landed a state-of-the-art mobile device that another provider won’t offer – at least not for the initial launch, sometime around early 2009.

But enough about Obama and Sprint.  Feast your eyes on the new kid on the block. Watch out iPhone.

Here’s a quick rundown of everything you need to know spec-wise:

• High-speed wireless (EV-DO Rev. A or HSDPA, depending on version)
• 802.11b / g WiFi
• Integrated GPS
• 3.1-inch 24-bit color 480 x 320 display
• Dedicated gesture area below display
• Slide-out portrait QWERTY keyboard
• Exchange email support in addition to POP and IMAP
• IM, MMS, and SMS messaging
• High-performance browser
• 3-megapixel camera with LED flash and “extended depth of field”
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP
• 8GB of internal storage
• USB mass storage mode
• MicroUSB connectivity with USB 2.0
• Proximity sensor for detecting when phone is near face
• Light sensor to automatically dim display
• Ringer mute switch
• Removable rechargeable battery
• 59.57 x 100.53 x 16.95mm closed
• 4.76 ounces

Read Engadget’s in-depth review here.

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2. Palm Pre Video Capture Test
3. Designing the Palm Pre: An interview with Michelle Koh

Playing the Massively Multi-player Online game (MMOG), you can play in virtual matches online against other people around the world. The key differentiator is that you only get to control your player. The remaining players on your team and the opposition are each played by a different person online. The exception are the goalkeepers, which will be controlled by artificial intelligence.

Judging by the quality of the game-play, I highly doubt this is going to effect sales of soccer games such as EA Sports FIFA series. Instead, it seems that the draw will rely on the community and “off the field” aspects of the sport.

If you’re interested in Football Superstars, register for the game today so you can be notified when it’s launched. Or visit the Football Superstars website for more details.

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