Blog Stuff we're discovering, learning, reading, watching, enjoying...

At the FOWD tour event in Leeds earlier this year, Brendan Dawes gave a great talk on the importance and role of beauty in everyday life and how this should be applied in interface design and digital systems. The Small Worlds Flash game is definitely an example of this. I’m not a gamer [not by modern standards, though I'm still weak to temptation when it comes to any release of FIFA on XBox 360], but there is something magical about the Small Worlds game that just draws you in. Despite winning a recent gaming award, I guess Small Worlds won’t be challenging CoD7, WoW9 or DGACAG5 in the annual gaming honours, but it’s a fine way to waste 10 minutes online, and might just remind you that small can certainly be beautiful.

Two totally different new websites came to my attention today…

Javari.co.uk is Amazon’s attack on the shoe market. I understand it’s been running in the US for a while and has already made a massive dent in the traditional shoe retail business. Amazon have tried to remove the barriers to online shoe [and presumably clothing] purchase by offering free one-day delivery, free 365-day returns and a fantastic product preview experience including high-res ‘exploratitive’ zooming of multiple product photos. It’s not the same as trying on a shoe and walking round the shop but if the price is right then it’s got to be tempting.

Jimcarrey.com on the other hand is a totally different approach. As rich Flash portfolios go, this one is going to be hard to beat. You can see the creators were basically given a blank sheet of paper, probably a blank cheque and certainly told not to hold back on the bells and whistles. Every possible effect and embellishment has been used but, along with a slightly eclectic and twisted creative direction, it completely fits with what we know of Jim Carrey. Great execution all-round and a worthy use of 10-minutes spare time.

We’ve been following the progress of the relaunched Skittles site with interest to see if they’d be sticking with their relatively brave approach to creating a web experience relying almost exclusively on utilising the big destination sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, etc. The site itself doesn’t offer much that’s new except for the blatant approach to exposing the underlying web properties and a quite nifty [though also not new] use of a floating Flash ‘controller’ to keep it all together. Wonder how long this will last and/or if other brands will follow suit.

In our latest Flash game you can overcome the current financial doom and gloom by helping Gordon save the banks. And if that doesn’t work you might just be able to raise yourself a few quid by selling your old phones back to Fonebank.com. This topical  Flash game builds on a simple “grab the object” game concept and adds topical sound bites and jokes. Developed completely in Actionscript 3 and including a physics engine for realistic effects, after playing the game you can share the game easily using social networks and bookmarking tools, challenge a friend by email to beat your score or value your old phones at Fonebank.com.

I was only recently introduced to the wondrous suite of visual/design online applications at Aviary.com. Having had a brief explore, I’m sure Adobe aren’t worried just yet but as a demonstration of how usually complex graphics applications can be delivered online using Flash they’re an amazing showcase. As with Google’s online application suite, the opportunities for such applications are best maximised either by focussing on the 10% of an applications features that are used by 90% of it’s users or when they deliver features that couldn’t be delivered with offline software. In Aviary’s case this might mean being able to quickly alter a photo before posting to a blog or photo-sharing site or being able to collaboratively edit a visual in real-time with other users.