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For those of you wanting to learn to develop for the iPhone, there is a very good article/tutorial on Mobiforge.com about using DashCode, one of Apple’s development tools available from our iPhone Dev Kit at AID. A
web app is different from the “native applications” as sold in the AppStore. These web apps are created with JavaScript, CSS, and XHTML via the excellent DashCode dev tool. Check out the tutorial for a better understanding of the types of web apps you can create and a beginning tutorial to see how fantastic the DashCode tool is to use. Dashcode is available in labs 302, 317, and 300. More on this topic later…

Mobiforge

I received a “Meetup” invite to a new flex user group some of you may be interested in. It appears that their first meeting will be at an event TechFlex09 to be held Friday, November 13, 2009, from 8am – 5pm at the

Dallas/Plano Marriott at Legacy Town Center
7120 Dallas Parkway
Plano, TX 75024
There is a fee for the event but it appears that the usergroup will form from this first event, so there should be monthly usergroup meetings also. The event is sponsored by Miller & Assoicates with Mike Smith and Matt Bugbee (AID Grad) part of the presenters for the event.

Check it out at: http://www.meetup.com/TexFlex09/?gj=wg2_ej1b.

Have you ever considered that new technologies may in fact be shrinking our market for “web design”? And what of the rise of frameworks and libraries and a growing use of content management systems such as WordPress by professional developers? Robert Capps “The Good enuf rvlutn” in Wired’s September ‘09 issue is a must read that may find us discussing these types of issues on the forefront of the information and communication technologies challenge.

I have personally felt for some time now that we needed to bring mobile design into our program, and as I researched it I found a rich and exciting new type of opportunity. While mobile applications – the sophisticated games and location aware apps and all the unique tools that you can’t live without get all the attention, there is also a world of integration between standard web sites and mobile websites. There is much that can be developed with XHTML/CSS/Javascript given the outstanding tools that Apple provides for the iPhone development process. These development tools are now available to our students through our Developer status with Apple. But I also realize that if we eventually are primarily designing for mobile sites rather than desktops, what will that mean for our industry? What effect will “good enough” have in the process?

The Capps article describes how “entire markets have been transformed by products that trade power or fidelity for low price, flexibility, and convenience”. Pure Digital, makers of the Flip video camera, made the discovery that good enough tech that is cheap, fast, and simple works every time. (The Flip just got challenged with Apple’s new Nano, as another example). And everyone knows that mp3 recordings are poor quality compared to CD’s, but the added advantage of take it with you everywhere cheaply and conveniently has become more important than fidelity.

Clay Shirkey, quoted in the article, sums up with “there comes a point at which improving upon the thing that was important in the past is a bad move”. Other examples of this concept in the article bring the point home and causes one to stop and ponder. What is the real purpose of our projects and where is web/mobile based communication heading? Or we may see these changes and discover the new types of opportunities that we will be privileged to develop!

There was a “worm” reported over the weekend that is seriously affecting older versions of WordPress that are located on private hosting environments. WordPress.com sites are not affected as they are automatically updated to the latest versions as they are released.

It is serious, and not very visible unless you know what you are looking for. Please read the following articles to get the details:
From Matt Mullenweg: http://wordpress.org/development/2009/09/keep-wordpress-secure/
and from WordPress.org on how to upgrade: http://codex.wordpress.org/upgrading_wordpress/
and if you have problems: http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2008/06/24/how-to- completely-clean-your-hacked-WordPress-installation/

It is not panic time, but it is serious and you should upgrade quickly to avoid any problems.

George Siemens just posted an article about “technology as Philosophy“. While the concept and article are sobering, it was the reference to a Wired article that really captured my thoughts about how serious our work as web designers really is. I highly recommend the article In Iraq With Web 2.0 Luminaries by Steven Levy. It helps us understand the big picture of what we are working to learn and express. It challenges the significance of our task to bring technologies to life, and not see them simply as tools we may or may not want to understand.

I used these terms to describe our Web Design & Interactive Media program at Open House today – not quite in this order, but its all there!

The economic crisis our nation and the world is struggling with has caused projects to be delayed, and in some cases people not hired, or let go because the employer has loss a major client. Richard Florida describes the “Uneven effects in the crisis” as it relates to jobs. He states that the intangible sector and creative sector jobs – arts, design, and entertainment, among others, are starting to register losses.

In this type of environment designers have to be clear about the difference between “treating a website like a commodity” (Andy Budd) and putting more thought and research into projects and making sure you are meeting the needs of users.

When we describe the need to create projects in courses that are “real world”, we are referring to issues that employers can identify with as the types of issues they work on daily. It is near impossible to identify such issues, without research and planning. It is simply not good enough to make a website that is better than one for a similar product. It is not about creating a site that “beats out” the competitors sites. Users are seeking to meet their needs, and unless you take the time and effort to see problems from the users perspective, you will find difficulty in satisfying today’s users. Students of Web Design and Interactive media, as well as other design disciplines, need deeper skills at learning to understand the user before going with the first good idea that comes along. You really can’t afford to wait until you graduate to develop these skills. You will need them as you hit the ground running.

References to further this post:
Uneven Effects of the Crisis, by Richard Florida
Don’t treat your website like a commodity, by Andy Budd
How the crash will reshape America, in The Atlantic, by Richard Florida

The WordPress User Group in our area meets this coming Saturday at 4:00 at Spaghetti Warehouse on Central Expressway in Plano, just north of 15th Street on the West access road. Unfortunately there is a limit on attendance and only 1 spot remains, however, try and register and RSVP in case there is more space. The Meetup announcements are located at: http://www.meetup.com/dfwwordpress/calendar/959387. This is a good way to meet bloggers, and learn from the professionals, as well as learn more about WordPress!

Mozilla labs has recently announced “Bespin” a new “text editor” available online that works through a browser. The promise of this type of cloud-based product (available online) is one I would love to see become a standard. As an opensource editor this just might happen. I registered to try out the current demo framework – not a beta, and found the interface and speed very interesting and simplified from existing html editors. The fact that it will be a collaborative tool also makes it interesting. And I wouldn’t have to ask anyone if we used it for classes! As I have shared many times, I think cloud computing is where we are headed, and this is an exciting example of a new breed of tool with fresh open-source ideas to grow it. You and I can participate by trying the demo and offering suggestions to the team at Mozilla Labs.

You can register and view an introductory video at bespin.mozilla.com to get a feel for the product.

I would like to collect some comments from students/instructors on your reaction to this product.