Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Designers love to hate skeuomorphism. It’s just decoration, they say. It’s completely useless. It will go out of style. Or as Mark Boulton, co-founder of Five Simple Steps, put it on twitter: I really wish everyone would stop making digital things look like real things. A screen is not a drop shadowed, bevelled, wooden plank. Yet Apple and many other software developers continue to use it heavily in some of their apps. Many hate without asking: Why? Why is Apple and so many others continuing down this path? They have all lost their sense of good design, surely. No?

Skeuomorphism is about communcating and reinforcing feelings – getting an application to become a memorable experience, not just a tool. It’s about communicating the purpose of a UI, not only the functions it enables.

An interface that is not only easy to use, but fun to use, engages the user and creates an experience where obstacles are easier to overcome, and thus an experience where the product is easier and more effortless to use. Done right, skeuomorphism can retain the simplicity and ease of use of an interface while empowering users to act.

Watching the students create the game has shown me how much young people can thrive when given a challenging task in a stimulating environment. Something that traditional classroom experiences can’t offer

Students developed literacy and teamwork skills, she writes, along with learning project management and problem solving.

A pair of MIT Media Lab alums have come up with a do-it-yourself kit for making smart environments. David Carr and John Kestner, partners in the industrial design firm Supermechanical, have developed a small, durable, inexpensive remote sensor node, and an easy-to-use web app that turns data from the sensor node into timely information. The system, dubbed Twine, lets you tie everyday objects into your digital life.

Twine is a palm-size block of rubber that contains a WiFi node, temperature sensor and accelerometer. It’s powered by two AAA batteries or a mini USB connection. And it has a port where external sensors can connect. The initial external sensors are a magnetic switch, moisture sensor and a breakout board for building your own sensor. Supermechanical is also considering an RFID reader, pressure sensor and current sensor.

a school that implements ePortfolios will mirror the collaborative patterns in academia and industry, where research and development are collaborative, peer-reviewed, and cumulative.  Such schools not only make the necessary evolution from individual training to community learning, but effectively prepare students for the world of knowledge work.

Times are changing. Kathy Sierra features a timeline on her blog which suggests that the 1970s and 80s were about how well we could learn, the 1990s and 2000s focused on how fast and how much we could learn, whilst today's education should be based on how much we can unlearn. And, she says, learning to let go of old and out of date rules is one of the skills we all need to develop. Futurologist Jack Uldrich is applying the same principle to the medical profession, arguing that the key to unlearning is to come to the realisation that 'we are all in a fog', and can't clearly see the future. Unlearning will be a strategy for coping with rapid change and uncertainties, he argues.

YouTube announced a new batch of partners that were added to its Education Channel today and noted that nearly 80% of the viewership of educational content on the site came from outside the United States. Less than 70% of the site's total traffic is International, so the educational content is disproportionately viewed by global audiences. Both YouTube and iTunes U are serving up huge quantities of educational content to a world already in the throes of a 50 year revolution in global education. In some ways they represent exactly the kind of education that a new world needs, too: learning that augments existing education and fosters life-long development of non-routine analytical and interactive skills. That's a recipe for good times. YouTube now hosts more than 500,000 educational videos, on a wide variety of topics. The new mobile-friendly iTunes U also offers 500,000 educational resources and says that 60% of its viewership comes from outside the United States. This global consuption of US-created online educational content may be the newest chapter in a radical transformation of global education over the past 50 years. Life in this world is not like it used to be just a few decades ago, and the availability of world-class education on-demand, at almost no cost, is likely to help things change all the more as this century unfolds.

A trend began, at least in the United states, as far back as 1985: demand for "routine manual skills" has held relatively steady, demand for non-routine manual skills has plummeted. Demand for routine cognitive skills climbed through 1970, then fell. What's hot? Non-routine analytic and non-routine interactive skills. Those are things that a good YouTube or iTunes U video about world history or global ecology can help improve, your non-routine analytic and interactive skills. More than for just economic well-being, those are skills that positively impact quality of life in many ways.

We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook

Developers cannot ignore Android. The old mantra of releasing on iOS and then eventually hitting Android needs to be rethought. Google also needs to step up its game. Google Play is a mess and Android has a very big problem with piracy. Android the ecosystem still sucks, but Android the mobile platform is winning.

The API supports a call to mouthPosition as well as left and right eye positions. T

Adobe unveils new publishing tools aimed at mobile and tablet devices

Digital Publishing Suite, which can be used by publishers to create, preview, publish and distribute digital content for mobile devices

The publishing industry is reinventing itself and a new era of editorial and advertising innovation is upon us as publishers target new mobile hardware platforms," David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager for Creative and Interactive Solutions at Adobe says in a release today.

Digital Cosmetic Mirror by industry giant Shiseido can be used to test make-up and recommendations without even having to pick up a mascara brush

Using augmented reality to do sampling is a novel way to involve consumers, and can be a useful technology for saving on waste

The terminal then gives you tailored recommendations. Pressing a few buttons on the touch-screen paints make-up onto your image in realtime, allowing you to see the results instantly. You also try out make-up that is currently making waves, along with printing out before and after photos with product information for you to go make the purchase of whichever colors caught your eye the most.