James Keller

The iPad Has Been Unveiled - Now What?

smallsociety:

As a veteran of agency life, I can say that being an iPhone™ OS-driven agency brings with it a unique set of hurdles - namely, that we have hitched our wagon to Apple’s pace of innovation, which includes newly accessible features with every new release of the OS, and sometimes, like yesterday, a whole new device.

As with all great things in life, this pace of innovation is the thing that gets us up and into the office each morning, but at the same time, it presents the most formidable challenges - creating the need for both our little business, and our client’s businesses, to stay nimble, aware and enthusiastic.

Getting Comfy with Our New Tools

Now that we have finally emerged from the post-launch haze, the Small Society team has downloaded the new Software Development Kit (SDK), the new Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), and run our existing apps through the paces in the iPad simulator.

We are taking a hard look at how well our apps will scale, and which of our clients might benefit from making custom iPad™ experiences.  Of note, we are under NDA with Apple, as are all developers - so we can only say so much about  what the future holds - but we wanted to share with you our thoughts around what details are already in the public realm.

While technically all iPhone apps will work “out of the box” on the iPad, that does not mean that most apps will look great, or even make sense when blown up to twice their natural size on a new device.

iPhone Apps Will Work Out of the Box, But is That a Good Thing?

Read More

One Big Step for one Small Society

smallsociety:

So here’s the thing… Small Society is the type of agency that believes that great people with a great idea can make a great app - but if you add just a dash of process garnered from years of experience making software, it can take that app from great to outstanding. We also fundamentally believe that in these young, Wild Wild West days of iPhone applications - having a strong process really sets us apart from many of our peers.

That being said, every once and awhile, an opportunity comes along that requires you to let go just a little bit and follow your heart.

Last week, we had the honor of having some of our work onstage at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). The Apple keynote has found it’s way into pop culture - having been parodied by everyone from 30 Rock to the College Humor crew - but to an Apple fan, it’s far more than that. Leading up to the keynote most Apple fans have already spent countless hours reading up on the rumors, trying to guess what the new announcements will be. For those who are not lucky to attend the keynote live, most fans will endlessly hit reload as one of the big Apple sites live blogs the entire event. So for us, the geeks who have dedicated our careers to this platform, an opportunity to help build one of the keynote showcase apps is an incredibly awesome experience.

It was this opportunity that inspired us to throw our usual user-centered design process out the window and join our friends at Zipcar for a crazy five-week sprint to bring a prototype of the Zipcar application to life. Our lead developer (Jon) and our fearless leader (Raven) went through a similar sprint on the Obama ‘08 iPhone application, and so the team was confident that there was enough time to get some solid code written, but our challenge was in understanding the Zipcar customer (25% of whom have iPhones!) and what they would want from this app, while at the same time leveraging brand new technologies to highlight the iPhone 3.0 OS.

Needless to say, we were excited. The weekend before the kick-off meeting in Cambridge, Jon had already implemented MapKit as a means to locate cars. On the plane home immediately following our kick-off, I had developed a first draft of the wireframes. From there, we were iterating the app almost daily, side by side with the Zipcar team, who were providing design, server development, and moral support every step of the way.

It was a crazy timeline, and the sprint wasn’t without a few tense and tiring moments, but in the end we built something that the whole team is quite proud of. We leveraged the best of 3.0 technologies including MapKit and Push Notifications, while at the same time bringing out the brand personality of Zipcar and keeping true to the ideal iPhone user experience. Luckily, Apple was pleased with our progress.

Perhaps the most talked about feature of the prototype was the ability to honk the horn and even unlock the car. Thanks to technology already built into the Zipcar fleet, it was possible to do some pretty amazing work in an incredibly short period of time. We were also lucky enough to not only see the demo live on stage at WWDC, but help the Zipcar team demo the technology for our fellow devs inside the Moscone center on Tuesday and Wednesday of the conference. (It was also pretty cool to be trending topic on twitter, if even briefly, amid all of the other cool announcements.)

Watch the Zipcar demo at the WWDC 09 keynote

Also, check out media coverage of the demo:
Wired (http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/06/zipcar-iphone/)
Mashable (http://mashable.com/2009/06/08/iphone-30-apps/)
The Apple Blog (http://theappleblog.com/2009/06/09/zipcar-car-sharingrenting-with-your-iphone/)

We’d like to thank Apple for giving Zipcar (and us, by proxy) the opportunity to participate in the keynote, and for giving us such an awesome platform to work with. And, of course, we’d like to thank Zipcar for being an outstanding client. Not only is Zipcar changing the way we think about transportation as the largest car-sharing service in the world, but the people who work for Zipcar truly embody the company brand - they are smart, fun and passionate.

We feel lucky to have been a part of such a crazy endeavor, but are all just a tiny bit relieved to have a little extra time to catch up on all of that sleep we missed.

i’m smitten with mini mittens

i had largely fallen off of the knitting bandwagon ages ago, but the cold, wet holiday spirit has put me in a knitting sort of mood.  besides, knitting is cheap, easy therapy when i get stressed.

whilst cleaning out my bookmarks i found this pattern - that i must’ve marked last year.  after ridiculously trying to first knit them with toothpicks, i finally gave up with splintery snagginess, and visited my lys to pick up a set of size 1s.

wow. so i suck at tumblr.

really going to try to get back on the bandwagon.  trying to be better at being “media social” again.

the husbot’s birthday

tomorrow we live the kidbot behind and go to walla walla for some wine tasting and general merriment.  i cannot express how needed this getaway is.

continuous partial attention on election day.

THE GOLDMINE RESOURCE:

The election day web toolkit from RRW

TRACK THE ELECTION  (thanks to my tweeps)

dtboyd - MSNBC has some good widgets to use to monitor http://www.msnbc.msn.com/27227813 

nolafilm - check out http://politics.betfair.com - they called every state right in the 2004 election. Offshore betting is pretty accurate.

reneemck great blog, along with interesting pictures and info from election sites around the country - http://tinyurl.com/ysz58q

sarahdopp Plug this into your blog widget or phone bookmarks to watch the Twitter Vote Report today http://tinyurl.com/ventanavote

verso From @dieselboi http://sayhear.org/ is really neat. Hear people explain why they voted (or didn’t) the way they did.

all sorts of google-ish wonder - http://www.google.com/2008election/

VOTING FOR CHANGE
make your own obama-themed avatar - http://logobama.com/

HUMOR
dtboyd - This is genius http://tinyurl.com/5m5qtc

about to go schmooze a room full of strangers. I can’t tell you how much I hate this sort of thing.

just voted. i <3 oregon vote by mail.