Texture design

Reading the questions asked in the PEW survey (see cyberspace-shapers-questioner.pdf)??

Telephia and comScore released the results of their latest study of mobile vs. PC-based Internet usage in the UK and the US.
Research highlights:

UK and US mobile market are similarly developed: mobile market size in number of users is 19% out of the web pc market size.Men under the age of 35 are the early adopters who are more likely to use mobile devices to access the Mobile WebLeading in the mobile web (January 07):
Popular pc internet sites Yahoo!, MSN and Google (both?

What are you waiting for!?

The CNMA's have a large number of categories that are waiting to be grabbed by individuals and companies from across this country who are creating innovative and fantastic projects, making a difference in and contributing to great successes the new media industry.

Check out past winners here.

Go to the the CNMA website now and submit your nomination before Friday, March 2nd! Time is ticking - being a finalist, heading to Toronto, taking part in this great event and being recognized by peers and colleagues is an experience and opportunity that should not be missed!

ONLY 2 WEEKS LEFT!! Submit a nomination for the Canadian New Media Awards 2007 by clicking here.

Check out what past finalists have said about being included in and recognized by the CNMA's:

1. "Not only did the awards raise my company's profile on the national New Media front, but they also legitimized years of independent production and non-profit creative passion!"
   
   Brooke Burgess | Executive Producer | Budget Monks Productions Inc.
2. "Winning a CNMA is one more thing that gives a client confidence in me. Every little bit helps."
   
   Nate Smith | Centre Ice | The Vacuum Design
3. "My CNMA nomination did a lot to raise my visibility in the industry and in the company I work for. I've been booked for numerous speaking engagements and consulting jobs since."
   
   Tim Willison | Interactive Engineering | Organic Inc.
4. "Thanks to the CNMA Website, a Polish executive found out about my work and invited me to work on a project in Poland which allowed me to set a foot in the eastern European market."
   
   Tommy Ferlatte | Creator
5. The prestige of winning a CNMA gave me the recognition instrumental in launching my career forward. No other award I've won bears quite the same weight. Norma Penner | Senior Contributor Designer | Organic Inc.

Submit Here.

Raincity Launches Social Networking Website For Kids

Kidzworld: a fully moderated, safe and secure social networking site for kids. In this world, internet savvy grade-schoolers can play games, enter contests, win prizes, test their knowledge in trivia quizzes, keep up to date on the latest sports and entertainment news, and meet other Kidzworld members from all over the world!

Even though it's designed and created for kids online, the kid in you will dig this site. My favourite section is the photo and videosharing KW Zone. Once you set up your profile, you can upload pictures, videos, find friends, add friends, comment on others' photos, and the coolest feature: edit the entire design of your KWZone to pretty much anything as many times as you want!

You can check out all the latest in the sports world, listen to your favourite tunes on KW Radio and get up to date on all the latest gossip in entertainment - wow, I think I just described my perfect news source!

Jeremy Hubert, Raincity's Director of Web Development and Lead Ruby on Rails developer, built the site from the ground up. It was an enormous challenge and took months of the nose to the grindstone, meeting with the team at Kidzworld on a regular basis to get the perfect product developed to their satisfaction and off the ground.

The site was built entirely in Ruby on Rails, and is, without a doubt, one of the largest deployments of a Rails site EVER!

Congrats Jeremy - what a feat! Now, let the kid in all of you take a spin through a Kidzworld - enjoy!

Attention:

Raincity Studios is seeking an experienced Web Designer to perform work on a contractual basis. Applicant should have a sizable portfolio of their professional design work available for immediate review.

Details:

Two Positions available:

* Web Designer

* Web Designer/Developer

Web Designer Qualifications include:

* a flawless understanding of branding and design for dynamic, interaction-driven websites and web applications

* Familiarity with current and upcoming web design trends

* Creativity and problem-solving abilities a must

Web Designer/Developer Qualifications include:

* All of the above qualifications plus...

* Web Standards development techniques including CSS and XHTML

Additionally, PHP fluency will give the applicant a large leg up. Familiarity with the Drupal CMS a large plus.

If you are interested in working with Raincity, please forward your cv, portfolio URL and any other additional files or information to: inquire@raincitystudios.com

Cisco Gets Jealous Over Apple's Dream Toy

Based on the fact that it's Apple, and Steve Jobs, and a tagline that reads: "Apple reinvents the phone", I think that Cisco doesn't have a hope in hell, and Apple Inc. knows it.

As of late Wednesday, Cisco Systems is suing Apple Inc. in US Federal Court for their trademark on their own handheld device, IPhone. That's with a capital "I". Apparently, Apple has been repeatedly asking Cisco for its' permission to make use of the brand, a name the company has held for 7 years.

I think the legal team over at Mr. Jobs' Mecca has likely been over this one, and this was just part of the grand master business plan in launching what is the most lovely phone ever to grace this land. Not to totally write off Cisco, I mean, it's Cisco and all, but, well, come on, it's Apple.

I'm sold on the iPhone. Who wouldn't be after that keynote? And once those inevitable bugs are worked out and the price drops a wee bit, oh yes, it will be mine.

One of the basic consideration in web 2.0 concept is 'tagging' where any contents in the web can be associated with one or more tags, which can be shared among social community network. It lets others to find any content according to their chosen tag. Tag is nothing, but a way to categorize any web content. In real world, any visitor can quickly reach to a content thru it's associated tags, can thus get a basic idea about whether s/he will consider it to read/download etc. "Search" is older concept to help users to find any desired content, but "Tags" provides users to have an open track to find his own choice which has not been discovered yet!

I am really a tag lover. All of the Web 2.0 sites I am using, I am associating web contents with tags, which helps me to properly organize and structure those. Well, the real world is not bed of roses, so I started to get confused, as soon as my contents get larger. For example, http://del.icio.us is one of my very favorite site, which is a award winning web 2.0 site, dedicated for bookmarking urls. Using browser buttons of http://del.icio.us, I can quickly bookmark any web page that I was just visiting into my http://del.icio.us account, with the URL, title, comment, as well as associate appropriate tags, which I have been defined previously in my account settings. From the beginning it really helped me to keep track of my web studies. So life got easier, it's matter of few seconds for me to find any site of a specific category, that I have been visited and found useful.

The Real World

Unfortunately, I am really a nerd reader So with in few months, number of my bookmarks crossed couple of hundreds. It turns to a bit problem to me, to find any URL through tag/category, as some of tags already have over hundreds of urls. More over, there are few tags, with similar or nearer meaning (for example: software-development, .NET, C#), and while searching, I didn't get sure that, in which tag, I have been associated the content, that I am just searching for!

So I started to feel that, I need to organize my tags in more intelligent way, so that for a long term period, all of my contents can be grouped together and found in much quicker time.

In the coming days, tags are getting more important place over the web, so we need to have some good concept and convention while tagging! Well, the popularity of tags lies due to its simplicity, so it will be used by the web users in very quick but un-structured way in the maximum time. That's great tho, you are free to choose your tags, but for important contents, "Intelligent" tags will really save lots of our time and effort!

Intelligent? Huh! Tags will be intelligent?

Well, tags can't be intelligent, it's true, but the fact is it can be designed and considered in intelligent way!

Object Oriented Tagging

Object Oriented concept has achieved a great deal of popularity among software developers in previous 2 decades. According to this concept, all real world entities, regarding a given context (or software requirements) are classified into separate areas and utilize each other as needed. One of the basic principal of Object Oriented technology is "Inheritance", where new classes can be inherited from super or base classes, that includes properties of it's parent class. This design idea facilitates the management of software architecture and codes very effectively, specially for large scale software.

When we have large number of contents (for example: URL, image etc), the associated tags can utilized in according to the concept of "Inheritance" to manage all contents properly. Here tags should be structured like the "Tree" data structure (root node, parent node, child node, siblings node etc)! For example, we have a base tag "Software Development", clicking on which will result all the contents related to software development. Now consider another tag, named ".NET", which is a sub tag or sub category of "Software Development" tag. Clicking on the tag ".NET" should list the result related to ".NET", which will include a sub portion of "Software Development" tag. Clicking on the tag "Software Development" will considers the contents all the sub tags of "Software Development", including ".NET" tag contents.

It would be great, if users can define the tree structure of the "Tag Inheritance" tree structure through the web application and thus create the life easy while putting the tags for a content, as well as searching contents through tags will work in much meaningful and faster way. If we have a built-in support for defining tag tree structure, it would take only one "Tag" defining a content in .NET, along with relating the content with "Software Development" tag category. Otherwise both tags "Software Development" and ".NET" needs to be considered with independent (and meaningless) relation among these two tags.

A Sample Structure

To understand the problem in deeper sense, lets go with more complicated example. Consider the following tag structure.

In a given example, all ASP.NET and C# contents are in sub tag of .NET. But an ASP.NET content might not related to C#, can be VB.NET or other stuffs and vice versa. So they lies in the same layer. In this context, considering ".NET" tag, it includes all tags related to "ASP.NET" and "C#" tag, but "ASP.NET" tag contents don't include "C#" tag contents.

Also, .NET can be a sub category of "Software Development", as this is a software development framework. But "Software Development" tag might have other issues, which are not related to .NET. As well as, .NET can be a sub category of "Microsoft", as this is a development framework by Microsoft. But "Microsoft" tag might have other issues, which are not related to .NET. So considering the tag "Software Development" or "Microsoft" guarantees to get the content of ALL of their sub category contents (.NET, ASP.NET, C#) but not vice versa.

Solution

Besides the built-in support in web application, we can solve this issues by maintaining our own policy while define and implement our tags. After some brain storming, I found two ways, where this object oriented approach can be fitted!

1. Root level

While bookmarking, consider the lowest level, and DON'T consider the corresponding upper parents. For example, "ASP.NET". We will define the tree structure by creating a special bookmark for each parent node. In this case, in the web application, we need to have a support to merge the contents of tags, which can be used by any other users in later time though a labeled name for that merged list. For example: For the merged list of "Microsoft", we can define it as follows:

Microsoft = ".NET" + "ASP.NET" + "C#" + {unclassifield "Microsoft" list}

2. Node level

While bookmarking any contents, starting from the lowest level, all parents corresponding to that level should be marked.

For example: a content related to "ASP.NET" should be bookmarked as follows:

ASP.NET content = "ASP.NET" + ".NET" + "Microsoft" + "Software Development"

Technically this is the most easiest way, as we don't need any type of support in the web application. All we need, is just to have a flat set of tags, which relations will be maintained while tagging. The problem is, the user always needs to remind the hierarchy of tags. As this is relatively tough for the users to remind the hierarchy, this idea can be used only in special or important content, where we don't have any tree or merge support in the web application.

I am very much addicted to the Read/Write Web, that is to say: it's where I like to surf for all the latest and greatest. And this upcoming week is no exception.

You want reviews of 2006 and all that shook down and what it all means as we launch into 2007? Richard MacManus and his 2.0 crack team of writers always seem to hit all the issues, news, conferences, and sum them up well, with honesty and realism in their writing, reporting and critiquing.

SO - I'll be watching and reading and hopefully reporting back and linking on The Standard, as per the usual, but let's be honest, it's 11 days, yes, ELEVEN days, until the stores close and the 12 Days of Christmas (technically are supposed to, in theory) begin. So while I shop, or rather, make my homemade gifts (oh my family love me for it, really they do) and we all feast over and over again, you can always take a spin through the read/write to catch what you've missed.

That is, if Grandma's house has that wifi hook-up so you can escape away to feed your addiction between eggnog and Santa chocolates.

Technology Branding 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games

I'm here at Presentation Centre at the Great Northern Way Campus, the new home for New Media BC and the future home for the Centre of Digital Media. Today is all about bringing together different sectors of technology, government representatives and members of the VANOC team.

With the Vancouver/Whistler Olympic Games kicking off in a mere 1163 days, now is the time to initiate the vision and branding for how we are going to best represent ourselves to the world. With billions of people from around the globe watching in 2010, it will be a precious time to define BC and Canada for perhaps the 25 years following, so who do we want to be? Is this a time when we can take advantage of this opportunity to change the way the world views Canada?

Using the latest in digital technology is an integral aspect in branding us as a world leader in new media. Just some of the ideas that were generated and expressed today with respect to new media and technology influencing our image in the 2010 Games:

• Let us shape new technology of the future, and not just be a part of it.
• Make the roof of BC Place a virtual world, a projector screen - enhancing the experience of the live audience, so that in turn, the television audience is experiencing the same positive, exhilarating feeling.
• Utilize real-time rendering: the ability use the computer to create characters, scenes, locations, and have each interact with one another - live imagery and computer generated imagery
• Collaboration between local companies here in Vancouver is an essential aspect of contributing to best-representing ourselves as a city, a province and a country.
• Bring the intense desire for community that has been found through the avenue of Second Life to connections and the possibility of virtual communities to the Olympics. One idea was to run the Torch through absolutely every location and community from coast to coast!

Scales and kk are here, of course, and are speaking to the group about how the media and therefore the coverage of the games has changed, due in no small part to new technologies and companies, and to showcase how Raincity and Bryght can be of great help and service to growing online communities leading up to 2010.