Tweetmeme, desarrollado por el mismo equipo de Fav.or.it, un sistema de comentarios para blogs aún en beta cerrada, rastrea la información cada cinco minutos de los tweets que comparten los usuarios a sus grupos de amigos, de manera que nos crea una portada principal con los tweets más destacados, y junto a éstos, los tweets relacionados.

Además, en muchos de los tweets es normal encontrar enlaces a distintos tipos de contenidos, con lo que nos permitirá, mediante pestañas, filtrarlos. Para ello disponemos de las pestañas: Blogs, Imágenes, Vídeos y Audio.

Un detalle interesante lo encontramos a la hora de poder establecer un periodo de tiempo para que nos muestren los temas más discutidos dentro de ese periodo.

En todo caso, nos facilita un canal rss que nos permite seguir las actualizaciones para cada uno de los apartados que dispone.

Sería interesante juntar algunos de estos servicios con el propio Twitter, ya que estos servicios complementarios cubren las carencias del propio Twitter, como la de un buen buscador integrado, estadísticas, y otros servicios que dan valor al propio Twitter.

Vía | Download Squad
Enlace | Tweetmeme

Dado el éxito de Twitter, resulta extraño que no haya aparecido algún script que nos permita montar nuestro propio clon de este servicio. Los chicos de Automattic, encargados del desarrollo de Wordpress, que están que no paran, han creado un tema para este gestor de blogs que le otorga funcionalidades similares.

Lo han llamado Prologue y permite implementar sobre Wordpress un Twitter para un número reducido de usuarios. Los usuarios registrados como editores en el blog pueden enviar sus mensajes cortos directamente desde la página, a través de un pequeño cuadro de texto situado en la parte superior.

Cada uno de los mensajes enviados es una entrada en toda regla, por lo que dispone de su propia página con comentarios. Es decir, no deja de ser un blog con un tema que facilita la tarea de montar un sistema similar a Twitter. Ideal para grupos de amigos o compañeros de trabajo.

Claro que la gracia de Twitter es la comunidad que se ha montado a su alrededor, pero como forma sencilla de montarlo en nuestro propio servidor o, incluso, como una especie de tumblelog, Prologue resulta bastante interesante.

Vía | Twitter de Andrés Milleiro.
Más información | Wordpress.
Enlace | Prologue.

Comiqs es una herramienta social que nos permite crear nuestras tiras cómicas partiendo de su librería de fotos, de las fotos que subamos o de las fotos existentes en la web, con posibilidad de importarlas desde nuestra cuenta de Flickr.

Simplemente tenemos que añadir viñetas, y sobre ellas seleccionar una de las plantillas, donde iremos arrastrando las fotos, añadiendo y adaptando los bocadillos de diálogo sobre cada una de ellas, y publicando nuestras tiras cómicas, enclavándolas en una categoría concreta con sus propias etiquetas. Y cómo no, como en casi todas las herramientas del estilo, nos permite compartirlas mediante enlaces, mediante código html, y además, nos permite recibir valoraciones y comentarios por parte de otros usuarios, que podrán llegar a ser nuestros fans.

Como puntos negativos tenemos que no podremos volver a editar nuestras tiras cómicas una vez publicadas, ni la podemos eliminar.

Ya sólo queda usar la creativdad de cada uno para usarla en sus obras, aunque me temo que por las fechas que son, el tipo de viñetas que se crearán puedan ser de carácter político, el cual también existe como categoría.

Vía | Incubaweb
Enlace | Comiqs

In this post we present some unusual music videos for your monday’s coffee break. Some of the videos are thought-provoking, some of them are funny and some are bizarre. While many of them are well-known, you’ll probably find some videos you’ve never watched before. The videos all perfectly to the music which is being played in the background. Hopefully, everyone will find something new and inspiring for himself/herself. Please notice that you might need to watch some videos at least twice to get the idea behind them.

You might want to read the descriptions of the videos — they are provided below every link. The screenshots often don’t reveal that much about the videos they stand for.

Music Videos

Unkle - Rabbit in your Headlights (hi-res Quicktime)
What is the guy whispering? Who is the guy? And what is he doing in the tunnel? You need to watch this video till the very end. You won’t be disappointed.

Jason Forrest - “War Photographer” (2005)
These freaking vikings are both cool and strange. But it doesn’t make them less sympathetic. And they can play both on drums and guitars pretty well.

Bat for Lashes — What’s A Girl To Do
00:38 is the best moment in the history of music videos. Well, this one is kind of scary. Hares driving on the bicycles and clapping their hands at the same time? A masterpiece from the year 2007.

Nick Cave & Kylie Mingoue — Where The Wild Roses Grow
Probably one of the most beautiful music videos ever made. There is no need for words. Watch it.

Rob Dougan — Clubbed To Death
Incredible editing and directing. So symbolic, so powerful.

Fujiya & Miyagi - Ankle Injuries
What about a music video which is made with thousands of 6-sided dice? Exactly. And the music fits perfectly.

Radiohead – “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” (1995)
The video for this song was shot using different film frequencies, allowing various actions to unfold at different rates within the same frame. The emotional effects of this practice range from silly to unsettling. Try not to watch this video too many times; it begins to feel a little more disturbing each time. [Jeff Shreve]

Sia – “Breathe Me” (Quicktime)
The production of this video clip took several thousands Polaroid photos. The result is… at least unusual.

Citizens Here and Abroad - You Drive and We’ll Listen To Music
Jason Koxvold’s video pairs crashing cars with crashing guitars. Rock. Very well executed and perfectly edited. Must see.

Moby - Porcelaine
Such a beautiful song. One of the videos you are amazed about once, and you never forget again.

The Strokes - You Only Live Once (Imeem)
With a Hundred ways to do a dozen things, why not try it all? Directed by Warren Fu.

Arctic Monkeys - A view from the afternoon (Quicktime version)
A song about a passion and unstoppable willingness to do what you love. Simple, yet so effective.

“Glosoli” - Sigur Ros
“Glosoli” depicts a young drummer boy gathering up the other denizens of what appears to be an adult-free utopian land, and leading a revolution to freedom. So beautiful and so touching. Don’t miss the last scene.

The Avalanches - “Frontier Psychiatrist”
This is freaky. Sometimes the most obvious concept for a video also turns out to be the best. The ghost choir is the best. Except for the nightmarish old-man turtle, of course. [via PitchForkMedia]

Royksopp - Remind Me
We’ve featured this movie already, but it’s worth mentioning it in this post. You can watch it dozens times and still not catch everything. A day in the life of an average working Jill, broken down into its minutest component parts. The unstated joke: mankind has erected immense, resource-devouring systems of almost incomprehensible complexity just so you can sit in your cubicle.

Blur - “Coffee & TV” (Quicktime)
Actually, this song is about a dancing milk carton. However, its adventures are funny, cute, but with a pleasing streak of cruelty. The milk-carton protagonist even has its own fan site.

Boards of Canada: “Dayvan Cowboy” (Quicktime)
It’s pretty easy to get wrapped up in the grainy, existential pulchritude of this thing and completely miss the cheeky self-reference. So, um, where can one surf in Canada? Directed by Melissa Olson.

Move Your Feet - Junior Senior
That’s weird. And that’s what makes it special. A pixel-based video clip.

Daft Punk - One More Time
Probably one of the most colorful animated music videos of all time. Daft Punk, one more time.

Xploding Plastix - Joy Comes In The Morning
A music video about the world we live in and the world we’d like to live in.

Unkle - Eye For Eye
A haunting track with a creepy animation, which won an award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Nasty weirdness drops from the sky and then moves on.

Vitalic - Poney
Flying dogs in light of a laser and in slow-motion. Nobody has ever done something like this before.

OK Go - Here It Comes Again

Justice “D.A.N.C.E.” (Quicktime)
Sometimes even T-Shirts can speak. For instance, in this music video. “D.A.N.C.E.” was nominated for “Video of the Year at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. On the first of November Justice received the “Video Star” award at the European Music Awards in Munich.

Forss - “City Ports”
The visualization fits perfectly to the music.

Radiohead - Just
What could the man on the street possibly have said?

Prodigy - Out Of Space
Prodigy’s “Out of Space” is probably one of the weirdest videos ever created. Welcome back to the 90s — this is how some videos looked like then. The song which was * for the whole generation.

The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony
A video everybody has seen. And everybody would see again.

RJD2 - Work It Out
This guy just want to have some fun with his crooks and his skateboard. A one-shot-video from 2007.

The Web has changed. This isn’t your neighbor’s nerdy kid’s internet anymore. Now the Web is home to your mom, your grandma and your technophobe sister. With computers as common a household appliance as televisions now, who might be using your web-application has expanded beyond the realm of just the power user.

Complicated menu systems, alert dialog messages that lock you out of the browser and flashy but confusing layouts aren’t necessarily going to help you make conversions. The Web user demographic has changed and to make your web application appeal to the masses your user interface needs to teach and to guide.

User Interfaces Should Teach

User interfaces need to teach your user how to use your application without resorting to a help screen. Many developers think that a help section will suffice for teaching users how to operate most any application, but this is not the case.

The help section of most applications, Web-based or otherwise, end up being used by the power users who are already trying to figure out every nook and cranny of the application. The proper way to help users understand how your application works is to bring the help section to them and in a format that can easily be understood.

In-line tips and interface descriptions work as an excellent introduction to the interface and how it operates. By providing your user with assistive instruction aside the interaction, it is easier for the user to relate the instruction with how it applies to your web application’s functionalities than a disconnected FAQ or help section.

Nourish by Integral Impressions is an application that creates an automated email newsletter of any RSS feed. The entire interface is documented in-line with descriptive help blocks that can easily be closed once the user decides they don’t need the help anymore. A quick visit to the user profile section presents an option to re-enable all the help boxes in the account just in-case the user forgot how to do something.

Nourish’s interface is documented in-line with descriptive help blocks.

37Signals accomplishes helping their users with their communications management applications like Basecamp in a similar manner. Sections which do not have any content yet display a screenshot of the section, populated with data. This screenshot is even linked to an instructional video on how to create content for the section. That’s user-friendly.

In Basecamp sections without any content display a screenshot of the section, populated with data.

Last.fm provides users with leads on what they can do with their social online radio application via contextual tips and descriptive defaults, teaching the user how use and understand the interaction without taking them away from it as a FAQ would do.

Last.fm uses contextual tips and descriptive defaults, teaching the user how use and understand the interaction.

To ease a user into your application, the application needs to teach the user how to use it. Once the user has moved beyond the beginner level with that application, the application should allow the user to skip all the help boxes and tool-tips or they should be un-obtrusive enough that they are never in the way to begin with. It is best to allow your users to re-enable the tips on how to use your application. Though never assume your user is done learning how to use your application the first time they read your helpful tips.

However, teaching a user how to use your interface is not just limited to providing tool-tips and lots of descriptive fields. You can easily teach a user by setting good default data. Setting good default data demonstrates to the user how a field should be formatted or what kind of information is expected in a particular text panel.

By entering in an email field email@domain.com as the default value it is perfectly clear what you are expecting to be entered in this field and how it is supposed to be formatted. To complete the interaction a bit of simple JavaScript can be used to make the form field even more usable by clearing the default value when the user gives focus to the field and then returning the default value if they did not enter any information.

This technique can even be taken into other fields where you may be expecting specific descriptive data to be entered, such as placing Describe the details of this project… as the default value in a textarea expecting the description of a project. Setting good defaults not only helps ensure that you’ll get the data is entered correctly, but it helps teach the user how the pieces of your application function.

User Interfaces Should Guide

Setting good defaults in your user interface and providing helpful tips will also allow you to guide users through processes and prevent having to correct them. There is nothing worse for the user experience than filling out a form of non-descript fields, and then alerting, via JavaScript, back to the user about how they did not fill the form out properly. Utilizing debugging implementations for instructive communication is a very alienating way of communicating instruction to users. A better way of instructing a user is to guide them through your form and prevent errors from ever happening.

Yahoo places defaults in fields that are not self-descriptive, but these defaults disappear when the field is given focus so as not to interrupt the user’s flow when filling out the form. When form fields are given focus, a simple description of the field and its parameters is given to the right, providing simple instruction without interrupting the user’s flow through the form.

On Yahoo defaults in fields disappear when the fields are entering the focus state.

Microsoft’s Live Mail signup also provides descriptive examples and parameters for fields that require them. Microsoft additionally groups fields in the signup form that are related to each other, providing a description of the section to the right of the form interaction area.

Microsoft groups fields in the signup form that are related, providing a description of the section to the right of the form interaction area.

The form only displays the description for the section the user is currently interacting with to keep the form area from becoming cluttered, allowing the user to focus on the section they are in before moving to the next.

Squidoo’s lens signup wizard is another example of a guiding interface. Their lens signup process provides human descriptions of each step making it easy to understand what is being done. The contact form seems to communicate with the users throughout their registration.

Squidoo also gives feedback to the user in their multi step process of how many steps they have to go providing the user an understanding of the scope of the signup process.

Setting up a form with these implementations humanizes the experience and hand-holds the user as they are walked through the form.

With AJAX and JavaScript DHTML, form fields can now be validated in real-time — no more submitting and going back is necessary. For instance, Yahoo’s account signup form display’s a green check mark if the data is correct, and highlights the invalid field with a friendly description of what was filled out incorrectly and why.

Zooomr.com validates their signup form in real-time with personable, yet helpful descriptions of field parameters

Zooomr, an online photo storage and sharing service, validates their signup form in real-time with personable, yet helpful descriptions of field parameters and valid (or invalid) entered data.

Conclusion

The average web user demographic has changed and so must the user interface. By creating a more usable, easier to understand and less intimidating experience your web application will encourage people to use it. Designing a web interface isn’t about how many features you can stick in one navigation or how pretty that subtle gradient might be.

Designing a web interface is about creating a conduit for users which is easy to use and understand, helps to to accomplish tasks and improves their experience. Show the users how you would like them to user your application, but don’t force it on them. Allow your web application to guide your users through the process, teaching them how to become experts at it and make the application work for them.

Dave Shepard is the Lead User Interface Developer at digital-telepathy specializing in web standards, user interaction, interface development and technology.

In both print and web design infographics — visual representations of information, data or knowledge — are often used to support information, strengthen it and present it within a provoking and sensitive context, depending on designer’s creativity.

This article presents some spectacular data visualizations and infographics which manage to combine a strong visual appeal with the effective presentation of information.

• You might want to take a look at the article Data Visualization: Modern Approaches we’ve written few months ago.

Data Visualization and Infographics

Country Codes of the World
Country Codes of the World maps 245 top-level domain country codes encompassing all United Nations countries as well as numerous islands and territories. Each two-digit code is aligned over the country it represents and is color coded with the legend below for quick and easy reference.

Flags as Infographics
These posters have been designed for the political magazine Grande “Reportagem”. The main idea behind visualization is to turn flags of various countries into infographics by adding a legend to them. For instance: United States. Red: In favor of the war in Iraq. White: Against the war in Iraq. Blue: Don’t know where Iraq is.

Independent: Infographic
Middle-East: who backs immediate cease-fire? The infographic below was published on the front page of the “Independent” magazine during the Middle-East crisis in July 2007.

Virtual countries
This stand present the largest virtual countries according to the gross domestic product of the countries and world’s largest companies.

Net Neutrality
This infographic is supposed to emphasize the importance of net neutrality; it isn’t really a data visualization, but it instantly delivers the message: this is how our future might look like.

Corporate connections:
An extremely compact and useful source of information.

DIZZIA, Gregory M.
This is the documentation of every intimate relationship Gregory Dizzia has ever had. The data spans 23 years.

Amadana Infographics
Amadana is a Japanese company, which explains why they might not have realized that a scapegoat isn’t the same as an “acuarium.” The first row is for that toaster oven, the second and third rows are for an air purifier, while the last is for a hot plate.

The Japanese Wii Safety Manual
This Japanese Wii safety manual is pretty much indicative of Japanese people’s general insanity. [via Gizmodo]

Virtual Water
Simple, clean, elegant and effective. A double-sided poster visualizing the water footprint of products and nations.

Apple’s Tipping Point: Macs For The Masses
Very calm, soft and appealing colors within a clearly presented context. Design by Paul Nixon.

AT&T/Bell System Pre- & Post-Divestiture Chart
Peter Ross. 1985.

Flickr User Model
A slightly more complex data infographics, however still clear and well-presented.

Journey into the Universe (1985)
Information design, 1985.

Megan Jaegerman
A review of Megan Jaegerman’s work by Edward Tufte. Notice how clean and legible the infographics are.

Good Magazine Infographics
In each of its issues Good magazine offers good, even excellent, infographics related to aspects of our life. Some excellent examples below.

Who Participates and what people are doing online
A slightly different presentation of usual charts gives it some uniqueness and appeal. [via Kottke.org]

The Cost of Living on the Bleeding Edge of Gadgetry
Price and market penetration of consumer electronics over the past 50 years. By Arno Ghelfi. Infographics from a quite different perspective.

A year in Iraq
An unusual data visualization which gives information on the type and location of each attack responsible for the 2,592 recorded deaths.

Cubism and Abstract Art
Clean, informative and elegant. Alfred Barr’s work, found in Edward Tufte’s book.

MyMap
A data visualization application capable of rendering the relationships between the user and individuals in the address book by examining the TO:, FROM:, and CC: fields of every email in the 60,000-large email archive.the intensity of the relationship is determined by the color intensity of the line. “My Map” allows to explore different relational groupings and periods of time, revealing the temporal ebbs and flows in various relationships. My Map thus becomes a veritable self-portrait, a visual reflection of personal associations and relationships.

When Bots Attack
Using rented botnets, you can launch hundreds of thousands — even millions — of infobombs at a target, all while maintaining total deniability. In this hypothetical scenario, a single attack launched by China against the US lasts only a few hours, but a full-scale assault lasting days or weeks could bring an entire modern information economy to its knees. This infographic is supposed to illustrate it.

Mapping the Blogosphere
This is what the blogosphere looks like…

Globalization
…what about globalization?

George W. Bush Speech Infographics
An interactive infographic, compares the number of times certain words appear in the address. Both are a nice example of how information design can give readers more ways to evaluate and contextualize a given text or set of data. So simple, but extremely intuitive and clear.

yHaus: BookScape, Query Bursts. Experimental projects by Yahoo! Design Innovation Team. These query bursts depict individual IP numbers that start very popular bursts of search queries. each particle shows a query from a unique location worldwide. bookscape represents about 250,000 illustrations taken from children books, originally collected by the Open Library Project. The experimental interface uses dynamic resampling of image data to place all the images in a single zoomable space, arranged alphabetically by title.

Sources and Resources

• Good Magazine Infographics
• grandcontent
• Sugar Batteries Infographic Movie
• Iccarus: 3D Data Visualization
• 6 Less-Than-Helpful Infographics