Shameless Promotion Department:

We've just released our PIXCETERA app in the Apple iPhone store. The experience was designed and created by the Key Experiences team within MediaGlow. We kept the experience very simple, very focused, and basically ported the value proposition of the site onto the hand-held device. Users can explore hundreds of original world-class photo galleries created by the photo-editors of the site as well as galleries published from across our content network. Check it out and let us know what you think. The app is significant for us in that it solves both a technical and UI convention for delivering photo browsing experiences within our upcoming iPhone apps. Very soon look for releases for "The Unofficial Apple Weblog" (www.TUAW.com), as well as Asylum.com. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures on PIXCETERA!

The Mexican suitcase showed up at the International Center of Photography over a year ago, filled with some of famed photographers Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymours' lost rolls of film. The images have finally been developed, and the New York Times has composed a brief slideshow highlighting some of the most evocative images from the series. The inclusion of the AGFA negative contextualizes the historicity of the images-- they are photographs representing both the Spanish Civil war as well as the inception of Magnum Images, but also became the foundation for snapshot reportage. Check out the wonderful collection here.

A friend and associate of mine (David Link at WonderFactory) recently twittered about the fact that all the three major content portals are basically the same and asked "what's next?" in a Web portal experience.

Here it is: http://twitter.com/WonderfactoryNY/status/1354194077

The suspects here would be Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL. I wanted to reply to the post and... (sort of) agree with David. I do think there are major differences but listing them out is too easy an answer and not where I think he is going.

Hey, twitter posts are half a calorie in terms of value and content. So I'll answer from an AOL perspective as we continue on our roadmap of super-setting the Web and giving our users more and more control.

At this point in terms of portal reinvention I think we're on the right path; but we know that "re-inventing", as in top-to-bottom, is not what the entrenched public really wants in many cases. They don't want a car with 3 wheels just so we can call it progress. When you have 50 million or a 100 million people coming to your sites, you have a tendency to listen to their needs. One of those needs is consistency and accepted formats. When you want to truly break the mold that can be an obvious inhibitor.

So I think the experience of a portal will change but not necessarily relative a Web page as we experience it today. It will be in your hands via smart-phone and projected on the living room wall and, like the wiii, you'll gesture to get what you want. This is not as far-fetched or far off as it could have sounded just three years ago. This is already upon us.

This portal will know no boundaries to data, or networking, or inter-connectedness to people. It will be ubiquitous and won't chain you to any one experience. And, though it will have a social networking component, you'll start to find shades of meaning beyond just "Friends". How many of you want all of your Facebook friends on the Living room wall and at that level of intimacy? ("Friend" possibly the most incorrectly used term of the age.)

You'll be able to filter the "news" in powers of 10, zooming outward or inward: your personal events ("I hear water outside"), your social circles ("Our neighbor's kitchen is flooded!"), your neighborhood ("Spring St. is flooded!"), your town ("Taxes just went up 10% to help fix flooding problem!"), your state ("State taxes just went up 5% on top of that local 10%"), your nation ("Obama to lower taxes!"), your entire world ("Taxes outlawed by G7 nations!"). And you'll be able to zoom in and out at these various levels of resolution and meaning and inter-connectedness. Meaning is everywhere. A good portal shoud be able to help you find it. Experiences today are so compartmentalized, dominated by the "module". We have to hammer at that one.

And all that said: personalization is the true next wave. Yes, all of us have been talking about it for years but NO ONE as done it well yet. Or at least to its full potential.

So the Portal is really you. And YOU are the portal. That is what it's going to be.

The team here will keep pushing toward this vision, whatever it is branded, and whatever device it sits on.

I love how the designers of this IBM micro-site interpreted their subjects (along the bottom) into stark and simple iconography while staying true to a consistent visual language. Very often we're tasked with taking cliches and making them fresh and invigorated. I think this team has done that well here across these 14 concepts.

I was stuck for a couple of extra hours at the airport in Dulles and I noticed this amazing visualization of the Internet from AT&T Labs and a company called "Lumeta". Yes, I know these have been done before, but rarely with any sense of aesthetics in mind. Alas, some extensive searching revealed no aditional information on this monstrosity (it is rather large). It is one of those things you'd really like to get a copy of, but for some reason, a company smart enough to map the Internet is not smart enough to put an URL on the poster to follow up on their creation. Something this cool deserved a "How We Did It" type of explanation somewhere. Oh well. If you are in Dulles or Reagan airports, be sure to check it out. It color codes major nodes and networks, and that faint gray "haze" is actually thousands of labels for major servers in the network. A great marriage of science and design.

And apologies for the quality of the picture. It was taken with my phone.

No, that's not the name of the latest band featured to be featured on Spinner this week.

Just yesterday, I was sent a link to an amazing photograph of President Barack Obama's inaugural address. I've come to find out that the photo has practically gone viral, with over 2 million views in the first 5 days it was posted, so I'm potentially not the first person to share this with you.

I had a rather strong reaction to the image itself, the story if its creation, as well as the interactive element, and the combination inspired me to go out on a declarative limb: This is THE image that depicts everything historical about Barack Obama's election. A grand statement, I know, but read on and I'll attempt to explain.



New York photographer David Bergman blogged about covering Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20th, 2009. "I covered my first inauguration and what an inauguration it was," he writes. "Before Tuesday, I had photographed five presidents and covered big events including the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and concerts like Live 8 and Live Earth. But this one was the biggest. It deserved a big photo."

When he says big, he means big.

Over the holidays, I started following several prolific design tweeters (via Twitter). Here are some inspiring links a couple of them shared that I thought you'd enjoy as much as I did.

Beautiful web typography
http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/20-websites-with-beautiful-typography


Logo design inspiration
http://www.logospire.com

I'm in the NASA generation... meaning I grew up when space exploration was THE most thrilling news covered in our solar system. It also means that I'm probably a bunch older than you... but we'll proceed anyway.

I recall gathering with my family in the living room, watching our single TV set:

10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 0 - BLAST OFF!!!!!
ROAR of unbelievably powerful rocket engines. HUGE Saturn V rocket engulfed in smoke and flames. INCOMPREHENSIBLE forces inching untold tonnage slowly upward, breaking away from gantry tubes, somehow going straight upward, hurtling its miniscule human cargo toward exciting exploration and discovery missions in outer space.



Not coincidentally, we all just got past the most famous recurring example of this type of cultural artifact:

10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!
Woooo Hooooo! Yelling. Noise-making. Kisses. Champagne. Affection. Reminiscing. Resolutions.

Countdowns are Cool!
Read on and learn how to Rock Your UI! >>

If you haven't already noticed, Pixcetera launched a full-screen template last week, allowing photos embedded in the everyday pixcetera galleries to expand full screen...



One of the most visual examples is the disturbing "Congo in Conflict" gallery. Not for the weak of heart, but the gallery definitely showcases the powerful experience of larger images.