Design posts

We have been hearing rumors about the iPhone 5 since long before the 4S was launched. One of the most recent rumors to surround the heavily anticipated smartphone is arguably more intriguing than them all. According to Patently Apple, the tech giant has patented a new technology that could give its popular mobile device three dimensional appeal. The site, which as the name implies, keeps up with all things related to Apple and its patenting initiatives, reported that the company recently patented a new technology that could introduce 3D camera technology into devices running its iOS operating…

One of the hardest parts about personalizing social media profiles and pages is getting the artwork and branding just right. Every site has different sizes and styles that they prefer when placing artwork on your page. The challenge is that they rarely (for some reason) tell us the dimensions that work best. This graphic by San Diego web design is a perfect cheat sheet for those who want their pages to look just right. It’s particularly useful for agencies who have to post graphics on a semi-regular basis. Click the image to download the PDF version for safe keeping. …

The dorm rooms that are often the most visited by friends are the ones with a fridge, a Playstation, and a Bose stereo. The gadgets and features of the “lucky” kids in the high-dollar dorms are great but they have nothing on BRAD. Take a few hundred dollars worth of equipment, a good amount of time putting it together, lots of skill and a ton of creativity and you have what Berkeley Engineering freshman Derek Low put together in unit 2, Griffith’s Hall room 402. The innovative approach to automation may have a short life, however. Despite keeping in line with housing standards of using tape rather than…

What happens when a stream of water hits a big enough obstacle? It moves towards right or left to pass over the blockage. Same thing happens to your audiences when they face dashboard or presentations on your site and fail to make anything out of them. We are talking specifically about drill-down charts here. They are pretty intuitive tools to make your reports and dashboard easier to grasp. However, the same tool can break your neck if you don’t use it with intelligence. Here, we explain how to make drill-down charts more intuitive and least obnoxious for all your reports and dashboards.  …

Leave it to the brains at MIT to improve something that most of us take for granted: glass. Their “Fog-free glass” is a nano-textured, multifunctional variation that resists fogging, virtually eliminates glare, and self-cleans. In the video below, you see water droplets bouncing off the superhydrophobic surface without leaving a, well, droplet. Imagine the applications on our gadgets and gizmos, not to mention what this can do to the solar power industry that is in desperate need of improve efficiency with their equipment. The rumors of repelling zombies are unconfirmed. Related articles…

Recently, Apple announced and showcased their new vision for 64-bit non-linear editors (NLEs). They called it Final Cut Pro X (FCPX). The news of this NLC sent waves through the industry, quickly appearing to be the biggest feature at NAB 2011. Finally, Apple released FCPX. Letting my inner child’s excitement take over, I went online and download it. Many technology review blogs haven’t yet explored this software deeply; I will show you the complete details and user experience of Apple’s Final Cut Pro X. As the software loaded up, I noticed that the process was much faster than it was on…

Since the dawn of graphic interfaces on computers, designers and developers have faced off over the proper ways to present data and tools. The aesthetics that please designers often conflicts with the functionality and ease that pleases developers. This battle is spilling over into iOS app development, but it doesn’t have to get bloody. In this graphic, the war is brought into the realm of compromise with these tips for designers that can cut off the objections before they materialize. With the right tact, proper techniques, and patience for the “less creative” types on the other side of the…

As startup success stories go, few can compare to Instagram. When they were purchased by Facebook earlier this week, there weren’t many people crying the standard conviction of “they sold too early!” At $1 billion, most agree that they hit their peak and sold off at just the right moment. This timeline from Visual.ly breaks down the course that brought them from small startup with a clever concept for photo sharing to a company that has made its 13 employees rich and ready for more adventures with Facebook. Click to enlarge. From: Los Angeles Honda Via: Visual.ly H/T: Automotive SEO…

To those of us who have been watching social media grow over the past few years, there are certain sites that succeed that didn’t quite make sense when they were rising. Looking at Facebook or YouTube, it’s easy to see the appeal, but in the early days many questioned the success potential for other social networks like Twitter (yes, there were actually major doubts just 4 years ago), Foursquare (I remember a discussion about how “nobody would want to take part in getting themselves stalked”), and now Pinterest. It’s just a photo sharing site, right? Flickr has that market in check for the most part…

The Tek Robotic Mobilization Device developed by Istanbul, Turkey-based AMS Mekatronic, bridges the gap between bulky wheelchairs with the inherent problems that come with them and mechanical engineering that will give many paraplegics more and easier access to their world. The idea is brilliant in its simplicity to the point that one wonders why something like this is new. Using a combination of balancing mechanisms, manual attachments and pulleys, and robotic engineering, the AMS team has reduced the horizontal size of mobility devices while solving other challenges such as mounting…