Articles by Tag

Details = Design

I just recieved an update for the PCF internet TV application Democracy. I’ve kept up with this app for the past year or so (read “Download some Democracy”), but the thing that caught my eye right from the beginning was the installer on my desktop.
Democracy app
When I drag the TV icon to my Applications folder, there’s a hole in the wall where all the funky fresh 70s wallpaper is. It’s a tiny detail, but it made quite an impression of me.

“The details are not the details. They make the design.”
   –Charles Eames

date Thu, 07 Jun 2007 Bookmark comment Comments
tags Tags: ,

Fire replacement icon

Fire icon The majority of my friends in New York use AOL Instant Messenger, all my Dutch friends use MSN Messenger as well as my brother, a few amigos from Brazil are using ICQ, I have a few people on Yahoo! Messenger, then there’s wifey on the local network using Bonjour, and finally all my collegues on an internal Jabber server at work. Am I supposed to have six skinny yet tall windows littering my desktop? Get real!

Several years ago, I found this smokin’ application called Fire on Sourceforge (puns!). I’ve been a huge fan every since. The interface uses minimal desktop real estate, it’s very customizable, there’s even a tabbed chat window which keeps the window madness under control, and it’s a stable little program. There’s a ton of other features that I would encourage you to read about on their site. I will say that the one drawback is the poor performance of sending files or lack of audio and/or video chatting. But, pound for pound, if you’re typing text back and forth to you friends across multiple messaging platforms, this is the answer to all your dreams!

Since this app is free, I decided to make some sort of contribution and build a few additions to Fire. Feel free to download them both below.

date Mon, 07 Aug 2006 Bookmark comment Comments
tags Tags: , ,

My del.icio.us Mac

Social bookmarking tools for OS X using del.icio.us

If you’re using del.icio.us social bookmarking and Mac OS X then you’d better check these tools out:

However, if you’d like to dig even deeper, there’s an exhaustive list of all things delicious right here.

date Sun, 05 Mar 2006 Bookmark comment Comments
tags Tags: , ,

Download some Democracy

Democracy screenshot
Image: Participatory Culture Foundation

With a name like Democracy (formerly DTV), this application makes a strong statement by making the user somewhat of a program selecter. You choose which channels to subscribe to, you choose which clips to keep, delete, etc. As of right now, there’s a limited amount of channels that provide good, quality content, but what do you expect for free? I suppose you could say the same for 90% of the podcasts out there. At any rate, the interface of Democracy is well thought out and quite nice to use—not perfect though. While it’s easy to subscribe to channels and navigate through them, once you’ve downloaded more than 10 clips, they get stuck in a huge, scrolling row on the right. I suspect these small tweaks will be attended to as the development progresses. Other than that, it’s a real nice app, a pleasure to use—definitely fills a gap with internet TV/videos.

One more thing…on Mac OS X, once you start downloading clips, the default file location is in your Videos folder, which makes them accessible via Front Row. Nice!

Great job to everyone at the Participatory Culture Foundation!

date Tue, 21 Feb 2006 Bookmark comment Comments
tags Tags: , , ,