Archive for August, 2009

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Reality is SO boring.

Monday, August 31st, 2009

reality01It seems that reality just isn’t cutting it anymore. We humans want to supersize reality, layer more and more stuff on top of reality to really trick it out. Innovative folks out there have been working to develop Augmented Reality technology since 1992, creating applications that blend our real physical world with computer-generated virtual imagery, and the results are pretty darn interesting.

There are some new mobile applications out there that help you, among other things, find subway stops, restaurants, identify landmarks, navigate the roads, identify someone’s face and pull up all of their online profile information, or pull up all of the wikipedia entries about your surroundings. If it can be layered on top of reality, someone’s figuring out how to do it.

For instance, take a look at this Yelp! app that uses the camera and GPS on your iPhone to tell you instant information about the restaurants around you.

This Top 6 countdown of hot mobile Augmented Reality apps explains where we are today and gives you a taste of the future possibilities of this technology.

And here’s a great example of an Augmented Reality digital hologram, used by GE to promote their Smart Grid technologies. You print off a special page and hold it in front of your web cam to view the hologram.

Lastly, this video shows an iPhone app that uses Augmented Reality to teach kids spelling. Watch out, children of the future!

Despite its early 90′s origins, which in Computerland makes Augmented Reality practically ancient, the possibilities of this technology are still nascent. The applications and graphics still feel a bit primitive (though, admittedly, in a futuristic way), and the overall consensus among techno geeks everywhere is that we’re just taking the first steps in what will be a huge leap forward for reality as we know it.

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Facebook Etiquette

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Zoom Creates has been a whirlwind of busy-ness this week, so blog posts have been taking a bit of a back seat. One of the things we’ve been doing is honing our social media strategies and skill sets. With that in mind, I am going to post a video that speaks volumes about Facebook Etiquette in an extremely delightful way. Please do enjoy!

Video compliments of Tango.

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My computer is gooey…

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

gooYes, coding is fun.  Super-duper fun even.  But every once in a while we need to turn our brains (mostly) off and recharge.  One of our favorite ways to do that is gaming. Today I’ll share with you one of our favorite games, World of Goo.

This game is made by an independent gaming company called 2D Boy, which is a team of two dudes coding from scratch. It’s super fun, and pretty challenging too. It’s a puzzle game where you can connect little balls of goo together to build connecting supports to move other goo balls around get them to get sucked into tubes. It’s super fun.

Also, this game is DRM free, and runs on Mac, Windows, Linux and the Wii. That’s pretty sweet. As a Linux user, I’m sick of games not coming to my platform. Go buy this game. It’s $20, runs on anything recent and is fun. Great music too.

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The Re-emergence of Plaid

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

We might be having a middle school flashback, but Plaid is back and it is HOT. Whether the look is classic Burberry, 90′s grunge, school girl chic or a Clueless throwback—it’s all about plaid. When it comes to the runway and celebrity looks, this bold pattern is everywhere.

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plaid_celebs

When it comes to interior design, this cross-hatched pattern is no longer reserved for dingy basement couches. We’re loving the modern takes on this preppy pattern.

plaid_interior

But we’re most excited to see the creative ways the tartan craze shows up in graphic design. Here’s a little taste—we’re sure there will be more where this came from.

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Dove Lewis, Another Zoom Neighbor

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

In addition to Lisa’s Won’t you be my neighbor post about the good neighbors around Zoom, I would like to point out another good neighbor directly across the street, Dove Lewis. Dove Lewis is a 24-hour emergency animal hospital. While we don’t rely on their services every day, it’s nice to know they are there when you need them.

Fortunately I have only needed them once—so far…

It was an early Sunday morning about 5 years ago. I was just waking up, and my wife, Bridget, was in the living room reading the paper. Hoss was busy being a puppy. I heard some rustling beside the bed, looked over and saw Hoss chewing on something white, but didn’t think too much about and tried unsuccessfully to fall back to sleep.

About 5 minutes later I decided to get up. I looked over to see what Hoss had been chewing on but didn’t see anything, just him chewing on my shoelaces or something. I asked Bridget if Hoss had brought anything white and chewed up into the living room. She said that he had not and then came into the bedroom to find out what it might have been. After looking around the room she screamed, “I think Hoss ate my underwear!”

As new dog owners we had no idea what to do. We called Dove Lewis and they told us to bring him in. They said there were two options: 1. we could wait and see if it passes, but it might not and then he would need surgery, or 2. they could induce vomiting and hope he had not eaten anything sharp that could injure him on the way up. We asked them to induce vomiting and they took him away to work their “magic”. About ten minutes later he was returned to us safe and sound. They said he barfed up the underwear…as well as two socks! Then they asked if we wanted them back! Needless to say, our house has been a lot cleaner since the incident. ALL our clothes now make it into the laundry basket.

cartoon

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Quick Look Feature in OS X 10.5

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

quicklook_title20090608For me, one of the best things about OS X 10.5 Leopard is the quick preview feature, Quick Look. Quick Look allows users to look at the contents of a file in the Finder at full or near-full size. Just select the document in the Finder and press the space bar (or choose File -> Quick Look, Cmd-Y) and the file will be viewable in a separate window. The reason I like this feature so much is that you don’t have to wait for an application, like Preview, Acrobat or Word to open. A window just pops up and you see the file.

This is super handy when looking through a bunch of photos or looking at Word, PowerPoint or especially Excel documents. For example, select an Excel file, hit the spacebar, and a preview of the file pops up including the ability to click on each worksheet in that file. This is much more efficient than waiting for Excel, Word, PowerPoint or even Acrobat to open just to get a brief glimpse of the content.

Quick Look can preview all popular graphics formats such as JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, Camera RAW, and Photoshop, as well as PDF, MP3, MIDI, AIFF, AAC, MPEG4, all MS Office apps and Apple iLife apps. You can even open a font file in Quick Look and the preview displays a large preview of the typeface. Awesome.

Unfortunately, Quick Look does not by default work with files that designers look at every day such as InDesign, Illustrator and EPS files. But, after a little research, I found that there are many plug-ins and tutorials out there that can enable these and many other file types to work with Quick Look. A good repository for these plug-ins is www.qlplugins.com.

Here are the plug-ins that I have found extremely useful:

BetterZip Quick Look Generator v1.1 Allows previewing of a wide array of compressed file types.

EPSQLPlugIn EPS Displays previews and thumbnails for EPS files.

Adobe Illustrator Viewer Allows viewing Adobe Illustrator files, but only if the files are saved with PDF compatibility.

SneakPeekPro Previews Illustrator, InDesign, and EPS documents and allows viewing of fonts, images, and colors used in many CS3 documents.

To install the plug-in, just copy the downloaded .qlgenerator file into your /Library/QuickLook folder.

Now if only you could copy text out of the Quick Look window…

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Linux and Dual Screens

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

dualScreenOne thing that I love about working at Zoom is that they give us the freedom to use the tools that we require to get the job done. For me, that is Sidux, Kate (the all powerful and awesome KDE text editor/IDE), SSH and the command line. Sure I use other tools (Virtual Box for Adobe CS3, Filezilla FTP client, GiMP, etc…) but one of the things that I really love about my computer is how easy it is to set up my dual screen set up. I don’t use any of the native built in tools to set this up, as I have found them sometimes amazing and sometimes terribly lacking. I pull up a BASH prompt, fire off a command, and get to work. Today I want to talk about the amazing command xrandr.

If you want to get your dual screens set up without much fuss, fire up your BASH prompt and click to read some more!

(more…)

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Animal Print

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Get on your safari hats, because today we’re going wild! We love a splashy animal print because it borders on that line of oh-so-good or oh-so-bad. That line can be crossed in fashion, interior design and graphic design, but when it’s done right it makes our hearts go pitter patter. Check out these examples of just the right amount of jungle style on the runway, in print and in the home. We recommend just a dash of these prints—don’t be afraid to mix and match with other bold patterns & textures, but always remember to go faux. Grrrr.

The Color of Animal Print

7504_Animal_Print

The color of animal print is 7504, a warm brown that looks soft to the touch.

The Typeface of Animal Print

AnimalPrint_Zeebra

The Typeface of animal print is Zeebraa. It is clearly wild and crazy enough to represent this fierce trend.

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Worth it?

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

If you’re thinking about getting a dog, think long and hard. Your life will never be the same again.

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oh. great. the laundry basket.

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hey. awesome. our chair.

You have to feed them EVERY day. They also need exercise and attention. They need shots and regular check-ups and vaccinations. When you go on vacation you have to pay someone to watch them. They are a bit on the stinky side, slobbery, shed like crazy and chew on things they shouldn’t chew on. You have to pick up their poo and they bark a lot. They turn their nose up at the good food you buy them for some unknown reason. They pee on things you don’t want them pee on. They turn their heads from the water bowl before they are finished drinking allowing the water in their mouth to flow out of their mouth and all over the kitchen. They leave slimy nose prints on windows and dirty foot prints on the floor.

But it’s worth it. It is totally worth every poo you pick up, every cent spent at the vet, every piece of dog hair you pull out of your food. It is worth it.

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The lunch-off of the century!

Monday, August 17th, 2009

pkvsnohosAugust is officially vacation month. Zoomers and clients alike are taking advantage of the final weeks of summer to head out of town and relax, which leaves those of us left behind with some big responsibilities.

We, for instance, are left with the duty of eating lunch EVERY day. Where to eat? What to order? Whoo. I’m tired already. I need a vacation.

But despite the taxing demands of feeding ourselves every day, I must say we’ve been doing pretty well. We’ve foraged, brought leftovers, ventured out into the neighborhood for sustenance. See, running a marketing communications agency isn’t that hard!

On Thursday, though, Eva raised the stakes. She’s on vacation in California, and suggested from afar that the studio enjoy a delicious lunch from Noho’s Hawaiian Cafe. This got all of us hula’d up, and we dug into a delicious meal of Phil’s Ono Chicken, rice and heavenly macaroni salad. Then Friday rolled around and Tim, not to be outdone, suggested boldly that we partake in a feast from PK Thai in the Pearl. Duty-bound, we agreed. A delicious feast it was.

Taking part in this Zoom Lunch-Off was an incredible challenge, and one that we faced with courage and teamwork. We had some big shoes to fill, but us non-vacationers stepped up and took one for the team. In the end, it was a “thai”, and there was “noho” way we could decide which lavish meal brought more delight to us Zoomers. We were simply happy that we could carry the weight of such responsibility with our chins held high, our stomachs full, and a smile on our faces.

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