The Art of Film & TV Title Design by PBS’ Off Book.

I was tipped-off to a great digital series PBS creates called ‘Off Book’ by @tjlull. The Title Design video above hooked me (who doesn’t love a good opening title sequence?). Like I did, you’ll end up watching most of their other videos, too.

A few great ones:

Have some time to kill? Check out my YouTube faves feed (see also Vimeo, Netflix, Ted Talks, etc.).

The Difference Between UX and UI: Subtleties Explained in Cereal (design.org) Ever met someone who uses UX and UI interchangeably? Ed Lea created this photographic infographic to visually define the differences between user experience and user interface design and how they relate to a product.
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The Difference Between UX and UI: Subtleties Explained in Cereal (design.org)

Ever met someone who uses UX and UI interchangeably? Ed Lea created this photographic infographic to visually define the differences between user experience and user interface design and how they relate to a product.

There’s a few things interesting about this, but specifically: - the acknowledgement of the increasing trend for riders with tablets—mostly iPads—that we’ve all noticed over the last year or so. - the choice to display white headphones instantly signals ubiquitous ‘Apple product’ to viewers (well-played, Apple).
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There’s a few things interesting about this, but specifically:
- the acknowledgement of the increasing trend for riders with tablets—mostly iPads—that we’ve all noticed over the last year or so.
- the choice to display white headphones instantly signals ubiquitous ‘Apple product’ to viewers (well-played, Apple).

And so a tradition was born: a tradition I am going to call (half descriptively, half out of revenge for all the hours I’ve lost to them) “stupid games.” In the nearly 30 years since Tetris’s invention — and especially over the last five, with the rise of smartphones — Tetris and its offspring (Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Fruit Ninja, etc.) have colonized our pockets and our brains and shifted the entire economic model of the video-game industry. Today we are living, for better and worse, in a world of stupid games.

Game-studies scholars (there are such things) like to point out that games tend to reflect the societies in which they are created and played. Monopoly, for instance, makes perfect sense as a product of the 1930s — it allowed anyone, in the middle of the Depression, to play at being a tycoon. Risk, released in the 1950s, is a stunningly literal expression of cold-war realpolitik. Twister is the translation, onto a game board, of the mid-1960s sexual revolution. One critic called it “sex in a box.”

Tetris was invented exactly when and where you would expect — in a Soviet computer lab in 1984 — and its game play reflects this origin. The enemy in Tetris is not some identifiable villain (Donkey Kong, Mike Tyson, Carmen Sandiego) but a faceless, ceaseless, reasonless force that threatens constantly to overwhelm you, a churning production of blocks against which your only defense is a repetitive, meaningless sorting. It is bureaucracy in pure form, busywork with no aim or end, impossible to avoid or escape. And the game’s final insult is that it annihilates free will. Despite its obvious futility, somehow we can’t make ourselves stop rotating blocks. Tetris, like all the stupid games it spawned, forces us to choose to punish ourselves.

NYtimes: Just one more game… — fantastic read.

Source: The New York Times

Pretty cool timeline + Google Image mashup for any search term over any period of time.

I think the print ads are kinda sexy.

An Axe fragrance for men and women? Supported by an Axe campaign that isn’t aggressively, compulsively misogynistic? The world must be coming to an end.

In fact, that’s exactly what seems to be happening in Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s launch spot for Axe Anarchy, the first fragrance in the brand’s history with a version for ladies as well as dudes. Axe has long been known, and relentlessly bashed, for “giving men the edge in the mating game” (their words)—which in the advertising has always meant portraying women as brainless, sex-driven fools unable to resist throwing themselves at the Axe-using men in their midst. The introduction of a women’s fragrance levels the playing field, and lets BBH finally portray both sexes as sex-crazed imbeciles, free to objectify each other equally in willfully mutual attraction—in what turns out to be the most absurdly romantic campaign Axe has ever produced.
via Adweek

Here’s the video spot:

Stopped by General Assembly’s first ever Career Fair, mostly out of curiosity. (They also had a pretty impressive lineup of NY tech companies like Facebook, Tumblr, Etsy, Meetup, Pivotal Labs, and more.) I found it to be something between a hipster résumé stacking contest and a nerd tech feeding frenzy. There’s clearly a huge demand for something done well like this. I’d love to see the next one have more space so people aren’t climbing over each other. I’d also recommend it to tech companies looking to find talent.
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Stopped by General Assembly’s first ever Career Fair, mostly out of curiosity. (They also had a pretty impressive lineup of NY tech companies like Facebook, Tumblr, Etsy, Meetup, Pivotal Labs, and more.)

I found it to be something between a hipster résumé stacking contest and a nerd tech feeding frenzy. There’s clearly a huge demand for something done well like this. I’d love to see the next one have more space so people aren’t climbing over each other. I’d also recommend it to tech companies looking to find talent.

What thread connects the ’90s trip-hop band Air, Tom Hanks, and the movie Hugo? A French filmmaker named Georges Méliès. I was just starting to wonder why Air’s cd was a little boring. Turns out it’s the soundtrack to a digital remastering of the classic film also featured prominantly in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, as well as the fantastic HBO miniseries produced by Tom Hanks called From the Earth to the Moon. (Tom Hanks’ only appearance in the miniseries is to actually play Mr. Méliès himself.) I’ve been a longtime fan of Air’s tunes (also AirTunes) — which also spurred a brilliant inside joke where my boyfriend thought their breakout hit, “Sexy Boy,” was actually chanting “sexy pudding.” (Go head and listen to the chorus: you can understand his hysterical mondegreen.) Hugo is a brilliant and gorgeous movie that I can’t wait to see again. And if you’re a space buff whom enjoys a little cinematic historical drama, add the From the Earth to the Moon miniseries to your Netflix queue immediately. …but back to George: Presented in its fully restored original 1902 colors (and featuring a new, kinetic soundtrack by AIR), Georges Méliès’ classic adventure tale of a lunar voyage is now as beautiful as ever. Come see the restoration that premiered at Cannes 2011 and was hailed by New York Times film critic A.O. Scott as “surely a cinematic highlight of the year, maybe the century.” Winner of the 2011 National Society of Film Critics’ Best Film Restoration Award. — American Cinematheque Who wants to go see this with me at Lincoln Center? I’m pretty excited. Restoration documentary to follow.
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What thread connects the ’90s trip-hop band Air, Tom Hanks, and the movie Hugo? A French filmmaker named Georges Méliès.

I was just starting to wonder why Air’s cd was a little boring. Turns out it’s the soundtrack to a digital remastering of the classic film also featured prominantly in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, as well as the fantastic HBO miniseries produced by Tom Hanks called From the Earth to the Moon. (Tom Hanks’ only appearance in the miniseries is to actually play Mr. Méliès himself.)

I’ve been a longtime fan of Air’s tunes (also AirTunes) — which also spurred a brilliant inside joke where my boyfriend thought their breakout hit, “Sexy Boy,” was actually chanting “sexy pudding.” (Go head and listen to the chorus: you can understand his hysterical mondegreen.)

Hugo is a brilliant and gorgeous movie that I can’t wait to see again.

And if you’re a space buff whom enjoys a little cinematic historical drama, add the From the Earth to the Moon miniseries to your Netflix queue immediately.

…but back to George:

Presented in its fully restored original 1902 colors (and featuring a new, kinetic soundtrack by AIR), Georges Méliès’ classic adventure tale of a lunar voyage is now as beautiful as ever. Come see the restoration that premiered at Cannes 2011 and was hailed by New York Times film critic A.O. Scott as “surely a cinematic highlight of the year, maybe the century.” Winner of the 2011 National Society of Film Critics’ Best Film Restoration Award.
— American Cinematheque

Who wants to go see this with me at Lincoln Center? I’m pretty excited. Restoration documentary to follow.

I’m not sure how I stumbled across it, but I’m sure glad I did. At the end of January, YouTube released some pretty mind-boggling stats around popularity and upload rate. But they celebrated it with a wonderfully immersive microsite.

Every second, one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube. That’s 24 hours every 24 seconds… or a decade every single day. Discover more time-bending stats at http://www.onehourpersecond.com.

The problem with statistics like this lies in its stickiness and comprehensibility factor. (Yes, I made that last term up.) Just reading the rate above as text, anyone would have hard time wrapping his mind around what ‘24hrs of uploaded video every 24 seconds’ really means. Is that a lot? It sounds like a lot, right? Luckily, Google (and lots of other smart companies) are starting to leverage the powers of HTML5 and CSS to create sites that go well beyond that of a boring stat or embedded video.

Give a look at the One Hour Per Second site and you’ll see what I mean. They coupled a strong artistic representation and mental extension of this rate applied to other (somewhat) tangible things that help you draw comparisons to comprehending this data:

  • “In 1.5 seconds of uploads to YouTube, the International Space Station completes one orbit of the earth. [1.5 seconds of uploads =] 91 minutes of video”
  • “In 36 seconds of uploads to YouTube, the Byrd Glacier in Antarctica moves 14.76 feet. 36hrs of video”
  • “In 1 minute 36 seconds of uploads to YouTube, the Sahara Desert expands by 500 feet. 4 days of video”

You get the idea. But it’s this light interaction and seamless transition between animated elements and an almost a cappella soundtrack that creates a joyous interactive experience. It’s really the audio that does it for me. It’s like the teacher in Charlie Brown meets a beatbox extraordinaire.

Want some other neat examples I’ve seen recently? Check out Google’s Zeitgeist 2011, a beautiful HTML5 representation of their popular search data. Really, it’s gorgeous. (But keep in mind that it’s basically a Keynote presentation of data made interactive and exciting.) Or even check out Kickstarter’s Annual Report / Year in Review. Stats, popular videos, and project recaps have never been so interesting. Do sexy infographics make your pulse quicken? GOOD is for you.

Bug with Tumblr Backdated Posts Ordering?

Hey Tumblr — I haven’t heard anything back from you loverly folks in over a week.

I’ve been Googling “tumblr backdated posts ordering issue” (or some derivation) for the last few weeks hoping something would arise, but I’m not having much luck. I found a few posts describing post backdating working or not, but nothing along the lines of the pagination ordering issue I’ve been seeing. I figure there’s got to be a few other people experiencing a similar issue, so why not write it up?

As I’m sure my few followers have noticed, I’ve been putting a bit of work into finally filling out my portfolio over the past few weeks. In an effort to keep things simple, I’m just using a tag #portfolio to create that section of my site.

As I was planning the best strategy to overhaul my digital existence, it eventually came down to a WordPress vs. Tumblr scenario. I’ve had a lot of WordPress work experience, so I know how powerful and customizable it can be, but I know it can also be a good amount of work to publish simple posts — especially on the go. And although they’ve got some improved apps, nothing really compares to the simplicity of the Tumblr suite. And let’s be honest, the themes are way sexier. So I thought I’d keep it as simple as possible for as long as viable. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, it’s that the easier it is to create the content, the more likely I will be to do it.

I had one requirement that I wasn’t sure Tumblr could fulfill: backdated posts. I needed a way to create an ordered portfolio section. With a bit of poking and experimentation, I found that Tumblr supported this. Whew. And tag pages even support RSS feeds to match, which would be nice if I ever want to display a feed of only portfolio items, like on the next version of MattLeiker.com. The RSS feed even displays the backdated post date correctly.

As I’ve created posts related to the projects I’ve worked on over the last 8 years, I started to notice something was funky with the post ordering between pages. Since I started with cataloging more recent projects and worked my way backward (for the most part), I’ve ended up creating posts for some of my oldest projects last. Yet those newer posts have the oldest (backdated) post dates.

If you look at my portfolio page, you’ll notice that all the posts on the first page are appear to be ordered by date. Glorious. Perfect. Wonderful.

But if you go to the second page of posts with the #portfolio tag and examine the dates, you’ll see that the posts are indeed in chronological order, but they aren’t necessarily older than the posts on the first page.

Crap.

Here’s what I think is going on:

  • Tumblr supports backdated posts. Glorious. 
  • … but before they started supporting it, I think their system was probably set up to display posts ordered by post ID.
  • Post IDs get larger as the post gets newer. I suspect post IDs are probably unique across the entire Tumblr system.
  • This is likely what each users’ dashboard uses to order whatever posts are coming in from their “Follow” list. (It would probably be too complicated for the Tumblr servers to order a Dashboard by date — and that would defeat the purpose.) I don’t mind if my backdated posts show up in the Dashboard, but I do expect them to be in order on my site.
  • When Tumblr renders a site, I suspect it looks at the list of posts ordered by post ID, grabs the first 15 (or whatever you have it set to display), calls that “Page 1”, then reshuffles them by post date before finally displaying them.
  • When you click “page 2”, it grabs the next 15 posts in the system ordered by post ID, and then reshuffles ‘em by post date. Wash, rinse, repeat for each page.
  • (Displaying only posts with a particular tag behaves the same way as the main loop.)

So, what can I do? Is this a bug you’re working on Tumblr? Do you ever expect to support this properly? Or do I have to move to WordPress to get true backdated post support?

I’d really like to not have to remake all the posts in a chronological order before backdating them just as a workaround. 

And I’d like to recreate some posts from my old blog here on Tumblr — which has to be a manual process since you don’t support much in the way of importing content. All of those posts would need to be backdated. But I don’t dare if it’s going to wreak havoc on anyone attempting to peruse my archives in a normal fashion.

Please help. 

Vimeo has announced that their 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards are open to submissions. I completely missed it in 2010, but their award ceremony was incredibly well done. Hosted by early internet comedy vlogger Ze Frank, the real star of the show was their incredible ‘architectural projection’ set. If you do nothing else, watch a few seconds of the video above around the 7:00 mark and then again at the very end.

It reminds me a lot of the Amon Tobin ‘Isam’ show I saw last year. Wild.

Curious to see what the hubbub is all about here at the New York Tech Meetup. There’s 800 attendees and yet tix originally sold out in 2 mins. @nytm #nerd
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Curious to see what the hubbub is all about here at the New York Tech Meetup. There’s 800 attendees and yet tix originally sold out in 2 mins. @nytm #nerd

MattLeiker.com, v4.0

Retired January 2012, you were simple, clean, and served me well. But you weren’t very easy to update and had no dynamic qualities. Shame on you. Rest in peace.

View the archived version. (My apologies in advance for any broken links.)

The Pioneer Woman Voce Communications; site redesign launched July 2010, updates through year end One of my favorite examples of a self-made blogger (empire?), The Pioneer Woman blog — arguably better titled a ‘portal’ — showcases Ree Drummond’s life on the ranch. Her incredibly regular reporting spans the gamut from her personal life, cooking, photography, home & garden, and even tales of homeschooling her kids. She has a rabid avid fan base, where any one of her weekly KitchenAid Mixer or iPad giveaways will garner tens of thousands of comments, often in the course of a few minutes. (It’s a constant headache for our SysAdmin to keep her giveaways from melting servers or imploding WordPress.) As one of the team’s hands-down favorite and most consistent clients over the years, we’ve been incredibly proud to watch Ree’s self-made success grow into her second (sure to be) best-selling cookbook and an amazing new show on The Food Network. (Yes, she really is as genuine and sweet as she seems.) Just read a few of her posts. Go ahead, I’ll wait. You’ll be back (well, after about 40 minutes disappear into thin air). The 2010 major redesign was one of my first projects when I officially joined the Voce team. The design was (mostly) approved and it needed to be executed. As Ree was a seasoned blogger and WordPress extraordinaire, we took the opportunity to leverage the automated and hierarchical goodies that WP has to offer, creating some simple automated “super widgets” that automatically display content from different areas, categories, time periods, or tags. We made the archives and category pages easier to browse. Her luscious photos are now featured even bigger (and more automated for her Flickr process). Check out Ree’s “new blog” announcement post for more information (she even thanks us all by name halfway through). project management, created requirements documents, development QA, post-launch support, authored tutorials
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The Pioneer Woman

Voce Communications; site redesign launched July 2010, updates through year end

One of my favorite examples of a self-made blogger (empire?), The Pioneer Woman blog — arguably better titled a ‘portal’ — showcases Ree Drummond’s life on the ranch. Her incredibly regular reporting spans the gamut from her personal life, cooking, photography, home & garden, and even tales of homeschooling her kids. She has a rabid avid fan base, where any one of her weekly KitchenAid Mixer or iPad giveaways will garner tens of thousands of comments, often in the course of a few minutes. (It’s a constant headache for our SysAdmin to keep her giveaways from melting servers or imploding WordPress.)

As one of the team’s hands-down favorite and most consistent clients over the years, we’ve been incredibly proud to watch Ree’s self-made success grow into her second (sure to be) best-selling cookbook and an amazing new show on The Food Network. (Yes, she really is as genuine and sweet as she seems.) Just read a few of her posts. Go ahead, I’ll wait. You’ll be back (well, after about 40 minutes disappear into thin air).

The 2010 major redesign was one of my first projects when I officially joined the Voce team. The design was (mostly) approved and it needed to be executed. As Ree was a seasoned blogger and WordPress extraordinaire, we took the opportunity to leverage the automated and hierarchical goodies that WP has to offer, creating some simple automated “super widgets” that automatically display content from different areas, categories, time periods, or tags. We made the archives and category pages easier to browse. Her luscious photos are now featured even bigger (and more automated for her Flickr process). Check out Ree’s “new blog” announcement post for more information (she even thanks us all by name halfway through).

project management, created requirements documents, development QA, post-launch support, authored tutorials

AOL’s AIM Pages Social Network

AOL; 2006-2007

Considered an evolution of “the first ever social network” — AOL’s Member Directory —AIM Pages was more than just a social network tied to your AIM Buddy List. While only AOL employees really considered Member Directory the first social network, it was clear that AOL was a bit behind the curve to only just be considering investing in the social networking space in 2005/2006. (Remember that Friendster was on its last breath, Facebook was still private-ish, and MySpace was king.)

Weighing in on the AIM Pages team’s efforts from the perspective of my position with AOL Music, I was young and opinionated and of the impression that the great majority of executives working on the project hadn’t really even used MySpace, Friendster or Facebook the same way teens and college students had. Frustrated with what I was seeing, I eventually shot a 4 page “Matt’s Guide to What AIM Pages Should Be” document off to a listserv. Not twenty minutes later, I got a call from the head of Product Management, asking if I’ve ever heard of it. I hadn’t. Thus began my career as a Product Manager.

Tasked with the typical duties of a ProdM, I managed the product requirements, task tracking, bugs, UX/UI development, and overall progress of pieces or subcomponents of the overall initiative. I was responsible for Search, friends component (Buddy Gallery), the Buddy Feed (an early response to Facebook’s News Feed), settings pages, privacy and rostering, and the media modules. Working with operations, marketing, programming, legal, advertising, and corporate communications, I gathered feedback from various executive stakeholders as well as integrated focus group and user testing feedback. As one of the more rewarding aspects, I managed teams of developers in the US, Ireland, and Bangalore, getting to visit them regularly. I also travelled to train and support AOL’s various help desks and call centers.

AIM Pages featured a robust AJAX drag-and-drop modular publishing system, intending to grant publishing freedom to users stuck with a typical form-field layout like MySpace and Facebook. While ultimately a bit too ambitious (read: buggy) for a first- or second-iteration product on such a massive scale, AIM Pages was eventually abandoned and profiles were migrated to AOL’s costly 2008 acquisition, Bebo. I think mine even still exists there in some Frankenstein form.

Press:

product manager, managed international dev teams (US, Ireland, India), focus groups & user testing