Apart from coming in on a Sunday to finish off a pitch, this weekend we’ve mostly been playing with Google’s new Mac released browser Chrome and have been comparing it to studio favourite Firefox and Mac’s own Safari.

Now, lets get things straight first – this comparison is strictly how the normal designer sees stuff and won’t be an essay on how the tabs work. This isn’t Mashable. I am far too northern to wax lyrical or indeed technical about browsers. I was just feeling inspired. It’s basically my Tuesday today (did I mention I was in on a Sunday? Missing the Come Dine With Me marathon?) so the brain’s running faster than normal. Sorta.

Here goes.

1. Dock Icon.

The release of Firefox 3.5 made for a shinier, slicker dock icon of the Fox humping the world (that’s what it’s meant to be, isn’t it?) and goes along with the old addage, if it ain’t broke add a gradient. Safari’s icon has been the same for ages too – the compass. Yawn. Google chrome’s icon does two things. One – annoys the hell out of me while working as the red bit at the top looks like new mail in the corner of my eye. Cue disappointment when I realise. And B – it looks like that Simon game from back in’t day. Is that a good thing? I don’t know. Maybe they should have based it on Trionimoes. That game ruled.

Winner: Firefox

2. Add Ons.

Or lack of, if you’re Safari or Googley Chrome. I really, really wanted to scrap FF and start using Chrome at the start of last week, but it wasn’t until actually using the browser properly, on a day to day basis that I really started to miss things like Skipscreen and the handy Web Developer toolbar. What? I like to know how big stuff is exactly with the ruler! And the resize window is indispensible.

Winner: Firefox

3. Awesome Bar.

Oh man. I got nerd quivers when Firefox started the awesome bar. “You mean I can pretty much type ANYTHING in that bar, and it’ll find it? That’s AWESOME.” Plus, the search bar options were quality too.

Open up Chrome and what do you get? One bar. One awesome bar. One AWESOME BAR POWERED BY GOOGLE.

Winner: Chrome

4. Tabs.

Hmmm. This one is based on how cool they look more than how they function. Just. Safari & Chrome are pretty much the same beast here. Although I actually now prefer Safari’s restraint of the constant tab Firefox employed for 3.5. Just get rid of it! You’re making me click something that doesn’t close! Ahhh!!!

Chrome’s tabs are like Shark fins popping out of the water. CMD+T was never this fun! Duh-DUH. Duh-DUH.

And check out how sweet the little add tab icon is! That’s a winner for me.

Winner: Chrome

5. History / Top Sites.
Now, I don’t know if this really is a cool thing or not. I think loads of people are going to be in love with what Google Chrome does for your recent viewing history and if you compare it to Safari, it is pretty awesome. I mean, seriously, I am not the guy who built the matrix. What’s with the AWFUL curved top sites screens? It actually makes me nauscious. Chrome’s is nice and clean and the switch between thumbnails and a Delicious style list is really, really nice.

The good thing about having thumbnails is that you can see where you’ve been, but doesn’t really work if you view more than, like, 20 sites. Add to that all of your bookmarks. Now if you’re wanting to find something you saw ages ago, but can’t remember the name, but remember how it looked, you’re going to be frustrated. Chrome and Safari will tease you with recently viewed sites or most viewed site. Really, what use is that? I recently SAW THEM. I KNOW WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE!

Firefox doesn’t even bother with it. It just gives you a list. If you can’t remember what site you’re looking for, tough. Snooze you lose.

Winner: Firefox

6. Downloads.

Although Chrome has a very nice self-contained Download bar at the bottom of the browser, it doesn’t forgive the ‘Billy & Johnny’ use of icons to tell you you’re downloading something. Seriously. I’m not 7! I don’t need an icon bigger than my head to tell me something is downloading.

Safari & Firefox use a separate modal window for downloads (i’m talking bigger file downloads here, not saving images to yer desktop..) which is all good. Once again, if it ain’t broke.

Safari loses here because it still opens PDFs in a new tab. And that annoys me no end. So much that I think I actually stopped using Safari for that very reason.

Yes, I am that fickle.

Winner: Firefox.

7. Themes.
Once again, I am not 7. I’ll use my browser as it comes thank you very much.

Winner: Me.

Final result.

Winner: Firefox

Although I really do like Chrome, maybe i’m being lured by its new shininess. And the fact that I think Firefox is better is two fold. A. Firefox IS better and 2. I’ve used Firefox pretty much everyday for the past year, so when things don’t work the same way, I instantly claim it’s rubbish.

The same thing happened when Adobe discontinued Freehand and made us all migrate to InDesign or Illustrator.

But that’s a whole other blog post.

So, banishing the ‘overhead projector’ philosophy and the need to share presentations on FTP because they’re too big to email, here are 5 of the neatest web tools to help you to make a bigger impact with your presentations:

1. Prezi

Okay, so I’ve mentioned this one before. But Prezi is the best example I’ve seen of trying to do something different with presentations. It takes a creative mind to  unleash the potential of Prezi, and in its current Beta test format (which means it’s free, people) it is a little limited in terms of fonts etc – but Prezi can make even the most boring topic alarmingly exciting.

Presentations can be downloaded as an .exe file without the need to download any software so it’s simple to use and save in your archive.  However, because the system doesn’t use slides and you can’t copy and paste presentation elements from one to the other it does mean you’re building shows from scratch every time.

2.SlideRocket

SlideRocket is an online, flash based tool for creating slides and presentations. It takes what Powerpoint can do and, well, does it better. It brings together a complete package of online slide making with features such as an intuitive interface, themes, flickr integration and much more. Best bits include cool slide transitions and the fact that hosted presentations can be accessed by everyone without the need to send a huge file.

Unlike Prezi, SlideRocket does have an amazing asset saving system, keeping all your pics, charts and multimedia in one place so making a new presentation is quicker and simpler than Powerpoint. You can even import Powerpoint slides if you want to update an existing presentation. Simples.

3. Animoto

I’ve banged on about Animoto enough here. It is seriously amazing though. Quick, easy, not free if you want the full service in terms of downloads etc, but not expensive either. Essentially, it lets you create amazing animated slideshows of image files (interspersed with captions if you wish) quickly and easily without any technical skill required – trust me.

From a PR perspective, presenting cuttings in an Aminoto presentation can reallly bring them to life. Good for design pitches too. Above is an example of an animation I created on Animoto to embed in a Prezi presentation at Going Social.

4. Slideshare

Okay – Slideshare is less an alternative to Powerpoint, and more a way to extend its uses. Slideshare is probably the most well-known presentation tool online, and rather than helping you create presentations or content, it’s a way to help your presentation go viral.

5. Empressr

Empressr essentially blends some of the benefits of SlideRocket with some of the benefits of Slideshare. Although at first glance it seems to be a poor man’s version of both, the best element is that, unlike Slideshare, it supports animated transitions within embedded presentations – making Empressr embeds less flat and lifeless than Slideshare.

I’ve not used this tool a great deal yet but will update this post when I have. It won’t let me embed an existing presentation because I’m on the free version of Wordpress but it does seem to be more shareable on social networks such as Facebook than Slideshare. the animations seem pretty smooth but load times are much higher than Slideshare too.

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So, there you have it. By no means are any of these tools ‘hidden gems’. They’re just the best out there in my honest opinion – but please let me know if you disagree.

The study offers some great insights but I presume UK stats would be much different in terms of traffic. For instance, Twitter use has increased only 2% since November last year (which the report seems to think is a big growth) but I’m betting UK Twitter growth is much bigger over the same period.

Anyway, the real insight for me was the picture it paints of the average Twitter user – something I think (though happy to hear arguments to the contrary) that won’t be so influenced by the geographic divide. Some of the key stats include:

• The median age of a Twitter user is 31. Facebook is 26 and MySpace 27, apparently. LinkedIn makes me feel less ‘past it’, rocking in with a median age of 40.

• Tweeters are city folk – only 9% are from rural areas, whereas a mighty 35% are from urban areas (the same demographic accounts for 29% of all internet users in the US, so it’s a clear trend).

• Unsurprisingly, Twitter users are more likley to use their mobile to access t’internet – a full 40% of them surf via mobile, compared to a lowly 24% of web users that don’t use Twitter.

• 57% of Tweeters read blogs, while 29% have their own.

So there you go. Tweeters don’t look like geeks at all. Honest. Now all that’s left is for someone to do this sort of study in the UK. Or maybe one exists and I just don’t know about it. Feel free to leave comments with links to other useful/interesting/geeky social media demographic studies.

That’s it, really. Glad to see Animoto in there – I’ll be blogging on that little gem in due course.

Obama is the new President of the United States of America and global superhero – Huzzah! So obviously the newspapers have been filled with details on how he went about winning whilst covering the inauguration (where 2 million people watched very little happen before and after an amazing, historic speech). Interestingly for the USA, opponent bashing and soundbite politics took a bit of a backseat this time around as the world looked on in wonder at the birth of electioneering 2.0.

It’s no surprise that the internet was a priority for the campaign managers – in just the four years since the last US election, social media has proven its capacity to distribute information virally, shape and broadcast opinions, drive offline word-of-mouth, unite activitsts or social groups and permeate audiences that are difficult to reach through traditional media channels. I mean, Facebook was only just launched in 2004 – but in 2008 over 130million people are logging in every month.

What was surprising, however, was the intelligence with which social media was targeted – by both the official and unofficial channels. The key to Obama’s success for me was a great mix of using existing social networks such as Facebook and Flickr, alongside unique online resources to recruit 1.5million supporters.

At one point I was being blamed for Obama’s loss in the election (should it happen), donating my Facebook status to the cause, watching my dream woman Sarah Silverman urge anyone Jewish to fly to Florida to get Grandma to vote Obama, hacking the live debates through Twitter and playing with an iPhone widget that was developed to unify supporters in the same locality. It’s probably best to overlook the efforts made by Obamagirl.

It’s probably too early for a full debrief on the precise impact social media had last week, but one thing is clear: politics has changed forever.

^ Viral images, viral videos, celebrity endorsements, social networks, microblogging – you name it, we saw it used to fll effect on the election campaign trail.

I love Twitter. Fact. That might, in some eyes (okay – most eyes) make me appear a geek. It wasn’t always that way.

There was a time when I used to regard Twitter with confusion and disdain in equal measure – my impression of the serial tweeter was pretty close to that of the gloriously hideous Twitter Whore.

However, I am most definitely a changed man. In recent times Twitter has become an essential professional tool – connecting me with a knowledge base that literally spans the world.

I also love the fact Twitter has become defined by its users – with many tweeters using the Twitter API to create new and exceptionally useful little tools and Web 2.0 widgets.

Here my soon-to-be Twitter addicts. Here.

You can see my own tweets to the right, or, as Hitler, the Pied Piper and the Moonies have been known to say – “follow me“

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALbH63Ali9U&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01]

^Twitter Whore: the traditional Tweeter caricature

]]> 0 http://www.manifestlondon.co.uk/blog/2009/01/30/dipity-2-dah/ http://www.manifestlondon.co.uk/blog/2009/01/30/dipity-2-dah/#comments Fri, 30 Jan 2009 09:42:00 +0000 Alex Myers http://worseforwear.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/dipity-2-dah/ It’s been around for a while but Dipity 2.0 is like, well, like your life flashing before you. Aside from providing a wealth of benefits when mapping projects, the combination with Daylife provides an exceptional tool to review news content around a specific issue according to time and date.

The timeline is, for me, by far the most useful visualisation but the Google Maps mashup adds another dimension of insight.

Below (as an example) is my current timeline bringing feeds from both my professional and personal life – quite scary for me, quite dull for you. These can be embedded in any blog or website, but also within Netvibes or other AJAX dashboard.

Okay – update… since moving from Blogger to Wordpress I can’t embed the Dipity widget. Meh. But click here to see it in fullscreen glory. Here’s a quick screengrab to show you how it looks: