Over the weekend, I visited The Armory Show, and found some new artists to follow. The Armory Show features most galleries here in New York City as well as ones abroad. Currently, I found an artist Alyson Shotz of Berlin (beautiful works in innovative mediums — i.e. string, pins and paper, or Mirror Plexiglass). The two pieces are not on the website, but ones I would have purchased if I had funds. I did also post my photos on Facebook of other artists I am following. So if you are interested, ping me/friend me or I can post photos on Picassa.

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I found this site: http://artsy.net/

Here are a couple of UI/UX stuff followed by screenshots (the ones italicized are displayed below):
• Filters (Color, Price, Scale, A-Z)
• A-Z Directory [http://artsy.net/thearmoryshow/browse/artists]
• Browse
• Search
• Follow/Share Tools
• Show More Text
• About (takes full screen) with urls to the right [http://artsy.net/about]

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Color Wheel and Scrubber interfaces for Price/Scale:

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Great use of Autofill and Feedback for Sharing and Following:

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Download ZIP File with screenshots (reduced width from 1666 pt/px to 800).

This HTML5 site incorporates scripts for changing the background. The animation of cat heads seem to be in sync with the beats of the music. Please wear headphones or view in conference room.

Bring In The Cats
http://www.bringinthecats.com/

Open up Firebug to see the code animate.

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This was a recommendation by colleague and Web Producer, Edwina Hay.

Lately, I have found this url very helpful for UX/Interaction Design. If you navigate to this url [http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/], in the right rail at the top, you will see a vertical accordion that expands to reveal categorized patterns. See image below, which is what I pasted together as an index. It is laid out in a 1-column layout.

Happy Belated Valentine's Day everyone!

In honor of technology, I just wanted to highlight Google Doodle's 2013 Valentine's Theme interactive piece honoring George Ferris' Birthday. For more about George Ferris, skip to the bottom of the post for references about his works and his process.

If you click on the heart-shaped button, a couple of lovers appear and the animation of the ferris wheels run, and then a storyboard is displayed of the lovers.

In this case, an octopus courts a duck, but what is funny about this series of images is that it references the movie, Say Anything. John Cusack's character holds a boombox, and plays Peter Gabriel's song In Your Eyes:

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Here is the url so you can experience the interactive piece. Google's art team covers the design process:
http://www.google.com/doodles/valentines-day-and-george-ferris-154th-birthday

The 9 additional stories, which reference popular culture:

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More about George Ferris here. The second url covers a bit of science education:
http://www.nndb.com/people/389/000159909/

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2013/0214/George-Ferris-s-Valentine-s-Day-gift-to-science-teachers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Gale_Ferris,_Jr.

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This is 2012 Valentine's Day Google Doodle (Tony Bennett):

Here are the list of the Top Ten Google Doodles of 2012:
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/12/12/the-10-most-popular-google-doodles-of-2012/slide/all/

Since 2005 when I purchased Microsoft Word for my MAC, my software was stolen when I mailed it to NYC. I was naive at the time, so I didn't insure my mail. In any case, I had purchased the CD for $199, and tried getting my license key and that version of software to no avail.

Fast forward to 2013. I had to create a UX Audit template, and miraculously was able to do everything on Google Drive, formerly Google Docs. My favorite feature is the Revision History, which came in handy when I had accidentally ported the wrong spreadsheet into a different file. In any case, I was able to undo several steps.

a16z is cool venture capital company that invests in 150 portfolio companies. They had invested in a couple of my favorite sites, such as Pinterest, Quirky and Fab also invested in this site as well). But the latest site, Rap Genius, is what I am interested in. I am interested in two folds, partly for the feature of annotations, and relations to law studies (statute and case law):
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/from-rap-genius-to-law-genius-v6qhEtfqRRas_Ysnnr06vw.html

Check out this Yale University Press published book, The Anthology of Rap. I just bought a copy myself for an awesome project.

I picked up this book at the NYPL Live event when I was fortunate enough to see Def Jam present this book. I even had it autographed... Woot! Woot! If you like Beastie Boys and Public Enemy, read this book. Check out some of the cover albums and screenshots of videos:

Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label
by Def Jam, Bill Adler, Dan Charnas and Rick Rubin (Oct 11, 2011)

One of my favorite rap artists is Eminem, check him out on VEVO:
http://www.youtube.com/user/EminemVEVO

This video is cute, Eminem is going back to high school:

Check out this cool song by Taylor Swift reappropriate Eminem's "Lose Yourself:"

If you like a jazzier rap, check out: Kendrick Lamar - Poetic Justice (Live on SNL). This looks pretty interesting, anything with Saturday Night Live (SNL) is awesome, also on VEVO:

One of my favorite documentary movies:

He has a strong work ethic.

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Rules from Jeff Weiner's article "From Seinfeld to Sushi: How to Master Your Domain:"

1. Never stop practicing (there is no perfect)
2. Sweat the details
3. Keep chipping away
4. Work clean
5. Be passionate
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For more inspiration, please read the chapter from Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers on "10,000 hours." Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite authors. I highly recommend Tipping Point.
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From Jiro on ageism:

There, in the last paragraph of an article announcing the Yankees had re-signed baseball great Ichiro Suzuki, was a quote from Ichiro that read, "I believe the Yankees organization appreciates that there is a difference between a 39-year-old who has played relying only on talent, and a 39-year-old who has prepared, practiced, and thought thoroughly through many experiences for their craft."

Awhile back, I was fortunate enough to travel to Calcutta, India. I was a photographer at Kshitij in IIT Kharagpur, India. IIT is the acronym for Indian Institute of Technology. They are the Asian version of MIT. In fact, I remembered watching a video about a graduate saying that this school was harder to get into than even some of the ivy leagues [source: 60 Minutes].

When I visited, there were robotics competitions and many innovative projects there. I was fortunate to see Jimmy Wales speak. I have always been an advocate of Wikipedia, since I wanted a set of Britannica Encyclopedia, but couldn't really afford it.

In any case, I found these two videos.

Did you ever wonder what happened to OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)? OLPC was founded by Nicholas Negroponte, who is also the founder of MIT Media Lab. Lisa Strausfeld, one of my professors for Information Visualization at ITP, worked on the o/s Sugar. This video documents children in Peru using Wikipedia on OLPC.

Children in Peru write their own history on Wikipedia
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International contributors from Wikipedia talk about their experiences and contributions.

Meet some of the awesome people who make Wikipedia

If you are an expert, volunteer!

So my little experiment incorporating the Agile methodology of designing a partial prototype of a laptop case worked, yay!

The actual designer/seamstress did a great job. She actually went above and beyond. All I asked was to just sew a row in two spots, but she created a cushion using a large stitch width minus the zig zag, seen here. If you have a sewing machine and are capable of making a straight stitch, I say go for it. And if it is not straight or perfect, all the more better. I have no patience so I let an expert handle my work plus I didn't have a measuring tape or ruler, lol.

The two pads fit perfectly. Here is the total cost breakdown:

1 yard of micro suede, which I purchased back in 2005 for my industrial design class costs $36.00. I only use a quarter or a third of the material, so estimating the higher cost comes out to be $18.00.

Batting was only $10.00, which I bought at a cool knitting store in Soho. And it was 100% cotton... amazing. I only used a third, which comes out to $3.50.

Designer/seamstress work: $23.00

I got the case from the Japanese bookstore next to Bryant Park ~$30.00. You don't need a case, just fold the batting in to thirds, and add a zipper. I think my case is as secure as one of those neoprene covers, but I take pride in customizing my work.

They have very cool pens, and I even saw a cork case for an iPad.

Here is the earlier post:
http://www.keeyool.com/2013/01/laptop_case_prototype.php

I <3 the ITP Alumni list. There was a thread of reading material for information visualization. Of course, various people recommended the Tufte books. But there were 2 books that I purchased. Here is the title of the first one: Now You See It. I tried looking for information but only found the Table of Contents (TOC). Based on the TOC, I purchased it, and was pleasantly surprised.

pg 41 lists attributes of data
• length
• width
• orientation
• size
• shape
• curvature
• enclosure
• spatial grouping
• blur
• hue
• color intensity
• 2-D position
• direction of motion
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Here are some photos:

Part-to-Whole and Ranking Patterns

This surprised me because the Part-to-Whole ration is one I watch out for (trained from studying the LSAT), but this is slightly different because there is a visual definition.

Anyway, buy the book if you are interested.