Evernote menu

Evernote is my external brain. There is a desktop app for Mac or PC, an iPhone app and a web app that all sync automatically. There's even a Thunderbird extension that sends things to your account. Text, audio, or photo. It's searchable, taggable and has categories.

BookShelf

Bookshelf is an e-book reader specifically for iPhone and the iPod Touch. It supports a lot of file formats (no DRM), including all my MobiPocket formatted files from Webscription.net. The best part is the customization options. There are a number of color themes and you can set the font and the size for what is easiest to read for you.

Any time I mention e-books, someone goes "But I like paper". I like paper too but paper is heavy and bulky to carry around. I can fit a dozen books on my phone, which is backlit for low-light situations and always have something to read when I have to wait. Plus, with Webscription.net's free library and low prices I can save money and a tree.

Moonlight Mah Jong

Mah Jong is an old favorite game of mine and Moonlight is the best execution of it for the iPhone. There are several layouts and a free as well as a pay version.

Sudoku

Sudoku is popular all over these days and Big Bang's web version for the iPhone was the most popular option. The installable version is still good, though there are a couple of changes I would like.

Tweetie Twitter Client

Yes I'm a Twitter addict. All my friends are too so it works out to help us keep up with each other. I've tried several different Twitter clients for the iPhone, including Twitterific which is my desktop client but I've only fallen in love with Tweetie. It loads quickly (moreso than the website) and gives you access to all the normal Twitter functions.

There are lots more great apps and I'd love to hear your favorites.

Because of the ease of entry (software-Gimp is free, upload fees-10L each, 400L for $1, and time), Second Life has a thriving home-grown fashion market. There are people making a living just making virtual doll-clothes and accessories.

Real world fashion businesses are taking notice of the money and interest being spent by this circle of fans and are coming into Second Life to create a presence for advertising purposes- and are not doing well.

The most memorable of these is none other than Armani. When Armani announced that they were building an in world store there was great deal of anticipation. They hired a good, experienced builder and got a nice store but apparently left the creation of their items (only 10) to their regular designers who presumably didn't have the time to really learn the built-in Second Life tools. The result is a too small collection that the very people Armani was hoping to attract took one look at and said I can get twice the quality at a third of the price.

They aren't the only ones though. A famous athletic shoe retailer created a "build your own" factory that doesn't see much use because the resulting shoes take up too much computer and server resources to render.

American Apparel has a store as well. They at least have more than 10 items and what they have is ok but when you're options include a leather trench coat and being a dalek, very plain colored t-shirts and khakis don't have much appeal. It's also a well-documented effect that you have to release new items regularly to keep traffic (and sales) up, which American Apparel has never done.

Doing it Right

There have been successful transitions. Most notable is a canadian couture designer named Nyla who has a set of shops where she has taken her real creations and remade them in Second Life. Because she took the time to learn the tools and the customer base her products are excellent quality and well-priced while still remaining in her style.

The japanese also have good ideas about in-world advertising. Treasure hunts for freebies are always popular and the word of mouth affect is very strong in Second Life.

Now that IBM has given a demonstration at the National Retail Federation on using Second Life for prototyping, there may be more mainstream fashion companies coming into Second Life but independents who can devote the time to learning the environment will still have the advantage for quite a while.

Help on learning to use the Second Life templates, scripting language and building blocks can be found on the forums. Marketing guidance can be found here.

The website was part of a grant project for helping senior citizens find reliable health information on the Internet. My purpose in using Wordpress as a backend was to speed development time as well as make it as easy as possible for non-techies to update. There were three types of information that needed to be displayed

1. The link directories
2. Two multipage tutorials
3. Static - the front, explanatory page, and the contact page which has since been taken offline.

Looking at it now, there are so many things I would love to change but I also recall how specific the customer was about what she wanted.

Since the purpose in using Wordpress was to manage the links, they were the first thing I looked at. Using the custom fields, it was easy to create those in individual posts, using customized category pages to list them.

The tutorials, likewise had the individual pages created as posts and separation managed by category. Display of the custom fields, internal navigation and the contact form were managed by plugins.

The other static page, the home page, was the index file. Today it could be created with a Wordpress "page" and a preference setting but at the time of creation those features weren't available.

Despite the fact it hasn't been updated since I turned it over using Wordpress was the best choice for this project. It shaved considerable time off of development and eased content addition tremendously.

Worse, the secondary color was a web-safe green that just made the orange that much worse.

Since then, I've found that there are a number of strategies that can be used for dealing with less than ideal colors, unfortunately most of them weren't available to me on that project.

1. Use it sparingly. This is what we did. A mostly black, white and grey design with punches of orange and little to no green. It worked, but it lacked warmth, energy, and a cohesion with the rest of the organization.
2. Use a complimentary/analogous color. The colors surrounding the offending one can effect how it comes across. There are about a gazillion color tools and guides out there. Pick a link and take a spin. Unfortunately, as a mere department, we were stuck with official rules which stated only those colors.
3. Use a similar but not as aweful shade. Most people may not even notice but they'll feel the difference and your statistics will thank you. This is the optimum option because it allows you to keep the full organizational branding while easing away from the ickyness. See color tools for help in finding that perfect double. I think we could have gotten away with this but the committee disagreed.