I’m Changing Directions…
Posted: September 21, 2011 Filed under: development, personal banter 3 Comments »Hello all devitalics fans. I just wanted to let you know that I am shifting directions with content theme I will be posting about in the future. This is mainly because of personal revised interest into the enterprise line-of-business development market.
Here’s what you can expect out of the upcoming tomes from this internet blog:
- Windows.Next Enterprise development: This topic has been kind of a bread and butter concept for my consulting business at Useable Concepts. With the announcements at the microsofts recent //Build/ Conference for both client and server technologies, there is a lot of new exciting technology just itching to be talked about. Expect some upcoming posts with some major nerditude built in.
- Google Cloud Enterprise development: Google’s turn key based enterprise solution with Google Apps is continuing to gain traction in the small to medium business space, as well as few guinea pig large enterprise subscribers. What interests me in this emerging market is custom line-of-business development with App Engine. I hope to interest you as well with my upcoming posts on the subject.
- IOS Enterprise Client Development: IOS and Objective-C. Yes, it is now impossible for me to deny the enterprise potential of this platform with projections of overall IPad sales reaching close to ~40 million by the end of 2011, maybe 100 million by the end of 2012. Watch in real time as I walk developers through the process of creating IOS client software for their enterprise.
Stay turned. A lot of cool content coming up for those enterprise line-of-business nerds out there like me.
Prototype Storyboard Concept: CiteMob!
Posted: June 23, 2011 Filed under: design, Prototype Step 1. Storyboard, prototyping 1 Comment »As I promised in my previous post, I am revealing the first protyping concept to be explored on devitalics.com. I’m calling it CiteMob: an website for collaboration and massive content creation. The idea follows the belief that all people should be encouraged to deliver personally authored rich content to the web, adding more dimension than microblogging and social networking have to author, and connecting people more cerebrally. CiteMob is kind of a mash up of Twitter, WordPress, and Facebook, allowing a contributor to add content and recieve encouragement from her/his peers. With a novel built in citing and ratings system used during the creation of content, a user cites as they create. In this universe, reading, citing, and mixing into original content are the name of the game.
The audience intended consists of variety of people. First I hope to attract people with a lot to say, but too maybe a bit too shy to say it and start up a blog. Citemob acts as “rich content social network” allowing more complex ideas to make into the web from sources that didn’t believe themselves important enough and feel limited by microblogging sites like Twitter. Along with nascent “CiteMobbers”, this authoring tool also can create a weighted latice-work for experienced bloggers and content contributors, giving their readers and admiring fans referrals to brand new “Cites” they’ve “Mobbed” about.
This first draft UX consists of a simple “login, read, cite, create” workflow, with the read having a “cart” to collect citations in a custom Cite article to be created later by the reader. During the citing and collecting process, the reader would have a ratings system for the citings, allowing the reader to give a thumbs up or down to the article. This will inevitably create a massive directed acyclic graph of related cite information, allowing for some potentially wicked spacial navigation of prospective “CiteMobbers” content. (Maybe we’ll include games like asteroids! Eh, maybe not – at least for the time being 
)
Here are the splatterings of CiteMob’s first concept draft, courtesy of yours truly, awful handwriting and all:
Marvel at the wond’rous drawing!
This chicken scratch is kind of a free association technique I use often, a great process to see different angles of a concept that aren’t always clear in the initial vision. To distill this into a web app targeting standard PC Browsers, my next CiteMob Storyboard post delves into design and flow of the actual UX screens, in a way that is (hopefully) clearer to the reader than this initial concept drawing. Stay tuned…
The Path to Prototype.
Posted: June 22, 2011 Filed under: Prototype Step 1. Storyboard, Prototype Step 2. Comp, Prototype Step 3. Architect, Prototype Step 4. Implement, prototyping 4 Comments »Wouldn’t it be cool to watch a plan from conception to prototype emerge into existence in the blogoshpere? Wouldn’t you like to see someone get naked to world with their creative and technical innards all out and danglin? I sure do, and that’s coming up next on devitalics.
Like any process that is free wheeling, fun, creative, spontaneous, and groundbreaking (hopefully), some planning is required (What?). Really it is. I have found all my zany endeavors, no matter how inspirational they may be, need some sort of track to development in order to to be truly appreciated. Software prototyping is no different, and with that, I have laid out 4 stages from inspiration and perspiration to creation. Here is a breakdown of the those steps to be witnessed on this blog, each to be appropriately categorized for the public’s pleasure:
- Storyboard: Probably the most important part of the process, conceiving and refining the actual idea to be fleshed out as a prototype. This is crucial to drive the requirements for the prototype. This step will be done with mainly with pencil and paper for a more organic feel (sorry trees! Hello scanner!).
- Comp: Flesh out the storyboard UI into real assets using some design tools. Then take the comps and apply them to a mock UI- ie, for web apps, a few static html pages, for mobile apps, a few screens. Expect to see a lot of Illustrator, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver work here.
- Architect: With features and comps in place. Design the technology of the app, starting with the database and moving towards the ui. Keep hosting decisions, if any, simple, this is a prototype ya know.
- Implement: Implement the prototype, feature by feature, to eventually reveal the prototype to the world!. Expect many posts on this one .
For the technical people in the audience, no coding should occur at the Storyboard or Comp stage of the process. The reason: to keep the objective clear to design an experience, not a piece of technology like some cool new server side web framework, or jquery plug-in, or… well, you get the idea. I’ve seen to many of my projects go to the toilet by losing site of the UX and getting lost in some nerd-gasm that inevitably proves itself pointless. I hope to keep my prototypes clean and avoid those here on devitalics.
There it is, the groundwork for the devitalics prototyping process and an incubator for some interesting discussion. Next up: my first Storyboard post.
Why Did You Buy that Mac, Nick?
Posted: June 20, 2011 Filed under: design, development, personal banter Leave a comment »Along with my transition into new realms of writing and development, I am embarking on a grand experiment: doing work on a Mac. Yes, I recently bought a new 15 inch Macbook Pro, and all I can say is that its a diff’rent world. Expect some upcoming posts on how I am charmed by frustrated with transitioning into this new environment.
Before that begins, let me start on the reasons I bought this new timesink:
- Well, like everyone else, I plan to do some IOS development. And thanks to Apple, the only way I can do it is with a Mac, XCode, and some money shelled out to their developer division. (To be fair, thanks to Microsoft, I need Windows and Visual Studio to develop for WP7 as well as marketplace license to distribute my wares, however that would not have required a hardware purchase.)
- I want to do more design, and be able to someday interview for web design positions. And I want to use Adobe. Yes, Adobe tools do run on both platforms, but from my limited understanding in this space, design based firms like Apple and their mac based products. And so do many design teams in large corps.
- I want something that I can run tools built from the gnu stack, gcc primarily, that will compile and run without me having to install some wrapper stack like Mingw or Cigwin. I am big fan of the Google Go language as well as LLVM, and I would like to play with both.
- I like my PC products to look they were designed for some beautiful Polynesian diety.
- I want to look like a rootin’ tootin Bay-area-ish developer at Devcons, user groups, and open source rally cries.
- I intend to purchase some thick rimmed glasses and look cool in the Pearl (if you’re from PDX, you know what I mean )
- I intend to take people’s perception of my “artistic genius” too seriously.
- I want to appear sensitive to others, no matter what the truth might actually be at the time.
- I plan to be assimilated, I have already bought a black turtleneck.
Welcome to my Zany World!
Posted: June 17, 2011 Filed under: design, development, prototyping 3 Comments »Well, its finally happened. I have started to, well, blog. Blog you say? Wow, what a novel groundbreaking concept! And, after toiling over it for days, months, years… I have decided to start with WordPress as my provider (maybe later I will design it myself, implement it myself, host it myself, etc, but for now WP saves me time ). For those of you who don’t know me, let me tell you a little bit about myself.
My name’s Nick Muhonen, a father of one, and a person who has been involved in software development since the mid ’90s (Previously I was waiter who studied acting, sculpted, did ceramics, etc, but that’s a whole other ball of wax). Most of my code splatterings have been achieved using mainly Microsoft tools, and I got pretty good at it. In fact, Microsoft even let me talk about some of my ramblings once in their fancy web universe (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/ff707264). I was pretty content living there, but times are a changin’ and now I’m venturing to try new things. Yes, I am just that wacky.
I’ve decided to start this foray into the already excessively blathering Blog Sphere, by giving you a heads up of what I hope to write about:
- Prototyping Web Apps: I have always been someone who likes to delve into practice, and while an abundance of information exists about specializing in a specific technology, there is a dearth of info on soup to nuts prototyping. Follow good design philosophy indifferent to tools is the new cool, and its time we all start that fancy dance (myself included). With new tap shoes in place, I’m hoping to fill the prototyping void with posts on this blog.
- Diff’rent Stackos for Diff’rent Wackos: Being a developer who has used primarily Microsoft tools I am coming to a place many technology sluggin’ workers get to after about 10 years of development with a single stack- boredom. So now its time to mix it up! Articles on Rails you say? Yep. Maybe a Django or 2? You betcha! Diff’rent types of stores ranging from Oracle to PostGres to Cassandra? Abso-nerdin-lutely. Cloud? Skys the limit baby. Even Microsoft stuff? Yes, even Microsoft stuff. And I plan to do it all here.
- Design: As a person who as always hated being labeled a “left brained technical geek with minimal social skills”, I feel that my background as a zany brained individual has been dearly overlooked. So here’s my chance to show the world diff’rent, and possibly change some career opportunities. Expect some articles on practical design tips, tool support, and plain old artistic silliness with an expected flaky touch.
- Silly Personal Banter: It wouldn’t be a true Nick Muhonen experience without it, so of course!
