Vancouver health club Studio 55 has recently added a Nintendo Wii station to its circuit training. Members are encouraged to use the console to warm up or cool down as part of their workouts. Apparently it offers about the same fitness benefits as a brisk walk.

Now I don’t feel like such a loser for totally tiring myself out playing Wii Boxing for 10 minutes.

Thank the Mighty Corporate Gods that allowed Adobe and Macromedia – both Gods in their own rights – to come together in perfect (albeit until now, not so Macintel-friendly) harmony.

Our patience has finally paid off. We gave these two some time to play around behind closed doors (to the two or three of you that thought about naughty things – for SHAME.) and now the collective Company has brought forth upon us Designers a true Deity, one to call our own and worship. And we shall call it…CS3.

(Okay…wow…that was a bit melodramatic. I think I actually heard French horns in the background.)

It’s true though, what the Prophecy of the Internet has told has come true. Creative Suite 3 (or, the “Tré”, as I like to call it. [ED NOTE: This Institution reserves the right to keep 5 cents for any reprints of that, or any other subsidiary slang]) is truly a blessing.

First up, Photoshop CS3. Okay, so it’s CS2 like we’ve come to know and love but with a FEW innovative features. I personally can’t wait to see what a Photoshop animated creation would look like exported directly to SWF with that better-than-ever-before look of “Yeah, I do that now.” Other than that, I couldn’t really say how many new features there are to discover, but if it’s half as good as discovering the hidden gems of CS2 (because honestly, who knew?), I’m in.

Illustrator…yup. Still here. Added features: Check. Cool new look: Check. Full integration with Flash…mmmm….them’s sounds appealing. I’ve always been afraid to try taking a native AI and just dumping it into Flash. I just dropped one in there and boo-ya, layers, shapes, everything, perfect. Ahhhhhhh…now I can get on animating this letter-loving-lizard…

InDesign CS3? Slow clap. That’s for you, buddy. Awesome.

The best thing hands down is the integration. You get virtually the same interface elements across the whole Design platform. Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop. I mean…native PSDs in Dreamweaver? Not GoLive? (Because, honestly.) That alone makes me want to personally thank the man who brokered their corporate merger.

So Thank You, Adobe/Macromedia. (mAdobe? Macdobe? There’s just no cool name, so enjoy just being Adobe I guess.) We are already salivating for some bug fixes for this new baby of yours, so get to it! (Why the *blank* can’t I associate .indd files with InDesign??? I mean Vista just won’t let me! I’ve tried editing my Registry and everything! Stupid Vista!! Curse you and your inability to understand what the heck I’m trying to get you to do!)

To recap. Adobe: Good. Vista: COME OOONNNNNNNN!!!

(Seriously. If you know how to make it open my InDesign files in…gee why not INDESIGN…please start a comment thread! I’m talking to you, Shawn! Thanks!)

As you’ve probably picked up on, a small contingent of 76designers have made the trip down to Toronto’s FITC conference. Unlike SXSW, which I blogged quite a bit, I haven’t been documenting my experience here the same way. It’s not that I’m not getting a lot out of the sessions – in fact, they’ve been consistently excellent – but what I get out of FITC has always been much less tangible. Instead of things like tips on how to manage multimedia projects or techniques to market our web applications, I’ve been learning how to find inspiration in the everyday and mundane, why I should keep drawing and making art, and to keep collecting lots of vinyl records. It’s all about personal creativity and what inspires each of us to create. And of course I’ve been seeing tonnes and tonnes of fantastic work. Seems like when I leave FITC each year I’m simultaneously creatively recharged, humbled, excited and even somewhat frustrated that I haven’t taken more time to hone my own skill set since the previous year. But most of all, I leave feeling satisfied that I was able to be here to take it all in.

There’s been a slew of articles posted in the last two weeks drawing attention to the US government’s reluctance to adopt Microsoft’s current suite of products – Vista, Internet Explorer 7 and Office 2007 – in favour of non-Windows alternatives like Google Apps. The FAA and the US Department of Transporation have both placed moratoriums on Microsoft upgrades and may consider a permanent ban on Microsoft products altogether. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology has banned Vista and is seriously considering non-Windows operating systems and web browsers using software packages like Google Apps.

Since launching in August of last year, Google Apps has become quite a popular tool amongst the web geeks and tech junkies – the early adopters I suppose – but with Vista, Microsoft’s new operating system, already notoriously incompatible with existing software and hardware, the timing couldn’t be better for non-Windows alternatives like Open Office and Google Apps. The added benefit of something like Google Apps is that it requires zero client-side software. All you need is a web browser. For massive organizations like the FAA, I’m sure the savings in software licenses and support alone would be on par with a small country’s GDP.

Who knows if the FAA, DOT and NIST will follow through and go non-Microsoft, but if they do it could set a pretty radical precedent. I wonder how long Google would be able to not be evil as they completely suck Microsoft dry and wipe them off the personal computing map.

First up, Customer Service is the New Marketing. The panel featured, among others, Nick Wilder of 30boxes and Heather Champ of flickr. I learned a lot from this one. The topic was definitely geared towards offering support for products or a web-based service, but a lot of the basic principles apply to a company like us that’s selling services. A few of the points that really connected with me:

• From Zappos (a huge online retail store) – each new employee takes a 4 week orientation course on the culture of the company. Two of those weeks are spent answering customer service calls – and this goes for the designers to the lawyers to the CFO. It forces new hires to really empathize with the customer from day one.
• 30boxes’ approach is to use web-based forums exclusively for support and offer no support by email. It’s worked for them – in Nick’s former company, Webshots, support was handled by email alone and as a result 50% (yes… 50%!) of all customer issues never got resolved. Now, looking at 30boxes, 50% of all customer issues are resolved by other customers on the forums. Double the success while only spending 4 to 6 hours per week on customer support for an active user base of about 30000. Not bad.
• And a great tip that came from a comment by a Google Reader developer in the audience – monitoring the blogosphere for mentions of your company or product can allow you to deal with complaints/criticism on the blog(s) in a very direct and transparent way. A great way to turn critics into fans.

The second session, entitled Design Aesthetic of the Indie Developer, kind of picked up where the first left off… or at least dovetailed it nicely.  On the panel were Shaun Inman (Mint), John Gruber (various projects) and Nick Bradbury (FeedDemon, Homesite and TopStyle).  Customer support was a recurring theme in this panel, especially when the topic of how these relatively small applications and compete against the big boys came up.  The main advantage that Nick and Shaun pointed out was that indie developers are able to respond much more quickly to their customers – whether it’s fixing bugs, adding features or just general customer support.  Another factor that was mentioned was that the indies generally have more attention to detail, design and aesthetics.  I don’t know if that’s really true or not, but in terms of the panelists in this session I would tend to agree.

Unfortunately today’s schedule ends here. We had to high tail it out of Will Wright‘s fascinating keynote to catch our flight back home. That meant missing a couple of afternoon sessions… but more importantly we missed the night’s open-bar parties. That’s the pits.

See y’all in Ottawa.

12 Values Shaping Technology’s Future

The twelve values: Appropriatenes, Assistance, Connectedness, Convenience, Efficiency, Health, Intelligence, Personalization, Protection, Simplicity, Sustainability, User creativity.

After connecting people to content, and connecting people to people, the technology will be moving further to the background.

Rachel Matney (Target) speaks to Simplicity, Assistance, Convenience: there is a lot going on, there is a lot of confusion, there is a lot of stuff: we want to feel in control. Simplicty: when will a dvd player become a grande mocha? People need simplicity in choices. This leads to ambient information and importance of information design. Assistance: how to help users achieve tasks. This leads to artificial intelligence and current technologies doing more for you.  Convenience: requirements to make tools and services to make life easier. These values are easier achieved and more quickly realized.

Andrea Shortell (MTV) speaks to User Creativity, Personalization, Appropriateness: everyone is a producer, everyone wants to share and everyone wants validation (top 8 on myspace).  User driven content and user developed architecture – leading to adaptive architecture.  Personlization means more than just presentation. As it applies to MTV, it allows the user to develop a close relationship with the brand. Appropriateness means aunthenticity. It means communicating in an expected channel. Diversity is a key factor to who the audience is: how they see themselves and their place in the world. It includes ethics and ethnicity.

Timo Veikkola (Nokia) speaks to Efficiency, Connectedness and Intelligence: Nothing compares to the intimacy of pesonal communication: focus in design is people centric (enable public to pick up on convergence and use new technologies) and aims enhance personal relationships. There is a lot of concern with hyper-consumerism (see What Would Jesus Buy) - there will be shift to searching for products that you want. Information starvation – need to find the information you need. People want more control. Shift from tools to companions which will aid in efficiency. Connectedness speaks to a participatory culture. Connectedness also speaks to connectedness of devices and systems. Personal entity in virtual communities leads into using imagery as useful capital and to communicate ideas and is important in establishing credibility and paradigms. Leapfrogging: some cultures are having first introduction to connectedness through mobile – not the web – which will create a shift in behaviour. Intelligence – mobile information needs to be contextual. don’t search, find. Intellignence means sensors, performance, productivity and classification.

Panelists:

• Scott Smith Futurist/Dir Research Applications,   Social Technologies
• Rachel Matney Guest Insight Group Mgr,   Target
• Andrea Shortell MTV
• Timo Veikkola Sr futures Specialist,   Nokia