Titles at an Online Shopping Site in the UK

(Via swissmiss)

∞

13 video player UIs in 24 hours

From one of the comments:

Interesting that they all share the same basic layout but it is still impossible for my father to understand anything but the pause and play buttons.

For me, the Flickr and Vimeo player UIs have to be the best of the lot.

∞

Soggy Sh.it Gets a Makeover

Milind finally gets off his lazy bum and finds the precious time to redesign his site.

All thanks to some stable internet and constant flow of coffee by the white guy, I got around to theming not just this blog, but the Tumblog as well. Let’s just say I hate theming in Tumblr and I probably won’t attempt it again.

The site sure looks great, although I wonder why he let the sidebar slide with the content, unlike how it was originally designed ( fixed position ).

∞

New Gmail Labs Feature: Mark Unread from here

I subscribe to a lot of really active mailing lists. Oftentimes, an email in my inbox will get dozens of replies before I get a chance to start reading it. If I only have a few moments to look at a particularly long and interesting discussion, Id like to start reading it then; later, when I have some more time, Ill pick up where I left off. However, if I mark the thread as unread, it will return to its previously read state without updating to show what I just read. When I come back to it, Ill have to search for the last thing I remember reading. If I star the first message I still want to read instead, I might not remember that it needs to be read when Im in my inbox later and when I do read it, Ill have to expand lots of messages before I can read the conversation properly

Finally, the long conversations in Gmail will not be so frustrating to keep a tab on.

Although, I wonder if this also affects the unread state through IMAP on the iPhone, since currently, if you mark a conversation as unread in Gmail, it’ll mark all the individual emails on the iPhone’s Mail app.

∞

Pat Dryburgh’s New Design Goes Live

I’ve been hearing him talk about his design on twitter and having seen some of the ads designed by him for the Fusion ad network, I was curious and excited to see it.

I love the new design, more so because it’s an HTML5 layout with the goodness of a Tumblr theme. But I hate the fact that everyone’s slowly making Tumblr their new home and I’m the lone WordPress warrior left on the planet of awesomeness.

∞

How P2P is finding legitimacy as BitTorrent sites struggle to change

Devindra Hardawar discusses the opposing trends of illegal versus more legitimate uses of P2P technology.

More importantly, what’s interesting is…

The Pirate Bay is using a combination of DHT (a de-centralized P2P network) and PEX (peer exchange, a method for gathering peers) to share files directly between peers without the use of a traditional tracker. They’re also doing away with torrent files by offering “magnet links”, which send torrent data directly to BitTorrent clients.

∞

Instapaper – Like Drugs, No Side-Effects

Colin talks about Instapaper, the awesome read later service from Marco

I figure Instapaper is sort of like drugs. Your friend offers you some crack and immediately you turn it down thinking that you don’t need crack. He says he’ll just leave the crack right here, on the table, in case you want to give it a try. For weeks the crack sits on the table and every so often you look over at it wondering what it is like. Then, one day you get home from a long day and you feel like you just need to escape all of this mess… and there it is. The crack. Before you know it; addict.

∞

I’m awestruck…

The internet is huge today. The information that is exchanged between nodes is of gigantic proportions and today’s fast paced life has made it necessary that the exchange of information happens quick – else you’ll not only be left behind, but also loose out on a lot of precious time. In our day to day conversations on the Internet, we end up sharing a ton of different kinds of files. This is either a one-on-one exchange – like quickly sharing a PDF or DOC file, or a mass broadcast – like sharing a screenshot on twitter. And as you know it, there are a gazillion tools out there, some big, some small, that make it super easy for you to share files with your friends or followers.

But what’s quicker than the quick ones out there? Let me introduce you to a nifty little service I recently discovered, called UploadRobots.

From their site:

What is Upload Robots?
Upload Robots is like an online thumbdrive; a thumbdrive that you cannot lose and will never break. In a matter of seconds you can upload, store, download, share and access all of your files online.

A Stunning UI

Before I even begin talking about UploadRobots, I must commend them on the beautiful site design. The home page is simple, makes lovely use of boxes of information and everything is nicely laid out. There’s a pretty simple and quick sign up form, if you wish to sign up for an account. Although, you don’t need to have an account to upload and share a file.

UploadRobots SignUp Form

Super Quick Uploads

Sticking to the goal of super quick file -uploads, UploadRobots has a nice Choose A File button with a progress box next to it, right on the homepage. Click the button, choose the file, upload it and you’re presented with a page with information about your recent upload.

Upload Right from the Homepage

About Recent Upload

This page shows a preview of the recently uploaded file, though it only supports limited file types at the moment. There is also a short URL generated for you, which you can easily share with your friends or followers.

Organizing Files

In case you have an account with the service (and you can sign up for a free one), all your file uploads will be available in your dashboard. One great feature here, is that you can organize your files just as easily. Create a group, rename the group to your choice and simply drag-n-drop files from your Recent Uploads to the group. You can cascade the groups, so hiding the list of files under a group is just as easy.

Easy File Organizing

Free vs. Pro

Every web-service or app has to sustain itself in the long run. You can’t possibly offer a free hosting service and expect yourself to function for years together. Similar to most other sites, UploadRobots also offers two types of accounts. There’s a Free account that gives you most of the important features. The Pro account offers the following added benefits:

• More Storage
• Faster Uploads
• SSL Security
• Custom Domains
• Custom URLs

Is it perfect?

Almost. In my testing, file upload and download speeds were fairly decent and didn’t cause any problems with browsers. A friend, barely geeky, was able to use the service with easy and comfort. The site does make use of a lot of CSS and JS effects, so things may seem broken at places (overlapping or hidden text, etc.) That said, the service is fairly new, so you might want to avoid uploading important or sensitive documents to the service. I wasn’t able to test the Pro accounts owing to an issue with my Paypal account, so I’ll drop my thoughts here once I do.

If you haven’t already, go check out UploadRobots.

Sketch Styles of the Designers at 37signals

“Thought it would be fun to share the very different sketch styles of the designers at 37signals. They range from very neat to a mess (mine).”

Posts like this are a great way to get the insights of how things work in the awesome startups and places of work that are fun to work at.

permalink