wejustblog

First up. If you haven’t checked out gothere.sg to get your Singapore street directions, you should!

Now we’ve created an app that allows you to get directions using the command:-

_gothere bus from:<from_address> to:<to_address>

For instance, if you wanted to get bus directions from Vivocity to Takashimaya you would type in

_gothere bus from:vivocity to: takashimaya

and what you’ll get back is

———————

From: VivoCity, 1 Harbourfront Walk, Singapore 098585
To: Ngee Ann City, 391 Orchard Road, Singapore 238872

[EstTime:33 min] [EstCost:$1.09]

Step 1: Walk to Opposite Vivocity, Telok Blangah Road (14119). - 1 min
Step 2: Take Bus 143 - 16 stops to Opposite Ngee Ann City, Orchard Turn (09011). - 30 min
Step 3: Walk to Ngee Ann City. - 1 min

(Source:GoThere.sg)
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If you wanted to get Bus+Train directions, you simply have to replace “bus” with “busntrain”

and if you can’t remember the list of commands, you just have to type “_gothere help”.

I thought it was pretty redundant to have to open up my MSN or to go all the way to the Widgeous page just to try to do a simple translation. Why can’t I just have the Widgeous Device pop up as and when I needed it. So thanks to Aen’s initial javascript hack and some further alterations from yours truly, now you can!

Drag this link to your bookmarks bar

Now when you click the bookmarklet, the Widgeous device will popup in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. Click it again and it goes away!

I have to say though that this is something we did as a “hack” and so we haven’t tested it. So far I know it works well only on Firefox.

Hope it helps!

I figured I should write something about our upcoming participation in the event…

An event hosted by the Singapore Media Development Authority (MDA), Broadcast Asia 2008 will be held from the 17^th to 20^th June 2008 and we’ll be showcasing some of our stuff at the MDA Jewel Showcase Area.

The event draws broadcasters, production companies, animation houses, content owners and developers, computer graphics producers, online gaming developers and many more. It’s an interesting challenge for us to see how Widgeous can contribute to this industry because we’re such a fundamental technology (As in we’re a platform and so we’re focusing on the front-end).

So how is our presentation going to be different from our previous one at BarCamp? Well, the crowd is different. While Barcamp focused on developers, Broadcast Asia 2008 draws a totally different type audience. For one, I wonder how many people are actually even aware of the evolution of web technologies.

I suspect it’s going to be crucial for us to show how we can actually allow for great interaction between content providers (or their content itself) and their consumers. So what better way than to showcase how a simple technology like ours can increase game participation right? It’ll be participative. It’ll be entertaining. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll be completely addictive.

So yeah, other than the usual presentation and press kits that we’ll be passing around, we’ve decided to develop a simple text-focused game that will allow developers to see how Widgeous can make their games more portable. And as for the users, well, it’ll show you how you can play a game regardless of where you are.

What do you think of the approach?

Ok, I know you guys probably want to know more about the game itself but that’s something you’ll have to find out by going down for BCA. We’ll probably only release it on that day itself. =)

Since this is my first post on wejustblog, I shall begin with a little self-introduction. I am U-Zyn (http://uzyn.com), the CTO of Widgeo.us. I am head of all things technology-related on Widgeo.us, including the system design of Widgeo.us and management of the development team. Being a part of development team myself, I am also the chief code monkey.

t.widgeo.us

Working at Widgeo.us with a bunch of geeks is not only fun, we sometimes also do crazy things together. t.widgeo.us, is a project Aen, our Art Director, and I made together with the free time we get while working on Widgeo.us.

Like many of you, the team members at Widgeo.us all have personal Twitter accounts. On top of that we also have a combined Widgeo.us account to update our followers with happenings around the company and the development. More often than not we find it a chore to be logging in and out of Twitter just to switch accounts to leave updates for different accounts. If you are like us, now you can manage your Twitter accounts with ease with t.widgeo.us.

As of now, t.widgeo.us is still very new, with quite a limited feature set. Though we like to keep things simple, we would most certainly be happy to hear from you. Aen and I will be spending more of our free time working on it as we go along, most importantly we are looking forward to interface t.widgeo.us with the soon-to-be-launched Widgeo.us.

It’s Saturday and Saturday’s the day to catch the movie “L: Change The World” and write a blog post, it is my turn today.

I have received several emails from people asking me to write this article on what principles the design of the Widgeo.us Blog is based on and why I did certain things in certain ways. So here’s an attempt at a walkthrough with detailed explanations of the rationale behind the design elements you see on this blog.

The Brand

“wejustblog” is in fact a play of the phrase “Widgeo.us Blog”, if you have not noticed. Kah Wee came up with the name while we were going back to the office from lunch in U-Zyn’s car, some weeks ago. We all thought the name was good so I created a logo based on the typography of the original Widgeo.us logo and slapped in there, not too soft-spoken and not too loud.

Typography

I have chosen light, soft brown background colors and very dark grey text. Why not black text on a white background? Text on screen is unlike print. The white on print is paper, which appears neutral. The white on screen however, are illuminated phosphors. Thus the contrast on screen is much higher of that on print. High contrast black on white is highly readable but it also strains the eyes. By lowering the contrast to a more comfortable yet readable level with very dark grey text on light and soft background, you get text that is less migraine-inducing.

Which one is more likely to give you a migraine?

Fat Buttons are the Opposite of Fat Fingers

As the world move towards tiny buttons on mobile phones, web design has to go in the opposite direction. Tiny buttons are a usability disaster. Not only are do they take considerably more effort to aim and press, they are also more difficult to spot. The buttons here are large, colored and understood. The slight 3D effect of the buttons makes them true buttons. Some people have commented that the buttons are distracting. Considering that articles are read top down, the buttons are probably already out of sight by the time you scrolled to this paragraph. Design is usability not compromised by aesthetics.

An Icon is not a Picture

With the rise of Ajax, “loading” animated GIFs are becoming the norm for indicating the wait the user has to go through while requests are being processed. With services like Ajaxload and Load Info, web designers are only spoilt for choice. Instead of using animated GIFs, I opted a more minimalistic approach. As the French Writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. Without the need for images, I simply change the submit button label to say “Loading…” instead. Yes a picture speaks a thousand words, but a icon is hardly able to speak even a hundred words.

Conclusions

That is all there is to it. I did not intend the blog to be complex so it is really that simple. No twenty-page documentations and fifty-page style guidelines. Simple is good design. Good design is as little design as possible. Do you think this blog was well-designed. I would love to have your opinions and criticisms.