H.264 Free For Web Use....Forever

Rightholders have agreed to extend the H.264 codec freedom in perpetuity. Whereas originally standards organization MPEG-LA had said it wouldn’t collect royalties from those freely distributing AVC/H.264 video until 2016, the limitless new timeframe may mean that content providers banking on WebM and HTML5 video won’t have an expensive surprise in the years to come.

Super Conversion Button

For those of us who like pretty buttons during the development phase here’s a shortcut.

CSS3Pie - Progressive Internet Explorer

This is awesome! Make IE understand certain CSS3 properties such as border-radius, box-shadow and multiple background images.

Laying claim to our emotions: BMW targets joy

The recent BMW ad entitled ‘Joy’ and narrated by Patrick Stewart states that “BMW makes Joy”. The unique and individual nature of joy makes this statement difficult to believe. This ad is a good example of how companies are getting it wrong as they scramble to position themselves in the new “Experience Economy”.

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These keep getting better and better. I really like the scroll wheel that is shown here and also used in Sports Illustrated HTML5 tablet app.

If It Was My Home

Oil Spill

Having a hard time imagining just how big the oil spill is? Use this Google Maps mashup to move it above your current city and see for yourself just how fucked we are.

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App Shopping

Eric Meyer posted a great article revolving around the idea of what he calls web stack applications (WSAs) and app stores. 

I love the idea of a web app store for mobile devices that provides an experience on par with iTunes shopping. Boutique stores will compete on selection and experience and all of a sudden you have many curators who pick and choose based on what fits their market. The infrastructure would be another story however…..

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Is This Really The Future of Magazines or Why Didn’t They Just Use HTML 5?

WIRED iPad app

If I had more time on my hands I would attempt to recreate some of the articles in HTML5 but alas I have shit to do……so hopefully someone else does it

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URLs as sentences

Sometimes you come across things that just make you stop and think wow that’s ingenious. Chris Shiflett ask what if we make every url a sentence in a post on his blog along with some fictional and real world examples of it’s usage. 

Of course one of his examples is Clearleft, whose website I’ve been to countless times and actually never noticed it. It’s just one of many small touches that go into creating a great user experience. Paul Robert Lloyd shares some more insight on why url’s matter and different variations of thoughts on the subject.

In conclusion each site has different requirements and the URL structure should reflect this. I believe it should be a part of the design from the iA and UX stage all the way through to the development team. Whether you go with a RESTful structure or get more creative and use sentences think about how these choices impact the overall experience of your site.

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