Hello Monday

It is not often that a portfolio site stands out to me, there is usually a lot of  ”been-there-seen-that” evident.  It is rarer still that an outstanding portfolio is also in some way related to the Seadragon universe, even tangentially.  In the case of the site Hello Monday, we’ve got a whole lotta “awesome” at work.

The entire portfolio is laid out on an infinite, scrolling, vertical, canvas that you can navigate with click and drag, or the mouse wheel.  As you mouse over individual items, they lose their sepia tones and acquire full color for emphasis, letting you interact with them more fully.  A single click to one of the portfolio items will zoom you in for larger imagery and greater detail into the nature of the project.  Another click will send you back out to the full portfolio.

There are a lot of nice touches to this site, from the springs on scrolling, to the smooth transitions between zoom states and the sepia toning.  My favorite bit has to be the intro screen that’s been designed to give visitors to the site an idea of how to putter around the site using click and drag.  It’s a simple thing, but an important one to help get users in the right mindset.  Oh, and the random whale hanging out on top is pretty fun.  Check it out.

-Kevin Hanes

Where to go for Seadragon news?

As recent as a year ago, it was pretty easy to keep track of all the stuff going on in the Seadragon world… a few people were doing interesting things with Deep Zoom, but otherwise it was pretty quiet. Nowadays there’s new stuff (projects, content, tools, code examples, etc.) all the time. I do my best to keep track of it and share it in various ways, but I haven’t found one single best channel; it’s all kind of scattered about. Perhaps I should fix this state of affairs and consolidate somehow, but for starters I think I’ll just share what I’ve got.

• There is of course this blog.
• I (and others) tweet from @livelabs.
• I bookmark zooming-related sites (many but not all having to do with Seadragon) on Delicious.
• I share interesting posts I find on Google Reader.
• I’ve also recently started a Twine for Seadragon-related stuff… we’ll see how that goes, but I like the fact that multiple people can contribute to it. The Zooming Group has a similar feature, and in fact my Delicious bookmarks (along with those of others) are replicated there, but it’s much broader than just Seadragon stuff. That’s cool, but it’s also nice to have the specific focus sometimes.

What do you think? How best to keep track of all the interesting stuff that’s going on?

– Ian Gilman

Fast Flip

Google Labs has come out with an interesting way to read through some of your daily news, Google Fast Flip.  Essentially placing news pages on an infinte, scrolling,  canvas that allows you to “flip” through articles in a series or one-up view.  No zooming to be had here,  sadly, though it seems to be begging for it; add some constrained or free zoom to this action and you can color me excited!

Fast Flip has received the usual Google design once-over, ensuring that content is your focus, not layout or interaction.  You can use the arrow keys to navigate, but only once you are in the one-up view.   It also feels like I should be able to click and drag to move through the feed, but that seems to be missing, too. Other than these details, it’s pretty slick, quick and easy to use.  Now if only I could add my own feeds to it and really get crankin’.

-Kevin Hanes

New in Zooming: Sony Gets Some.

The folks over at Gizmodo have a delightful article on a zooming technology that Sony has demoed for both the PS3 as well as their portable device, the PSP.  From the video you can see a lot of the nice touches that we’ve come to expect of high-quality zooming implementations.  Things like springs for smooth zooming, total responsiveness to the user and remarkably fast resolve time from one zoom level to the next.  It truly is mesmerizing to watch.

The ability and apparent usability of the PSP (at 2:10 into the video) is particularly cool.  The portable device’s navigation buttons appear to be intuitive and every bit as performant as on PS3.  I can’t wait to see what people come up with after Sony ships this to developers “soon”.

-Kevin Hanes