openff.org webdesign concept... (1280 px wide so click through to view fullsize ) / post additional features you think are needed for the home page here!
2. Participation panel with 3 actions: join the team / donate / spread the word
- vijay
3. Latest News panel: I would suggest this to be the friendfeed embed widget for the "openff" group.
- vijay
4. Top Dev panel: Shows most active contributors according to pointers along with their latest twitter updates. The one thing our project can offer is lots of attention for our devs so promoting active devs on a leaderboard is a good way to keep the activity up and running. ( Right now, I'm calling it "dev" board for lack of a nicer shortner name but the final leaderboard will include ALL contributors including non-devs. )
- vijay
5. Scroll Alert: At the right bottom is a small msg that shows up when the viewer still has some scrolling to do on the page warning them that there is MORE content on the page that is available for them to view.
- vijay
I haven't added scrollbars to the mockup. But there will be content below the fold as always.
- vijay
i think the video should be embedded within the page.. but i guess thats the case when the page goes live.
- Gtp19
yep, video will be a pop up overlay as usual. The page behaves the usual way sites these days display content, nothing extraordinary.
- vijay
Very classy. I wonder how it'd map to a "physical" website, though.
- Tyson Key
This is fixed width layout; viewable from 1024 upwards Jason.
- vijay
I think one reason for the relatively low numbers of friendfeed users was that people were uncertain as to how to use it and what value it provided over other web sites. In addition to the intro video, something like the "What can you use it for?" text on the current FF home page is needed but better written and making a more compelling case for signing up.
- Rajit
This will end quickly Forbidden You don't have permission to access / on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
- Dan owns Comicsforge.com
What will be the licence of server software ? GPL 3 ?
- Thierry Lhôte
sigh. there's gonna be a license flame war. I'll simply say: -1 to GPL
- Capn' One Eye - adrift
for better readability bodytext has to be black (or grey) (just saying...)
- minus-one
body text 'is' gray right now minus-one; nearly the same color as this comment is on friendfeed. Why, does it need still more contrast?
- vijay
from iPhone
it's slightly on a green side here (111,120,108) maybe it's not sRGB...
- minus-one
ah! ok. no probs, I'll fix that up. thanks :D
- vijay
Vij, a sidebar with best of the day entries livestream would be cool...
- Abhishek
that's a good thing to have Abi. Let's add it when we begin the coding.
- vijay
Haven't seen this before. Maybe we'll never need Openff, but if we do, this is gorgeous! Re: sidebar - like the idea functionally, worried another element will crap this up visually. It's so clean the way it is now!
- Mary B, VALUE author
yeah openff seems dead from where I see it. Though it really was buzzing like a beehive when I started working on this.
- vijay
I played around with the app a little bit this morning and have to say that I think it’s very cool — especially for a free app. The app allows you to do some of the most basic edits with your iPhone photos including cropping, adjusting exposure and contrast, converting an image to black and white, rotating an image etc. It also has a very basic set of effects that you can apply and filters that you can add to create effects (like an image border, sketching or blurring effects, and the effect that I liked the most, an effect called “warm vintage”). I especially liked the cropping tool of the app and found it reasonably robust (for a free mobile app) allowing you to do things like constrain crops to certain aspect ratios (a square crop for example). You can also use the app to offload your iPhone photos to a free photoshop.com (2GB storage limit) account freeing up storage space on your iPhone. You can also easily access your photoshop.com account via the app to share show people photos from that account via the app later.
- Thomas Hawk
App not available in Europe at this moment, Adobe sucks and fuck you globalization. And by the way Adobe: instead of Photoshop i now use Pixelmator on my Mac and instead of Audition (Windows) i use Reaper (Mac/Win), both apps are way cheaper, slicker and don´t tend to crash. One more thing: i hope Flash will die soon ....
- HansVanRock
I wonder why it's not available in Europe.
- Thomas Hawk
I suck at Photoshop, and I'd already bought Photogene long ago, but I'm downloading PSM.
- a runcible MiniMage
No Australia either... Can't access Photoshop.com either...
- Johnny
from iPhone
Lars Rasmussen: #googlewave servers mostly OK but found a few bugs. Fixing now + will only trickle invitations on the weekend. Please be patient! - http://twitter.com/larsras...
"What we have for you is even better, a great collection of free Wordpress themes with functionalities just as good as the ones premium themes have."
- AJ Batac (/-_-)
from Bookmarklet
Admittedly very clever, and probably very useful for some, but I've never gotten any DM spam. I thought you had to follow somebody for them to send you a DM, and I don't do auto-follow so I don't follow spammers. Anyway, I like the DM->email idea and always thought that should have been in there to begin with.
- Otto
Otto, yes, this was targeted mostly to those that are more aggressive in who they follow back. However, the DM e-mails themselves can be pretty useful even if you don't auto-follow. If there's anything we can add to them to make your life easier please let me know.
- Jesse Stay
Hi Jesse, I've been 'Socialtoo' curious for a while and gave it a whirl. Now I do not autofollow back and I'm not a poweruser. The people who follow me are generally fellow-geeks and spambots (luckily not too many of the latter, but it goes in phases). So, as a fairly average user, is SocialToo right for me? And, by logging into the site does that change my Twitter settings so I do...
more...
- WoH: Minding her Steves
It doesn't activate anything automatically, near as I can tell. I had to turn the bits I wanted on. Works very well.
- Otto
No, I don't think it does it automatically, Otto. But that could be clearer in the front page because if people *think* it is automatic it might put them off.
- WoH: Minding her Steves
Thanks WoH - yes, you're right. Nothing should be activated when you log in. You have to check the boxes on your preferences to enable anything. We're working on the UI - I'm not a graphic designer so it's not my specialty. What I am good at is functionality so that's been our focus. UI is going to be one of our next focuses though and I appreciate your feedback.
- Jesse Stay
An immense new laboratory of human relations is taking shape. Millions of us are playing, working, flirting, and socializing online—and producing oceans of data. Duncan J. Watts, a Columbia University sociologist now on leave and heading a research unit at Yahoo!, marvels at the change. "When I started network research 12 years ago, we had virtually no data," he says. Now he and his team can study the network behavior of 295 million e-mailers and legions of the 200 million Facebook users. For social scientists, Watts says, this flood of data could be as transformative as Galileo's telescope was for the physical sciences: "It gives us a new understanding of our world and ourselves."
- Meryn Stol
"Aston Villa clinched a battling win over a below-par Liverpool side, who slumped to their second defeat in their first three Premier League games."
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
Hehe, Burnley beat Everton over the weekend, they are on fire, LOL!
- Kol Tregaskes
wow, it seems Rafa's squad management (Xabi's selling) hurts Liverpool anyway. He deserved this. Go Villans! :) I always liked Martin O'neill, if he'll be Alex Ferguson's successor, L'pool will never get the EPL in the future.
- Oguz Serdar
Mint.com, the personal finance site that has racked up 1.4 million users in the U.S., might expand up north and across the pond early next year, according to its founder and CEO Aaron Patzer. The Mountain View, Calif.-based startup tracks personal checking accounts, credit card spending and retirement portfolios to help users manage their finances. It recently raised $14 million in a third round of financing and launched features this week advising employees on how to roll over their retirement savings when switching jobs. The company is one of Silicon Valley’s bright lights at a time when the IPO market remains cloudy and other consumer-facing companies have struggled to eke a living out of advertising. “Canada and the U.K. would definitely be the first. I would like to say early next year,” said Patzer. Growing internationally may be a little more logistically difficult for a company like Mint than it is for other consumer-focused companies, since the startup will have to weave its...
EVERYONE... ask ANY question you have regarding this project here. ALL are welcome. Questions NOT restricted to technical domain alone! Ask ANYTHING related to the project that you need to know more about. We'll put this post up on the FAQ section of the wiki with answers.
Do we have a mission statement. I know it's terribly corporate, but a good mission statement would tell the world what this project actually aims to do. Just a thought.
- Eoghann Irving
Will openFF be centralized or decentralized, or maybe both?
- arjo
Will I be able to run a copy of OpenFF in my office for my dev group? ie, walled off, internal use/visiblity only
- Capn' One Eye - adrift
what is the timeline for implementing the openff project roadmap? ( btw, roadmap is here --->- http://bit.ly/Cpi7C )
- vijay
Do we have a Fail Whale equivalent, yet? (It had to be asked) ;)
- Tyson Key
what is our backup plan in the event our main devs have to quit (temporarily or permanently)?
- vijay
What license is the wiki content and/or documentation considered to be under?
- Tyson Key
what infrastructure do we need to keep the project running? How do we plan to "keep it running" in the long term?
- vijay
(If we do have a fail whale equivalent, I could design it! (I sooo want to be a part of this!!:)))
- Abhishek
( Abi, can you enclose your comment in parantheses like this comment from me, so it's clear the comment is not a question. thanks : ) )
- vijay
Is any programming going on? where do I go to know who's working on what?
- vijay
(Answering my own question courtesy of the wiki. Mission is: Create a free and open client and server for Friendfeed-like social networks, consisting of stream aggregation, asynchronus relationships, and serendipitous content discovery.)
- Eoghann Irving
3 more logo concepts (2nd concept of the "open eye" has an additional variation, taking the total to 4). Each concept comes on a light bg immediately followed on dark bg. Each concept this time has a symbol version of the logo for use as favicons, avatars, on t-shirts etc...
I like #1 and #2, because it also reminds me of a "round table", which is a bit of a metaphor for conversation (and equality). I think that's a huge part of FriendFeed as well. I mean, we can get a feel for each other through our feeds, but we get to know each other through conversation. Often in small groups. Joining a conversation is as sitting down at a table, I'd say.
- Meryn Stol
Meryn, that's(person at the table) part of the concept! and I'm glad someone else sees it that way too without me explicitly saying it! :D
- vijay
I might be an exception, but for me the real-time commenting is more important than the actual "lifestreaming". I could live with much sparser feeds. It's the comments which I enjoy the most. Of course, FF is also about anyone being able to start a conversation, and that's done through the stream. So the two concepts (stream and conversation) complement each other.
- Meryn Stol
Vijay, I'm good with metaphor, but bad with gfx design. It's also matter of being able to *recognize* it or actually think it up. Recognizing something is often more easy.
- Meryn Stol
I think this "O" can somehow symbolize "participation", "deliberation" as well. Just like it. Very evocative. (Anyone remember's O'Reilly's concept of "The Architecture of Participation"?)
- Meryn Stol
thanks Ade. : ) It's worth the effort when folks like it :D
- vijay
All logo's in the middle remind me too much of a shooting target. Like someone shot at the bulls-eye once, but missed. #1 and #2 and the last two ones are the best. The last ones are really "light" though. It looks a bit weird to me.
- Meryn Stol
I think it looks like "pen" as the "o" symbol is not as bold as the rest of the characters? Can we see the top two with a more bold "o"? The second one down is my favourite out of the lot just would like to see if the amendment helps. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
#2 then #6 (or #1 and #5). I can't decide if I like the dark or light background better. Awesome stuff!
- caj
Heh, I thought that the symbol in the centre of 5 was a cherry-bomb initially...
- Tyson Key
guys, you're right about the font being too bold and the words not gelling together. Doing the tweaky tweaky now...
- vijay
Tyson, we can lob the cherry bomb onto FB's logo.
- vijay
Curtis, light and dark are not separate concepts; they are color variations of the same concept to show you how each concept will look on contrasting bg.
- vijay
They are better than current FF logo. :)
- Ersan Özer
#s I & 2. I really appreciate the concept behind the open-o and am 100% behind its deployment. :-)
- Absentee
#1. Hit me visually as the best of the lot, and I really like the person-at-table thinking you guys have brought out in the threads. I like the clean blue on white better than #2 generally, and as a carryover from the original ff.
- Mary B, VALUE author
You'll want to beef up the line weight a little when the time comes for a favicon, but I'm finding that by the time I modify a logotype for a favicon you really don't want to see the favicon symbol at full size. (Fortunately, nobody ever has to.)
- Mary B, VALUE author
Also I just caught your comment about how the light and dark aren't separate concepts - they're alternative bgs - d'oh! I should have realized that.
- Mary B, VALUE author
haha Mary. happens all the time :D thanks for the favicon tip. Appreciate it : )
- vijay
2, would be great if the logo was a watermark behind the typography. BTW, great work Vij! You are doin better than rest of us. :)
- Abhishek
from fftogo
Abi, I'm keeping it simple that's all. These aren't finalized anyway. :D
- vijay
The first two logos shown are among the best that I've seen so far.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
thanks Rishabh. : ) Both are the same concept shown on contrasting bg. I have a slightly tweaked version of that concept which I'll post here soon.
- vijay
In the first symbol, I also see "accomodation" (the circle "accomdotates" to the new circle coming in). It looks a bit like a cell-membrane or something. I said it earlier on, it's very evocative. Long-time ago I've seen something as "deep" in a logo. Especially considering the unbelievably simple form. It's just two circles. Together, they say lots.
- Meryn Stol
If you want, you can also see the small circle as a speaker, while the large circle is the audience. Like an auditorium.
- Meryn Stol
yup, 'simple' has that nature Meryn... leaves lots of room for interpretation.
- vijay
Vijay: Do you know that guy that pushes "dots" to be used in presentation slides? He has a whole philosophy around it. Indeed, that in the simplest forms you can see the most.
- Meryn Stol
But a circle is a much cooler base element than a dot - at least for our purpose, I think.
- Meryn Stol
Vijay, for protecting your own interest, I would try to look into publishing this work as solidly as you can, to give you the most chances to claim "prior art"... I'm not a lawyer btw... I think it would be shame if someone else would take this from you (or us).
- Meryn Stol
Post it to flickr with a big copyright notice slapped on top of it or something... Or, if you have pockets, file for a trademark. Really, at this point, I think it'd be worth it.
- Meryn Stol
Would CC-SA, CC-NC or CC-SA-NC work in the meantime? It's Vijay's set of designs though, so it's his choice.
- Tyson Key
If you don't have pockets, maybe donating this logo to a trustworthy organization who does have pockets might work well instead. I don't know which org would be suitable for that. They'd have to be willing to fight other people in court over it.
- Meryn Stol
you're right Meryn. I will get that done. Thanks for pointing that out : )
- vijay
The worst that could happen is that there's some uproar over the ownership of it, and a new project has to be started, or the existing project has to be renamed (as happened to Wireshark, and to a lesser extent, Joomla/Mambo).
- Tyson Key
Yup, and I think that Vijay wants to see his logo be put to good use. E.g. used for a cause he supports.
- Meryn Stol
+1 Meryn. It'd be a shame for anything to happen to it, or the other concepts, whilst things are still ramping-up.
- Tyson Key
I would not rule-out the possibility that this logo is in fact not unique, and has been trademarked already. Is there a kind of image search which could search on this exact shape? I don't think I haven't seen it before, but that says nothing.
- Meryn Stol
broken O logo I like. What I can't figure out is why I like it better with the dark blue background. I think it says something about the openff impact with white background.
- amarquart
these are pretty good! I'm liking #1 the most. Well done, vijay! :)
- Dee @ Holycool.net
If you want to keep abreast of what is going on with the CloneFeed / OpenFF project you could follow the new Twitter account. - https://twitter.com/openffp...
"currently just a feed" ? What would everyone like to have posted to Twitter in the future? Hootsuite allows multiple admins for single and multiple Twitter accounts, amongst a list of other features. don't know if that would help later on in the project.
- Ade Lack
It has it's own twitter account... it's officially a tech project.
- tehKenny