We had the privilege of being involved early on with author, scholar, and speaker Wes Moore as he was developing his idea for the book The Other Wes Moore and the personal site that would host the book. Brainstorming with Wes and developing a myriad of ideas, a number of specifics bubbled to the surface.  Wes was extremely flexible in allowing us to the freedom to make the most of it. We had discussions about his priorities for the site and how we could develop an appropriate solution.

Take a look at all of the work we put into it or just go visit the site at TheOtherWesMoore.com

Rachel Maddow makes it kinda sickening to see what’s happening in the gulf. [Thanks to Wimp.com]

John MacWade (from the online design mag Before & After) has a great writeup on the iPad:

I’ve read the reviews of Apple’s new iPad. “It’s a big iPod Touch!” “It’s a Kindle, but nicer.” “It plays movies, but so does my computer.” “It doesn’t have a camera.” And so on. All are correct observations, but all are wrong. They’re wrong because they look backward. They compare to stuff we already have. The stuff we have is old. The way we live — phone, surf, socialize, whatever — no matter how fresh it seems today, is the result, literally, of yester day’s vision. Yesterday, Facebook was a hobby. Twitter didn’t exist. We used our cell phones only to make phone calls. Today we live differently because these things caused a change.

Great observation.

Video of a great guerilla marketing stunt that KLM airlines put in the Manchester airport. [via LikeCool]

“The gap between ability and taste drives creative people to achieve great things.” —Ira Glass

If you’re a lover of the Apple Magic Mouse, as I am, you’re no doubt constantly fighting off the wrist fatigue it promotes based on its extremely low profile. If found MMFixed, thanks to Cameron Moll and ordered one.  I’ll post a review as soon as I receive the product.

If you’re looking for a USB-based wireless mouse, I also love the Logitech v450 Wireless Nano mouse.

…Continued, from Part 1 of the review

Quick Find in the native toolbar
One of the major benefits of the native toolbar is that users are getting the benefits of increased innovation as FileMaker Inc. adds more functionality to the database. They have only added two functions to the customizable toolbar: a Save As Snapshot button, and a Quick Find search field.

Without a doubt, this exponentially increases the power of a database for end users who can’t wrap their head around Find Mode, Browse Mode, and navigating between the two. It unquestionably builds upon the experience of search engines in the web space and OS X’s Spotlight function where all the data is reachable in one or two clicks away but without procedural thinking on the part of the end-user. Advanced developers have been replicating this kind of functionality for years, but most especially since v7 allowed field entry in header and footer parts, and even moreso with the advent of script triggers. For simpler databases, this feature may be the death of Find Mode as it allows users to specify which fields are included in the Quick Find index and search across those fields fairly painlessly. Ultimately, this kind of functionality is what we want from our data – smarter responses without a lot of cognitive processing by the user.

I’ve been fortunate enough to use FileMaker Pro Advanced v11 and have been testing it since the 2nd week of February. Per an email from FileMaker Inc, version 11 boasts the following top new features:

1. FileMaker Charts – Create eye-catching reports using bar, line, area, and pie charts.
2. Quick Reports – Make reports in a spreadsheet-like format. Group and summarize data on the fly.
3. Enhanced Layout/Report Assistant – New streamlined interface guides you step-by-step in building reports with grouped data.
4. Recurring Import – Automatically import Excel and text files every time you open your database.
5. Snapshot Link – Save a specific set of records at a point in time. Preserve the same layout, view, and sort order.
6. Quick Find – Search for information just as you would in a web browser.
7. Inspector – Manage your layout tools all in one convenient place.
8. Invoice Starter Solution – Create, manage, and print customized invoices for every order.
9. Improved Quick Start Screen – Create a new database, manage favorite files, or find helpful resources – all from one screen.
10. Layout Folders – Organize all your layouts in folders – just drag and drop.
11. Portal Filtering – Specify related records based on calculations.
12. Improved security – A new security scheme has been developed to prevent unauthorized field access in older versions.

Features new to v11 Advanced are:

1. Enhanced Custom Menus interface
2. Copy, paste, and import Custom Functions.
3. Improved Script Debugger to debug scripts attached to buttons and Custom Menus and powerful Data Viewer.
4. Modify and maintain databases with ease using the advanced Database Design Report and Multiple Table Import.

So here goes an exploration into the new features.

A little over 24 hours to go until Apple releases their next device which is going to end world hunger.  Not really, but the press build up seems to indicate that what is coming is worthy of such epic proportions.

Most likely it will be a game changer but while many people are thinking that it will be a business-focused device, I’m downright sure that it will be an entertainment device, along the lines of a game machine with some possible benefits of an e-reader or other media device.  If anything has flourished on the iPhone development platform, it has been gaming.  Apple has opened up a new type of device in a market with no to little other competition and Nintendo has shown that focusing on the arms-race between processor power and graphic display isn’t always the path.

Apple is looking down the same highway, seeing little to no other competitors and looking to combine their unibody engineering experience, the new built-in battery, and the flourishing development of the iPhone & iPod Touch into a product that answers the two most salient questions, one from John Gruber and the other from Steve Jobs:

1. Per John Gruber and his epic Tablet post of 2009: If you already own an iPhone and a MacBook, why would you want to own this device?
2. Per Steve Jobs: What good is a tablet device for other than web browsing in the bathroom?

A standard tablet computer, developed by Apple, doesn’t answer those two basic questions. But if refocused as a platform that is designed for entertainment, you have a device that can tie directly in to the record sales and growth that the gaming industry has enjoyed for years, including 2008 & 2009, when just about every indicator showed businesses hurting throughout the global downturn.  Oh, and you get a device that fills a niche between your Macbooks and iPhone, and is good for email when you’re pooping.  (Yes, I used pooping in a journalistic speculation article – quality!!!!)

Per the Entertainment Software Association data on 2009, computer games sold $701 million worth of games at 29.1 million units, there was a record $2.1 billion in portable software sales, and the most popular genre was “Family Entertainment”.  It makes a clearer case why Apple might want to ignite the fuse on their not so dark-horse gaming platform with a hardware upgrade that is as sexy as they can make it.

There’s not a lot of info, I realize, on the web or collectively disseminated about building a vertical market solution using FileMaker Pro as your development and user environment. Many people have built vertical market solutions, but few have actually spoken about it.

Given this is something I feel passionate about and have had numerous experiences in selling hundreds of copies of the InBloom Shop Solution, built in Filemaker, I feel I can throw my hat in the very empty ring, not to steal the limelight, but to begin the dialogue.  There’s much to figure out, namely the cost of your solution, plans on distributing your solution, support, software-networking, and more.  So starting in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be waxing poetic about this very topic and if you’re interested, tune in.

If you have any ideas or things you would like to see addressed, then chime in on the comments section of the blog.