Hacking Gmail to Keep Track of Your Favorite Internet Discoveries

One of the reasons I love gmail is because of the many ways you can casually hack it. For example, when I come across a post or an idea on the internet that I want to keep track of, I email it to myself with the word "Keeper" (as in fishing) in the title. Then I set up a filter that keeps everything with the word "Keeper" in the title in a folder named Keeper. That way all I have to do is click on the Keeper folder (in the left hand list of folders in my gmail) and boom: everything is right there.

OK, so you already knew that, great. But did you put the following amazing link in your Keeper folder? It's a kind of storyboard that a favorite illustrator of mine, Christoph Nieman, created after hearing an interview between Terry Gross and Maurice Sendak. I'm sure he had help at the NYT turning it into this sweet little video, but please enjoy:

Sketches and Storyboards for Product & Architectural Concept Design

When it comes to explaining your product and architectural concept designs, there is no better storytelling medium than pencil, pen and paper. Pen and ink sketches lend a human touch missing in most presentations, and help differentiate your firm from the nameless competition all using the same digital techniques. Th

Introducing buyLOca (in beta)...The Mobile And Web App That Allows Shoppers To Make Photo-Based Wish Lists

Well, readers, this marks the introduction of the start up mobile and web app that a team of us have been working on for the last year. BuyLOca is 100% intended for the use and benefit of the LOCAL independent businesses who... well, wait, I'll just copy in the press release. Enjoy, and be sure to check out the wireframe diagrams at the end of how the mobile and web app will work.

Press Release, May 21, 2010

from BALLE conference in Charleston, SC

Introducing  buyLOca (in beta)...

A Shopper-driven Solution For Sustainable Local Ecommerce

BuyLOca is the mobile (iPhone) and web app that allows shoppers to make photo-based wish lists--tagged with price, location and store name--then share them with friends and family via email and over social networks (because who couldn't use a little help with the 50 gifts--from birthdays to graduations to holidays to housewarming parties that families of four feel "obligated" to exchange every year. Make that 25 for couples without kids.)

BuyLOca is, of course, meant to be a huge convenience for shoppers, but it's also designed to do something VERY cool for local independent merchants and service providers. The magic occurs when buyLOca aggregates shoppers' wish list photos to both users' homepages, and to FREE "wiki" store pages for the local businesses from where items are listed (since 90% of these businesses lack the resources to build their own ecommerce capability and can use the help in competing with malls, big box stores and online retailers!). Bottom line? As shoppers share their wish lists via email and social network: 1) THEY get what they really want from friends and family on gift giving occasions; 2) BUSINESS OWNERS get free ecommerce pages (built spontaneously from their customers' wishes, which turns out to be an efficient and powerful form of online search recommendation engine) and viral word of mouth advertising over customers' social networks, and; 3) the NETWORK EFFECTS create a virtuous cycle and drive even MORE TRAFFIC TO LOCAL BUSINESSES and BUY LOCAL PROGRAMS .

Additionally, as growing numbers of store owners add items and services to their free pages, local goods and services in general become more visible to ORGANIC SEARCH (where according to Forrester Research, an astonishing 90% of all discretionary shopping begins these days), allowing random online shoppers to find the goods they're searching for LOCALLY before they reflexively venture off to malls, big box stores and online retailers. The fact that wish listers and their favorite stores will tend to be in the same area means that buyLOca will also save last minute gift buyers (i.e. all of us) the growing expense of 1-,2- or even 5-day shipping typical of last minute online purchases.

In summary, buyLOca helps--at the scale of the individual online and offline shopper--to make the connections between producers and consumers that the best Buy Local networks seek to make, and SHIFTS a portion of day-to-day shopping--starting with gift buying--back to the local businesses that form the heart and soul of our local communities (and--in striking contrast to the policies of national chains--the supporters of our local Little League teams and High School Musicals:).

Although buyLOca begins as an app that makes gift giving easier, more accurate and more meaningful, its MISSION is to revolutionize local ecommerce and help sustain local economies by: 1) cataloging and uploading local goods and services "one wish list at a time;" 2) encouraging local businesses to upload more of their local goods and services to their free pages, and; 3) laying the foundation for a mobile and web channel that allows a million-plus resource-challenged local businesses to extend the geographic and seasonal markets for their goods and services to a global online and mobile audience.

BuyLOca is looking for communities that would like to help us beta test the service, and for angel investors who would like to be a part of the team working toward a 2010 holiday season launch. Please call Jamie Akers at 413-250-8800 if you wish to help with either. Thank you for your time, and remember, we are in beta, so we invite you to help us make buyLOca better with your suggestions in the comments section.

The following diagrams--though one generation old--give the general idea for how the mobile and web app will work.

Storyboards and Startups: How Sketching Can Help Entrepreneurs, Angels And VCs With Everything From Elevator Pitches To User Experience Design

(Note: Welcome to the startup and angel investor community on LinkedIn. Please visit the portfolio portion of this site to see other examples of architectural--building, software or otherwise--visualization techniques.)

Entrepreneurs have a lot on their plates--finding pain points to solve, raising funds, choosing between iPhone, Android, and now iPad platforms, cutting through crowded marketplace noise, etc. Great ideas must elegantly solve pain while being fun to use, hyper-efficient to navigate and joyous to spread. UX (user experience) designers know they're going to lose half of their audience with every click, so making mobile and web apps simple, stunning and "sticky" is job one.

UX design is central to any web 2.0 start up conversation. There are many wireframe programs available to help, but the medium is the message, and these aides tend to make the apps they help create look the same. Why not follow the lead of movie directors and entertainment designers and use storyboards to nucleate your vision, get team members on the same page, and communicate to investors in a striking and company-differentiating way?

Taking the metaphor a bit further, UX design is a lot like set design (see samples included) only your stage is held in the palm of your hand (on your mobile device). Providing examples of storyboarding will be a recurring theme in this blog, beginning with some in-progress and very rough UX sketches for a social mobile start up being developed right here in western Massachusetts. (Yes, western Massachusetts. Afterall, we were home to Bo Peabody and Matt Harris's Tripod, so we can certainly do it again.) These begin as rough pencil sketches made in real-time working with developers around a table, and evolve after many iterations into publishable memes that tell your story. I can't tell you much about the startup idea involved here, but the clever ones among you may figure it out.

That's it for the UX stuff I can show on this project. Below are a sampling of storyboards made in collaboration with famed set designer/architect David Rockwell, and several other firms doing work in the entertainment industry.

The moment of Frank's Entry in the staged production of Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Studies for the "reinvention" of the aging Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas.

Thanks for coming, and please stay tuned for more on how storyboarding can help your startup (or startups if you're an angel investor) focus team effort and get to launch faster.

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David Rockwell, The 2010 Oscars Set Design, Architectural Rendering & 3D Visualization

Is it me, or was the set design the star of the 2010 Oscars ceremony last night? I couldn't get over the coordination between the elegance and beauty of the set as a whole, and the way the individual pieces--constantly rotating in and out to deliver presenters and video walls--never overpowered the people on stage. If you have any idea how much work that takes, than you are as amazed as I am at how flawlessly coordinated were the sets, the people, the production and the camera angles designed to take advantage of it all. It really was a tour de force.

I can't take any credit for helping with last night's design beyond the work we did last year (see below) when David Rockwell first did the design, and the contribution of some early sketches this year used to establish a rough direction, but a number of people behind the scenes do deseve credit beyond what the public is normally aware of. I don't think it's taking anything away from David Rockwell to say that my friend Barry Richards--David's number one collaborator on sets, and design director of one of David's coolest studios (also doing restaurants, high-end apartments, etc.)--was instrumental in realizing last night's miracle. Here are some sketches for the Oscars and for Broadway musicals that David and Barry have asked me to do over the years. Again, congratulations to both and to Rockwellgroup in general for what I truly believe was a masterpiece of set design and set movement.