You’ve probably heard by now, Firefox 1.5 is out. This is the first time i’ve seen icons explaining how to install the application on a mac, instead of the “Drag to your applications folder” text you usually see, they went the international route - visually showing dragging the icon to the applications folder. Great job Firefox team!

For a limited time I’m hosting the videos from the 11/10/05 Refresh Dallas meeting.

• View Stephen Anderson’s presentation.
• View Garrett Dimon’s presentation.

Read more about the Refresh Dallas meeting on Garrett’s blog as well as on Stephen’s blog.

I went to Richland College last week to speak to a portfolio class about some things i’ve learned in the past 5+ years in the design field. Titled “10 things I wish they told me” (pdf) I went over things that I noticed students “missing” when I was in school.

One new slide i added (i also gave this talk at ATI earlier this year) was a model I call the “Designer Career Pyramid” (pdf). I wanted to show what I think is a somewhat typical growth/career chart was for a designer.

Starting at the bottom, in school you learn may different types of design - from video to print. As you move “up” the pyramid you start to narrow your skills to a particular design area that interests you. As you continue “up” you move from doing these things to thinking and directing these things, until at the “top” you become a expert at whichever part of the design field you’ve decide you enjoy most (hopefully!). I also added a pay scale to this model, more for the students, as I think college kids really want to know what they can make someday - these numbers were not really researched, but I think it’s possible.

I’ve had this idea in my head for awhile, but have never put it down on paper before. Download the Designer Career Pyramid and see for yourself.

A friend of mine wanted me to plug a local googlemaps mash-up called Friday Night Hangout.

This site was developed by the UTA Libraries: GIS Program to demonstrate the capabilities of geographic information systems, the Google Maps API, and the power of combining the two.

This application demonstrates the integration of geographic information systems analysis with the Google Maps API. Answer all of the following 7 questions and the geoprocessor will calculate the best location in Tarrant County, TX for you to hang out. All user selections are stored, so who knows…maybe someone else will be hanging out there with you…

I’m glad to see some interesting “web 2.0″ apps coming out of North Texas!

I’ve posted some photos I took at the Refresh Dallas meeting.

Great turnout - around 50-60 people!

Take a look and add a note or a comment if you see yourself!

Amazon has a new service called Amazon Mechanical Turk.

The Turk is a reference to a “mechanical chess-playing automaton” from 1769:

In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced. A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, Kempelen’s “Turk” was seated behind a cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. To persuade skeptical audiences, Kempelen would slide open the cabinet’s doors to reveal the intricate set of gears, cogs and springs that powered his invention. He convinced them that he had built a machine that made decisions using artificial intelligence. What they did not know was the secret behind the mechanical Turk: a chess master cleverly concealed inside.

There is a great book I read about The Turk awhile ago called (what else) “The Turk“.

To break down what Amazon’s new service is:

• Lets say you had 10,000 photographs and you needed only photographs with dogs
• There is no computer that can do this reliability - so you need real people
• You then write a program that displays the images and says “Is there a dog in this image” “Yes or No”
• Using the Amazon Turk API you then can release the program on the web and pay people .05 per image
• Amazon handles all the backend stuff and you get reliable results - real people looking at each image, telling you which images have dogs (and getting a small compensation for their trouble)

Very interesting, something to keep your eye on…

Getting ready to head on over for the Refresh Dallas meeting.

We’re finishing up printing, getting the equipment ready - and leaving Bright Corner shortly.

Hopefully we’ll have a pod cast, pics and more up tomorrow.

I came across this when signing up for a Remember the Milk account:

Things I like:

• Short and sweet.
• Check boxes that appear when you’ve filled out the field correctly.
• The “username” is available message.
• The “Which Looks Right” date for international localization.

It’s also a great to-do application, i’ve been using it for about three weeks now and so far it’s performed great! - now if I can just get everyone in the office to start using it…