Category: Web Design

^ www.zopim.com

I tried to get as many people i knew to go to for Popout 07 and managed to get Ken and Mike to come along. I’m glad we went as we definitely learned a few things that night.

I was a bit late, but managed to still get a sit and to my surprise i sat beside Claudia (her post about popout here) whom i knew from the net.

There were few presentations and i particularly liked www.zopim.com and Bookjetty.

Zopim’s idea is very simple and their implementation is also simple and elegant. I’ve cut and paste below their about us page, better let them explain whats its all about.

What is ZopIM?
ZopIM is the next generation sales Instant Messaging platform that will be FREE and EASILY DEPLOYED on any website.

Why is ZopIM free? You kidding?
No, we are not kidding. For too long Enterprise-level Instant Messaging tools have been cost-prohibitive for the Joe/Jane on the street and Consumer-level IM services are not equipped for sales.

Who needs ZopIM?
Anyone & everyone who sells their products or services over the internet. ZopIM helps you keep track of leads, provide customer support and INCREASE SALES CONVERSION without paying a dime/cent/yen/Euro/yuan/rupiah (you get the idea).

If you need to provide your clients online chat support, look no further.

^ Bookjetty

BookJetty is by the talented and humble Herryanta Siatona. His idea is also very simple, take Amazon’s book listing, put it beside your fave library’s listings and you are off to a book fest. Buy or loan, its totally up to you.

BookJetty is user-friendly book cataloging system to keep track of the books you have read, currently reading or want to read. You can tag, rate and review your books, show your book list on your blog, share your catalog and meet friends.

You can also check your books availability in your local libraries seamlessly. It currently integrates with about 300 libraries worldwide. So you can borrow from the libraries to save money, or buy from Amazon.com if you feel like it. You no longer have to manually swap between the Amazon.com and the library catalog.

Gen Kanai from Mozilla then made the final presentation. Other then a sneak peek of features in the next version of Firefox, he also shared with all abit of what Firefox is about and commented on each of the presentations of the night.

It was a good night and after that went with Mike and his friend Niel for a simple subway dinner while sitting outside City Hall MRT.

I wonder when is the next web related event like this. Looking at people excelling in their field really motivates me to want to do good work.

Was on the beach with Dezzo and family on saturday and like a dedicated Architect, Dezzo introduced me to Monocle, yes at the beach.

Launched in February 2007, Monocle is a global briefing covering international affairs, business, culture and design. Headquartered in London with bureaux in Tokyo, Sydney, Zürich and New York, Monocle appears 10 times a year in print and is updated constantly at monocle.com.

When i started browsing thru it, i immediately fell in love with its content and also its layout. Not only was content presented neatly, it felt like every page is laid out with good composition in mind. You can feel how content flows and you will not be distracted with illogical sequencing.

The use of space, the use of colours, the use of typography, the use of visual balance. Its hard to explain, you just got to see it for yourself.

After going thru every page and reading several articles, i made a point to visit its website when i got home and i’m glad the consistency carried thru even online.

www.monocle.com

Why white base magazine and black background for its website? If the magazine is white base (for obvious less ink = cheaper to print reasons… i think…) why not have the website white background? Look at Mocoloco, Dexigner, Design Addict, iF or even the very popular Apple.com, they all are designery-ish and they all use white background.

I gave it a bit of thought and realise even blogging with my WordPress in white background is actually quite painful for my eyes. I think reading online is actually more comfortable when the website’s background colour is black. And if the text is full white, the contrast might be a bit harsh on the eyes, hence a shade of grey would fit in just nice. Its not surprising that Monocle does just that.

THIS is how a good website should be done. Maybe its just my preference, but i think websites are about its content and the design should not distract users, instead the design should facilitate users in accessing content.

Almost every other website out there is just trying to get attention by having a fancy design or by providing interesting content via aggregating other website’s original content. I’m glad Monocle not only have good content in print, but also good content for its online audience.

And yes i’ve subscribed to its RSS and i plan to redesign my website.

Its a tough job to design for designers and its even tougher when a design firm is to design for a design festival.

Read more on marketing-interactive.com.

I hope this year’s Singapore Design Festival will be a blast. I’ll definitely cover it more on my blog when i know more about it.