Sarawak Tourism Board new interface

check out the new http://www.sarawaktourism.com Sarawak Tourism Board, the interface and useability is much more better then the old one.
They are using ColdFusion and Flash. I think is not done by local(Kuching) but maybe KL or Singapore team. Great Job!

TheLife.com.my

Check this out guys, http://www.thelife.com.my a web portal for local(Kuching). Is going to launch on 1 June 2006. Great to have such a website/portal for Kuching. Overall design is clean. Rich of content/information. Great job to those designer and technician.

front page screen capture of thelife.com.my

Feedsky Release New Version

Feedsky Release New Version

Feedsky(profile in here), China?s answer to Feedburner, just released its new version in weekend. As its founder, Lv Xinxin, said in our interview, the new version made significant change in back-end technology and platform and simplify the features to make the basic functions much more robust.

I tried its new version, and have to agree that it is much better than the previous one. The statistics of feed subscription finally works well. That?s great, since it is the most important function that users require.

This time it seems they are moving towards the right direction.

Screencasts

FeedSky

 

[via China Web2.0 Review]

Google Web Toolkit - rumored Morfik partnership

Google Web Toolkit - rumored Morfik partnership

Google has just released its Ajax toolkit, called Google Web Toolkit:

"Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don't speak browser quirks as a second language."

Also an interesting rumor is swirling around that Google either partnered with, or licensed technology from, WebOS company Morfik. Am digging to see what if any truth there is to this...

Update, May 18: Bret Taylor, Product Manager of Google Web Toolkit, has dispelled the rumor:

"Morfik seems like great technology, but Google Web Toolkit is in no way associated with Morfik or based on its technology. There have been some rumors circulating on this list that have been causing some confusion, and I wanted to clarify.
Thanks,
Bret Taylor Product Manager, Google Web Toolkit"

[via Read/WriteWeb]

Design Magazines Online

Design Magazines Online

As the barriers to Web publishing continue to diminish, more design-focused publications are springing up online. Here?s a list of what I?ve come across. Drop me a note if there?s any good ones I missed.

UXmatters
A nonprofit Web magazine that delivers compelling content about developing effective user experience (UX) strategies and designing digital-product user experiences that optimally serve people?s needs and satisfy their desires. [my bi-monthly column about Communication Design]

Boxes & Arrows
Devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of graphic design, interaction design and information architecture, large and small. [my articles on Boxes & Arrows]

Digital Web Magazine
An online magazine intended for professional web designers, web developers and information architects.

Design in Flight
An online magazine devoted to art and design, be it graphic design, web design, illustration or architecture.

PingMag
The Tokyo-based magazine about & Design and Making Things.

Design Interact
Directed toward information architects, designers and programmers, a combination of news and feature articles explore the creativity and technology necessary for the completion of successful interactive media projects. [my article on Design Interact]

UX Magazine
UX Magazine sets out to explore, promote & discuss the multiple facets of user experience one article at a time.

Creative Behavior
An online design magazine that provides design information for new media designers, graphic designers, creative people, and any of you who take a keen interest in the area of creative industry. [my article on Creative Behavior]

Clear: IID/AIGA Journal of Information Design
Information design makes complex information easier to understand and to use, and Clear is dedicated to informing, inspiring, and defining the rapidly growing discipline and its participants.

A List Apart
Explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on techniques and benefits of designing with web standards.

Vitamin
Designers, developers and entrepreneurs are energized, refueled and producing some mind-blowing projects. Vitamin is dedicated to that new web industry.

BusinessWeek Innovation & Design
Strategy, Creativity, and Research

Treehouse
A Web development magazine.

[via Functioning Form:Interface Design]

Google Web Toolkit: Ajax Apps from Java

Google Web Toolkit: Ajax Apps from Java

Google has released Google Web Toolkit (GWT), a code generation framework that lets you code Ajax apps in pure Java. It's not unlike Echo2, the open-source framework from NextApp. A compiler performs the Java-to-Javascript translation.

• Use your favorite Java IDE to write and debug an application in the Java language, using as many (or as few) GWT libraries as you find useful.
• Use GWT's Java-to-JavaScript compiler to distill your application into a set of JavaScript and HTML files that you can serve with any web server.
• Confirm that your application works in each browser that you want to support, which usually takes no additional work.

GWT offers tools for remoting as well as a range of widgets: hierachical trees, tab bars, menu bars, and modal dialog boxes. There's no mention of using these widgets standalone, but hopefully they can be used as pure Javascript widgets in much the same way as Scriptaculous can be used without Rails.

A widget like tree has methods to manipulate the structure (e.g. addItem()) and event handlers (e.g. addFocusListener). Here's how a tree is created:

public class TreeExample implements EntryPoint {

  public void onModuleLoad() {
    // Create a tree with a few items in it.
    TreeItem root = new TreeItem("root");
    root.addItem("item0");
    root.addItem("item1");
    root.addItem("item2");

    Tree t = new Tree();
    t.addItem(root);

    // Add it to the root panel.
    RootPanel.get().add(t);
  }
}
 

 

[via Ajaxian]

Google Notebook Launches: Ho-Hum

Google Notebook Launches: Ho-Hum

You no longer need to see the pre-release screenshots: Google Notebook is now live at google.com/notebook.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Google Notebook is a direct Del.icio.us competitor. You can bookmark content (a web page or a piece of content on a web page) either via normal Google search (click on the ?note this? link at the bottom of a search result), or on the open web with an IE or Firefox extension (highlight text, right click).

Once content has been bookmarked, you can add a note and categorize it. No tagging (and no multiple categories per item) are supported. However, I like the clean drag and drop Ajax interface for organizing bookmarks.

Multiple Notebooks can be created and any or all of them can be made public. There is a search function that can be used to search across your own Notebooks, or all public Notebooks.

But?

The lack of tagging is important: it is natural to be able to tag a piece of content to make searching easier in the future - its unclear why Google doesn?t support this proven model for describing bookmarks.

My final thought is this: Google Notebook will have some level of success just because it?s associated with Google, and built directly into search results. Like Aim Pages, I do not feel that it is a particularly inspired product, or one that I would give much of a chance if it didn?t have Google backing it up. Del.icio.us would have been a perfect acquisition for Google, right down to the user interface which is very Google-like. For whatever reason they let it go to Yahoo. I suspect that over time they?ll regret that decision.

I also wonder about Google?s dedication to its own projects. For example, what will be the fate of Google Bookmarks now that Google Notepad has launched? Google Labs is littered with half baked and half finished products. I see little or no product vision coming out of Google, sitting fat and arrogant on it its Adsense revenues.

Google, Google Notebook

 

[via TechCrunch]

Google Notebook Screen Shots

Google Notebook Screen Shots

A Google employee named Erica Joy has posted a number of screen shots of Google Notebook, which will launch next week at google.com/notebook.

Notebook looks like it is designed to be a flat out del.icio.us competitor, allowing you to gather content from around the web, add metadata like categories and, if you like, publish the information. More from Philip Lenssen.

Screen shots:

Google, Google Notebook

 

[Via TechCrunch]

7 Reasons Why Web Apps Fail

7 Reasons Why Web Apps Fail

Web applications are popping up faster and faster every day, and quite a few are using the power that Ajax offers to their advantage. They create sites with lofty ideas and ideas of the future that might need a little bit of grounding. Anyone that?s paying attention can see that there are just some practices that aren?t working, and are only leading to developers watching their applications flounder or fail. There?s theories all around about why this is happening, but one of my favorites so far is this list from Joshua Porter over on Bokardo.com.

His list, made up of seven different ideas, can be applied to just about any kind of web application out there, not just those using Ajax. For each idea, he talks briefly about what it means (not just for the developer, but for the users too) and ways that you can avoid falling into this pit.

He suggests the following:

• Focus on social instead of personal.
• They solve too many problems, or try to.
• They?re about making someone other than the user happy.
• They sell it the wrong way.
• Not in it for the long haul.
• They show too much of what?s going on, and get gamed.
• They don?t have an underlying business strategy of improving people?s lives.

I know I?ve been guilty of the second option, hacking away at my code with these grand ideas of making a full-featured site up from nothing. The only problem - all the features in the world won?t be used if there?s no one to use them. Thankfully, there seem to be a few movements in place (like some ideas from the 37 signals folks) to encourage people in the direction of Joshua?s tips - make is simple, make it work, and make it useful.

[via Ajaxian]

AjaxLaunch Readies their AjaxOS

AjaxLaunch Readies their AjaxOS

From the group that brought AjaxWite and AjaxSketch to the web, AjaxLaunch, comes a seak peak at their latest project - the AjaxOS, a complete Ajax-enabled operating system (based on Linspire).

In a few weeks we will be releasing the ajaxOS, a fully functional AJAX-aware operating system. The most exciting feature in ajaxOS is the ability to store to a remote server, with full access to file navigation on this remote server as well as your computer?s hard disk. As easily as you save and open documents on your local machine, you will be able to do so on our secure servers.

To see Michael Robertson?s presentation on AJAX software and a demo of ajaxOS, click here or visit the ajaxOS product site at www.michaelrobertson.com/ajaxos .

It looks interesting, but I?m not sure what kind of advantages there?d be with an OS that understands Ajax. There?s some teasers on the functionality that could have promise (ability to save files to a virtual storage, and be integrated directly with it) - only time will tell though. Keep an eye out for this release soon!

  

[via Ajaxian]