This project has been developed with Morgan Legal (Flash, Pole Nord Studio) and Sebastien Atoch (Drupal, Montreal QC).

Website is live here : www.lo-mob.com

Headquarters are here : www.lo-mob.com/site

Our first app runs on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It’s called Lo-Mob. It has ranked 3 in the top Photography apps on the US Store and we were featured as number one in What’s Hot USA for two consecutive weeks.

You can check the application on the iTunes AppStore here.

Want a peak at what the application results are? Check the Flickr Pool, thouthands of pics have been posted there.

• Much more Lo-Mob picture here.

WordPress is amazing, still. Retrieving of the old content, including categories, tags and comments, was flawless. Layout setup has been a piece of cake. Akismet setup and basic needed plugins, installed in a snap. And I finally got to test my Typekit demo account on this project, so the blog displays some @font-face nice fonts from Typekit without the need of Cufont or Fl-/Sifr.

And voilà! A web project that comes with already made quality content is way more motivatiing than having to do the same with nothing, placeholders or latin crap… if clients were aware of the much better quality they would obtain by crating real content, massive content by advance, as we request, they won’t hesitate to do so, never… and actually, it’s never the case.

Thanks to Santu for (always) helping me on managing domains, subdomains and users on my server, and for not yelling at me when I cry for help after missing not less than a digit in the DNS setup (lame, shame).

• Watch the final billboards on 118 218 Dailymotion page

• Check the site here : ecologieurbaine.net

1. Le Bistrot du Peintre – XIth district – typical parisian bistrot, moderate prices, not so far from Bastille.
2. Racine – not a lot of room, not so cheap but not that bad, a-ma-zing dishes, you HAVE TO try the porc lard, ask for it. Also the pork cheek is a revelation.
3. Polidor is a suggestion from Kevin W.
4. Le Train Bleu – amazing high ceiling old decoration classy restaurant of the Gare de Lyon train station. They serve their veal speciality for 30 years. don’t miss super chocolate generous Profiterolles au chocolat. Not so moderate price but not that mush though
5. Le timbre – Kevin W. suggestion, his favorite restaurant
6. Chartier – cheap, kind of – super experience of typical parisian brasserie where the rudeness of the waiters is part of the experience as they are some sort of shareholders of the restaurant. Don’t be afraid of queing up outside, you have to. Good and simple food. Never tried porc feet? It’s the place to give it a shot. On the Grands Boulevards not so far from Republique
7. Les Itinéraires – 34 euros menu, very nice
8. La biche au bois – Pretty not expensive very good game food
9. Les marcheurs de la planete – bastille (salade/cheese/coldcuts/wine), affordable depending on wine
10. Les Galopins – Bastille district
11. La fee verte – The green fairy, Bastille District
12. Café des anges - super afordable
13. Cyclo – Bastille district, vietnamese yummy
14. Nakagawa – great japanese restaurant, XXth district

I hope this is going to lead you to a great parisian culinary experience. Please tell me afterwards.

Follow me on twitter @vinchubang.

Original post : http://www.jolicloud.com/blog/2009/06/26/introducing-the-jolicloud-alpha-2-release/

Tutorial author : http://hthetiot.blogspot.com/

1. Run the command to create a bootable VDI image (without quotes): “VBoxManage convertfromraw jolicloud-robby-alpha2-live.img jolicloud-robby-alpha2-live.vdi”
2. Run the command to create a new empty VDI image where to install the image with 4GB space: “VBoxManage createhd -filename jolicloud-robby.vdi -size 4000″
   Note: you can use -register option at the end of this command or register this VDI file from the VirtualBox later.
3. Create a new VM using the jolicloud-robby-alpha2-live.vdi (use the existing vdi option)
4. Attach the jolicloud-robby.vdi as a Primary Slave
5. Start the VM (boot)
6. Install

And I’m adding a last step to the list : Once the installation finished, close the VM and edit it, remove the primary Master (the vdi file) and set the 4GB primary slave partition to primary master, launch the VM again, and voilà!

Links :

• Virtual Box
• Jolicloud

EDIT August 11th 2009

Thanks all for feedback. I now run Jolicloud on a Lenovo s10 and share experience on Twitter. Follow @vinchubang to keep track of it. I do think that Jolicloud is making a point. I’ve been looking for such a simple system for ages.  My goal was to fing a simple system for my mother to use : she’s 70 and never used a modern computer and Internet. She’s going to love it, OSX has been a litle too complex for her.

What makes Jolicloud a good OS :

• Easy install (for an Alpha)
• Easy update
• The appstore-like application panel in the Cloud area (bye bye the ‘packet’ idea and crazy words like ‘Synaptic’)
• Easy update (no really!)

So I thought it would be great, and it would be easy to use and understand. It took some long months, even years, for the service to become popular and for platforms, CMS and framework to propose its implementation. Today, it’s almost everywhere. But in most cases, it’s not easy to use, because of bad practices that come with it.

Best example of bad practice

Very often found : a single field asking you to log in with OpenID.

The previous example comes from http://paris2009.drupalcon.org . It’s a Drupal website, and you’re ending up with this situation when you just activate the OpenID module on a Drupal website. It’s going to work for users who already know more than a bit about OpenID, but not for new users. Even if you click on the « What’s OpenID » link you’re not going to be told what you’re supposed to type in the field. Morevover, if you finally get what to type, you’ll be ask just after to create a full new account, yes, with a login, a password and various informations the site requires. Ok for the informations, but what’s for the login and password? Of course your account appears to be linked with your OpenID, but I really don’t see the point here. Mostly useless.

So what is a good practice for OpenID?

Check below how StackOverflow propose you to log in using OpenID:

That’s it, just click on one of the services you belong to, and you’ll be loogged into the site with a new account. Nothing to fill, nothing to tell. Click it. One told me that StackOverflow is known for this kind of OpenID good practice, so don’t hesitate, copy them! You want OpenID on your site? Do it the right way and propose these services buttons. If you don’t, don’t bother implement the single field, I bet that almost no one is going to use it.

A bit more about UI, User experience and openID

Notice how StackOverflow don’t propose you to create and account without using OpenID. They made their choice: no user account beside OpenID. Usually, when you try to login into a site, you’re getting prompted to enter your login/password or to create an account. Then if you decide to create one, you’re proposed to do it within the site’s user system, and a link invites you to log with OpenID. So in the best case scenario you’re two or three clics away to start registering. Why so much? OpenID option should be there right away, and even if it’s not the only way to login, it should be proposed alongside of the normal registering form, not in a different page. Remember that we don’t want interactions. We want to minimise our interaction. (citation got from a tweet of Leisa Reitchelt at UxLondon 06/09)

• Paris2009.drupalcon.org
• stackoverflow
• drupal
• opendID on wikipedia
• List of OpenID provider

There’s also a twitter account to follow and a flickr group to post contributions.

Internet Meme Timeline
Spawned: 4chan
Developed: 4chan
Murdered: 4chan
Revived: Reddit
Complained about: Reddit
Noticed: Digg
Matured: Reddit
Subpage frontpaged: Digg
Made annoying: Reddit
Promptly dismissed: Somethingawful
Front Paged: Digg
Blood squeezed from the stone: www.icanhazphilosoraptor.com
Implemented into unfunny headline: Fark
Made into painful flash video: YTMND
Unfunny headline turned into meme: Fark
Automatically downmodded/buried: Reddit and Digg
Showed up at one point but no one cares because they’re too busy Twittering about their recent bowel movement: Stumbleupon
Stolen and used for profit: Ebaumsworld
Extensive advice about how meme can improve your blog: Delicio.us
Revived and considered mildly entertaining: Somethingawful
LOLcats noticed: Yahoo
Mentioned in magazine under the « we’re hip with the kids » section: Time, Newsweek, etc.
Forgotten: Everyone except Somethingawful
Revived months later to piss off everyone: 4chan

• Meme : definition on Wikipedia
• The source of the post on Reddit
• Reddit.com
• 4chan.com
• Digg.com
• Stumbleupon
• Somethingawful
• Ebaumsworld.com
• Drew Curtis’s Fark
• You’re the man now dog

(You may ask yourself sometimes where all the internet crap you’re being forwarded to comes from… Good chances it comes from one of the sites listed above.)

Original artistic direction has been made by french agency Uzik. I’ve been designing screens since. Here is a selection of my work :

(featured pictures from my Flickr Album : Olympia + Heretik + le cabaret des filles des joies de Juliette Dragon)

They wanted to keep the look of the paper catalog for their online website, so I came up with this grid, presenting a lot of products on the same page, with a lot of pictures straight at the first level.

What kills me in Drupal is the basic layout for fieldsets elements, and especially that the title label is printed over the top border of the fieldset, and that I NEVER find where to cancel this property.

Zen theme fieldsets

Garland theme fieldset

Why would you place a label on top of a border? Is this because it has been the case in any Windows dialg since Windows 3.x? That’s my only explanation. But where it kind of works for dialog zones in the MFC (Microsoft Foundation CLass, gathering any UI element of MS Windows), it does not for and online UI, I think.

So I’ve been trying to style these elements in a more simple way, for the page to gain in readability: I want the user to clearly distinguish collapsed and not collapsed fieldsets on a page.
I could’nt find a way to do this properly with the already printed code, wich look like this:

Original fieldset code in Drupal

So I ask developpers to print me an outer element to play with:

Modified fieldset code in Drupal, with an outer element

Then, it’s much more evident to style the whole element. Here is what I obtain as a basis, with a plain background color and a revised and better balanced arrow icon:

Redesigned fieldset in Drupal, styling only the outer element

Isn’t it better ? What is cool with these changes is that they affect the entire site, back-office and online backoffice zones.

Finally, here the CSS code I made for these changes :

fieldset
{
    padding:0 10px 10px 10px;
    color:#4A4A4A;
    border:none;
}

.fieldset-outer {
    background:#f0f0e6;
    border:1px solid #BBBBBB;
    overflow:visible;
    margin-bottom:10px;
    margin-top:10px;
    clear:both;
}

• The zen theme
• Drupal.org

Edit : 2009 Sept, 25th

You’ve been asking for some more technical details about the developer side of the modification. Pierre Cotinière from OWS gave me thise details :

Orininal changes were made in Drupal 5. But this mod will work in Drupal 6 and 7. You have to edit the template.php file. Details here : http://api.drupal.org/api/function/theme_fieldset/6

Here is our code :

function zen_fieldset($element) {
 if (!empty($element['#collapsible'])) {
 drupal_add_js('misc/collapse.js');
 if (!isset($element['#attributes']['class'])) {
 $element['#attributes']['class'] = '';
 }
 $element['#attributes']['class'] .= ' collapsible';
 if (!empty($element['#collapsed'])) {
 $element['#attributes']['class'] .= ' collapsed';
 }
 }
 return '<div class=\'fieldset-outer\'><fieldset'. drupal_attributes($element['#attributes']) .'>'. ($element['#title'] ? '<legend>'. $element['#title'] .'</legend>' : '') . (isset($element['#description']) && $element['#description'] ? '<div>'. $element['#description'] .'</div>' : '') . (!empty($element['#children']) ? $element['#children'] : '') . (isset($element['#value']) ? $element['#value'] : '') ."</fieldset></div>\n";
}

Hope it helps

I can’t figure how long it takes to endup with such an animation…

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

I also love this one, filmed by charlywashere for Youtube :

• More videos from Blu on Vimeo
• Blu’s home on blublu.org

UPDATE : a very recent flick appeared this morning on Le Collagiste blog, a time lapse giant painting in Berlin. I’m still a fan.

Only one game lost so far this season for the Giants. Now everyone dreams about a possible NY Giants vs NY Jets for the Superball final!

This could be the best photo news for OS X since… since never, as iPhoto never tried to correct itself from the huge interface and philosophy mistakes. If this was true, it could make me seriously reconsider using Picasa Web Albums again… reconsider only, it will need really strong enhancements to make me leave Flickr and the already fast-growing social network I’m building on it.

Could could could… Won’t talk about it again till it’s real NEWS!

• Appleinsider
• Picasa
• Picasa Web Albums
• iPhoto

« One day, or another… »

Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

The North Wind Blew South from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Very inspiring! If you still think these are models animation, please check this post for an explanation.