(Here Comes) The Reuben Kincaid!

So sometime back in the previous millennium a bunch of us technical-publishing bohemians were sitting around wasting time as we were wont to do, coming up with band names, which reminds me of xian’s law: “There are more good band names than there are good bands.”

One of the ones that I suggested that our gang really liked was The Reuben Kincaid (we weren’t sure how to spell it though). It has that ’70s pop-culture thing and of course the classic ’60s-era “The” prefix (as in “The Pink Floyd”). Then time passed and we drifted around.

Five or so years ago when I started teaching myself ukulele and posting my baby steps on my blog, I decided that I was going to form a “virtual band” out of myself and anyone I could get to overdub on my tracks. I called that band The Reuben Kincaid.

More time passed and I renamed it Layers of Meta, which is its name today. I also play in a duo with my brother Arthur (aka “xourmas”) as The Power & Mighty.

But when myself and Cecil Vortex and so-called Bill and “the B is silent” Ryan got together last fall, at first to work on our still-very-underground radio show, Podcast Gold, we sort of evolved into a quartet, with Cecil on guitar, songwriting, arrangement, keyboards, production, and general fabulousness, Bill on bass, Ryan on bongoes (and sound recording-ism), and myself on ukulele.

And now, at last, the Reuben Kincaid has its first single! Enjoy…

play “Single-Cell Critter”

a 22-pen signature

Barack Obama signed the Affordable Healthcare Act with 22 pens (check out the “O”), to create souvenirs for instrumental legislators and supporters.

Designing for play at Ignite Bay Area

Just got sent a link to all the videos from Ignite Bay Area last month.

Here’s my “Designing for Play” talk, a topic I’ll be exploring in greater depth at Web Visions, the Web 2.0 Expo, and Web Directions @media later this year:

There’ll be another Ignite in May coinciding with the Web 2.0 Expo, so get your submission in now.

The vision thing in Portland

I’m pretty excited to be heading up to Portland for the first time to speak at Web Visions for the first time in May. Erin Malone and I will be doing our Designing Social Interfaces workshop (which includes learning and playing the Social Mania game), and I’ll be giving a talk on the subject of Designing for Play.

Here’s a little promo to whet your appetite:

…and even if the “visionary” thing is just a play on the name of the conference, well flattery will get you everywhere or at least it will get me to embed your video in my blog.

See me and other "web app masters" in San Diego next week

Time is fast running out to sign up for the first stop on the UIE Web App Masters Tour in San Diego on March 23 and 24 next week.

I have to admit I love seeing stuff like this in my inbox:

Oh, and if you’ve scrolled down this far, you can get a $300 discount for San Diego using the promo code CRUMLISH.

See you there?

Four-alarm pentatonic ukulele chili

My #uke4geeks talk at South By was so hot it set off a false alarm. We persevered, and prevailed, a small band of die-hards, many of whom brought their own axes (next time we set it up as a hootenanny?), and here are the slides I spoke to. I’m already revising them based on flow and keeping remembering other things I meant to say:

View more presentations from Christian Crumlish.

via Ukulele For Geeks: Secrets of the Pentatonic Scales (sxsw 2010).

Tags as collecting behavior

When I first started curating the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library, I put “tags” near the top of my list of user interaction patterns to investigate. By that time, Yahoo! had already acquired several pioneers in the tagging realm, Flickr and Delicious, and there were some subtle distinctions in how they implemented the experience.

We got down in the weeds on these and did a lot of research, ultimately settled on offering high-level guidance, and finished the patterns in the course of writing the social patterns book, where we filed tagging under the group of patterns known as Collecting, under Social Objects.

Tagging and other forms of collecting are also an example of social design patterns that mimic game dynamics. Collecting objects is a core “easy fun” activity in many games, and similarly these extremely lightweight social interactions around gathering or tagging objects enable a form of self-interested behavior that creates aggregate value and potentially richer forms of engagement.

Our three new tagging patterns are Tag an Object, Find with Tags, and the somewhat controversial Tag Cloud, which some people view as an “anti-pattern.” Drop by, check them out, and let us know if we can make them any better.

Reposted from Patterns: Tag Collection (Yahoo! Developer Network Blog).

Coming this Friday to SXSW: "Ukulele for Geeks: Secrets of the Pentatonic Scales"

“At first glance the fretboard of a ukulele (or guitar) looks incomprehensible, but with the magic of pentatonic scales – ancient, nearly universal 5-note patterns, you can “crack the code” and hack the fretboard and start jamming along with your favorite tunes or musician friends in no time.

“You don’t need to know the names of the notes or what key a song is. Just find the “little dippers” and start messing around with patterns. I’ll explain the concepts and demonstrate the techniques, which are completely self taught.”

That’s the official blurb for my South by Southwest talk at 5:00 PM friday in room 18ABCD (uh oh, that sounds big), Ukulele for Geeks: Secrets of the Pentatonic Scales.

This is based on the Ignite talk I did in Sydney and the Pecha Kucha I did in Tokyo, but this is the expanded 45-minute version of the talk, so I don’t have to rush through all the little concepts and shapes. I think it will be a blast.

See you there?

New navbar patterns in the Yahoo! library

Over the past few months I conducted an audit of the patterns in Yahoo!’s internal design pattern library, with an eye toward publishing as many of them as possible in the open library at YDN. Why? Well, for one thing, to get more eyeballs on them, to gather more feedback and keep improving the patterns. Also, since very few patterns in the library contain Yahoo!-specific information, and an alternative process is now in place for vetting requirements specific to the Yahoo! network and brand components, the design pattern collection can now more easily focus on (relatively) universal design principles for web implementations.

I completed the audit before the end of last year and expect to release new patterns in batches over the next few months. Some patterns will be mature and provide a solid foundation for site design. A few will be published as beta patterns which may undergo significant changes in subsequent updates based on feedback received. Regardless of their status, we hope you’ll get involved and review and provide feedback on the patterns provided.

The first batch of patterns to come out from the audit relates to navigation bars. There are three patterns so far in this grouping: Top Navigation, Left Navigation, and Progress Bar. One legitimate question is whether top and left nav bars are still the best or most current way to navigate a site and find content? We still find many examples of them across the web and in use at Yahoo! so for now I’ll say yes, but it’s worth thinking about.

Wherever possible I try to link patterns back to the YUI Library and, where appropriate, to other code and implementation solutions. YUI has great support for navbars and menu examples. Probably the best place to start is the menu widget.

One interesting nomenclature issue we studied was the distinction between a stepwise progress indicator (which is what the pattern is about) and a continuous progress bar (for which there’s a great YUI example). These two things are often referred to with similar names, but perform different functions. Suggestions for more appropriate terminology are welcome.

Please check out these new patterns and let us know what you think!

Reposted from Three new navigation design patterns » Yahoo! User Interface Blog (YUIBlog).