Today’s blog blitz came as a surprise to me as I have not even completed the Harlequin Project yet, but it’s all over the news already. I do see the appeal of working with dual screens, and the potential UIs that can be productive and futuristic, though I didn’t realize the urge is this great.  As a UX designer, I’m still trying to sort this out.

Microsoft nailed the idea with Courier, and I hope they do come out with something soon, or people like me or other companies will start ‘borrowing’ it for their own.

As a record for myself, here’s a list of blogs that mentioned the project:

• Engadget: Modder creates dual-screen Courier from Dell Mini 9, calls it Harlequin, Joker unavailable for comment – I will definitely look for Joker in my next update. Again, thanks Mr. Tim Robbins for the post!
• Gizmodo: DIY Courier Is Both Sad and Ingenious (10000 views, great! And thanks to commenters defending for Giz’s unnecessary harshness. Also on Reddit.) – Giz, I’m very happy and Ima let you finish, but Engadget is
• Liliputing: DIY Courier tablet consists of Dell Mini 9 + 2 touchscreens
• Thanks to Netbooked for unearthing the news, and Slashgear for spreading it!
• Also on: New Netbook Reviews, Slashgear, GottabeMobile, EEEPC – Blog, Ubergizmo, Mobile Computer Magazine (UK), Netbook Choice, Gadget Venue and Génération Tactile (France).

I had been working hard on the House of Yes Christmas Spectacular for the past few weeks, so I haven’t worked much on the tablet, except I took apart everything even more. It’s time to go back to the lab more!

Thanks a lot again, Internet!

On another note, I just won a Woot! Bag of Crap.

Sorry for the lack of updates last month. I had been sick for a month in May due to some deadly allergies, as well as breathing the construction dust from my new apartment (and as well as various turbulent personal matters). That means I have quite a big list of blogs I have to catch up writing!

For most geeks, today is the Firefox Download Day. However, what’s more exciting to me is the release of GreaseMonkey 0.8 last week. Besides a great slew of fixes and new functions, it also revealed a new logo I updated for the GreaseMonkey dev crew a while ago.

The story began with a emoticon pack I did for Trillian back in 2001. As Trillian became popular, quite a few people had fallen in love with its emoticons, due to its vast selection and simplistic design. The emoticons were later ported to Trillian fan sites in GIF format, and of course, later leaked to the whole Internet (something you can never stop).

Eventually, the main developer of GreaseMonkey Aaron Boodman searched on Google for a monkey image, and some monkey.gif came up. Perhaps the square-eyed Trillian monkey were cute/decent/handsome enough, it begged for adoption and ended up in the early builds of GreaseMonkey.

It went full circle when I downloaded my copy of Firefox 1.5 and a friend pointed out the use of the monkey. I’m rather surprised and pleased that the emoticons had found an unlikely home, as it would be usually kidnapped by some Trillian instant messenger clones! I wrote an email to Aaron, and got a reply a while after.

The new logo is a visual update of the old happy and smug monkey… :] I attempted to keep the essence of the smile and updated it with better drawing techniques. 16×16 is a particularly difficult size, as I cannot include too many visual information – It has to be simple, clean and crisp.

The large version references the Firefox logo and Aaron’s comment on how he thought the original monkey is Donkey Kong. I expanded on these ideas and make a full logo out of it, so it looks like the ones from Firefox or Thunderbird. While Firefox ‘ruled’ the web by encircling the globe, and Thunderbird delivered a email on its beak, GreaseMonkey changed the web by swinging around and greasing up the Internet’s series of tubes (no pun intended!).

So that was the short story. I hope you like it, and like the logo as well! (If you don’t, I’m sure some Stylish scripts can fix it for you… hahaha) Either way, enjoy and go download it now!

The song and music video, conceived by my talented activist great friend Miss Lauren Larken, criticizes the veil between a person being truly personal and a technical support acting personal for your services, while suggests that a corporate love is perhaps possible as well as we break our preconceptions and let our imagination go wild.

The kids staged a few improv dances inside and outside Apple Stores around Manhattan a couple weeks ago. I was in the dance, too, making fun of the Apple products that I love and hate, while handing out heart-shaped balloons that resemble their oh-so-glorious logo.

The video was released on Valentines’ Day, and a few performances followed.

On the back side of the project, I also designed the animation for the opening and the karaoke session. Everything was done in Adobe AfterEffects and Illustrator, the same tool I used for the over-the-top Trillian Astra preview movie. (Watch it over and over again while it’s still up!)

Faking the space with some simple polar distortion. Well, not so good.

Simple 3D layers and motion paths were used, plus a few custom space-y background effects inspired by tutorials of Andrew Kramer. His tutorials are intuitive and helpful, and I would recommend everyone to watch them if you are interested in animation effects more advanced than Flash.

“Subtle arrogance” through font weight: Notice how there is hardly a U, there is only i.

Imitating Apple is always educational, as you learn how to restrain yourself from using way to many effects while giving the products a nice professional finish. Just having a few pixels or centimeters off will ruin your composition, while picking the wrong highlights and shadows will end up looking like a fake. However, make sure you don’t end up ripping off the whole design!