As I mentioned last week, I went to Microsoft’s UX dev camp. It was a great day where the presenters mixed theory with practical group exercises. A great way to learn, and a great way to spend a day. I worked together with a wonderful team from Stockholm firm Nansen.
The Nansen team were good enough to write a blog post (in Swedish) about our shared efforts, which can be found at their corporate blog. Give it a read!
I’ve always considered myself to be a water-person. I love swimming, I drink copious amounts of carbonated water, I prefer to play blue decks in Magic: The Gathering games. As a water-person, I have a completely rational fear of heights.
The Holiday Inn Shanghai Pudong Kangqiao in China have recently built a unique swimming pool, located 24 stories above street level. And when I say above, I mean directly above.
I’m thus torn between my wanting to swim in such a cool pool and my crippling fear of looking down once in the pool.
Thanks Geekologie! Source: CNN
My one constant liquid addiction in this world is easily recognized by anyone close to me. The effervescent enabler, my carbonated courtesan, sparkling water. With the exception of when I’m abroad, I’m often found with a glass of Ramlösa nearby. The brand Ramlösa has gone through several changes during the past years. Moving from a simpler, more refined look towards a more detailed, inviting look. Take their citrus flavored water for example. Five years ago, the citrus flavor was represented by a yellow circle (lemon) and a light green circle (lime) overlapping each other creating a venn-diagram.
Old design (left), new design (right).
The simplicity in the old design was striking. Representing the two well known fruits with just two circles and using white-space in order to create the illusion of a paper label. The new design is much richer in graphic presentation, but not as elaborate nor as clean.
I’m torn between these two designs, which in my mind kind of represents the two different styles in interface design today. Either you do a well thought out, clean and classic interface like Windows 8 and Windows Phone’s Metro. Or you do a rich interface with a lot of polish and graphical excellence like Apple or Samsung. If you just put in the time to make sure what you do is the best it can be, it will be beautiful.
I can’t decide right now which I like the most, just like I can’t decide which of the two interface-styles appeals the most to me. I know this though, I love Ramlösa, and I’ll continue to drink it as long as they keep making it.
I didn’t really notice that, yesterday, I reached 30 000 unique hits on my blog since it started up two years ago. By international blog standards this isn’t a lot, but I’m glad that my thoughts have reached so many minds. If this means that a thousand people have read thirty different posts I’ve written or that one dude is furiously changing IPs to reload my main page 30 000 times, I’m glad there’s interest in what I have to say.
Now for something completely different a bit more relevant. BUILD starts up tonight (CET) with a keynote address. Myself I’m very excited about this, though a bit sad not being able to attend. Catch the keynote at Channel9 tonight or find the videos at BuildWindows.com tomorrow.
Word is that we might see a CTP of Win8 as soon as tomorrow. Although I wouldn’t be able to install such early release code on my work machine, I have a netbook at home just begging to be reformatted 
Just saw an awesome preview of Sony’s latest tech. An awesome looking 3D visor which gives the viewer the experience of a 750” screen (omg!).
This is all I want for Christmas (plus a box of bluray 3D pornos).
Everyone I know either have a cold, a broken knee or something worse.
Here is a classic Swedish commercial dealing with when a man “Has a really bad cold”
Rough translation
You women talk about giving birth, but you should know how it feels when a man has a really BAD cold
Myself, I have an inner-ear thing going on which allows me to sport this fanciful/practical/very uncomfortable head bandage.
Until next time, stay healthy friends!
I depart for MIX11 one month from today. I had a great time last year and this year might just top that. Las Vegas was a fun town to visit and I got some great souvenirs from last year (dice and knowledge, not chlamydia).
I’m going to travel with Michael Björn and Johan Nedin from Avanade. I’ll try to start up my blogging again so I’m warmed up when the show hits. Actually bought a netbook in order to be able to blog properly during the show.
The annual Nordic Avanade conference was this weekend. I’m just returning from it with a few good takeaways. I’ve met a lot of interesting people, heard a few good ideas, a few bad ideas and eaten a LOT of salmon.
We stayed at a hotel/funland in Sarpsborg, Norway. After much struggling, I managed to pull my session on WP7 together fairly well. It generated the most interest of any session during the conference and we actually had to add chairs in the room to seat enough people. I also got to familiarize myself with the WP7 platform a little better. I like how I often find new little things which I enjoy. The demos I showed went very well and I hope I’ll be able to post at least a few of them online soon.
A final note on life in Norway, shit ain’t cheap. Everything was priced like in Sweden, only with the much stronger currency Norway uses. The cab prizes were truly Kafkaesque. Due to the lack of buses on the weekend, a few other people and I had to take a taxi to the airport (which was 90 kilometers / 60 miles) away. The final fare was over FIVE THOUSAND NOK! That’s almost a thousand US dollars for anyone who’s counting. Norway truly has taken the throne over Sweden and Japan as the most expensive country in the world.
Source: http://bigmacindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2010-Big-Mac-Index.jpg
I’m putting the final touches to my presentation on Saturday.
“… This is one of the benefits of a standardized platform in combination with cloud services. When we know what to expect from the platform, we can expect even more from the applications we create for it.”
I feel like a god damned poet.
The Devday in Stockholm yesterday was very nice. In this post, I discuss WP7 as a platform for enterprise applications, Pivot and Panorama controls and something called “Launchers and Choosers”. I very much appreciated another chance to ask questions and finally fulfill my dream to lick a Windows Phone 7.
Fragile Development 
