Checkout the website  my team and I have been spending the better part of the last 8 months building/iterating.  It lets you track down food & drink specials and deals near you.   It uses a massive database of deals and specials gathered from around the US by our content management team, as well as data from our partners (Groupon, Local Offer Network, Restaurant.com, Savored, and more).
Feedback is very welcome.

Some sample searches:

• Pizza!
• Italian Restaurants with a Deal on a Tuesday

The system lets you slice and dice our huge database however you’d like.  Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

www.specialsagent.com

One of the most original, clever and well-written games I’ve ever played was Valve’s original Portal, released as part of the Orange Box package back in late 2007.  Now I’ve just (well, a week or so ago) completed the sequel to that game, Portal 2 and it brought back the magic of the original added lots of fresh new ideas and managed to transcend the perfection that was the original game.

Do yourself a favor and get this game, it features tremendous writing and fantastic voice acting by some amazing performers (Stephen Merchant, J.K. Simmons).  I loved everything about this game and I think you will too, especially those soft-spoken death-dealing turrets.

Portal 2 and its predecessor’s gameplay is unique in that it is a comedic (albeit dark) puzzle-based adventure game from a first-person perspective.  The puzzles require creativity to solve, and the reward is some of the wittiest writing I’ve ever seen in a game.  It’ll get you hooked.

SXSWi is a great opportunity to reconnect with friends and colleagues, all working on bringing about the next big thing in interactive media (think Twitter — which took off after becoming a large hit at the 2007 conference).  The event is attended by passionate and creative folks from every corner of the world and is a fantastic opportunity to meet folks, talk shop, generate ideas, and have a good time.  I can’t wait.

I’ll be throwing posts up on this blog and in my twitter feed (@chris_Schnyder) throughout the conference, although I’m not the kind of dude that just posts a stream of minutiae (most of the time).  So you can count on any posts coming out of me during the next week having something relevant to say about the event.  If not, someone has hijacked my account… someone who has probably had too much to drink at one of the infamous SXSWi parties.

Mobile used to mean that the design as targeted at usage on a very small device — a mobile phone or PDA.  But with the exploding popularity of the iPad from Apple and the deluge of comparable (if not more powerful) tablets coming from other manufacturers (including Motorola’s Xoom, which I’m excited about), is the “mobile design” term still appropriate?  These devices are much larger, and from what I can gather are referred to as “mobile” purely because they are not “desktop”.

I, personally, think design differs based on both the screen real-estate of a target device as well as the typical method of input on that device (mouse, keyboard, scroll/thumb-wheel, or touch).  Perhaps the best method of identifying a design target is with a hyphenate representing the UI size and the input method — something like “mobile-scroll” or “tablet-touch” for example.

So, the reason for this post:  I’m interested in knowing what terminology other developers and designers are using when distinguishing between design targeted at smart phones and PDAs vs tablet devices vs typical web and desktop applications but considering the input methods as well.  Please discuss in comments.

The CR-48 is a test device developed by Google to pilot its new Chrome OS.

Google is readying the release of its own light-weight, heavily-cloud-reliant OS named “Chrome”.  One of the test platforms they are using for a pilot program is the CR-48, a small unbranded notebook built specifically for Google for this purpose.  Eager to get real-world feedback, Google has been very generous in opening up its pilot program to interested developers.  And I was fortunate enough to pick up one of the units while attending a Google Technology Users Group (GTUG) event at the Google offices in Chicago this past Monday night.  The event was organized by the founder of the Chicago GTUG, Uki D. Lucas.

The device, itself, is powered by an Atom N455 procesor with the minimal OS loading from a solid-state hard-drive.  All of the application and configuration data is stored in the cloud (at Google’s data center), with some data also being cached locally.  Users who already depend on hosted applications such as Gmail, Google Apps or Google Docs are already doing this.  For those users, using a Google Chrome notebook will be an easy transition from traditional desktop apps and operating systems.  For others, it may take a little time to let go of the traditional “desktop” that they’ve grown used to.  Google Chrome doesn’t have a “desktop” metaphor in its UI.  Instead, you are in a browser from the moment you boot the device – a process that is almost instantaneous, by-the-way.  The notebook supports quick connection to Wi-Fi networks, as well as the ability to connect to Verizon’s 3G network which allows 100MB of data transfer per month for free for two years.  Although I haven’t been able to get the 3G connection activated successfully, the device runs very well on my Wi-Fi network.

I’ve been using the device for a few days now and have several observations to share:

1. The battery life is amazing — most likely due to the efficient processor.  I’ve been using the notebook for days off-and-on without having it plugged in, and I’m still at 50% battery power remaining.
2. The speed at which the device boots and wakes up after having been suspended is amazingly fast.  So fast that it is as handy (if not more handy) than a smartphone when you need to jump on the internet to check/send email quickly.  To qualify this: I feel this way because I type VERY fast on a normal-sized physical keyboard and using a smartphone physical/virtual keyboard is time-consuming for me.
3. The minimal Chrome browser tabbed UI works well as a task-bar replacement, providing the standard functionality of a windows task-bar while still feeling familiar and natural to users of any modern browser with a tabbed interface.
4. If the consumer version of the device is inexpensive enough, I can see an argument for having several of these devices throughout a household… allowing you to avoid having to run to the home office and booting up a desktop or laptop computer just to pay a bill or check your email.  Flip the lid open on one of these notebooks and you’re in your email in under 2 seconds.

I’ll post follow-ups regarding the notebook an its value to app developers soon.

1. This thing is FAST! Seriously fast. My unscientific testing has it seeming to load/render pages faster than Chrome, which has been my go-to browser for over a year based purely on its speed and spartan user interface.
2. The UI has been completely overhauled and any non-critical control has been removed from the window. The UI has been streamlined drastically, and is VERY similar to that of Google Chrome now. So right out of the gate, the two features of Google Chrome that had it set to be my default browser are reproduced, if not out-done by IE9.
3. The impending production release of this product means that IE6, the browser that comes bundled with every PC sold in hell, is now 3 versions behind the current release. Any company’s IT organization, if it has an ounce of self-respect, will finally be compelled to upgrade their long-suffering employees to a browser that plays well with the latest technology.

It’s not all rosey in IE9-land, however. I’ve found that several sites that I use religiously will not function at all in the browser. Namely Hootsuite and Google Docs. The former will not allow me to login, and the latter will not allow me to create/edit a document (it LISTS them just fine).

So while I’m excited about the browser and will use it periodically, I can’t make it the default browser on my system just yet. I don’t know if there will be an updated Beta release prior to the launch of the final product, and I don’t know when the official product will be released (hopefully soon). But once it’s fully cooked, if it keeps the UI changes and spectacular performance of this Beta, I’ll definitely be clicking the “Make Default Browser” button.

This machine set the course for the next 25 years of my life.  It got me hooked with the simple fact that I could type stuff into it, and make my television screen (which served as a monitor) output what I wanted.  That’s assuming I didn’t have any errors.  Me and my friends (especially Steve) became experts at coding BASIC programs on the thing (Steve had a Commodore Vic-20 at the time and then upgraded to a 64).  Steve even ran a dial-up bulletin board system on his Commodore 64 for a period of time.  I can even remember the phone number, wow.

The magazine “Compute’s Gazette” was the main resource we had for finding software for the machine and keeping up with the what was going on with personal computers — basically everything we do with blogs nowadays.

Many nights you could have found Steve and I staying up until 4am typing in endless streams of 2-character sequences (plus a checksum value) as we input a machine language application or game that had been published in that magazine.  One of us would dictate for 30 minutes or so, and the other would type the characters in… and then we’d switch roles.  All so we could play some crummy (by today’s standards) game at 5am.

There was also a burgeoning warez scene forming around Commodore 64 software, and Steve, myself and several other friends would get our parents to drop us off at Special Interest Group meetings so that we could beg the big kids to let us copy their games.  It was kind of shady, but hey there was NO WAY we were going to be able to pay for the software – we were 14.  So the way I rationalize it, the publishers didn’t lose any money.

It was one of the greatest periods of my life, and an experience I hope my son can share as he gets a little older… although with much more amazing tech at his disposal.  So will I be getting this PC in a Commodore 64 chassis?  Hell yes.  And I’ll run Commodore 64 emulation software on it.  It will be bliss.

When I’m sitting at my desk, after hours and hours of staring at my display while feverishly working away on a project, I start to lose my ability to stay focused on tasks.  I’ll wind up looking at a window full of 60+ lines of script and feeling overwhelmed, and kind of intimidated.  I can’t decide “where to start”.

I think I’ve just found the solution, though.  I’ve begun “zooming” my code-editor window, which enlarges the text of the window significantly.  By doing this I wind up with a “pre-school” version of the screen where the entire screen is filled with about 10 or 11 lines of very large type.  Suddenly, it’s easier to focus because there isn’t a pile of code above and below what I’m immediately working on, trying to distract me.  My productivity has improved dramatically, especially when working through periods of exhaustion.

So if you find yourself with a large coding task ahead of you, and having a hard time getting started… zoom in.  It might help you like it has helped me.

PS.  For Visual Studio users (and possibly other IDEs) just ctrl+scrollwheel to zoom in/out.  Love it.

Random Sights/Sounds from my day at SXSWi from Chris Schnyder on Vimeo.