Archives:
Technology

xBlog → Collaboratory

As you probably know, XPLANE is now Dachis Group. We are integrating everything as the year closes out — xBlog included.

On the heels of our post celebrating 4,383 days online (that’s 12 internet years!), I want to let everyone know that we’ll be importing key posts into Dachis Group’s Collaboratory blog, and we’ll continue publishing our thoughts and work on visual thinking there. In fact, my first post went up yesterday and other XPLANE alumnus have started blogging there as well.

We won’t be transferring all 8,333 xBlog posts. So many of them are outdated and linkrotted. But we will make sure key posts redirect to their new homes on the Collaboratory and all other posts don’t 404.

It has been a wonderful, amazing, enlightening ride here at xBlog, from hand-coding it starting in 1999, to embracing the first release of WordPress .7 in 2003, to today — a world where blogs are more than commonplace — they are ubiquitous. I don’t know that I could give a better rundown than I did for last year’s 11th anniversary, so if you want a trip down xBlog’s memory lane you can read it here.

Blogging has been core to me and XPLANE for a long time and we’re not going to stop. I truly hope XPLANE’s fans and xBlog’s readers will continue to follow our work as Dachis Group. We’ll still be doing that visual thinking thing, just as we have been for all these years, only now we’ll be bringing to it many more people and businesses.

So on behalf of xBlog… so long, and thanks for all the links.

See you at the Collaboratory.

Cheers,
Bill Keaggy
November 19, 2011




What does a socially optimized business look like?

Today we are happy to publish a new Dachis Group XPLANATiON about Social Business.

What’s a Social Business? It’s a business alive with energy and big ideas. It’s collaborative, authentic, customer-centric, trusted, open and real-time.


Click to download the PDF.

Read more »




Meet the Social Business Index

Noise.

The web’s full of it. And social has dramatically increased it because so much can be said so quickly and so easily, from anywhere, by almost anyone. But social connects us — and a lot of us think of it as a purely personal experience. Friend to friend, person to person, fame to fan, etc. As individuals we struggle to make sense of it all as we juggle Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts, friends, contacts, comments and feeds.

Read more »




10 key tips for making movies in Keynote

Our earlier post on making informational videos in Keynote generated some questions, so I’ve rounded up a few tips.


A Keynote video we made for Nitin Nohria, dean of Harvard Business School.

1. On goals and purpose
Over the last few years we’ve found that in some cases, a Keynote-authored video is what you might call the “good enough” solution. Full animation can be complicated, expensive and time-consuming. Don’t get me wrong — we love it, it’s beautiful, but it’s not always needed. Keynote lets you create and edit presentations, make things move, is ridiculously easy to learn and exports to Quicktime, including easy exports for iPhone. That’s the “good enough” part — but of course technology isn’t all you need. You better have a good story and visuals too.

Read more »

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Thursday, August 11th, 2011 at 2:58 pm
Also published in Movies & motion, Presentations, Software & technology | comments (7)



Did you know there’s a new ‘Did You Know?’ video?

Once again XPLANE | Dachis Group has teamed up with Dr. Scott McLeod of Iowa State University to create a thought-provoking video. The brand-new “Iowa, Did You Know?” kicked off the School Administrators of Iowa Conference yesterday morning. This DYK video contrasts the world’s exponential growth in technology and learning with Iowa’s struggles to best prepare K-12 students for this new future.

Intended as a forceful wake-up call for Iowa educators, the video stresses the importance of an educational approach that moves away from “low-level mental work” and towards stronger development in critical thinking and problem solving.

Read more »

Posted by W. Scott Matthews on Thursday, August 4th, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Also published in History, Internet, Leadership, Learning, Mobile, Movies & motion, Software & technology, XPLANE news | comments (0)



Announcing The Economist’s “World in Figures” app for iPhone

XPLANE | Dachis Group and The Economist teamed up to create the “World in Figures” application for iPhone. Based on The Economist’s popular book, Pocket World in Figures, the application provides a unique, visual way to discover and display global data so that it’s compelling, understandable and easy to use. Here’s a quick video overview of the project.

Read more »

Posted by Parker Lee on Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Also published in Interface design, Mobile, XPLANE news | comments (3)



Safe travels, Robonaut

Way back in 2002 XPLANE did an XPLANATiON for NYSE magazine about NASA’s robotic astronaut, which was then in development and expected to start flying in 2004 or 2005.


Click above to view larger.

Well, yesterday our friend Robonaut finally blasted off aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. While Robonaut 2 is the first humanoid robot to go into space — this is the shuttle’s 39th and final flight.

We’re very happy you finally made it to space, even if you’re never coming back.

But don’t be too sad, folks. You can follow Robonaut’s space exploits on Twitter: @AstroRobonaut.

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Friday, February 25th, 2011 at 10:16 am
Also published in Software & technology, XPLANE news | comments (1)



How will your week work?

Hi. It’s Monday — the start of the work week for most of us.

But before you get started, let me ask you a few questions… Did you know that 40% of workers say they bring work home to complete at night, or work overtime at least once a week? That 15% of people admit that they are addicted to email — some confess to checking their email at the beach, at weddings and even at funerals? That the number of workers who work remotely is on the rise — in 2009, 28% of the global workforce worked remotely and by 2016, an expected 43% of the workforce will become remote workers (and did you know that studies show that working remotely improves productivity by 15%)? Did you know that a whopping 26% of Americans say they never take vacations?

If you didn’t, kick off the work week by watching this:

Read more »

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Monday, February 7th, 2011 at 6:40 am
Also published in Business issues, Life, Meetings & office culture, Mobile, Movies & motion, XPLANE news | comments (0)



A robust app-etite

It’s kind of fascinating peeking in on other people’s iPhone screens. What apps do they use? Are they organized or a total mess?

The other day I casually mentioned Genius Scan to Dave and it quickly became his favorite app (at least for now :-)

Most of us have our favorite apps and our guilty pleasure apps, some of us have those “it’s for my kids” apps and all of us have our can’t-live-without apps. And everyone has their own system for arranging things. Click the image to see mine…
Read more »

Posted by Bill Keaggy on Thursday, November 11th, 2010 at 10:25 am
Also published in Mobile, Software & technology | comments (0)



I want my stylus

Or, the nib cursor

I love my iPad, but the finger-only interface has been a continuing frustration for me. As an artist and designer, I want to do things that I can easily do with a pen and paper, like write, scribble and sketch. But these are not things we typically do with our fingers, any more than we eat soup or salad with our fingers.

Apple apologists will say that you can sketch and write with the iPad, and indeed we can. Yes, and indeed we can also eat salad or even soup without utensils if it’s absolutely necessary. But that’s not ideal, is it? Over the years we’ve developed tools, like forks, spoons, knives and yes, pens, that make life easier. We should expect no less from our interface designers.

Read more »

Posted by Dave Gray on Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 at 11:09 am
Also published in Interaction design, Interface design, Mobile, Sketching & illustration, Software & technology | comments (3)



Kronos video

Sample visual
Check out this video we made for Kronos to help celebrate International Women's Day, 2011. Learn more in this xBlog post or jump over to YouTube and watch it there.

Azure poster

Sample visual
XPLANE | Dachis Group developed a A vibrant, engaging poster showing how Microsoft Azure enables developers to run applications and store data on Microsoft servers. The poster recently took top honors in the American Business Awards.

Tweets & Flickrs