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 So many of them are outdated and linkrotted.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’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.

And it’s about time. After decades of mechanistic, process-oriented management dogma, progressive organizations are waking up to the disturbing truth that they’ve squeezed all the creativity out of their business. But when companies embrace organic, passionate, socially-savvy initiatives, they blossom. That’s Social Business.

This XPLANATiON was produced in association with our colleagues at Dachis Group’s Social Business Council, a collection of practitioners from large businesses who are charting the course for Social Business. We interviewed Council members and turned their knowledge into a clean, clear visual that quickly helps everyone understand the benefits of Social Business.

You can view the XPLANATiON on Dachis Group’s Collaboratory blog or download a PDF here.

October 19, 2011: We posted a newer version today with updated artwork.

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.

Can you imagine how big brands must feel?

It’s more than overwhelming.

The brave new world of immediate social connectivity has exploded and soon it will be impossible to survive as a business without making sense of it. Because all those friends and fans and random people are talking about the businesses they love and hate.

But that’s adding to the noise, isn’t it? And it’s difficult to keep up with, impossible to control, unbelievable in scope.

Signal.

In June Dachis Group launched the Social Business Index (SBI), but unless you were a social media practitioner, a brand owner, or a social strategy owner in one of the Indexed companies, there wasn’t a lot to see.

That changes today. Dachis Group has opened up a portion of the Social Business Index to the public.

The Index is not a white paper. It’s not a 500 page report. It’s not a ‘top 10 tips on social’ blog post. It’s not a set of survey results or prognostication on trends in social.

The Social Business Index is a dynamic, living, interactive lens into real-time social performance, covering over 26,000 brands from over 20,000 companies, including over 100 million social accounts worldwide.

It’s a big deal.

While XPLANE | Dachis Group was not involved in the design of SBI (another of Jeff Dachis’s companies, Bond Art & Science, took care of that), we’re really excited about how visual the presentation of the data is.

There’s a Periodic Table-like breakdown to the high-level ranking information, and simple but clear methods for visualizing business’s community and behavior. As more data is gathered and sorted, I can’t wait to see the new ways we come up with to order and present the information.

Dive in for yourself to see what we’re talking about. Public access is now available at www.socialbusinessindex.com — and brands can register for more in-depth access to the tool.

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.

2. On preparation
Know your material. Be aware of possible copyright issues with that material. Set a time limit (between one and four minutes is a good window) for your video. Then write a script and edit it mercilessly. Each chunk needs to be very short — you just can’t have a full paragraph on a screen. Use facts, stats, short lists, and simple sentences.

3. On design
Once you’ve got a script, figure out what look and feel is going to be best for this specific content. Typography really matters here because your audience is going to be reading text within a video for several minutes. Make sure it’s readable and appropriate (and use Master Slides so you can control your main fonts globally). Avoid the temptation of putting drop shadows on every object, or making everything big and bold. If everything is big and bold, then nothing stands out.

4. On animations
Storyboard your script and iterate based on feedback with friends and colleagues. If you haven’t yet played around with Keynote, do it now. You’re going to need to know what transitions and moves are possible as you storyboard. Keep it simple. Once you’re working in Keynote, remember that one of the software’s most powerful features is “Media Placeholder.” This allows you to replace art on a slide even after you’ve assigned builds and animations to it. So unlike PowerPoint, you don’t have to redo a bunch of work just because you’ve updated the art. Keynote also has a “Text Placeholder” feature.

5. On pace
Chances are that your first export is probably going to move either way too slow or way too fast. Be careful: Because you’re very familiar with the material it’s going to be easier for you to read it even if it’s too fast. Have a different friend of colleague review it each time.

6. On transitions
Speaking of pace, to keep things moving it’s better to make the transition itself happen as fast as possible to leave more time for the message. We tend to avoid “out” builds and animations for objects and leave the clearing of the screen to the slide transitions. For the most part, try to transition to a screen with something already on it — as opposed to a blank that now needs to be filled. Lastly, mix the transitions up. Left, right, up, down, in, out, wipe, zoom, type only, back to image etc. Avoid the gimmicky transitions like “Revolving Door” or “Sparkle.”

7. On complexity
Keynote doesn’t have layers to work in so once you’ve got a few different overlapping objects on a slide, things get messy pretty quickly. It’s hard to grab things behind other objects. One way around that is to split up complicated animations and builds over several slides. By using no transition between the slides they blend together seamlessly. One annoying thing to note is that there is no artboard available above or to the left of the slide. That makes it difficult to place objects there if you need them to move in or out of the screen. Also, we highly recommend that you save any assets as individual named file, then place them into the movie — this allows each object to have an identifiable name within Keynote. If you cut and paste art from another application, every object will be labeled “Untitled” in the animation window.

The Economist‘s DYK4 video is full of funky little Keynote tricks. You can download the source here.

8. On hacking it
Because Keynote is just “good enough,” you’ll end up needing to figure out all kinds of hacks to accomplish simple things that would be no problem to do in Flash or After Effects. But it’s kind of exhilarating how you find yourself creating a bunch of semi-brilliant little workarounds to achieve the effect you’re looking for. So get really familiar with the program and solutions should just start coming to you.

9. On music and voiceovers
Face this fact: Keynote is terrible for soundtracked and narrated videos. This is where Keynote’s “good enough” just isn’t good enough. It allows you to add music or narration to the whole preso, or to individual slides, but there are several issues.

1. When you playback or export, the audio always starts at the very beginning of the presentation or slide. You can’t adjust when it comes in.
2. When reviewing a presentation with global audio, it always starts playing on slide 1. For some reason, once you’ve added audio in Keynote it is impossible to review the presentation except from the beginning. This means that if you’ve got a 3-minute video and make an edit on slide 65 out of 75, you have to watch the entire thing to see how your edit looks when it plays in context.
3. You can’t adjust the volume. Or fade in/out. The fact is that you’ll need another program to track audio or music. GarageBand works very well for this, so you probably should just avoid audio in Keynote.

10. On exporting
For animation, you’ll want to use the Custom settings. We’ve found the following works nicely.

1. Create your video at 1920×1080 (or smaller if you’d prefer).
2. First export screen: Export with “Playback uses: Manual Advance” and “Formats: Custom.”
3. Second export screen: Video should be set to Full Size, then click “Settings.”
4. Compression type should be “H.264,” Frame Rate at “29.97,” Key Frames every “24″ frames, Quality at “Best” and Data Rate “Automatic.” The hit “OK.”
5. You’ll return to a prior window and since you probably don’t have any audio in the presentation, just select “No Audio.”
6. Now export to .mov, check it, and drag it into GarageBand to add audio or music tracks. Then export again with the same settings (but be sure to include that audio!).

11. On… ?
So… what else do you want to know? Leave your questions and comments below and we’ll tackle those in future Keynote video posts.

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.

We knew we needed the look of “Iowa, Did You Know? to respect the serious tone of the content — and also create a sense of urgency. To do this, we minimized the color palette and illustrated in a simple, flat style. We found ourselves inspired by letterpress and silkscreen posters — they always seem to convey such personality and immediacy. This is true for both modern band posters and things like historic FSA and political posters.

To help strike a contrast between Iowa and the world, the Iowa scenes have an earth-toned color palette as well as a burlap texture. This makes them feel somewhat analog and vintage. Anything related to the outside world or new technologies received a brighter, cleaner color palette that is more vivid and energized. We used Thirstype’s Apex typeface to bring an academic feel and a look that meshes with IowaFuture.org’s branding.

XPLANE previously worked with Dr. McLeod and Karl Fisch on the educational “Did You Know? 2.0” video in 2007. We collaborated again in 2009, this time including The Economist, on “Did You Know? 4.0” which focused on media convergence and technology. These videos have more than 7 million views on YouTube.

The “Iowa, Did You Know” content was developed by Dr. McLeod, with all storyboarding, design, and animation by XPLANE | Dachis Group.

Tell us what you think!

Update, August 5, 2011: Here’s Scott McLeod’s blog post with more info about the piece and the series.

XPLANE was challenged to create an application that was more than just a “page turning” tool. “The process definitely challenged our designers, making us consider new ways to enhance functionality around how data was being presented, while also fostering intuitive interaction between the user and the application,” said Parker Lee, executive vice president, global account services, Dachis Group. “The end result really does put a new face on information.”

You can download the “World in Figures” iPhone app from the iTunes store today. The iPad version is in development.

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.

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:

Late last year we collaborated with Kronos to make this video highlighting how the work week has evolved through the centuries, across cultures and because of labor regulations, technological innovations and shifting workplace norms. It’s the second in a series covering the ever-changing global workforce (the first, “How Will You Manage?”, has been viewed more than 40,000 times on YouTube).

So. It’s Monday.

How will your week work? And how has it changed since you joined the workforce?

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…

I keep some frequently used apps in the top row as a type of second dock. I love the folders in iOS4 — I’ve filled the rest of the home screen with those, grouped by category. And I use a second screen for apps that I’m still undecided about. Way better for me than having seven or eight screens on my old iPhone 3.

My all-time favorites include: TeuxDeux for to-do lists, Mint for finance, Instapaper for offline reading, Shazam for music recognition, Words With Friends for fun, Ambiance for ambient noise when I’m seeping in hotel rooms, check.in for Gowalla and Foursquare, FTPOnTheGo for flat file web editing, Air Sharing and USB Disk for Mac/iPhone file swapping, iTalk Lite for recording audio, Dragon Dictation for speech to text, MotionX-GPS for tracking… and of course Google, Amazon, Twitter and TweetDeck.. and many others as you can see from the screenshot.

Current faves include: PocketBooth, Instagram, Icebird, Flashlight+, LiveSketch and AppShopper.

And someday I hope to start using Couch to 5K :-)

What do your screens look like? Post ‘em to the xBlog Activities Group so everyone can check them out.

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.

Recently I participated in a stimulating discussion on Twitter with user experience designers @docbaty, @daveixd, @mojoguzzi and @fred_beecher that left me thinking — could we solve this problem without changing the hardware? And indeed I think we can.

The problem that a pen solves (beyond carrying ink around) is that it gives the user the ability to “see where they are going.” Using your finger to draw on the iPad, or even one of the many styli that are available, has the tendency to hide the point of the virtual “pen,” thus hiding the path.

Now imagine an interface that allows you to use the natural gesture you use to write with a pen or pencil, and gives you a point that you can see. Suddenly you can see where you are going and the primary problem is solved.

One of the things that occurred to me this morning — which led to this insight — was that when Apple first “virtualized” the keyboard by adding it to the software interface instead of the hardware, there was a lot of initial resistance. I was one of those resisters. I couldn’t imagine using a phone without a physical keyboard. But over time, I learned to use the virtual keyboard and now I appreciate the additional flexibility that this interface gives me: to have more screen or less as the case demands.

Why not do the same with the stylus? A “virtualized pen” would answer most of my gripes and over time I would probably come to love it. I might even stop carrying a pen and paper around. And that would be an interface I could fall in love with.