-
Gamma matters
Thoughts about The Internet on August 12, 2011
The eighties were a simpler time. Publishers were happy if their typewriters came with eraser ribbons and users were thrilled if the text on their monitors appeared in white. However, with the advent of the Internet in the late nineties, publishers were forced to prepare their content for constantly changing browsers, ever increasing screen resolutions and – given the explosion of mobile computing over the last few years – a myriad of devices too.
The one thing that you could count on amidst all the change was that your reds would be red, your blues, blue, and your greens, well, green; but how about the terracotta reds, lime greens and cerulean blues? With the increasing age of today’s computer screens and the growth of new display technologies, you now need to consider the influence of color shift and gamma on the colors in your designs too – especially on the colors in between.
If you’ve never heard of gamma before, it’s simply an indicator of how bright your mid-tones are. The concept was crucial in the design of CRT monitors and holds true even for LCDs. It has no effect on black, white and primary colors, but affects everything in between.
The image above illustrates how this photograph appears on my four year old screen with a blue color shift on the left – notice the cooler hues – and how it appears on my new screen with high gamma on the right – notice the dark mid-tones. Of course, you’re probably wondering what I’m talking about, because your screen’s color calibration is entirely different from that of mine. In fact, to you the image may appear washed out on the left and warm on the right.
Sadly, there is neither substantial research on the average color shift and gamma of screens around the world, nor is there a perfect solution to ensure that your colors are reproduced in the exact same manner on every screen. However, you can do a few things to save your designs:
- Calibrate your screen’s colors to prevent your designs from being tainted by a color shift.
- Preview your templates on screens with different levels of gamma, just as publishers test their content on multiple browsers. Try an old laptop, a brand new desktop and so on.
- Embed color profiles in your images so that users with different color profiles can see them as they were intended. Most modern browsers handle this well.
-
Viva la revolución
Thoughts about The Internet on June 27, 2009
Change is never easy. The rights we take for granted today were sown by people who believed in their cause so passionately that they would huddle under the shimmer of moonlight at risk of life and limb to bring about change. Of course, things have come a long way since then. First there was email, then blogs and now micro blogs.
I’ve been on email since 1997 and written this blog since 2006, but I have to admit that I’ve never quite felt as empowered to build support for change as I have since I began tweeting earlier this month. If you don’t believe me, start by asking yourself a simple question – how many times have you wanted to drop an anvil on your computer in frustration or go out on to the streets in protest, but just couldn’t convince yourself or couldn’t, period?
Those are the exact questions the people of Iran and the Email Standards Project asked themselves this month – and they did something about it. By encouraging people to voice their opinions on twitter, these two campaigns successfully built support for change. In fact, you too can join the revolution by simply tweeting about something you’re passionate about. For example, you can start by telling Microsoft to fix Outlook 2010 before it’s too late or wake up to find all those great looking emails charred in your mailbox in 2011.
-
Dot com ransom
Thoughts about The Internet on August 15, 2008
When wine.com and business.com sold for a record-breaking $2.9 and $7.5 million, respectively, at the height of the dot-com bubble, a growing number of people saw an investment opportunity which we’ve come to know as cybersquatting. In fact, a brand-jacking report released by MarkMonitor this spring shows that the practice has grown by approximately 40% in the last year alone into a multi-million dollar industry.
Despite the apparent lawlessness, a legal framework does exist to protect genuine trademark owners. However, the opportunity cost involved in pursuing a domain name dispute often outweighs what most businesses are willing to invest in their presence on the Internet, let alone the risk of losing a dispute to a legal loophole. Some famous disputes that have made the news in recent years include nissan.com and PETA.org.
Prevalent as it may have been in the rest of the world, cybersquatting hadn’t quite made it to the Middle East until word of Dubai’s growing prosperity began to make the headlines in 2003. For example, Sama Dubai – a leading real estate company and television channel in the UAE have their domain name held to ransom with a rumored seven figure US$ asking price. One among the fortunate few who got away with a bargain is Dubai’s first low cost carrier – Fly Dubai, whose domain name appears to have been sold for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
-
I double dare you
Thoughts about The Internet on December 22, 2007
Morgan Stanley spent months trying to figure out if the serifs in their corporate typeface made them look weak (if you’ve only noticed the “g”, look closer Holmes). On the other hand, a bunch of old mates caught up over a pint of Stella to discuss the next best thing online and in a drunken slur, christened it “zyb”!
But don’t let the name fool you. Zyb is a great little service that lets you back up and synchronize your address book across as many phones as you’d like to – and it’s idiot-proof. Those of you who’ve lost a night or two trying synchronize their Blackberries over Bluetooth will particularly appreciate this.
One of the really neat things about the site is how it provides pretty much up-to-the-second feedback when you synchronize your phone.
PS: If you don’t know how to configure your Nokia to use the Internet, their support website will get you going in just a few clicks.
-
Clutterphobia
Thoughts about The Internet on April 20, 2007
Some of you may have noticed that Google experimented with an alternate search result layout a couple of days ago. For a second there, I thought to myself, that’s a great idea to draw attention to the AdWords which appear on the right-hand-side of each search result page. But if you spent a couple more seconds, you’d realize that you just couldn’t take your eyes off the big blue box to get to the AdWords, which they’d probably tried to lure you into.
It’s quite possible that having gotten used to the regular layout that I might’ve been intrigued by the experimental layout and focused on the big blue box to a degree that I wouldn’t have, had it been around long enough. But I’m willing to bet that an eye tracking experiment will prove otherwise.
Shaped by design, the world of advertising challenges you to be unconventional – to break the mold and be different. However, we often forget that when it comes to user experience, it’s quite alright to be conventional – predictable, if you will.