This week, we were asked to use JavaScript to either spruce up the website we made previously (based on another classmate’s project) or create something new. I decided that there was no practical reason to incorporate JS into the Dynamic Canvas site so I used JavaScript to create a drag and drop interaction and present to you the “Criminally Colorful Ransom Letter Generator.”
Our assignment this week was to utilize HTML and CSS to create a website for a classmate’s project. Below is the simple microsite I created for EunYoung’s “Dynamic Canvas” project, which was featured at the ITP 2010 Winter Show.
Correction on my previous blog post: Shazam is actually not considered a mobile web app, it is rather a native web app. The difference? Mobile web apps are web-accessible through a mobile browser while native web apps live locally on a mobile. However, to add to the confusion further, a mobile web app is also distinguishable from a mobile website. An example of a mobile web app is m.nyc.com/rw (NYC Restaurant Week.) When saved to the home screen, a specially designed web app icon appears and it virtually indistinguishable from a native app icon (for a mobile web site, a blank white icon will appear). When tapped, however, the app opens via Safari. Also, although this app is supported on a mobile browser, it looks and functions like a native app. With HTML5, it can also request and use your current geographical location.
Aside from the social networking apps on my iPhone (Facebook, foursquare), the app that I probably use the most (and the first app I ever downloaded in my life) is Shazam. Shazam and I have had our moments, whether its trying to catch a song on the radio while driving or holding it up in the air at Home Depot testing whether it could identify the barely audible tune coming from the speakers on the high ceilings to obsessing over how many songs it could recognize on ethnic radio stations. Recently, I noticed a brilliant update that made this app even better. Instead of having to tap a tiny button on the top right corner of the screen to begin “tagging” a song, the entire start screen is now that button, a very clever and insightful redesign. Shazam most likely realized that most of their users probably use the app to identify songs on the radio, which likely means that they are in a moving vehicle, making it highly dangerous to look away from the road to find a small button. Have a full-screen touch button makes it safer for drivers to (in most states, discreetly) pull out their phones to identify a song.
For the realization that the catchy song that you’re dying to know the name of will always be playing after the light turns green, here’s to Shazam.
