I’ve heard of Fen Sui, but…FENGUI? You are not going to believe this. But it’s true. The guys from a company called FenGui Labs have developed an application that simulates the eye movement during the first 5 seconds of exposure to an image. The objective is to achieve an optimal arrangement of your visual elements so your audience can have the most pleasant visual experience and you can get the best exposure of your product. How about that eh? This app deserves a good look, although, I have to say  it´s nothing you can do better by yourself with a good read of Arnheim’s “Art and Visual Perception”. But then agian… hell, it does the job in two seconds! Give it a try.

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The hot topic this week, was the announcement that Yahoo and Microsoft have finally tied the knot (corporately speaking). After two Yahoo CEO’s and almost year and a half of negotiations, they have agreed to combine their search and advertisement businesses. Technology Mammoth Microsoft has agreed to pull the strings backstage the search technology on Yahoo, and Yahoo is going to sell premium advertisement for both companies. That info you already know, because it has been thoroughly covered in the media. Let’s talk the deal further so I can get off my chest all the weird fishy stuff that is lying underneath.

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I truly believe, that if you ever want to get good at something, you not only have to excel at the technique. In fact that is the least part. The most important thing is to have something to say. To question everything. And that inner anxiety comes from the world outside ourselves. We are what we eat.  We are who we meet. We are what we read.

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master.” William Faulkner

I am researching lately about automated ways to test Graphical User Interfaces, which I have to say, is a new and now fascinating world for me. I found a couple of days ago a commercial tool we are planning to test at Iconchock called GUIDANCER. (you can read the post here. ) and today I found out another effort, this time open source, called FEST.

I watched the videos and it looks very promising in deed. You can read the product description by the project’s main programmer, Alex Ruiz here. If any of you out there tests it, we will be glad to publish your thoughts.

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I’m going to buy my first iphone this week, and am pretty anxious to join the club at last. Well, not that I’ve ever wanted to join the club or like clubs anyway. It’s just that I couldn’t resist that naughty, minimal, little gadget that’s driving everyone crazy. I began researching, and found this very useful list of apps at Macappstorm. What I like the most about this list made by David Appleyard, is that it features the iphone apps with the most exciting interfaces around.

I have to say that what drove me to buy the iphone wasn’t its hype nor it’s tempting fashionable appeal. What really turned my bucks towards it were the possibilities that such a new and evolving technology could offer. Iphone development is kind of a loose Ferrari with no brakes, a real mainstay on portable software and interfaces. A darling too young and growing to fast to ignore.

Besides, it has a 16 Gig mp3 player. How can you beat that?

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I don’t want to spoil the most jaw dropping three minutes you will have today, so I won’t tell you anything else. Simply amazing. Flynn lives!

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I know it’s quite a pompous title, and I am surely lucky if this article manages to encompass half the premise. What I want is to give you a mayor overview through the history and concepts of the graphic user interface, something so ubiquitous its easy to ignore.

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Welcome to a new blog week, as always, full of enlightening news, thought provoking articles and life changing quotes. Hmm… am I talking about my blog?

Anyway, I wanted to begin this week with this interview made by PUSHING PIXELS to the nice Alexandra Imrie from the German software development company BREDEX. She gives us an insightful overview on GUIDANCER, a program designed to test Java application and HTML user interfaces. Besides staring for hours at her photo, you should give this tool a test drive. You have to register to their site to request a free demo license. We at Iconshock will certainly check it out too.

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I just found out this very interesting post by Rob Griffiths, where he gives us a clue on how to change those strange icon mess-ups you find under Leopard. Rebooting your Mac, using mace pepper spray or unplugging the power chord are options not included.

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No. This is not about my broken heart, and it doesn’t have anything to do with none of those dirty thoughts you readers are generating at this instant. This blog has not become a xxx rated fanzine. (to the despair of many I imagine.) Every word in the title innocently refers to web designing and programming jargon, used in the most unsexy of fashions millions of times a day on the internet. I know all kinds of readers come to this blog, both knowledgeable programmers and internet hobbyists. So I figured out it could be a cool idea to unify the two worlds and give some common ground so all of us can enjoy all articles in the same way. I found this very cool blog post by Cameron Chapman titled “Web Design Industry Jargon: Glossary and Resources” in which he gives us an illustrated glossary of all common used definitions regarding web design, surfing and programming. Go ahead and check it out and stay tuned for today’s free icon set. A revoir!

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Opps! sorry for the vulgar title. It’s just that I’ve been thinking lately in all the precious seconds we spend daily ordering, cataloging and proof checking things that in reality….no one cares for. Who cares if your images filenames don’t begin with caps? Who in this world will die with you’re duplicate <div> tag if it doesn’t mean any harm? I mean, when you are a perfectionist, you sometimes confuse being a good professional that stands out from the bunch with a tight ass academic-by the book-technocrat that worries about things that don’t really matter in life. I mean, life is comprised of tons of silly formalisms in every profession, that don’t necessarily translate in productivity, or quality of life for all that matters. I mean, what is the ultimate…last, final and conclusive goal of being productive? Why do we have to make workflows more efficient? Isn’t it so we can accomplish our duties faster in order to have more spare time to enjoy the world outside? Don’t you think in the end that we just spend too much time on unnecessary formalisms that really don’t make our life better? Our friend Jacobe Gube from Six Revisions gives us a pretty good reflection about all these matters on his post “Adopting a “Does It Really Matter?” Philosophy”. His thoughts are oriented to programming, but the core of his thought can be applied to every aspect of life. It’s not an advertisement for mediocrity. It’s just a way to value what’s really important.

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Undoubtedly, Deviant art is THE best source for free high quality icon sets on the net. Deviant unites the best artists and lets us search their work with an easy navigation within a friendly interface.  But there are also many other resources that with a little percentage of patience will give you very good sets.  As I made up my last posts with the 500 best icons in the web, I had to use every tool I could find, testing various search engines and reading tons of blogs. I want to share with you my ten favorite icon search engines, that, added to this blog and to deviant art, will make you bearer of the ultimate library of icon sets in the universe. Imagine as if I were giving you the complete ring kit from lord of the rings, or the revised edition of god’s book on how to be happy. Iconwise I mean.

1. Iconfinder

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Wandering around the internet, while, you know, “researching” for my next post, I found this little quote that although many of you could have read before, I think it deserves a little space here.

“I aim to be content with what I produce. It’s an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible. Graham Greene”

Doesn’t matter if you’re a programmer, a designer or a writer. If you are to be good at what you are, and I mean REALLY good, I think you can never arrive to a point of complete satisfaction. It is that uneasiness in each word, in each line of code, that pushes us to do it better each time. Perfection is a bar too high to achieve. But we get closer everyday.

Hello to all! As you might already know, we have uploaded a new icon set for your delight in the community forum. Please remember that all these icons are free to anyone, you just have to register. We are not going to spam you, bill you, or send you bad voodoo in your mail. Last week, some weird guy said we were “ripping” off people with our free sets. Can you believe that? How on earth can you rip off somebody with something free?

I have a question. Is there any member that has accumulated so many point that could own all Iconshock free sets?

Bye! Good luck!

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