Bryan Landers

Toymaker + Shapeshifter

PadMapper: Effective Pie Topping UI

Padmapper

After checking out tips on Quora for neighborhoods to checkout while visiting Silicon Valley, I followed a recommendation to try out PadMapper. I love this idea of having UI elements simply overlaid on a Google map (as seen in the above screenshot). To keep things clean and simple, this tactic necessitates sparsity in visible menu items. PadMapper uses a slide-out menu for tracking favorites and collapsible menu chunks in the main menu for additional filtering options. Even though this puts common elements like login links in a non-standard position (instead of being in the top-right of the browser window they appear at the top of the main superimposed menu), PadMapper leverages users’ familiarity with Google Maps (with its UI elements in the top left and right corners) and keeps new functionality easy to locate by grouping it together within the superimposed menu. The graying-out of the map pins is a nice touch. To improve the UX I would include the favorites menu as a collapsible side tab off the main menu and reveal rental listing details when you mouseover the map pins rather than having to click on each one.

Stalking Howard Hughes On The Interwebs

12 year-old Howard Hughes with Motor Bike 1917The movie The Aviator was sloppy around the edges (what the hell were they thinking with those bizarre Wainwright cameos in the Cocoanut Grove scenes?) in spite of some excellent acting. But, one thing I am left with after viewing the film is a lingering fascination with Howard Hughes. His innovation and ability to execute on his vision were staggering. I can’t get through the film without searching on my iPhone for photos of Hughes with any number of starlettes, the spectacle of the Hell’s Angels premiere, or the morbid glimpses of Hughes on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance after crashing his plane into a Beverly Hills house.

There’s a wonderful unofficial collection of Hughes images (and a few videos) on Flickr. A former Hughes employee chimes in from time to time in the comments to correct details (see more from Paul B. WInn, Hughes’ former personal secretary, on this sprawling Facebook thread.)

Don’t you just love the web? It makes stalking so easy and media-rich.

New Site: Brin Levinson Art

Brinlevinson_com
Introducing the new and improved brinlevinson.com! Brin is an an exciting artist who lives up in Portland, OR. I’ve known Brin since we attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) together, where he was studying character animation. His artwork is highly stylized (tending towards the dark and mysterious), virtuosic, and always tells a story that draws you in and sends your imagination running wild.

This site is built on WordPress and uses the phpFlickr library to pull in artwork posted on Flickr. phpFlickr has some nice features like caching and all the Flickr API integration needed to build a slick gallery. We’re using the nyroModal jQuery plugin for an effective full-screen slideshow feature to get a great look at Brin’s art. One thing we ported over from Brin’s former site was the PayPal buy links that allow patrons to purchase both original artwork and prints in the store.

I’m happy to note that with some prior discussion to get on the same page about the new site, we were able to build and launch this in less than a week! If only every site could go that smoothly… I hope you enjoy the site and please send along feedback (via Twitter, comments…any which way!)