There’s no surprise that more people around the world, not just Times Square alone, doesn’t know what a browser is, don’t use the internet as much as we would like to think, are less savvy and would get lost if the site is designed to be more complicated than they would have liked.

It’s a good place to start thinking about these users who are going to use the next website you design. Watch the following video and be surprised:

Found at: UX Magazine

If you haven’t heard of SUBERNOVA, it’s an online project management application (designed and developed by us!) that makes you more productive by taking the stress out of remembering important details of your projects, lets you track time, send invoices and estimates, collaborate with team mates or clients and keeps your business smooth by keeping tabs on late payments, deadlines and more.

The same high gloss magazines but with interactive elements. What a brand new experience!

Adobe announced that AIR would run on Android, and Adobe has already announced its Packager for iPhone tool that will allow Flash apps (including AIR) to run on Apple mobile platforms.

That is exciting! Can’t wait to leverage our existing AS3 skills to build native mobile apps for iPhone and iPad.

Aside from mini notebooks, most notebooks are heavy and we all lived with that. Apple didn’t leave it at that, instead they came up with an innovative solution to solve that problem, by carving each new notebooks from a single piece of aluminum.

This not only reduces faults and breakdowns, but reduces the weight of the notebooks as they are not constructed from different pieces of metal.

The click button on the trackpad was also removed and trackpad widened leaving more room for multitouch gestures like swiping, pinching, rotating etc. The whole trackpad is a click button by the way (2 fingers for right click).

Here’s some pictures of the new slimmer Macbook Pro 15” to ogle at, enjoy.

Adobe’s Creative Suite, the tools of our trade, is getting a bump onto it’s brand new version, Creative Suite – CS4. But it feels like we’ve only used CS3 for a while!

At the blink of an eye, Adobe Creative Suite 4 will be unveiled next week, here’s the dates / timings for different zones:

Europe – 11:00 am CET (Sept 23)
North America – 9:00 am Eastern (Sept 23)
North America – 9:00 am Pacific (Sept 23)
Australia – 4:00pm AET (Sept 24)
Singapore/Hong Kong – 2:00 pm (Sept 24)
India – 11:30 am IST (Sept 24)

Adobe will be doing a special web broadcast to unveil the new Creative Suite 4 on the above dates. So head on there to register if you’re interested to be part of this special web event.

As gathered from various sources, the update of this new creative suite will be minor, nothing revolutionary. There will be various new features for all CS4 applications but let’s take a peek at the more popular Flash and Photoshop CS4:

Flash CS4

Flash CS4 will come with a completely new and “proper” timeline dubbed Motion Editor as well as a new object-based motion tween model – frameless flash animation. The new model includes no keyframes and is said to facilitate vast timeline animations to work with and make Flash much easier for beginners.

Well I’m not really sure about that,  I have read mixed reviews about the new model and some says that it could be a new learning curve that further fragments the Flash community.

As most people are still torn between AS2 and AS3, now we might have a hard time trying to play catch up with the new source file formats.

Photoshop CS4

Basically Photoshop CS4, codename Stonehenge, will allow 3D objects to be imported as wireframes. Wonder how this will benefit the majority of graphic and web designers.

A new feature I am more happy with is the new “Tabbed Panel” style of managing multiple documents in Photoshop as you can see from the above screenshot. This also applies to all new CS4 applications.

Sneak Peak at the new Photoshop CS4

Also, Photoshop CS4 will feature a Flash services panel, natural canvas rotation and content aware image resizing. More features includes some of these new features:

• Enhanced masking feature
  Layer Mask Density option allows you to fade away the effect of a layer mask gradually revealing the parts that are hidden.
• Real-time filters with no color depth restrictions
  Allows filters to use graphics card power in image processing instead of the CPU, which means all operations will be much faster.
• Liquid resize feature
  Allows you to shrink or enlarge a photo disproportionally without stretching it.
• Enhanced Quick Selection tool
  The Refine Edge dialog now has a new feature to deals much better with complex surfaces such as fur ensuring a more defined line between subject and background.
• Improved Dodge and Burn tools
  Improved algorithm in these tools lets results look less destructive and more natural.
• Polished interface
  Photoshop interface brightness will be adjustable like in Adobe Bridge with buttons and dialog boxes look will be improved.
• Extended and enhanced color profile management.
  Multichannel, Device-Link and Abstract color profiles to be added.
• Other Photoshop CS4 new features and improvements:
  New technology for creating amazing panoramas.
  Rotatable canvas in 360 degree space
  Better HDR support
  Faster load time
  Enhanced vanishing point
  Better Black & White conversion
  Better RAW image processing

Screen Sharing

We can finally collaborate with each other in real time via a new feature that will allow users to initiate a screen-sharing session from the File Menu, thanks to Adobe’s conferencing business and Connect software. This will also apply to all CS4 applications. Graphic Designers who love to collaborate with each other will be happy with this new feature I suppose. Beginners who needs help desperately from their more experienced peers can also benefit from this new feature.

We’ll only know how good the new features are when this rolls out next week. Stay tuned.

Fantasy Interactive, once creators of everything rich media and Flash, who delivered the very famous Road Runner and MTV.com entirely in Flash, have shifted their technological direction and focus towards delivering more sites with HTML and AJAX.

Check out their brand new website in HTML which was freshly launched on the 1st May 08.

What’s brewing behind the scene is the much anticipated Propod (still under development), the next generation media blog which claims to let users easily integrate all their videos, audio, photos and writing seamlessly in one place. Propod is much similar to Wordpress, but the only difference is that it is developed using the Flash platform. Very interesting and I can’t wait to put my hands on it since most / if not all blogging platforms are in HTML/AJAX.

To take a sneak peek at Propod, visit Fantasy Interactive’s rich media blog @ Think Swedish to see Propod in action.

Hot off the stoves, Apple had just released it’s new line of iMacs, processor speed now at a whopping 3.06GHz!! Released in the U.S. and might probably take a few days or weeks to ship to Singapore, makes us just want to buy it!

Here’s the specs to make you drool (source from AppleInsider):

The new 20-inch 2.4 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,199 (US), includes:

• 20-inch widescreen LCD display
• 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus
• 1GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB
• 250GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive® with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128MB GDDR3 memory
• built-in iSight video camera
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
• the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.

The new 20-inch 2.66 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,499 (US), includes:

• 20-inch widescreen LCD display
• 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB
• 320GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB GDDR3 memory
• built-in iSight video camera
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
• the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.

The new 24-inch 2.8 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,799 (US), includes:

• 24-inch widescreen LCD display
• 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB
• 320GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB GDDR3 memory
• built-in iSight video camera
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
• the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.

The new 24-inch 3.06 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $2,199 (US), includes:

• 24-inch widescreen LCD display
• 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus
• 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB
• 500GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
• a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS with 512MB GDDR3 memory
• built-in iSight video camera
• built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
• the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.

Finally a 3rd version coming soon. FCUKstar awards is in my opinion, a direct alternative to the FWA. Both features outstanding websites but the selection criteria is a little different. The FWA is geared towards more media rich websites with 3D and video content while FCUKstar gives credit to websites with a much sleeker feel.

Version 3 coming later, not sure how late is later, but be sure to look out!

Check out Hi-ReS! interview by Apple. Hi-ReS!, founded by Florian Schmitt and Alexandra Jugovic, his wife and creative partner in 1999 and recently acquired by Syzygy Group, builds its intriguingly imperfect, immersive experiences with the help of Mac applications such as Adobe Creative Suite, Final Cut Studio, Logic, and Autodesk Maya. â??The Mac puts everything in one place,â? says Hi-ReS! Creative Director Florian Schmitt. He also mentioned that for the first time they’re able to do anything anywhere with the new line of Macbook Pro. Apparently the new powerful line of Macbook Pros are capable of being a substitute for desktop machines. Find out more about their creative processes.