I  wish to point out the session that my husband Jerome Paradis gave to PodCamp Toronto. Jerome talked about his vision of the future of ecommerce. He has an innovative concept of what is next for ecommerce. Jonathan Kennedy wrote a recap on the blog of NVI.

Jerome Paradis named his concept Semantic Commerce. It offers advantages for both the consumers and good merchants. Consumers will regain control of their data. It will simplify the way we purchase online.

Jerome founded with Tara Hunt and Cassandra Girard a startup called Shwowp that will put the wow into shopping. They are not ready yet to reveal what Shwowp will do.

+ PodCamp Toronto: Jérome Paradis on Ecommerce 3.0

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Balsamiq Mockups is one  tool I use to build my upcoming community site. Following a tweet I made last week, I saw that many of you were curious to know what I was thinking of Balsamiq Mockups. So, here we are.

Before you build any software, Web site or even a blog, you need is to draw mockups of the interface. This step is not about being pretty. This step is about defining how the Web pages will operate. Plus, you identify what content and how it will be shown to the users.

I used many tools and methods to create wireframes/UI mockups over my UI and Web design career. The most efficient I found so far is Balsamiq. It feels natural and you work fast.

How Balsamiq works?

Using Balsamiq Mockups feels natural since it reproduces hand drawing on a piece of paper done but quickly done with a computer. Once you learned where are the 75 pre-set controls, it goes fast to create your interface. You have access to more than 150 icons. For the expert users, they are plenty of keyboard shortcuts.

The pre-set controls come with context-sensitive properties to give you more options. You can import an image if there is no ready-to-use controls that fit your need. Plus, you can download custom control made by the members of their Mockups To Go community.

In team meetings, you could easily modify and create new mockups while you are having a discussion. For all these reasons, I love it!

+ Balsamiq Mockups
+ Google Maps Mockup

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After covering what the iPad should do for magazines and newspapers, Fast Company published an interesting article on how five websites push the envelop of web design. We are entering a new era. I cannot wait for an enhanced experience. Imagine how more fluid browsing a site like MoCo Loco could be if you navigate it on the iPad. Discover who are the four other websites with an honorable mention.

+ via Fast Company

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Apple revealed its iPad last Wednesday. I took a couple of days to think it over before I shared what I think about this new device. I will probably get one! Let’s be clear, I do really need it but it’s cool and some features make the experience more enjoyable than using my 13-inch MacBook Pro.

The Apple marketing guys excel at making us wanting their products. They even used the soundtrack of my favorite The Cure’s song. Therefore, I watched over and over the feature video until I can get an objective feel of what the features are all about.

A Content Distribution Device

I see the iPad as a big version of the iPhone without the phone and a camera, but on which Apple added a more powerful CPU and a better resolution screen. You can also describe the iPad as a content distribution device or, as Josyan mentioned on her comment, a media consumption platform. New possibilities emerge from the bigger size and increased power. When you take into account all these, it makes the device appealing.

One element that iPad can deliver is adding comfort to our browsing experience. I dreamt for years of browsing with only a screen on my laps. Now, I will be able to do it. Showing your last vacation to your best friends will be easier since the iPad reproduced the way we are accustomed to do it. When traveling, I see us watching movies on the train or the plane with more ease than opening our laptop. For these reasons, I want one. Plus, I want someone to invent a waterproof case to use the iPad while I work on my tan sitting on my pool chair.

What About Women?

Have you noticed that we never see a woman holding the iPad? The question I have is “With my fingers that measure half the size of the long fingers of the guy on the video would it would be as comfortable for me to handle the device?” With all the funny jokes about the name of the device, I wonder if the guys at Apple has ever asked a woman to use their advice.

If you wish more details about the iPad, my husband wrote an excellent iPad review. He talked about other aspects of the device that you should know about. You should read it.

I am curious to know your intention.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

+ photo: iPad feature video by Apple

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I am going to San Francisco next week. I read on PCWorld that with iPhone OS 3.0 AT&T will deliver free Wi-Fi access non-U.S. carriers who include Wi-Fi access in their plans. Naturally, I am curious to see if the plan I have with Rogers (my Canadian provider) covers me with a Wi-Fi access. Since I unable to find the information on Rogers site, I did a search.

Here are the search results I got on Rogers Web site. Totally useless since the description repeats the menu instead of highlighting some content of the page. To make matter worse, the results were not even filtered for iPhone due to the fact that their search engine considers menu items. This is what happens when you failed to implement the most basic don’ts and do’s in search engine.

At minimal, a search engine eliminates menu items and only considers the content of the page to deliver relevant results. At least if they were providing me with the content of the page instead of repeating the menu items in the short text highlights I may be able, with patience, to get a clue of where to find what I was looking for.

Basic WordPress Search Engine

To reassure bloggers on WordPress, the basic search engine used by default on WordPress blogs limit the search to the content of the page. It is far from perfect, but at least it does that.

Search Engine is the Last Resort

A well-designed site should give me easy and obvious access to the information I need. A good navigation system and gathering related links are a must. If the Rogers site was better structured, I could have find the information I was looking for without using the search engine. In doubt, ask yourself these questions:

• Is it too complicated to navigate your Web site or blog?
• What I can do to make it simple to understand?
• Do I need a portal page easy to navigate that contains absolutely ALL the links relevant to the single product, its options and accessories and latest news?

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But as many other bloggers, I often wish to mix and match plugins in a different way. This is where I hit a wall. I hit a few walls so far. Some are due to the fact that I run a design blog where the visual aspect is quite important. At other times, I wish to bring a feature to the next level.

Mashup Sites

Today’s blogs are mashups. WordPress blogs are the king of mashups. Plugins are developed by a bunch of programmers of different skill levels. The ideal plugin gives control to the user with parameters. One size fits all does not work to bring the ultimate experience to your community.

To understand my point, let’s look at the mashup of P2 theme with Twitter Tools. Two teams developed the 2 projects. I decided to put them together to create my Live blog. I used these 2 tools as an example but the same hold true for most Web 2.0 tools that you put together.

The Situation

Like I mentioned yesterday on my At Home blog, I created Kim Vallee Live to publish quick posts, without photos and to live blog when I go to conferences. The P2 theme interface provides a Twitter-style interface without limiting my comment to 140 characters, which provides the right framework for what I want.

One feature of the Twitter Tools plugin is to automatically publish a tweet by shortening the message I entered in Kim Vallee Live. But the way it is done right now does not add value to my readers. See for yourself, why I do not like the current result:

Twitter Tools automatically adds “New blog post:” in front of the tweet. Even if technically, each entry I published in P2 is a post, there are not from a user viewpoint. My programmer changed the plugin to put #kvlive instead. If the maker of Twitter Tools had better thought about usability, they could have add one more parameter to their long list of options so I can fill the text of the prefix. If I do not wish to add a prefix, I would leave blank the text box.

The other problem is that the tweet message is too short to be meaningful for my followers. What happened is that the Twitter Tools plugin used the post title as the content for the tweet. The P2 theme stored the first 40 characters as the post title. The maker of the P2 theme did not anticipated that it could be a problem since this WordPress theme was designed to show Twitter-style posts.

One lesson I learned from years of experience in software development is that users will always find new ways to use your applications. As more and more non-technical people are embracing social media and running different types of blogs, it puts more pressure on developers of mashup tools to give more control to the users.

Custom-Made Solution

I defined with Jerome of Paradivision (we own Paradivision) the ultimate automatic tweet generator for Kim Vallee Live. We still have to implement it. Until then, I disabled the automatic tweet feature. When it is done, Jerome and I will share with you what we did.

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The 6th edition of Webcom Montreal is scheduled for Wednesday, May 13th, 2009. This is a bi-annual one-day conference. I am writing a quick note to tell you that I will be publishing posts live (assuming no technological problems) one week from now. Readers of On The Web will be lucky since you will get more than one post next week.

I am one of the 5 official bloggers of the conference. The other official bloggers are Bertrand Duperrin, Frédéric Harper, Philippe Bonneau and my husband Jérôme Paradis. Since Jerome is an extraordinary software developer, our coverage should be from a different angle. As you can see, I am the only woman in the group. Note that 6 speakers out of 32 are women.  I wish to concentrate my coverage on topics that will interest you as bloggers and participants in social media.

Being hosted in Montreal, Webcom Montreal has the particularity of having sessions in French and sessions in English. About 40% of the sessions are in English. The 32 speakers are from Canada (many from Quebec), the United States and France. All conferences from 3:30 pm to 6 pm are free. Places are limited.

If you wish to know more, visit the Webcom Montreal conference Web site. The event will take place at the head office of the ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organization.

+ Webcom Montreal
+ Blog of Webcom Montreal – in French

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Here is how it works

Instead of giving possible dates and time or listing when you are not available in an email, simply send a link that automatically keeps up to date of your availability. Tungle works in sync with your preferred calendar: Google Calendar, MS Outlook, Entourage for Mac and Apple iCal. I tried it with iCal and it works fine.

You can send and receive requests to book a meeting with you.

People can propose you several timeslots without registering. If they do not registered, they will need to confirm their email before you received their email with the proposed timeslots.

From the email you get a link that enables you to:

• pick a time that suits you from the calendar, then click to book the email and notice the other party
• send other proposed dates and times
• tell them that you will not attend the meeting.

As a bonus, Tungle will prevent the risk of double-booking a timeslot. But this is only true if you do not make typing errors, like I did last week. I entered A.M. instead of P.M. while recording an appointment with my iPhone. The appointment is for next week. I will send that person my personal Meet with Me link now. I suggest you get your own.

MORE:
+ Tungle
+ Via a tweet by afrognthevalley

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New devices and natural user interfaces will be invented to make our life easier. Just things of all the progress we did over the last 40 years where we passed from a typewriter to digital cameras, MacBook Air and the iPhone. Using everyday objects like our key chains to carry and update information will simplify our life.

The biggest advantage will be than we will enjoy true mobile technology. By truly mobile technology, I mean equipments that are small, weightless and are powerful to have everything we need at our fingertips. No more needs for laptops to carry around.

iPhone users already have a taste of it. So imagine if that freedom extent to our entire computer needs both at home and at the office. I cannot wait for the next 10 years. We live in exciting time.

Take for example, the interactive electronic newspaper. Imagine all the carbon emission we will save in distribution, not counting the trees. For comfort, we need bigger screen than the iPhone and more mobility than the laptop. Electronic paper will become a reality at some point. Many attempts of inventing the electronic paper have already been tried.

Watch a short version here. You can watch the 5-minute video (the second one) at I started something by Long Zheng, a 21 years old Chinese-born who now lives in Australia. The 5 -minute video put things into context. A Powerpoint presentation by Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft Business Division, covers the technology showcased in the video.

It is not just the devices but mostly the ease of use that is impressive. From an interior design viewpoint, we will recover at some point the sleek look of our house as the devices will be less intrusive and will serve multi-purpose. The flat screen TV will be our computer screen and computer.

User interface based on natural movements will revolution the use of computer. The best application today is the iPhone (I know I love my iPhone). From a transparent wall screen between two classrooms miles away to animated drawings, surface displays a la Minority Report, digital wallets, electronic flight boarding cards, way way smarter phones, and mini projectors to guide you in the airport.

The future looks bright.

+ Via I started something

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The game play is simple. You make points by catching any insects except the bees. The bees will kill you. You jump to catch and eat the bug. You cannot catch more than one insect per jump.

The interface is easy to maneuver. Gently hit the screen to trigger a jump. Move your iPhone horizontally in the desired directions to direct your frog in the air and on the ground.

A lovable element of the game are the frog expressions. If it failed to catch an insect, it looks disappointed. The frog smiles after eating an insect. The frog shouts in pain when it gets stunned by a bee. I often shout with it.

Lima Sky has already created 26 iPhone applications. Crazy Frog is a fun and addictive game. At 99 cents, it is money well spent.

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I prefer the Mac, unconditionally. I used to be a PC user (I still have a desktop at the office) but I do not intend to go back for my daily activities. I feel that for the average folks (not just the graphic designers), the Mac is the best option.

Defining Your Needs

I switched in spring 2008. I wanted a new laptop to fulfill my needs as a blogger. Basically, I run a small numbers of applications including Word and Photoshop. I am a heavy Web user, I upload photos and answer my emails. This corresponds to what most people do.

I gave up Outlook a couple years ago and I use Gmail now. Therefore, I do not have to care about the email software compatibility.

What I like the most about the Mac laptop?

1. Fun and easy to use
2. Hassle-free with the ProCare service – $99 per year for up to three computers
3. No more frequent windows updates to interrupt my work
4. No need to install an anti-virus software that slows you computer (thanks Janick for reminding me of this great feature)
5. A keyboard that feels wonderful – I type faster on my Mac than my PC
6. A better looking computer that is fast

Which Mac model to select?

For mobility, the affordable 13-inch MacBook will satisfy your needs and keep the weight down. Unless you are always on the run, I suggest to get a more powerful MacBook that cost less than the MacBook Air. This is what my husband did before Christmas.

I owned a 15-inch MacBook Pro.  I went for the Pro in case I want to edit some videos but mostly because the basic MacBook did not have an illuminated keyboard at the time. If you select the more rapid MacBook, the 2.4GHz MacBook, you will get the illuminated keyboard.

How Was the Transition?

I optimized my work with the right tools and techniques over the years on my PC. It took me about a week until I found the ultimate working environment on the Mac.

By asking Mac users around me or by searching for the answers on Goggle, I discovered the Mac tools or the integrated functions I need to perform at maximum. The only feature unavailable on the Mac than is way better on the PC is a keystroke shortcut to switch between an English keyboard and the French keyboard.

If you are unsure about which system is best for you, I suggest you express your needs in simple tasks or features like the way I did on this post.

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Then, the iPhone becomes a simple cell phone with a contact book. Nothing smart about it. I felt naked. It is easy to forget the technological advancement as we get used to technology. The first thing we did when we arrived at the hotel was to open our computer to get Rogers phone number. We called to inquiry if there was a plan we could subscribe to reduce our costs. They now do!

Instead of paying $6 CAD per meg, you pay a monthly fee of $10 + $1 per meg. I used about 14 meg on my trip. I save $60 (=$84-$24). Since my husband also have an iPhone, our savings pay off the Custo Barcelona dress I got on sale.

Important Steps to Take to Reduce your Costs

1. Turn off the data roaming as you board your departure flight even if you subscribed to a US data rooming  plan.
2. Close off the Fetch New Data – this means that you control when you are downloading new data.
3. Reset the usage statistics (Settings -> General -> Usage). The idea is that you can track your usage and adapt your behavior.
4. Once you landed you can put back on the data roaming.
5. Try to limit browsing the Web, reading your RSS feeds (especially if you read a lot of graphic blog) and even checking your email too often. These actions raise your bill.
6. Uploading pictures on Twitter do not consume too much; after all they are part of the fun of Twitter. I sent a little bit more than 1 meg for uploads versus receiving 13 meg.
7. If you do not plan to go to the United States the next month, cancel the US data roaming plan at Rogers to save the $10 monthly fee

As soon as we landed in Montreal, I return to reading my RSS feeds while I was waiting to pass the customs. It felt great to use the full capability of my iPhone whenever I want.

Little note: My husband Jerome Paradis, the other half of the we in this post, wrote a post on the same topic. We did not consult before. If you are curious you can check his version of the story.

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