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With the final round of voting coming in just a few days, our six remaining contestants have naturally been quite busy coming up with new stuf to show off to voters.
Atmosphere (New)
Cameron has just posted some screenshots on how weather forecasting might work in Atmosphere, which you can check in in this post. It’s a sidebar-like display showing thumbnail views of upcoming weather in the week. Hey, I’d personally love to see a little slider for fast forwarding the weather through the day or week, but this definitely works. (Maybe fastforwarding as an alternative method of viewing forecasts?) Also in the blog post is a new Atmosphere preference pane mockup which integrates a Coverflow type view for selecting scenery with a more standard Aqua interface for other preferences.
Cookbook
Michael’s been pretty busy, as he shows in this blog post. What’s new for Cookbook? Some visualizations of how community features might work. Think iTunes Music Store for recipes, with easy downloading, submitting, and rating of your favorites. He’s also come up with a sort of all-in-one screenshot displaying most of Cookbook’s main features, which I think is a great idea for the finals:
Whistler
From what I’ve seen, complexity has been one of Whistler’s big challenges and most common criticism. Richard addresses that in this post, unveiling a simplified UI for those who just want to boot the app and start whistling.
Hijack
With Hijack’s regular interface already mocked up, as well as fantastic videos for its “training mode” and full-screen feature, Kevin’s focused his efforts this time around on a logo. Say hello to Hijack, the “jack of all threads”:
And, perhaps taking a cue from recently eliminated Russell, he’s also set up a Cafe Press t-shirt shop for the hardcore Hijack fans.
Blossom
I’ve always been a bit curious how you would easily and without much annoyance set Blossom’s feed/neglect settings for individual websites. Dan’s really fleshed out how this process might work in a series of mockups in his latest post, and I have to say, I am very impressed. Be sure to check this one out to get a better feel for his idea.
Portal
Portal is probably one of the most complicated ideas remaining, in terms of end-user interaction. The fact is, it attempts to do a lot of things, and in a variety of situations. So Farzad’s come up with a series of posts (Part 1 and Part 2) that attempt to give voters a better idea of how to use Portal. Check them out for a very comprehensive description of how it works.
For the semifinal round of voting to begin tonight, I encourage you to check out forum member Stephen’s “Time Restricted Voters Guide” for a pretty thorough round up of the remaining contestants and what they’ve been up to. (That’s a lot, which is why this guide should be helpful for those of you who haven’t had the time to keep up with everything.) Thanks Stephen!
Thanks to today’s sponsors: Pzizz, the critically acclaimed nap enhancer and creativity booster, Candybar, the excellent, juicy iconset tool, EarthDesk, the Earth-starring dynamic desktop, csstux, for the best dressed sites on the web, and macZOT!, for daily deals on Mac software.
One thing we’ve encouraged from the start is continual, active involvement from contestants throughout the contest through blogging. This aspect of the contest has really blown past my expectations, and the result is over 225 blog posts so far from contestants!
For those of you who haven’t had time to look through all the content generated by the community, here’s some of the more interesting things going on in the blogs and forums.
Farzad has posted some mockup ideas for a Portal widget, viewable here.
Richard has been working hard on a website for Whistler, breaking down what his idea is about, and featuring some comments from voters and judges. Is it too early to create websites for applications that, well, don’t exist yet? Perhaps, but the Whistler website certainly does a great job of introducing people to the idea.
Jeff’s also been working on visualizing his ideas for iGTD, focusing on keeping things simple. You can see his thoughts in this blog post.
After impressing many with his explanation on how Atmosphere might work, Cameron is back with a mockup of potential preferences. Sure, it’s not nearly as flashy as seeing visualizations of the dynamic desktop “in action”, but the preferences do a good job of summarizing what you might actually be fiddling with as a user. If Atmosphere makes it. ;)
Perhaps inspired by Kevin’s full screen Hijack mockup video, Michael has posted mockups of how Cookbook’s full screen feature might work in this blog post. This is one of the more exciting features of Cookbook… it’d be fun to press play on my remote while over a step and have Leopard’s voiceover read instructions to me while my hands are busy cooking! (Less fun would be eating the results of said cooking.)
And meanwhile, with contestants going crazy with mockups, forum member illi raises the question of how important mockups really should be, in this rather heated forum discussion thread.
There’s tons of interesting stuff out there, so be sure to explore the site!
The competition is getting fierce! With only 12 finalists remaining from the initial 24, some of our contestants are truly taking that to heart, and creating some wonderful things.
Development manager John Casasanta has written a blog post with some tips for contestants, and one thing I’ve personally seen dramatically influence votes are mockups. Simply put, a picture can be worth a thousand words, and a mockup just as many votes. Since round 2, I’ve noticed a very cool new mockup from Richard Whitelock for Whistler (to note, I did add this to voting later on), some visualization from Bogumil for his very visual RSS reader, Herald, and perhaps most impressively, an awesome video mockup from Kevin illustrating the full screen mode in Hijack.
But for those who aren’t the greatest artists, don’t despair… there are other ways. Such as Stick-It’s Anders Melin offering his MacBook for a designer partner.
Then there’s Russell, pimping out Ground Control with a possible t-shirt. With three weeks to go, it’ll be interesting to see what contestants will come up wtih next!
Thanks to today’s sponsors: iClip, the multiple clipboard solution for OS X, VoodooPad, the ultimate organizer, Awaken, the iTunes compatible alarm clock, TextMate, the Apple Design Award winning Text Editor, and macZOT!, for daily deals on Mac software.
As you’ve probably noticed, there’s been a lot of little bubbles popping up in the contestants grid over the past week. (That means new blog posts.) Here are a few I found interesting:
In his post, “So let’s talk about Atmosphere“, contestant Cameron Westland recognizes exactly what Atmosphere is and is not, and discusses the benefits of a very focused approach and “deliberately reduced feature sets”.
Kevin Capizzi’s Hijack has quickly become one of the forums’ favorite ideas, and in “Hijack Mockup - Draft 1“, he visualizes what the app’s UI may be. Checking it out, I’d love to see a skin-supporting Webkit message view like Adium’s for some totally customizable looks.
