This weekend as Israelis and Palestinians clashed again in Gaza, and it seemed like everyone had a reaction to the violence.

As I consumed the popular media, I began to think about the more pedestrian views out there. It is important to understand what the everyman thinks, even if one does not agree with him or her (and I certainly do not agree with many of the opinions out there). After all, it is only by understanding others’ points of view that we will ever get ourselves out of these international confrontations. Peace comes when people understand and interact with one another.

A great place to get at peoples’ opinions is the popular new communication tool: Twitter. Twitter allows users to post messages, opinions, and thoughts 140 characters at a time. Each post is a tiny glance at a person’s thought. If you’re not a member yet, you should give Twitter a try. It’s quite fun and addictive.

So, as I set out to glance at what people were saying about the situation in the Middle East via Twitter, I decided to build a tool that would help with this task. And so I did just that, with TwiddleEast.

Here's what TwiddleEast looks like

TwiddleEast allows you to quickly glance at what people on Twitter are saying about a few of the Middle Eastern countries in the news today.

Check it out, and I’d love to hear if it is helpful to you. If there is anything I can do to make TwiddleEast better, don’t hesitate to let me know, and while you’re at it: follow me or TwiddleEast on Twitter.

It is truly one of my favorite design “tools:” A good notebook. Personally, I like the full size Moleskine models, but whatever you can manage to carry around will work best. I carry mine everywhere with me, always with a pencil attached.

Check out these notes, if you dare, which preceded my recent talk with Jeff Patton at Interaction08.

Here’s a first page of general notes about what could happen during the talk.

The crux of my thoughts here is that many Designers, Interaction Designers included, don’t really tend to think about software development methodologies in their day-to-day life. Thus, they may need a little brush-up on what a development methodology is, with some examples.

Still, it’s important for IxDers to understand why software is developed the way it is in their organization, and to be a stakeholder in this process.

The prevalent development methodology in use today is waterfall. It should probably look familiar to most designers & developers.

With Agile Methodologies, we have the opportunity to get our software working, and out in the real world quickly. This allows our concepts to see the light of day, so that they can be improved upon. Of course, these methods do have their drawbacks…

Some snapshots of what agile methods look like.

So, the big question is whether Interaction Design methods can fit within the Agile Context, or vice versa. The answer to this is complex, but I think the talk covered the topic well.

Back to the point — Sketching really helped me sort out these topics in my head. Sure, it took longer than just bullet-pointing out a PowerPoint…but I was able to visualize my thoughts, and look at them later with clarity, and pass them on to others to digest. Visualizing my thoughts really helps my process, and maybe it’ll help yours too.

How do you visualize your thoughts?

This has been a long time coming. Back in May I completed my Master’s Degree education by presenting my Capstone Project: Prepare. Project. Present. Using Technology to Encourage Effective Presentations.

The video of my presentation is now up on YouTube, in three parts. Watch them below by pressing the play button:

YouTube Link to part 1

YouTube Link to part 2

YouTube Link to part 3

*P.S. If you’re having trouble seeing the videos, come on over to the blog…they’re visible there.

So in my free time over the past few days I’ve been trying my hand at a little Javascript. It’s not too complex most of the time, but still, you gotta start somewhere. Check out my calculator:

calculator.html

I’ve been hard at work on a new template for my blog. It should be up soon, once I figure out this whole WordPress Themes thing…it seems harder than I had originally imagined. Here’s a sneak preview:

This evening I took some time out to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I played with Flickr’s API for interacting with photos using PHP. I invite you to check out what I made. It’s not all that impressive, but still, it was fun to make…and maybe soon I’ll actually build something useful!

Check it out

P.S. An example username to try it with is: josh.ev9

Today I turned in a paper about HP’s Cooltown. You can read it if you’d like.

Also, check out this picture I made for my HCI/Design Class. Special thanks to E for the photoshop advice.

Here’s what I turned in for my first project in I500, in case you care. I think I managed to make it as copy proof as possible. If you would like to run this program, let me know and I’ll send you a copy you can execute. The unix entry syntax is as follows:

$ perl proj1.pl test.txt writefile.txt

Where ‘perl’ is the name of the programming language, proj1.pl is the program, test.txt is the input file, and writefile.txt is the output file.

Pretty nifty, eh?

As promised, here’s my latest paper considering the question: How will Social Informatics affect my career?