Lucky for us though, Canal+ Spain will premiere the film sometime in May. Take note of the date because this one’s definitely not worth missing. The amount of archive material these men had access to is astonishing and the way Jason Cohn’s script interweaves private and public aspects of their lives, pretty enlightening.

But, movie-aspects aside, this is a great opportunity to revisit the Eames’ work and, especially, their philosophy. El Pais’ Anatxu Zabalbeascoa did a pretty good job at grasping what this event was all about in her article a few weeks ago: Eames for times of crisis. Charles and Ray taught us that difficult times are a great opportunity to change things: to do more and better.

They injected some of this ‘good design is good business’ mantra in companies like Herman Miller, IBM and Polaroid but they also engrained this in future generations of designers. Like us. Many years after them. This is the main reason why we decided to do this event in the first place and share it with the people we respect. For those of you who came: thank you. This is the first time we do something like this. Hopefully it won’t be the last.

We’d also like to thank the great team behind us in this event: Pelayo and Marta. And Vitra Spain for their generosity.

We make a big effort in Vostok to choose our clients wisely and there’s a reason for it: when you work with people you admire you work better and quicker. Like a well-oiled machine. There are pros and cons, true, but they’re worth it. Basically because you have days like today.

Today Minube and Ducksboard are taking two important steps forward. For one, Ducksboard has launched. If you haven’t checked out the pretty awesome video yet, do. We made the video with the Riot Cinema team.

Next in line is Minube. After winning Apple’s Spain’s best app of the year award and the App Date [links in Spanish] award a few days ago, they’re organizing a pretty cool event today to celebrate the launch of their social traveler guides on iPad.

All in all, a pretty good way to begin closing 2011.

Only two companies were featured in RTVE‘s (a Spanish national TV channel) coverage of FICOD (Spain’s most acclaimed forum for digital content) last night. We’re proud to say both of them are Vostok’s clients with whom we’ve been working and desigining together for some time now.

Are we bragging? You bet. It’s not every day that two products you did strategy and design for receive this kind of offline attention. We’re thrilled. Kudos to Filmin and Minube :)

You can watch it online here.

As ‘Gabriela who works at Vostok‘ this is pretty much what I have to say. But, as ‘Gabriela who loves movies and doesn’t know what she would do without them’, I would like to say a few more things about Filmin:

1. It’s one of the best online video services out there. It’s run by people who love movies, it’s simple, it’s efficient and it has a great catalog. Sure there are a few things I wish they could do better… but hey, I also want my man to be handsome, intelligent, sensitive and understanding…everyday, at all time…so hey, who cares?

2. It’s one of the few bridges between –and I’m gonna be intentionally simplistic here to stress my point– the two sides of the Spanish film industry today: the more “internet is the devil” side Vs. “internet is our savior”. There are millions of caveats, trillions of nuances and loads of things one cannot talk about unless one’s there, working at it and sweating it but, I can say this: we need middle-grounds, we need fresh air, we need companies, people, organizations and production companies that realize film distribution (and exhibition) has changed and that the new change will only bring good things for cinema.

And that’s it.

So congratulations and in Monsieur Tarantino’s own words:

We were hired by Movistar, a high-powered Spanish telecom with important international presence, to envision the best solution for what their online video and television service should be like. We have spent the last few months designing it and collaborating with Movistar’s UX team. And we are incredibly proud of the results.

It’s the product of months of work but, most importantly, it’s a representation of Vostok’s design principles: it’s simple, it’s elegant, it’s honest.

The premise: An online service for film, TV series and linear TV that could be accessed anytime, anywhere. For clients and non-clients. Our solution: a native grid system that responds to a set pattern of interactions that work across all platforms (PC, TV and mobile phones).

To share our thought process we have uploaded a slideshow that puts together the design premises we kicked off with. And a webpage that shows a selection of the design aspects in the final product we find most interesting.

Last, but not least we release a video made in collaboration with Riot Cinema that is the perfect accompaniment to this product. Don’t forget to check it out :)

Curious to know what you think.

Bernardo, for those of you who don’t know him already, is Worldwide Director of Emerging Products at Google.

Website credits:
Vostok has done the design, Pep Gómez has supervised the implementation and Jorge González from Wakalaka has done the mockup and CSS.

www.bernardohernandez.com

If you wanna stay in the loop: @ducksboard

It’s a pity certain things don’t last forever. We’re happy to announce though, our Vostok sleeves are all sold out :)

We’d like to thank our clients and Riot Cinema for this video.

For those who don’t know it yet, dribbble is one of my top 5 favorite things of 2010, along with fffffound, Salsa Valentina, the Tokyo real-sized Gundam and a yet-empty spot.

Those who already purchased it will receive the updated file by email.

FIRST, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH PIGMENTS

Man has always wanted to tell stories through images. It all started with cavemen and their paintings. Their language was probably not very rich in vocabulary but they knew they wanted to show others what their memories held and what populated their imagination. So they painted it. But access to pigments and the ability to paint on stone was limited to only a few.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH STONE

Sculpture, along with wall paintings (or glass) paintings were the way advanced civilizations (from mesopotamic to christian) represented visually the characters in their stories. Stories were told and not read for many centuries and sculptures would help people visualize their heroes, saints or divinities. Think of sculptures in palaces and churches where generals and saints were displayed in their epic endeavors. Also painted glass windows and mosaics of those who were powerful and where their power lied. Only the “official” artists had access to such expensive means and their stories were limited to what was the official version of the official story.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH PAPER

Paper was a very expensive technology until just a few centuries ago. It was difficult to manufacture and only a few lettered people had access to it: mostly scholars and monks, some of whom were specialized in miniature paintings illustrating the concepts explained in the books.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH INK

Newspapers slowly started to incorporate pictures in their stories but they tended to be small: sending them was techically complex and the ink was expensive. Stories had be told textually or with a few small photographs. Or at least until the 60s when photography became a commodity for magazines.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH CAMERAS

Photography allowed memories to last forever but, again, it was limited and expensive at the beginning. It took 100 years for that industry to make photography available to everyone. In the 70s people could only afford to have one camera per household. Then they were able to have relatively cheap photoalbums where the stories that mattered to them the most were stored: new born babies, marriages, adventures, trips… they were all narrations composed of visual memories. But still, you couldn’t share them easily.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH BANDWIDTH

Photos and images have always been part of the Internet, especially of the Word Wide Web, but the first modems were very very slow. You had to scan a picture (no digital cameras yet), you had to compress it, reduce its size and expect visitors to wait several minutes for the image to load. The standard was around 200 pixels wide for a rectangular picture. So, we had a medium that allowed us to share our messages with the world but the use of images was still scarce. Text was the only way to go.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH RESOLUTION

Digital images became widely available, everyone could create and share them. Bandwidth grew fast: size was no longer an issue. But… Monitors still didn’t have enough resolution to show pictures in all their glory. Remember when 800×600 was the reference when it came to website matters? Nothing bigger than that was allowed. It took us 10 years to start moving to 1024 pixels wide and even then there was some fear of using big format images. Powerpoint was there and allowed some to tell stories visually (most just used it for bulletpointed BS) but images were still just there to dress a good text.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE THE SOFTWARE

Sure there is flickr now, and many others, but until not so long ago there was not a single piece of cheap software that allowed people to tell visual stories in a sequence of images. Just as we could do in a photoalbum, or a Powerpoint in fullscreen mode, attracting the viewer’s full attention. Images that ARE the message and not just the accompaniment. The Big Picture, at Boston.com got it but they didn’t make it sequential. The iPad did it with its image galleries but they weren’t shareable on the internet. We were almost there…

AND NOW…

We now have the bandwidth, the cameras, the screen size and the Internet. We all need to tell our stories, to show our projects, to be able to share our memories with pictures and videos. And we cannot pay a high price for it.

So we, at Vostok, have made it possible. It had to be done.

We created a tool that allows people to tell stories visually and to share them with the rest of the world. We also made it affordable. It’s a WordPress theme, it’s called BlackVostok – www.blackvostok.com and it’s just $16.

Now tell your story, take over the full browser window with your images and share them with the world.

BlackVostok
Here’s the website: www.blackvostok.com
Here’s the theme in action: www.blackvostok.com/test

I say they are right.

We agree that it’s a boring theme but we’d rather call it NEUTRAL. It’s neutral, it doesn’t have a soul. It has no personality. Why?

The message shouldn’t be in the container but in the content itself. If a blog that uses the Vostok Theme is boring it’s probably because the content is boring. It has nothing to do with the “design”. The Vostok Theme is neutral because it let’s the content speak for itself. It’s your writing, your pictures and your editorial style what makes a blog interesting.

If you focus more on pictures you’d probably pick the dark version because photos contrast with the background and thus are more vivid. If you want text to be king you’ll pick the white one wich is better in terms of legibility.

To those who say that the Vostok Theme is boring I reply: yes, but it’s because of your content. And if your content is boring it really doesn’t matter which theme you use, it will always be boring. You may go for a colorful, fancy schmancy theme and catch the visitor’s attention for some seconds but if your stuff is dull… you are perceived as dull.

The Vostok Theme is neutral, it lets your content speak for itself. There is no make up, just legibility and clarity. It’s an honest theme.

(thanks a lot Ricardo!)

The best thing about it is that you don’t need to chose beforehand, you just install one file and BOOM! Both themes appear on your WordPress so you can fit them both and chose one right away.

Remember, Vostok Theme is for those who don’t want attention to be distracted from content. Colors and typography have been carefully chosen to achieve maximum legibility with minimum eye fatigue. Also, code has been written with extreme care for web standards and accessibility.

NOTE TO TUMBLR USERS: Ricardo Fernández just made an adaptation and now you have the Vostok Theme for Tumblr available in black (white soon to come).

Their original post is here.

Our assumptions

We (both minube and us) put extreme attention to what information mattered the most and made it stand above the secondary data. These were our main assumptions:

• Price matters most than company.
• Price (usually) matters most than hours.
• There is the cheapest and then the rest.
• Airlines are better recognized by their logos/colors than by their names.
• Some things don’t need to be a in a filter: price ranges, airline, websites searched, etc.
• Those with flexible dates need a different way to look at it.
• It’s easier to redo the search than to refine through ajax.
• Flight and flight back are consecutive, so let’s show them consecutive.
• It’s likely that your choice will be among the first 10 results (although you may want to see more).
• White space helps people identify choices, it makes everything clearer.
• Boxes help you separate between different types of content.
• It’s better to show just the essential data.

Old and new versions side to side

Minube is always quesioning how they do things and how these things can be improved. I like to say that at Vostok we are not good at innovating but at improving. The old version was good. But good as it was it could be, and should be improved. Here you have both versions side to side:

Facts prove it

We know the new one is more beautiful and more honest. Facts prove it. Raúl (Minube’s CEO) told me about the A/B Test results and the main indicators doubled in the new one. You should check Raúl’s post in Spanish about it.

We both believe

It’s a great thing we have clients who share our believes. Working with minube is always of great pleasure. We have a relationship based on trust and shared values. They also think that beauty and honesty are two of most important principles of good design.

These are some of the principles we’ve applied here:

• Place the alert as close as possible to the spot where the decision has to be made.
• Add visual feedback that something important is going on (the message flashes) so it is noticeable.
• Change the form (size, color and text) of the confirmation element to make sure the user notices the alert

Here’s the full scene:

If we knew that not noticing the cards was too frequent we’d consider haing another step in the process just for filling the cards. But we are unsure about that and there is no easy way for knowing this (no, usability tests don’t work for that because users pay extra attention when observed). So instead of redesigning the process making it more effective and painful we went with this “user interface hack”.

… and the file (links to the one you have to use, 1024×1024 px.):

Enjoy it.

As part of the rebuilding of Planetaki we’ve switched from MySQL databases to MongoDB. It is quite a big change and the results are already noticeable. You can feel the wond in your face when in front of your planet. It’s fast, very fast.

Sam wrote a post about how it’s all set up. The techie inside you will enjoy it. Here are a few excerpts:

Planetaki caches huge amounts of data from posts all over the internet resulting in very large rows. The result is that the traditional database caching and optimisation techniques just aren’t as effective, and Planetaki was getting progressively slower and harder to manage.

[...]

Planetaki now uses a hybrid solution for storing data. The complex feeds and their entries are stored in MongoDB, and user data is stored in a traditional Postgresql database. This allows us to split the system into two parts, on one side we have the feed “reaping”, and on the other the website which mainly accesses the tables of data.

Read the full article: Planetaki powered by MongoDB

Our partners and friends at Riot Cinema (they make movies) just did this amazing video for Unience, a social network of investors. We love it not just becuse of the aesthetics but also because the script is so well written it makes you open an account right away:

To make good use of Movida’s release, we helped BeBanjo in the redesign of their website and their branding. Our goal was to help explain their products better, and to create a simple yet handsome and extensible visual system to represent them.

We started off by exploring a western theme, lots of things fitted in without being overtly obvious: BeBanjo’s name, Spain’s history of spaguetti western cinema, and the folksy personalities of the team (in a good way!).

We presented a couple of options with a western theme (boots, cacti, banjos, etc) and they fell in love with the simple shapes of this hat:

So I made a family of hats made out of lines. However, when you use a dark background and clear lines they seem more complex than needed. So we added a simple rule:

In the end we decided on keeping the logos black & white, that way we can throw almost any color or texture and it still look goods (not that we would do it!).

Head over to BeBanjo.com to check out their brand new website and identity. I’ll talk about the website later!

Vostok Theme was designed by me (Javier Cañada) and coded by Rubén Lozano quite long ago. I am still confident about most of the design decisions in it, especially those about features and layout. But as screen resolution has increased I feel like type size and column height should be revised.

I’m also considering making a “white version” with the same legibility goals. Or perhaps a Serif version. Do you think that would make sense?

We are kinda proud of how it is designed. Its main goal is to minimize uncertainty. Some of its virtues:

• It tells (and shows) right away what did you buy and when it will be delivered.
• Direct invoice download.
• A visual reminder that your flowers will arrive closed and will blossom after.
• Info on what to do if you want to change anything (links, email adresses and even a phone number).
• Minimal visual identity elements from Floresfrescas.com, just so you can identify the email quickly and without reading anything.
• Print-friendly layout.
• It can be read with images disabled (for those malware-aware).

  Confirmation emails are a very important part of a purchase process and sometimes are ignored by interaction designers. Do you have any good examples of this? How would you improve the Floresfrescas one?

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/floresfrescascom-confirmation-email/feed 8 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/new-planetaki-theme-helvetiplanet http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/new-planetaki-theme-helvetiplanet#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:54:22 +0000 admin http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=1022 Today we replaced our ageing white theme with a minimal theme named Helvetiplanet.
  

  It’s no secret we’re huge Swiss nostalgics, and this is a little homage to one of our favorite typefaces, Helvetica. We hope you don’t mind us being retro-stylish once in a while!

  To check it out in action just set ‘Helvetiplanet’ color in your preferences. Don’t have a Planetaki account? Sign up here, it will take you less than a minute, really.

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/new-planetaki-theme-helvetiplanet/feed 0 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/google-favorite-places-and-vostok http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/google-favorite-places-and-vostok#comments Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:25:10 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=967 Two weeks ago Google launched Favorite Places: famous people from several cities around the world share their favorite spots on Google Maps. Check this video to see what’s all about:

  We, Vostok, were hired by Google to help them design the interface that allows you to browse betweeen cities, celebrities and their favorite places:

  

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/google-favorite-places-and-vostok/feed 8 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/floresfrescas-redesigned http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/floresfrescas-redesigned#comments Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:59:59 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=943 We recently redesigned floresfrescas.com, probably the most ambitious project designed and developed at Vostok. It was not only the front store but all of the internal applications: inventory management, courier interfaces and backoffice stuff behind such a business. We could say we rebuilt the whole enchilada. Huge project.
  

  floresfrescas.com is a place to buy nice & fresh flowers in Spain for half the price you would pay at any interflora kiosk. The concept is simple: they carry only three products (roses, multi-flower, and flower of the week bouquets).

  We are extremely proud of our work. There are many tiny details in which we put so much care both in design and programming:

  • The heading color for the flower of the week changes according to the color of the flower (María spent days on this).
  • The muted color palette was designed to allow the freshness and vivacity
    of the flowers really shine.
  • Texts are clear and friendly, especially confirmation messages.
    
  • Calendars. They rock. You can change delivery dates after your order has been placed. That is done in a really awesome manner, thanks to Sam’s code-wizardy.
  • All your account info and configuration is in a single page.
  • The homepage is clear and the structure is very flat, you can access
    pretty much any page from there.
  • We also redesigned all the Corporate Identity (taking good care of making the brand web-centric instead of logo-centric).
  • The 404: Page Not Found rocks

  Just as a reference, this is a screenshot of the old website:

  

  The visual difference is outstanding, but we are also very proud of being able to narrow down a 12+ step checkout process into a couple of screens, without overloading the customer with endless error-prone forms.

  We hope you like it and (here comes the shameless plug) if you, or one of your loved ones is in Peninsular Spain, try it out!

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/floresfrescas-redesigned/feed 16 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/minubes-travel-guides-in-paper http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/minubes-travel-guides-in-paper#comments Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:19:33 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=940 Minube, a Spanish and French online website where travellers share info about travel destinations, just released their printable traveller guides, which are basically travel guides with user comments, pictures and maps from the place you chose based on your selected categories, tags, etc.

  

  We, Vostok, helped minube designing the creation and personalisation process which you can see on this post at the Minube blog (Spanish).

  Ah, here’s an example of what a guide looks like (pdf). Pretty awesome. Congrats to the minube guys!

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/minubes-travel-guides-in-paper/feed 1 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/beautiful-launches http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/beautiful-launches#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:03:57 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=910 We are about to launch something big pretty soon… Green light was received and the countdown will start right now. In the meantime feast your eyes on this amazing collection of pictures of launches:

  

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/beautiful-launches/feed 0 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/the-cosmonaut-the-movie-just-launched http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/the-cosmonaut-the-movie-just-launched#comments Mon, 25 May 2009 15:09:51 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=869 Un, deux, trois, quatre!

  We proudly introduce you thecosmonaut.org and its Spanish counterpart elcosmonauta.es: the website for the movie The Cosmonaut which we mentioned some time ago.

  

  Check it out! It has a cool store where you can buy merchandise and become a producer of the movie. The Cosmonaut is special for several reasons:

  • The plot is awesome
  • The movie is crowdfunded (anybody can be a producer)
  • Everything will be released under Creative Commons license, free of cost
  • The list of people who support the idea is amazing (in quantity and quality)

  We, Vostok, designed and developed the website (in three weeks!!) falling in love with the project and becoming producers too, so expect a little friendly spam every now and then ;)

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/the-cosmonaut-the-movie-just-launched/feed 2 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/vostok-%e2%99%a5-tuenti http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/vostok-%e2%99%a5-tuenti#comments Tue, 12 May 2009 12:12:54 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=855 Tuenti, the leading social network in Spain just semi-released a new version and we, Vostok, collaborated with their design team assessing in usability and interaction design matters. It’s not like we are happy about it, it’s more like we are overflowing with pride.

  

  Tuenti is one of the three most used websites in Spain together with Google and perhaps some online newspaper. Astronomic numbers on usage time, milions of active users and an indecent number of pictures uploaded everyday. It’s the drug our youngsters consume every day in Spain.

  The project has not concluded yet and some changes are still to come. Usability testing, user feedback and tons of data help the team make the final adjustments before they release the new version to all users.

  

  The new design includes a few new functionalities, improves legibility and makes easier to do the most common tasks (messaging, uploading pics, creating events…). Most of these changes are hard to see at a glance, they are subtle. They need to be used and *felt*. You know, it’s not just about how it looks but about how it behaves.

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/vostok-%e2%99%a5-tuenti/feed 13 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/movie-presentation-at-medialab-prado-in-madrid http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/movie-presentation-at-medialab-prado-in-madrid#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:56:57 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=846 If you are in Madrid tomorrow you may want to attend the presentation of El Cosmonauta (The Cosmonaut – Kokmohabt) at Medialab Prado. Nicolás Alcalá and the guys from Riot Cinema will be explaining their project of filming an amazing science fiction movie applying the principles of Creative Commons and crowdfunding.

  When: Thursday April 23th, 19:30h.
  Where: Medialab-Prado. Plaza de las Letras, C/ Alameda, 15 · Madrid (map)

  

  As you may know, Vostok is pretty involved in this initiative which we mentione a few posts earlier. We hope you find it as exciting as we do.

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/movie-presentation-at-medialab-prado-in-madrid/feed 0 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/the-cosmonaut-the-movie-and-us http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/the-cosmonaut-the-movie-and-us#comments Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:39:44 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=831 Today is April 12th and we celebrate the 58th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space on the Vostok 1 mission. It’s also a great day to make the following announcement:

  We, Vostok, will be in charge of designing and producing the internet presence for a movie titled The Cosmonaut. It is special for many reasons, being the topic the most obvious one.Also, the movie will be crowdfunded (everybody will be able to become producer for a small amount of money) and released under Creative Commons license. That itself makes it very unique and special, but that’s not it. It will be filmed in Russian and some of the locations will be there as well. But there is more:

  The movie is supported by (among others):

  • Roskosmos (the Russian Space Agency)
  • Richard Stallman
  • Cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Boris Volynov
  • the Russian Embassy in Spain
  • Aeronautics and Astronautics Spanish Museum
  • Luis Ruiz de Gopegui (former Director for NASA programs in Spain)
  • etc.

  The movie is a project by Riot Cinema, to be directed by Nicolás Alcalá, who runs a blog in Spanish with all the progress they are making.

  A great day for announcing our collaboration in such a beautiful project. We are extremely excited about it.

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/the-cosmonaut-the-movie-and-us/feed 2 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/new-website http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/new-website#comments Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:34:33 +0000 admin http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=762 Over the weekend we released our brand new one-page website at vostok.es.

  During the past few months we’ve had the privilege of working with great clients, both start-ups and multi-nationals. It has been a great pleasure collaborating with partners and friends who understand the virtues of honest, simple, and well-thought design. Vostok’s rockets are still going full-thrust, we will keep you updated on recently completed projects.

  

  This blog is also running under the new domain, but thanks to some ancient Apache magic conjuration you won’t even notice. We’re also giving away some limited-edition Planetaki T-Shirts, just pay the shipping and we will send it via a reliable courier. To get yours just visit our new website.

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/new-website/feed 10 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/bebanjo http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/bebanjo#comments Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:39:34 +0000 admin http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=720 If you are—in any way—involved with TV programming or operations, you should be aware of BeBanjo. They are preparing a suite of products that will allow your team and providers to collaborate online seamlessly, and their product kicks ass.

  

  Over the last couple of months Vostok has had the pleasure of teaming up with BeBanjo, a start-up composed of an Elite Team of A-Players. We are very flattered to be mentioned as collaborators at their brand-new website, as we share many traits: passion for simplicity, staying lean and mean, and being obssesive about what really matters. Working with them has been a thrill, as their agile development turns our interaction design deliverables into The Real Thing in a matter of days.

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/bebanjo/feed 2 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/planetaki-app-for-the-iphone-almost-there http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/planetaki-app-for-the-iphone-almost-there#comments Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:42:51 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=704 Check this out. It’s the pre-pre-alpha of our brand new iPhone version of Planetaki. Out from the oven and still hot. Kudos to Sam!

  

  We still need to do a lot of work on many details, especially those related to design so we can keep the same user experience we already have on the website. It’s not done yet but… It works!

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/planetaki-app-for-the-iphone-almost-there/feed 1 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/we-will-miss-her http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/we-will-miss-her#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:41:19 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=692 Yeah, we will miss her. She loved us, we love her. And with this little homage we finally found a good use for those thousands of avatars we have at Planetaki ;)

  

  BTW, the big-sized poster is at the Planetaki Blog, in case you want to find your website in the image.

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/we-will-miss-her/feed 1 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/facerank-online-dating http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/facerank-online-dating#comments Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:13:55 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=565 Make sure to check Dorothy Silva’s post on the concept of Facerank. It’s pretty illustrative.

  It left me thinking about its application to an online service of say… dating. Most of todays online dating websites are based on browsing or searching. In fact it’s a combination of the two, since it’s some sort of filtering (gender, age, location, etc.). But no one, or at least no one that I know, has implemented an online dating system based on recommendations: “Javier, I know you so much I bet this girl is definitely a good match for you”.

  I am sooo thinking about it these days.
  This will be Vostok‘s next project.
  Yeah!

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/facerank-online-dating/feed 0 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/embed-a-planet-in-any-website http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/embed-a-planet-in-any-website#comments Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:27:00 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/?p=515 I am super-happy to share this news about Planetaki: we already implemented a feature to embed a planet in whatever website you want. Ain’t that cool or what?

  If you are a Planetaki user and want to try it out, experiment a bit or just do some good to your website readers, try embedding this ultra-tiny piece of code inside your html:

  <script type=”text/javascript”
  src=”http://www.planetaki.com/javiercanada.js”></script>

  Make sure you change the “javiercanada” piece for your planet slug or it will be my planet showing up on your own house :)

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/embed-a-planet-in-any-website/feed 5 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/munimadrid-n-1-in-usability-in-the-world http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/munimadrid-n-1-in-usability-in-the-world#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:21:38 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/munimadrid-n-1-in-usability-in-the-world The City of Madrid’s website (munimadrid.es) has been ranked the most usable of all municipal governance websites in the world in a study commissioned by United Nations and conducted by Rutgers University. Madrid also ranks very high in other categories, being the 5th best overall.

  

  This makes me very proud since I lead the team who made that possible. I guess I cannot disclose much of the information regarding the project, but I want to congratulate and thank the team who worked really hard to make it possible. We weren’t expecting such success.

  Here is the press release and a link to a United Nations page with the full report.

  Here is the overall ranking:

  

  This is the detail on the usability category:

  

  This is the paragraph where Madrid’s website is mentioned as one of the best practices all over the world:

  

  Working for the public administration is always dificult. There are many interests and stakeholders which sometimes conflict among themselves and you feel in the middle having to come up with something that compromises all parts and is also what you think it’s best for users. I don’t recall it as an easy project.

  Besides, as a professional you have to deliver a plus when working in such projects. Why? For two main reasons:

  1. You are being paid with everybody’s money
  2. Your users are the Citizens. You work for the public good.

  I remember recalling these principles when things used to get tough. It was our big motivation. Now I see it was worth the sacrifice.

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/munimadrid-n-1-in-usability-in-the-world/feed 8 http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/planetaki-on-pc-actual-magazine http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/planetaki-on-pc-actual-magazine#comments Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:54:41 +0000 Javier Cañada http://www.vostok.es/blog/planetaki-on-pc-actual-magazine I was very happy to see Planetaki on PC Actual, one of the main computer magazines in Spain. It’s on a report about web apps made here.

  Here is a picture of the article, taken by Denegro:

  

  It’s so cool to share these three pages with Unvlog and iwannagothere, two projects we admire, use and love.

  ]]> http://www.vostokstudio.com/blog/planetaki-on-pc-actual-magazine/feed 4