Step Up

Hello everybody.

Since our OMWeather team hardly working on Maemo 5 version, I’ve finaly forced myself to learn Adobe Flash technology for better interaction between my brain and programmers :) Dynamic UI prototype can greatly increase whole team productivity: designer will see, if his idea is actually cool and tweak details without waiting for actual code to be done by coders, and programmers can see clearly what designer wants from them, not just “I want this think to ppear like “whoooosh!” and then “baaaam!” Got it?”.

So after 1 day of learning Flash and action Script 3 from ground zero, I came with this super-basic, but still pretty stuff :) Click image to see live demo.

This demo represents my vision on how Maemo 5 desktop applets can behave. It’s totally fictional, since we don’t know anything bout applets (widgets) in Fremantle.

Hope you’ll like it!

Mer UI: Scalability

Hello everyone.

Today I’m not gonna show you new calculator faceplates (surprise!). Today I’ll show you the evolution of Mer UI design, that was inspired by Mer’s scalability.

If you thought that two Ti-calculators are not enough…

… you’re lucky today, cause Marat “fms” Fayzullin presents you the support of 3 more Ti calculators: Ti-83, Ti-83+ and Ti-84+. All of them are packed with my faceplates aswell :)

Comming soon to the Extras repository near you :)

Almost Ti85 Emulator Released

Hello there.
Today I want to announce the release of another piece of software from emu-genius Marat Fayzullin called “Almost Ti85” (ATi85). It emulates full-functional Texas Instruments Ti85 and Ti86 calculators. Marat has asked me if I can help with image faceplates and… well, you know :)
It was very interesting to try to make skins that will be familiar to Ti owners, fit 16:10 screen of the tablets and usable same time.So here are the results:

Hope you’ll like it, cause as more calculators will be supported – more skins will come.
Thanks for reading.

Nokia n97 widget contest.

Hello.
Sorry if this post is not 100% maemo related. I want to invite all maemo community to join interesting contest, that’s held within Nokia Innovation Newsdesk. It’s called Nokia n97 Widget Competition. You just have to come up with some fresh idea, some one-touch breakthru, draw it as good as you can and post it! No coding, debugging and so on, just you, your imagination, paint/photoshop/gimp/whatever you like and weird upload system, that actually uploads your creation but waits bout a week to show it.
Here’s mine by the way, I’ve taken my idea of Uni-Search from “New Year Countdown Series” and made it look as n97 widget.

Funny that it was already ripped off three times: by Ilian Tihov with his two widgets: “Apple movie trailers”

and “Digital Retro Clock”

And say hello to Martin Gerla with his “Ovi search” widget.

Also I’ve already found another Maemo Community member’s widget – Famous “Flip Alarm Clock No Party” by Ciro Ippolito!

So jump in and take a chance to win n97!

Mer UI: the Beginning

Hello there.

Today I’m starting new series of posts, dedicated to my work in Mer project. It became more complex and interesting so I think you’d like to see the UI developing process in details. In past few days I’ve done some nice stuff so let’s begin.

FMS Emulators Icons

Hello everyone.

Life is very interesting thing, you never know what or who will you meet next. It was 6 years ago when I met fms’ awesome emulators while playing with my Viewsonic v35 pocket pc. That was really good and fun time for me because everyone around were totally jealous cause I could play tons of games right from the tiny device. And 6 years later I’ve met Marat Fayzullin a.k.a. fms on the #maemo IRC channel and it was real surprise and great chance to say “thank you” almost face-to-face.

After some time hanging around on #maemo, during hot debates bout Mer’s UI (and it’s a theme for the next post) Marat has asked me if I can draw some proper icons for his emulation series, and ofcourse I gladly agreed.

The Funny Thing

Hello everybody.

Very funny and confusing thing happened yesterday. Thanks to Flatfeet comment in my previous post bout my Mer contribution (which got unprecedented attention from the Community, I really can see that I’ve made right decision to work with Mer guys) it appeared that my wallpaper looks similar to upcoming Windows 7 wallpaper, which I haven’t actually seen until today :) At first I felt very confused and sad cause I’ve started to look like cheap copycat to some Windows stuff. But then I’ve finally googled that wallpaper and the result you can see below:

Somehow it reminds me some ad about modern HD TV, like “before/after”.

And if there are people, I think there aren’t but still, that think that I’m such a dumbass to copycat windows wallpaper and then claim that it was made by myself – I can’t help you :)

P.S.: I’m still contributing to Mer cause it’s awesome to work with such great guys :)

Repos à la Mer*

Hello everybody, hope you’ve spent your hollidays quite well.

I’m starting this year with great mood and feel for something extremely new. So I’ve broke all my previous rules and entered great project outside of Maemo OS, but it’s 100% maemo related.  Let me introduce – Mer!

New Year Countdown Series: #10

Happy new year to all of you! Almost half of our planet is already in the future, other is waiting, we have 23:00 here in Moscow and party is getting started. Thank you for all your warm words about my New Year Countdown Series, it’s really a great pleasure to see you all here reading and especially discussing my posts. I wish that we’ll all have some great stuff from Nokia guys that will change the game dramatically and break the barrier of “geek toys” into something massive and epic! Happy New Year!

And as a present I give you, as promised, my favourite UI concept, one of my best of all ideas. Today we will reinvent copy/paste system!