sugarenia.com

So I went to IMC 2007 last Friday. Flew to Athens in the morning, watched all presentations, flew back in the evening, dropped dead on my bed. Here are some quick thoughts:

• Jean-Paul Edwards speaks too quickly - his thoughts were too rushed. But he brought an OMD UK air with him and that was nice.
• Patou Nuytemans‘ presentation was the hit of the day - simple, engaging, fun and up-to-date. Hat tip to her (and Keynote, mrs. Nuytemans was the only Macbook owner among the guests).
• Pantelis Mpakis‘ presentation seemed kinda shallow to me - I enjoyed the Scream TV case study, but well, that’s about it.
• I had some high hopes for mr. Marmarokopos and mrs. Panou presentation - after all, with a title like A Woman’s right to interactivity, why not? I was disappointed though, because it was only a case study on the advertising campaign of a well-known detergent powder - complete with read-through, ugly-graphs slides. Sigh.
• Mr. Stanislas Segard from Doubleclick did not inform us about anything new - but he tried to give us some clues on the future of rich media, so credit where credit is due.
• Mr. Tsolakidis presented us the idea behind BachelorParties.gr, but as well thought their advertising plan was, I cannot get past their kinda ugly design and site bugs.
• I did not like the presentation aka lecture of mr. Antonis Liberis, neither do I agree with some of his sayings. Why? Because his stance against so-called “17-year-olds with silly ideas” was too aggressive and competitive. We Greeks never learn anything from others - we should embrace those youth, not fight them.
• I laughed a lot with mr. Brian Kealy from Microsoft - a very laid back guy, not shy of his Irish origins and a bit foul-mouthed, but very funny. Hit of his presentation: his Microsoft Powerpoint which refused to cooperate. [insert Windows joke here]
• On a relevant note, The worst presentation conducted by one of the overseas guests was better than the best presentation held by a greek guest. In my humble opinion.
• People should really, really stop reading their slides - it’s annoying and boring as hell. I’d prefer some “oohs” and “aahs” here and there than this.
• I hate graphs.

This is not a full review of the day, by all means. Search around in Technorati for more accurate (and less subjective) reviews. It’s just my take on an interesting day.

Sadly, I forgot my photo camera so I have no visual clues of the day (the mobile phone shots were hideous). All in all, it was an inspiring and fun but really, really tiring day, especially difficult after lunch and just before the end.

As far as the event organization is concerned, I only have one objection: the seats were too close to each other, it was really difficult to sit comfortably after a while, especially when wearing a skirt. Silly? Maybe.

Thanks @ mr. Periklis Vanikiotis for inviting me and @ my company for sending me there.

imc07

Lo and behold, ladies and gentlemen, after quite some time of tweaks and fixes and some more tweaks, the brand-new homepage of Pathfinder.gr is here!

It’s not a beta, but always a work in progress, feel free to pass by and check it out.

Any idea or comment or critique is more than welcome.

And don’t forget to check out the 2007 version of Pathfinder Christmas!

On a relevant note, some colleagues and me will attend the IMC 2007 event in Athens tomorrow. See you there!

pathfinder, pathfinder.gr

Since its recent overhaul, Gmail is getting buggier and buggier for me. Or is it really just for me?

I ranted and ranted to friends and relatives, twitted about it, talked to myself and decided not to get too angry with it, but enough! Now it’s revenge blogging time!

My main problems seem to be Gmail running in multiple instances (say, tabs) and the search functionality. At home (Safari), Gmail refuses to cooperate when I have multiple instances of it open, since it does not respond at clicks at all. At work (Firefox), using the search function completely locks up my browser at least once per day, forcing me to kill and restart the app. I’m quite lukewarm towards Firefox these days, but this is just insane!

I don’t know what’s wrong - my inbox is almost always empty since I tag and archive everything, I have only 3 labels (OK, maybe a little more with Mail.app IMAP integration) and.. that’s it! I use only 5% of my total space and I’m a relatively occasional e-mailer. What’s wrong?

Before you start, yes, I disabled Firebug for Gmail ages ago. The problems persist though. Sometimes even switching to the older version won’t do - because the app itself won’t let me into the old version, freezing upon loading.

Needless to say, this has cost me many precious minutes - since I work by e-mail for PC Magazine, I find it highly irritating that my Gmail won’t obey me.

Has any of you experienced a similar problem after the update?

gmail, gmail bugs

I love o.rang.es, a great site with short stories by Edward Pistachio, much like a blog. Apart from its excellent typography and the interesting range of ornaments and symbols used, it has a nifty contact form, unlike any other I’ve seen:

O.rang.es contact form

To solve the problem of bots and to ensure that he doesn’t receive only the occasional “Oi! Nice site! Kthnxbai” e-mails, mr. Pistachio put together a little riddle to help you discover his long-sought e-mail address.

Put the letters in the right order, gather the numbered letters et voilá! The address is there. Nice twist to the usual, bland comment forms.

No spoilers in the picture above, promise!

o.rang.es, edward pistachio, contact form

I happen to love one Microsoft product - OneNote.

OneNote is a brilliant note-taking program that offers a bunch of useful features to the organized and the not-so-organized like me.

I use it mainly at work - especially when conducting design research or inspiration. I surf the web, find great websites and clip to OneNote everything that strikes my fancy - it’s perfect for creating moodboards. I love the fact that you don’t need to insert data into it in a linear way - paste things wherever you want and you’re good to go.

Design research in OneNote

The only thing that bugs me is that I haven’t yet found a way to create to-do lists that makes completed tasks automatically turn gray.

Task management and todos

I want this thing for the Mac too - it’s one powerhouse of note-taking and scrapbooking. I guess it would replace my personal information manager (currently SohoNotes) too.

Ever heard of a similar application for Mac OS? Do share!

UPDATE: I just recently stumbled upon a fantastic app full of OneNote features for Mac OS X, called Curio. This app does what OneNote does and much more, so give it a shot! I’m kinda convinced.

onenote, microsoft, apple, macos