“You owe me son! and you owe me big time!

I feel sometimes, two people come up with a great idea and this things happens. Of course, in other instances, only one person comes up with a great idea and the rest just copy it, or promote it better. In this case, Justice, hard and cold justice, may be the one who solves this case.

More about this in GoNintendo.com

The Tetris effect is the ability of any activity to which people devote sufficient time and attention to begin to dominate their thoughts, mental images, and dreams. It is named after the video game Tetris. In the game a player rotates and moves different falling shapes made up of blocks. If the player can arrange the shapes so there are complete horizontal lines of blocks without any gaps, those lines are eliminated. The object of the game is to eliminate as many lines as possible before the shapes fill the screen.
People who play Tetris for a long time might then find themselves thinking about ways different shapes in the real world can fit together, such as the boxes on a supermarket shelf or the buildings on a street.[1] In this sense, the Tetris effect is a form of habit.

So, if you catch yourself walking down the street and mentally, you are still doing what you where doing for the last 72hs, don’t panic! it’s just the Tetris Effect. It happens to designers A LOT for what I heard.

Hey! Good start for 2008!

Download passage from SourceForge

Now, I never hit the sky with Emagiancion (yet) because I had lost my goals earlier, before I went into the “battlefield”. This is a 3rd world country gentlemen, it gets ugly sometimes down here and you may get your head screw up from time to time if you don’t move away from all the madness going on here. Yes, I admit it. I have lost the original plan, the goal and I’m now in the trenches with no map at all; I don’t recognize in what side are the allies, and in what side the axis are; totally lost.

But, there is a solution for that. Our job, our main job is to find solutions each day, to problems. Can be a website usability, a design that doesn’t fit well with what the client wants, users that are complaining about a specific feature and how it works, it can be anything, but we solve problems. And it’s a daily task in our business administration too; so the “lost goals” issue, has a fix for sure.

Make a plan

This is what I’m doing right now. Think about what you once wanted to accomplish by going into business. Yes, being your own boss, not working for [[insert boss name here]] never again, not seeing his/her face, working from home, making millions. Yes sure, those are good reasons in fantasy land. Here in reality, a business needs to make a difference; not just for you but for others. No business that makes a difference just for their owners goes anywhere beyond the backroom in the owners house.

Is not always about the money; but about what you can do for the others or what you can avoid to happen. Example: McDonalds is a fast food place right, the only reason for those business to exist is to make money for their owners right? wrong! they don’t sell hamburgers. No sir. That’s not their product. Their product is that you, or I, or anyone, all of us live in a world where nothing works as it suppose to work, everyone is always late, everyone is always running and not being there in time, everyone always have an excuse. You, me everyone.

Not in McDonalds they don’t. You go there, for a meal, ask for it, and under 4 minutes, you are on your way with what you asked for. That’s what McDonalds are producing, that’s their product, that’s what they sell. The peace of mind to know you can get a full meal within 4 minutes. Sure they won’t win the prize of the year for nutrition, but it’s not about that. Again, is about going there, asking for a meal, and witting 4 minutes, having it in your hand. Then, you walk through the door, and you are again, in the imperfect Real World ™ where everything fails.

That’s McDonalds business. The easiest example I can think off right now.

First, you make a plan. What are you going to change? what are you going to deliver out there? It can be changing something you know is wrong (37signals guys changed how the web works, they made web apps easy and accessible for everyone, by price and by features), it can be helping something good to stay how it is, it can be working to fix something that is absolutely wrong; you follow me? it needs to be real. It needs to be there, right in people’s face.

Once you have that, once you have your “cause”, you are ready. THEN, you make a plan. Then you work on how to go from here, to there, and what you will need.

The Plan Sheet

I made a quick plan sheet that folds into my pocket and I carry it everywhere. I actually carry it inside my Moleskine Pocket. I use it twice a day: when I wake up, and after I eat my yogurt ;) and when I’m about to leave my office. How do I use it? I just read it and imagine what’s my next move.

On that Plan Sheet I have wrote down where I’m, where I want to go, and how do I plan to get there, it’s a mini-plan, with numbers ($) and notations everywhere. It doesn’t need to look pretty, it just needs to work. Right in the middle of it, there is our “EmaStudios motto”, or our cause per say. I will reveal it once EmaStudios goes live. But, you can place it on the top, on the bottom, whenever you want, but it has to be there, big enough for you to see. Bigger than everything else. Dominant.

If you don’t forget where you are, and where you want to be, and if you don’t forget WHY you wanted to begin the journey in the first place, I believe you, as I, could go right to the top of our dreams.

It’s not hard. It’s DAMN HARD. And that’s why we are doing it, right?

Javier Cabrera
From the EmaStudios HQ. Bs. As. Argentina.

From Nifty corners (with Nifty Cubes included) to this one called CSS Teaser Box from 456 Berea Street which is really interesting because it comes in fluid and fixed flavor:

Enjoy!

Twitter is an excellent tool to let everyone know what you are doing right now. I know I know, I’m six months late with this, but believe me, it has a great business potential. I can let know everyone I work with (clients and employees) where I’m and what I’m doing all the time, even through my cellphone; which is invaluable. People out there is saying the BlackBerry is evil because it forces you to stay online or in touch 24/7, I say this is the cure for the BlackBerry syndrome. With just 1 minute, you can open your account and through your cellphone or instant messenger you can actually keep everyone up to date with what’s going on with you at the moment. This breaks with the urgency of “I will email Phill to see where my project is right now” or “Let’s email John to see if he forgot about our project, it is about a week now that I don’t get any answers from him”.

With Twitter you have instant update on the table; everyone will know what you are up to, and everyone will know what you are doing. Last week, it was an ugly week for me, lots of deadlines and lots of fun too (doing something that it may change some people’s way of working… it’s beautiful, will talk about it when the client allows me. Kevin, thanks!) and some other things that are extremely interesting (Branden! it is a go!) and Twitter has helped me with the rest of my clients and people I work with during those days.

It is an excellent tool for communication, and I will integrate to my blog when the new site comes live. Right now, you can find me at http://twitter.com/doncabrera

Tim Vaughan
Yup, all true
But that was probably true for vinyl records as well

Javier Cabrera | http://twitter.com/doncabrera
the core of books aren’t just the words or the content… but the book itself.
yup, maybe. Or you just maybe want to pick a fight. Do you want us to take this outside, punk?

Tim Vaughan
Seriously dude, I’d kick your asss
You know that
I know that

Javier Cabrera | http://twitter.com/doncabrera
hahahaha! yes you are actually right!

At MSN today, 2:40 PM Bs As time.

It’s called Kindle and it just launched today, you can read about it on EndGadget, but you can see some pictures of it too before that!

EndGadget Kindle Launch

Look at Jeff Bezos face, he is so proud!

Can someone remember this episode? the “homer-car”? looks like an “homer-car” situation on Jeff Bezos face there!

1990 is back!

We all know Mr.Bezos is one of the most brilliant minds out there, he is probably the first and ultimate entrepreneur and business owner for most of us, a living legend, but hey, this Kindle thing looks awful, no doubt about that either (just a personal note!). If they can make it look like an iPod (technology wise too) they won’t have any problem with it, but if not…

The “laundry soap” or Kindle, as Amazon called it, it has a built in WiFi connectivity and it can download books in a breeze, one of the smartest ideas ever (we are all tired of software install, download to the pc, etc).

Looks ugly even up-close!

We really hope they can make it look better (maybe not 2008 if they don’t want to go that far, but they could use some 1995 radios as design base! they can really benefit from those ones! anything better than this thing!) and we know they will in the future. It will be beautiful and easy to use. Even the software inside looks ugly (they didn’t had 37signals on their pocket? maybe is time to use some of those talents there hey…)

Kindle is promising, it is what’s coming, and you saw it first here, at clear.your.mind. Tell your kids!

You will be approached as a junior web designer and be trained to work with us until you can imitate our style perfectly. All levels of skills are opened for this position, if you have the minimum set of skills to design a web with the “2.0″ look, don’t suffer, we can help you out. There is more than just making nice buttons and blue gradients, there is interface and usability approaches that you will learn by working with us; so you have to be willing to learn a lot! just try us and see if we can work together. More details once we start talking!

Educational background can get you so far in life, then it’s experience and willing to learn, that’s what we value here. So, if you are in this world (no matter where) and you want to work with a small group of smart, funny people who make the web a little better; just drop us a line to javier = at = emaginacion.com.ar and let’s see what we can do together.

If you know someone, just send him/her to meet us!

Google has made a great job for the web, it is actually the fahter and mother of today’s Internet, clear, simple and cool enough to let us use it without showing us stupid yellow/red banners blinking all over the place (Altavista, Yahoo, AOL, where are you guys?). Google has made the Internet, what is today (in part). Youtube is what’s coming if you ask me. Haven’t you noticed how new gadgets now don’t come with a “Google” feature? but with a Youtube feature? (iPhone anyone?). I know I know, Youtube was bought by Google, but hey, Youtube isn’t Google, and it wasn’t made by Google. That means Google bought their competitor and made it their own partner, that’s very cool actually.

I’m not saying Google will disappear, it will just go for a vacation until it reorganizes itself. Blogger wasn’t a hit. Google Video wasn’t a hit either. Google stats was definitely not a hit. Youtube, it is indeed, a good hit for Google, since most of us don’t even use it anymore to look for entertainment (cellphones review, gadgets review, games review, movies review, books reviews, etc) now we just Youtube-it.

Funny how things turn out right?

This is one of the photos people found:

And here’s the link

Here is the same one but closer:

Someone may think this is funny, but again, the United States had a terrorist attack over 9/11 (I presume people at Google remember this right?) if they are uploading fake “UFOs”, people, is not funny, citizens may get scared just because someone wanted to be funny.

If not, if that’s something that really appeared there, it may be a meteorologic balloon, or something else (like something in the lens of the satellite) and there is no reason to be alarmed. It’s very unlikely that what we are seeing there on those pics, and here, and here are flying disks with martians inside playing poker; but for the other hand, it appears the anomaly only appear one day, and the next one has moved to a different position, and in some cases, it is gone for good.

What the heck!
(Found via GoogleSightSeeing.com)

As you can appreciate, the outcome of a photo that went through Pixoo service is very good. Yes, it looks like photoshoped but hey, it looks better! Now, I don’t know why people would use this kind of service… (shhh…I know… me too!)