jeremy johnson (online)

It captures my love of legos. And my hair.

Thanks @JuleeDyer!

I was recently able to spend three weeks in Europe – two weeks working in London, and one week traveling to Brussels and Amsterdam. I haven’t had a lot of long work engagements outside the states, but it really helps get a more global view, and in my case, getting some insights around our international audience.

When starting at GameStop towards the end of 2010 I posted about all the reasons I was interested in getting into gaming – and while being in the middle of it all at GameStop has been fun, I’ve decided to go back to my first love… Travel.

When you think about how people were entertained in their homes in the past, they would usually crowd around a radio or TV – which would be located at some central point in the home. Recently this has changed – with powerful, smaller, connected devices we’re able to fragment this experience. You have a home where everyone is on a different shared device, being more selective about the content they’re consuming – video, websites, games – all up to the individual, but still connected to their circles of family and friends.

As Android gains ground, iOS may not be enough for some brands. And with limited budgets and development constraints, sometimes you can’t give your app the full “Android Treatment” it should deserve. I’ve put together a mini guide to go over some common ways to get your iOS app over to Android, while keeping it consistent (mostly) with today’s Android patterns.

A good number of people I know have gotten “the text message”. You know, the one that tells you – “Hey you, quit hogging all the bandwidth, why don’t you use more Wi-Fi and stay out of my yard”. Yes, I love to be told by a company that I’m using their services, which I pay for, so much I need to be punished.

This past week I was able to speak to a large room of developers at the Gravity Center, who were all there to learn more about developing for Kinect. Which is really developing for sensors – of course Kinect development is much more exciting than sensor development You could also say it’s designing for NUI – Natural User Interfaces, ways you’d expect to interact with interfaces if we didn’t have things like mice in the way. I was asked to speak, as a Designer (and the only one in the room) on the trends of Kinect interfaces, and give my perspective.

If you like a combination of the following: design, user experience, technology, games, art, travel and the internet let me provide you the news. Yes, I actually enjoy sifting through the news, so that you don’t have to – and I bet I’ll do a better job than your news reader (that is if we have similar interests!).

I’ve been a fan since I found Tintin as a child in my local library in Noblesville, IN. I used to check them out over and over again, and I can still remember the torn pages of a book that’s been on the shelf way too long. I’ve been able to pass on the joy of reading Tintin to my 7 year old – who loves the adventure, laughs at the well timed slapstick humor – and mimics the Captain’s endearing outbursts.

I’m Gowalla user #91. They’re at about 2 million now. But, alas… they are no more. I’ve been easing into the idea for months now – my slow decline in usage started with a series of events: taking away my (yes my) icons, demoting check-ins, and my social graph moving on to other apps/sites. Gowalla is one of my first true “must have services” that have disappeared. Why am I sad, because Gowalla was meaningful to me.