Sunday recap: November 13th

Behind the scene of "Lights" using WebGL: a friend of mine and former colleague posted this a few days ago, and it's interesting to see how they brought this to life. link

Trailers in reverse – Dead Island: after showing a colleague of mine the new GTA trailer and talking about how we were impressed that the video game company didn't default to a simple collection of guns and glory shots, he showed me another video game trailer for Dead Island which is quite disturbing but creates a story that draws you in for 3 minutes. link

Mobile UX Content Recommendations from Jakob Neilson: for those that have worked on mobile app projects, they'll agree with Mr. Neilson's statement that you should critically analyze the content you put in app screens or generally present to a user on a mobile device (since content influences the template layout). I also personally find that it is much easier for a user to get disoriented when tapping through your app, making it pertinent to have critical information accessible within a tap and allowing them to re-orient themselves without having to drive back 4 steps. link

Online dating data is giving scientists the data they need to dissect us even more: an interesting article in the Sunday NYTimes that calls out some impressive stats, such as the fact that apparently 21% of heterosexual couples that have formed romantic relationships in the U.S. between 2007 and 2009 did so online. I've always been quite curious about the effectiveness of online dating sites, since I've observed a few of my friends using them in the past. I've personally found that males between the ages 21-27 still find it quite taboo to mention the fact that they met girls through online dating sites, and that any site that charges a fee generally gets abandoned after a few days (a freemium model tends to work better). link

Going local is also going back in time: the NYTimes has cited two cases in the U.S where those who live in small, rural towns have banded together to save their local shops and in some cases actually pooled the money together to re-open and staff the shop. There is something quite authentic and nostalgic about a town coming together to save their local shops. As much as the past 10 years has scene us move away from emotional connections with the places we buy items from, I think it is coming back with a full head of steam. link

One of the rare benefits of overdeveloped areas in the U.S – luxurious student housing: apparently students in Merced, California have been taking advantage of the rock bottom rental rates for 4000 square foot homes near their university, and have been choosing these monster houses instead of 200 square foot dorm rooms. It sounds temporary, but heck, I would have loved to do this while going to uni. link