I’m basically a print designer, and even though I have done web design I worried that they would be “talking in code” and I’d be lost. I was pleasantly surprised—the presenters who showed some code did it in a way that I could understand. Even Eric Meyer’s chat on “CSS for evil” was presented in a way that made sense to the print designers like me!

Monday morning started with AEA founder Jeffrey Zeldman giving a history of Emoticons. From the simple smiley face to winking emoticons with hats and mustaches to the difference between eastern and western styles, we were impressed with Zelman’s vast knowledge.

Just joking :)

Seriously, you know that the next two days are going to be great when you hear things like “Beautiful no longer means flash-based.” Zeldman’s passionate opening on the history of the web—Web 2.0—set the tone of the conference. He kicked off AEA by showing inventions from history that led to the web, and showing why we stand at the dawn of a newer and more mature web powered by standards.

Following Zeldman, we heard from Sarah Parmenter on Crafting the User Experience. She discussed principles from human psychology, such as speed, simplicity, surprise, social behavior and stirring emotions, and she gave practical advice for using psychology when thinking about web design and user experience.

Rounding out the morning was Jason Santa Maria’s session On Web Typography. He began by talking about what makes a good web typeface and major typography considerations, such as dimensions, special features, prolonged reading and internationalization. “Good typography is invisible. Don’t make me think about reading, just let me read!” Then he talked about the advances and choices we now have with web fonts. Even though those advances are exciting, he cautioned, we still have to use good design and web standards.

The afternoon started with Scott Berkun talking about Why Designers Fail and What to Do About It. He gave us his thoughts on how we’d never learn and move forward without failure. He said all designers fail 95% of the time, but design suffers from a lack of failure analysis—how to look at the reasons we fail and what to do about it.

One of my favourite sessions was A Content Strategy Roadmap with Kristina Halvorson. She provided valuable insights into how we spend a lot of time on strategy, wireframes and design before obtaining content for our websites. Content often comes last, when it should come first. The bottomline: “Start designing from the content out, rather that the canvas in,” she said.

Finishing off the day was Luke Wroblewski, whose presentation Mobile Web Design Moves left me eager for his full-day mobile web design course. It was exciting to hear about the huge growth in mobile usage, the immense possibilities of mobile web design and how we need to think differently when designing for mobile devices.

Day two started off with Eric Meyer and his talk The CSS3 Anarchists’ Cookbook. Basically, he gave us tips and tricks on how to use CSS for “evil”—how to mess with your co-workers by changing up code in their browser’s user stylesheets. I was a little scared of this talk, but whenever Eric showed the code he showed examples of what it did so it made sense. It was a cheeky way to show the new tools in HTML5 and CSS3.

Jeremy Keith followed with a discussion of Design Principles. He talked about how your principles and design should match, and how this will help you reach your goals—“The more you can boil down your design principles, the better.” Aarron Walter then did a presentation titled Idea to Interface. It was great to learn how those iPhone apps you have in your mind would translate from just an idea into actuality. He said you need to give yourself permission to be the person with the idea, and he outlined how you would carry it through.

The afternoon continued with Andy Clarke and his presentation Smoke Gets in Your Eyes about CSS3 web animation. We learned about the latest CSS animation techniques, and he showed some entertaining videos, such as the Flash vs. Web rap battle.

Alexa Andrzejewski, the founder of Foodspotting, followed with an intriguing presention The Dimensions of a Good Experience. She talked about evaluating experiences using 10 principles from urban planning, and how these same qualities could be applied to digital experiences—“Design influences our experience of the world.” It was the process that led her to create the Foodspotting app.

Finishing off day two was the humourous and incredibly passionate Tom Coates talking about Everything the Network Touches. He reminded us all about how exciting and powerful the web is and how the network is not only extending to people but to objects and places. His final thought: “I am going to say something controversial: I don’t think we should have web standards. It’s only with the ability to explore and not be bound by rules and regulations that we going to create and discover new realms.”

With our minds on overload from these two days we headed into day three, Mobile Web Design with Luke Wroblewski. Again, I had no reason to worry that we’d be doing something super techincal. It was all digestible information. Talking to a crowd of 300, Luke did a great job of getting us to interact with him and each other. He started by asking the audience what we’d like to learn. We also did a few interactive projects by sharing in small groups. Throughout the day, Luke took us through the major considerations when designing for mobile: what the constraints are, stats on usage, what behaviours drive the use of mobile devices and how they are used.

AEA, you know how to throw a conference: 12 exceptionally fantastic speakers, a live Twitter feed, three parties and a soundtrack! If you’re looking to attend a fun web design conference that runs seamlessly with loads of exciting and passionate people, check out An Event Apart. Having attended many design conferences I found AEA to be among one of the best experiences I’ve had. I went from not knowing anything about this conference to coming back with practical experience and tools ready to be put to use in our office.

Further reading:
A List Apart
World Wide Web Consortium
Luke Wroblewski’s Notes on AEA Presentations

Backing up information seems like such a simple thing to do, but stop and consider if your information is actually safely backed up? With the demise of Ma.gnolia last week many are left wondering about the state of their backups particularly whether online web apps (Ma.gnolia, Delicious, Flickr et al) really do a good job of backing up content. A few lessons worth sharing:

Backup, backup, backup! (duh)
Test your backups
It’s not a question if your hard drive will fail, it’s WHEN.
Set up your backup system BEFORE your drives fail, not after.
If you’re a business or if there are professional implications of potential data loss, don’t do your own IT.

I have numerous hard drives floating around at home (one just died this weekend, but I didn’t lose anything) and love the CalDigit backup drives. (worth every penny!) Of course, there’s always the Seagate Hard Drive debacle…

I’m far from a techy Server Admin, and this is far from a tech blog, but while checking out Dave Shea’s blog this morning, I caught wind of a potentially crippling security flaw. The low down is that if you go to your banks website, there is no guarantee that it’s actually your banks website. So when you input your login information, someone else might be receiving it. I’ll leave the full blown explanation to the experts (doxpara.com and ComputerWorld). These posts are worth a read and do a good job of explaining the problem to the layman. While reading them, you can also test your DNS to see if you’re vulnerable. This all might be blowing smoke about nothing, but it’s better to be safe then broke.

Confused by Wikis? Rather just use e-mail? Check out this graph and see if your opinion changes. (via Tantek Çelik on Twitter)

Clients don’t always realize why the picture they took on their cellphone or old 3.2 MP digital camera can’t be blown up for use on a trade show booth. Even in the hands of a skilled photoshop artist the picture can only be blown up so much. But 600%? There’s a group of Photoshop actions called Re-Sizer that claims to have Photoshop actions that will allow you to resize a photo up 600%. I don’t know all the ins and outs but at $10, it’s worth a look.

Say what you want about User Experience and User Interface, but for the longest time, Captcha has worked. Well this year the tide seems to be turning as spammers crack some of the most secure captcha’s used by Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. I can’t say that I’m disappointed to see captcha on the decline but it is an ominious sign that we aren’t winning the war against spam. There’s a great article about this on Computerworld that’s worth a read.

Radiohead is one of those bands that always seems to innovate and they’ve done it again. For their latest video for House of Cards, they collaborated with James Frost (Of Blip Boutique) to realize a video created entirely using data visualization and not traditional film techniques. Inspired by Aaron Koblin’s Flight Patterns, and harnessing the power of Processing, Frost created a video that is rather aw inspiring from an artistic point of view, not to mention the technical point of view! There’s a great explanation of everything including a great interview with Frost over at Creativity Online including some behind the scenes video and a bunch of the working files and code that’s been made available.

Today Rogers Wireless formally announced their iPhone package rates. Set to be available July 11th, this is the newest 3G iPhone 2.0 for $199 for the 8GB or $299 for 16GB. Plans start at $60, and frankly, seem pretty decent all things considered, though I’m not keen on paying more on top of that for caller id functionality.

I wouldn’t consider myself an early adopter exactly. I tend to ride out technology to somewhere mid-life cycle to avoid the glitches and high costs normally associated with being the first kid on the block with the latest and greatest. And in some respects might even be considered a downright Luddite when it comes to really maximizing the features of my three year old Motorola Razr, but you know, it does what it’s supposed to really well.

I also really like the slim, sleek Razr, especially come summer when it slips into my shorts or shirt pocket and I can barely tell it’s there. Yet, I want (read: have to have) an iPhone. Admittedly, I’m a member of the Apple cult. I can’t imaging life without a Mac. We have them here and always buy Apple stuff when it’s time. I still don’t get why my parents have a PC, and it drives me crazy whenever I get asked to help them with it.

So, iPhone, why do I want you so? Well, I don’t like carrying three devices if I can help it, and you can replace my Nano as a music player. You’re also going to integrate seamlessly with my MacBook, iTunes and iPhoto. I like that. Warning: if you see me, I’m going to whip it out and start showing you pictures of my new daughter. So cute. Oh, and you are small, slim and not going to make people wonder if I’m carrying a phone in my pocket or just happy to see them.

Will I use all the features? Max out my data plan? Respond to emails and text messages any more responsively. Probably not. Will I line up at a store for my black 16GB. Not bloody likely. But, Rogers, I am coming your way. Sorry Telus.

UPDATE:
Okay, I actually analyzed what I am paying and getting from TELUS and what it will cost me for the same at Rogers, and admittedly, the pricing is not competitive. So much so that I’m going to wait until there is a better plan. Seems Apple feels the same way, and has not only diverted Canadian supplies of the 3G iPhone to Europe, but is also not going to sell then in Canadian Apple stores this Friday. Speculation is that Apple is pissed off that Rogers is gouging Canadian consumers. Read more here.