ScrollMotion is a company that focuses on iPhone-Applications and simplicity. They have 10 guiding principles about how to design applications and what mobile-applications should be able to do, compared to traditional web. Although manifestos like that can be a dangerous thing to stick onto, it nevertheless is definitely a good read for anyone, who want to get into mobile application design or who just loves to think and theorize about it. Examples:

1. 1 App = 1 Job

Think about one job you want to do for your user and do it well. It’s possible for an app to have multiple tasks. But at its core a mobile iPhone application should do one job in its user’s life. Remember, it’s better to do 1 thing great instead of 5 things just okay.

4. Instant Fun

New interfaces should be fun. When possible use the accelerometer, which allows the user to interact with the device using movement instead of just touch. Emphasize action, not buttons.

Somehow the style from ScrollMotion as well as their thoughts about design remind me on the traditional technology-company Phillips.

I am not the biggest fan of Christmas chipmusic-collections in general, but this here is high energy and and surprising good quality. Several chipmusic artists made versions of Christmas-songs – some are happy, some are moody, some experimental. What all this songs have in common is the extraordinary high music-quality. Chipmusic is more like hypermodern jazz, than just a simple “retro-thing”. This guys know how to play their instruments. The collection is released on the Pixelmod Records. They write about the release:

This christmas compilation contains the who-is-who from the current chiptune scene and some fresh and sparkling newcomers.

To give yourself this Christmas-pleasure, just download the .zip here.

via Player1

Oh boy, this currently released material of the game “Owlboy” just left my mouth wide open. Owlboy is an upcoming independent platformer with more than just “incredible” pixelgraphics. Really, it is hard to tell, how awesome the graphics are. The style is absolutely pure pixelstyle, but in a very laborious manner. Gameplay is also very classic in the style of jump’n’adventure, a little bit like Gargoyles Quest, Castlevania or Rainbow Islands. Owlboy will be a pleasurable graphic-adventure trip, but it is in 2d and feels extremely good and cutting edge. Should somebody say, that graphics lost its relevance. (I suggest this posting on 2d-sprites and animations on GameDesignScrapbook).

The publisher of Owlboy D-Pad Studio should think about releasing printed posters to sell, just instead or besides the game. I would definitely count in for such a goodie.

Petko D. Petkov is one of the founding-members of the Gnucitizen-hacker-network. They work inbetween internet, computers and security and always have very interesting projects going on, for example the “House of Hackers” a social-network for hackers and security experts. The Gnucitizen define themself as “a leading information security think tank, delivering solutions to local, national and international clients“.

Thier latest project is Netsecurify, an automated, webbased, remote testing tool, that enables security-testings of applications. One of the primary goal of the projects is not only to have a pioneering sort-of feeling, but foremost to support low-profit or non-profit organisations to have a robust and stable security-testing tools for free. They think of organisations, that otherwise would not be able to affort security experts and testing. We had a short interview with Petko D. Petkov on Netsecurify, their motivation, software design and overall goals.

What does the tool Netsecurify exactly do?

Netsecurify is a remote, automated, vulnerability assessment tool. The tool follows the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, i.e. it is a service which runs from Amazon’s scalable computing infrastructure. In it’s core, the tool performs several assessments, all based on open source technologies, and also provides recommendations through a flexible recommendation engine. The tool also allows 3rd-party organizations to enhance the reports.

Netsecurify is very simple to use. All the user has to do is to login and schedule a test for a particular network range. Once we approach the specified scheduled data, we run the test. When the test is done, the user is notified via email or by other means which we are working on at the moment. The user then logs in and downloads a copy of the report. For security reasons, the report is destroyed 30 days after it has been completed.

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A man called Myk Dawg (official website here) made two years ago a nice videoclip for a relaxed DJ Shadow video. This information comes partly via the new blog from the BoingBoing Offworld. You also definatelly should have a look on this blog, because, well, it is really well made off-content. As always guys. Take a look at the other video from Myk Dawg.

The one and only netlabel-magazine Phlow-Mag gives us a second christmas-special with the best of the best of netaudio released on the web. Like last year, mo. and Sven Swift not only put together a fine netlabel-collection of music, but also netlabel-activists, musicians and other artists answer willingly the questions of their personal favourite netlabel-music from 2008. Much, much great music to explore. I highly recommend peeking around this and that playlist.

The compilation: Fall is for lovers.

GlitchDS – also with a good sense for screen aestetics

Neverending Nintendo DS revolution. The GlitchDS is a homebrew synth for the Nintendo DS, that do not only have a stong impact sound, but also combines the “Game of Life/Cellular Automaton” with really working rhythmic patterns (so generative music in a way). But it does this all without sounding like an academic experiment in generative music. Nope. It sounds more like club and electronic classics like Aphex Twin or Autechre. Simply incredible. It is also incredible, into what the Nintendo DS homebrew movement is growing. And all that with the speed of light. (via Fed.eu)