Ideacodes co-founder, Max Kiesler, has launched a new project called DesignDemo, which features interaction demos from new web 2.0 applications and services. Within a day of its launch, DesignDemo was feautred on del.icio.us popular with several hundred bookmarks. rn

As an interaction designer I’m always wondering what’s next. Over the last few years we’ve become familiar with web application design, new constructs like recency and popularity, however, in the back-channel of web design there has been an increasing movement towards data visualizations, both large and small. You can currently see this in everything from blog design to large-scale data visualizations like We Feel Fine and digg labs. Designers and programers are coming together in new ways, which in the end result are producing some of the most functional, and creative web interfaces I’ve ever seen. “Consider this list a primer. I’ve spent the last year looking at data visualizations and have compiled a list of resources that will give you a good view of what’s going on in the field. Please use the comments section of this post to …

Javascript is becoming increasingly popular on websites, from loading dynamic data via AJAX to adding special effects to your page. Unfortunately, these features come at a price: you must often rely on heavy Javascript libraries that can add dozens or even hundreds of kilobytes to your page. Users hate waiting, so here are a few techniques you can use to trim down your sites.

Website: http://betterexplained.com/articles/speed-up-your-javascript-load-time/

ModalBox is a JavaScript technique for creating modern (Web 2.0-style) modal dialogs or even wizards (sequences of dialogs) without using conventional popups and page reloads. It’s inspired by Mac OS X modal dialogs. And yes, it may also be useful for showing bigger versions of images. ModalBox is built with pure JavaScript and is based on Sam Stephenson’s excellent Prototype JavaScript Framework, script.aculo.us and valid XHTML/CSS. ModalBox uses AJAX to load content.

Website: http://okonet.ru/projects/modalbox/

If you’ve ever wanted to see your website usage on a large screen in a very visual way this is the application for you. From the demo video the visuals look stunning. As the earth turns you see your website visitors pop up on the globe in real-time also showing you a variety of other statistical data. One of the coolest features is the ability to hook up an interactive whiteboard or SMART board and be able to turn the earth with your fingers. Just like in the movie “Minority Report”. I do wish they would produce a web base application so my website visitors could see this information in real-time. Nice product. “

Ideacodes has been working with BlogHer, the leading destination online for women’s opinions and activities, to redesign and enhance the user experience of the site. As the only women’s blog network, BlogHer creates opportunities for women bloggers to seek greater exposure, education, community and economic empowerment, and has more than 7,400 blogs listed. We’re delighted to be working with BlogHer co-founders, Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort, and Jory Des Jardins, and the BlogHer community on this new version. rn

One of the first sites that got me interested in real-time data visualizations was digg spy. I had just become hooked on digg when the spy came out, and watching the stories asynchronously roll by was even more intriguing than going to the regular home page. As they say on the digg site, “Digg BigSpy places stories at the top of the screen as they are dugg. As new stories are dugg, older stories move down the list. Bigger stories have more diggs. The projects currently in Digg Labs are the results of collaboration with Digg partner Stamen Design. As the project matures, we’ll be releasing a public API to allow outside developers access to this data”.”

GigaOM, the leading tech blog network founded by our client and friend, Om Malik, has launched a redesign based on feedback solicited in December 2006. As Om writes, “We made notes, and have been diligently trying to put that into practice.” See Om’s post for details, and stay tuned for continued refinements and enhancements.rn

It’s not AJAX, DHTML, Java, or Ruby but it is a new way of seeing blog categories. Tonight I’m presenting the first in a series of tiny blog visualizations. If you look in the top right corner of my new home page you’ll see a clickable pie chart of my current blog categories presented by popularity. Why tiny visualizations? In the last year I’ve been impressed by the number and quality of large scale data visualizations. Sites like Digg Labs, We Feel Fine and Gapminder all present a new flow and discovery model for data. However, in these examples the visualization is based on a very large data set. Recently, I’ve become increasingly interested in the idea of tiny visualizations and how this notion can be used as a way to navigate blogs and other micro communities. “Many community websites …

Ideacodes co-founders, Emily Chang and Max Kiesler will be at the SXSW Interactive Conference coming up March 9-13, 2007. Emily was invited by Tom Markiewicz, CEO of EvolvePoint, to be part of the “Using RSS for Marketing” panel scheduled for Sunday, March 11, 2007 from 10-11am. Emily is looking for feedback on current trends in RSS. If you’ll be at SXSW and would like to meet up, please send us a note as we’re planning to have a get together sometime during the conference. See you in Austin! rn