Matthew Lettini

A month or so ago I made a post about Favtape and discussed other music websites, like its ancestor Muxtape. Well I’m pleased to announce my new favorite music site: Grooveshark. Grooveshark is a flash-based web application that works very much like an ipod…someone elses ipod that has 5 million songs uploaded. It has a similar look and feel as an itunes/ipod mashup, with it’s own unique styling. And as an interface designer/developer I have to say I’m in love with the design. Very sleek, smooth, and crisp design that is easy to navigate and use. The best part about it? It’s extremely fast for a Flash site. I’m not sure how they managed that but the animations and everything are very smooth.

Grooveshark also has an Autoplay feature, which makes it basically a new (more stylish) Pandora. And unlike Pandora, Grooveshark allows you to add (via drag&drop no less) songs into the playlist wherever you’d like. You can vote yay or nay on whatever song you want to come out with a good playlist. They also have a social network of sorts where you can favorite tracks and see others playlists and save and share playlists and songs…etc. I’m not sure if I’ll use this feature but I’m sure plenty of others will. Also, the advertising is out of your way and unobtrusive…awesome.

Something I think they need to add is more links for artists. There should be a link to the artist’s homepage, their amazon page (maybe a buy this cd button), maybe a link to their itunes, and also their last.fm page. Also the lyrics of the song would be a fun tool. And speaking of last.fm, it would be great (read: probably won’t happen) if the tracks you listen to could be scrobbled to your last.fm.

Grooveshark is still in ‘beta’ but instead they call themselves Grooveshark ‘lite.’ I like it, I think it works. There is a flood of beta apps around and I think it helps establish them better. But even still, the app works perfectly and I highly recommend it. Maybe autoplay your next party?

This is a simple portfolio website I did for Yamit Dardashtian, a graphic designer from NY. She makes lovely illustrations for a variety of mediums, usually book covers. She wanted something extremely simple and small, yet able to show her entire portfolio. I used a wonderful lightbox script called Fancybox and the results are fantastic.

You can view Yamit’s portfolio here.

FFFFOUND! is a site for bookmarking images you find on the web. Images you like, find interesting, inspire you, cool photographs, whatever it may be. Now, what makes it different? It’s streamlined. There’s nothing else the site does…it shows you the image and links back to where you ‘found’ it (always handy to give props to the original), and also shows you similar images you might like to look at. You can literally spend hours just clicking images, then clicking a similar, then a similar, then a similar… It’s invitation-based, signups have been halted a long time ago. I have scoured the web and come up with nothing. I would very much like an invitation please.

On another note, here is another tee that I really like. I must be on a typography kick, although I’ve always been a huge fan. Also, I am enjoying this photography of wrinkled t-shirts (see previous post). It makes for better selling than previous t-shirt stores where you see somebody wearing the tee, or it’s a vector image of a shirt with the graphic slapped on.

F the Economy. Something I might be purchasing in the near future…

What’s going on in my life at this time? Tons!

Continue Reading…

The Sixty One is a digg-like music website, with a small twist: It plays like an adventure game. You level up and rack up points by bumping (digging) tracks, as well as everything else you can do on the site. It keeps you interacted while you learn some great new music. It’s a pretty nice concept, and actually one I thought of awhile ago (I was going to call it Atomic Radio…guess they beat me to it). Also when you are playing a song, it doesn’t shut off if you navigate elsewhere on the site, which is pretty awesome.

I had heard about the site almost a year ago when it was too new to the scene, and quickly discovered that I found the site unusable. My main problem with the site is the interface and usability. It’s horrendous. Navigating the site and design just hurts my eyes, and nothing grabs my attention properly, and I find it hard to find what I want to click on. The colors are bad, the typography too heavy…and overall its just plain poor design. Granted, the whole site is only run by 2 guys, so I can’t blame them too heavily if they aren’t designers. But the design itself ruined what should have been a fun, engaging experience.

A few of my friends have discovered the site and it’s gaining in popularity, so I decided to check it out again. Since that first time I discovered the site, they had made 0 changes. Probably a lot of backend technical advances, but not design. So, because I needed some practice, I redesigned The Sixty One. I kept true to the colors and general layout, but added enough interface features to completely differentiate between my design and theirs. The new navigation is probably the most useful aspect here, as theirs just didn’t make any sense. Mine slides open sub-navigation instead of splitting it into two lines. Makes a big difference. Oh, and I came up with an idea for a logo, as they currently don’t have one.

I will possibly contact theSixtyOne and see what they say. I like to do a lot of mockup and redesigns for practice, so if you like my style, contact me.

GreenPeace is a global campaigning organization that exists to “change attitudes and behavior, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace.” Respectable. One of the things they do is rate Electronics companies on their green-ness with the materials they use to build their electronics. They’ve recently come out with their latest version for September 2008.

Here’s how the companies stack up:

The article I original read on this topic was focused on Apple not being as green as they market themselves to be. Out of 10, they come in at 4. In fact, the only company over 6 is Nokia! Apple is being (only slightly beat) by other leading computer manufacturers such as Dell & HP.

However, what really strikes me are the bottom two: Microsoft and Nintendo. Now, I’m an Apple guy, but I’m not an Apple fanboy…I think Windows is great for certain things (such as Web Development)…but I think they’ve been in the spotlight for a much longer time than Apple. And it’s easy to see how such a big company could lose sight of “going green,” but how come I rarely hear anybody ragging on Microsoft about it? Apple gets a ton of crap all the time. And Nintendo?! I had no idea. I am a huge fan - own a Wii and Super Nintendo is greatest system of all time - and I never saw any articles on how horrendous their ‘green’ policy is.

I’m not entirely sure how the ranking system works, but GreenPeace is large enough to be a trust-worthy site. I like that this Flash module lets you see older Versions. Go to Version 6, which I find is the most interesting. It’s the first time Nintendo is featured. It’s almost a year ago, Dec 2007, and we have 10 companies in the 7 area, and Nintendo doesn’t even get a 1. Apple was even at 6 at the time. How did it get so bad in a year?

Some action needs to be taken, or regulation put on this. As pointed out by GreenPeace:

The rate at which these mountains of obsolete electronic products are growing will reach crisis proportions unless electronics corporations that profit from making and selling these devices face up to their responsibilities.

It’s reminding me of all those videos found last week where major financial advisors warned of the Stock Armageddon a year ago or whatever, and no one paid attention until now. I know my house is full of old cell phone in drawers and cords to nowhere. It is completely feasible to make durable, clean, and recyclable products. I expect more from companies like Apple, and especially Nintendo.

Buy or Don’t Buy is an internet blog run by a few friends of mine. It’s an opinion-based blog, with a strong focus on society, trends, gossip, and the media. Basically they talk about what they love and what they hate, but it makes for fun discussions.

They’ve recently had their official “launch” this past weekend, and to celebrate I redesigned the whole site. The navigation and usability is much easier now with added categories bar and many other features. It’s a Wordpress blog (as well as this blog) and the more I work on it the more comfortable I am with Wordpress. They are so easy to customize!

If you have need for a blog, I love doing them, so get in touch if you do.

Liam Finn performing Second Chance on Letterman

I haven’t listened to this song in awhile, but I also never saw his performance on Letterman (way back in February!) I think he and his female counterpart do a terrific job of adapting this song for live play without need of a whole band.