Smart design in every day life
Working in the web dev world we would like to think we are bleeding edge smart. The AJAX effects, the in-the-cloud data storage, off-site collaboration, RoR, Symphony! But smart design is everywhere, and I love collecting examples outside our field, in every day life and learn from them: Example 1 – Cup Noodles You’re probably asking yourself how much smartness can you find on a food which consists of boil water, pour into container, wait 3 minutes and eat? But wait, look at this packaging design detail. It’s a little sticker on the bottom that performs 2 functions. First of all, it helps you open the cellophane wrapped cup. You pull it and in doing so rips part of the cellophane with it. And its second function is helping to hold down the...
If they made ticket vending machines at stations like
Ticket vending machines at stations are really important for our life in Japan. A few days ago I found an interesting blog post called “If they made ticket vending machines at stations like…” I’ve translated it below. If they made ticket vending machines like… Nintendo You can buy a ticket if you trace the path from departure to arrival Sony High end machines with their self made CPU (But tickets cost a bit) Microsoft Input a departure station, a destination station, departure time, arrival time, which route you prefer, and choose grade of a train then you can buy it Apple You can only choose your destination station but somehow it will be all right Google Input like “A to B” then you can get a list of tickets with a...
Next Generation of The User Interface
CUI for keyboards, GUI for mouse devices. What’s next? At the TED presentation, I found a new possibility of the user interface. It’s blocks. Amazing! Multi touch UI on iPhone and Microsoft Surface are another possibilities but this one seems really interesting. Here are some videos which show you our...
[Ruby] HOW TO use multiple databases with ActiveRecord
Sometimes you need to access multiple databases in one application. For example, using different application’s database. But usually ActiveRecord is configured to ActiveRecord::Base directly, and so establishes a connection with ActiveRecord::Base, so you can’t use multiple database with AR. So how to do it? Just create sub-classes of ActiveRecord::Base. Sub-classes of ActiveRecord::Base can access parent class configurations and connections. So create a sub-class of ActiveRecord::Base BaseDB then set configurations to it. Create sub-classes of BaseDB then establish database connection each of them. It’s better than to set configurations and establish connection on ActiveRecord::Base directly for future. ActiveRecord::Base BaseDB <...