You should also follow us on Twitter and Facebook

My next step is a Partnership at Uproot, a creative technology shop here in Toronto. At Uproot, our goal is to partner with all kinds of organizations to solve interesting challenges like connected agriculture, open government and next generation publishing. Like any web-savvy group, you can follow our progress on Twitter and Flickr.

Thanks again to T+L for the great times, without them I wouldn’t be ready for this next challenge.

After 3+ months, my library at Image Spark is starting to take shape. I find it fascinating that the images I’ve collected are revealing tastes that I was never aware of.
For example, as you can see above I’m drawn to minimal and vintage items, things with wood and I’ve got a thing for posters. I wouldn’t have necessarily verbalized any of those if someone asked what my general tastes were. Some of the other tags, like mid-century modern, are more obvious, especially if you’ve seen my apartment. And other things that I love, like skating and sneakers aren’t represented at all.

I wonder at how many other people are finding out what really inspires them as they collect and converge images on Image Spark. Sign up today for a free account and find out what inspires you.

In this economic climate, you’re probably not thinking about airports. However, when traveling it’s the one thing you’ll always have a comment about – and it’s probably not a nice comment. On the flip side, there are some great airports out there. If you’re traveling soon, maybe you’ll pass through one of these.

Last night something terrible happened. A young woman was struck and killed crossing Front St. shortly before the Raptors game ended. There were little to no people around at the time. Today, the local newspaper has an article describing what happened and it mentions that the “street was full of traffic”. This is inaccurate.

I know it’s inaccurate because I was there, three cars removed from the intersection where it happened, no more than 10-20 minutes after it happened. EMS arrived shortly later. The police began blocking the street. Liz, in the passenger seat, was exclaiming she could see a body in the street. I couldn’t see one (my view was obstructed) but tragically, she was right. And, there was no traffic. We left the game early. I was still listening to the closing remarks on the local sports radio station. Except for a few people hoping to beat the impending post-game traffic rush, the traffic was light to non-existent.

Today over email Liz, questioning the inaccuracy of the article’s details, had this to say:

…What I don’t get is why there were 3 people on the story’s byline. It took 3 employees to write a short and inaccurate story that except for the age of the girl, you probably could have written on your iPhone if I had let you out to go talk to people sitting in the Tims.

Talk about a microcosm of the dying newspaper industry. Things happen so fast in this world, and despite 3 people staffed to cover it, they can’t get it right? On the flip side, with so many citizen journalists at the ready to report and disseminate information how can a newspaper, built on a model that hasn’t changed in over a 100 years, keep up in this economy? The short answer is: They can’t…right away. (CNN has a great article I recommend to get up to speed on what’s happening in the newspaper market. It’s not pretty.).

So what’s a newspaper to do? Well, the answer lies in the context. User-generated content and citizen journalism, like reality TV, can only take you so far. There is still a desperate need for great writing in this world. After all, who will provide the informed commentary and context that will spark conversation and debate? Not the guy down the street. Not me. It’s got to be the newspapers.

The challenge is, can new journalism be participatory? Can it be more responsive? Can it secede mundane tasks like beat reporting to crowdsourcing?

These are the questions that we’re asking of a current client at work. Hopefully if we do our job right, we can just get back to accurate, trusted news and not everyone will have to lose their job.

When it comes to where I live, I’m considering my next space. I’ve reached a point with my current apartment now where I feel it’s comfortable and complete. Without revealing too much, I have an idea where that next space is and this time around I have a great tool to consider and communicate what that space should feel like: Image Spark.

ImageSpark was always meant to be a tool for us, by us that other people could find value in. Using the moodboard to collect inspiration for decor, lighting, furniture and layout was never my intention, although it feels like that’s what it was created for. To me, those are the best experiences online – the ones that provide a specific utility but are a blank canvas for how you want to use them.

I’m eager to see how other people are using moodboards on Image Spark…as soon as find the right dining table.

Apple will be hosting an event today at 1pm PT where they will announce the features of the upcoming iPhone 3.0 software. (You can follow a live blog of the event on Macworld.)

For those not a member of Apple fandom (or a shareholder), here’s what this means:

For the business, the event is aimed at keeping the luster on a product that has become the benchmark of the mobile phone industry but is at risk of losing traction as competitors come around to duplicating what made it a success. (Read: The Palm Pre)

For developers, many of whom have made careers out of developing applications for the iPhone, this will hopefully mean a few new tools they can play with to bring an even better experience to the phone. I’ve downloaded several great apps since I got my iPhone and whether I use them to tune my guitar, chat with friends, play a game, check movie listings or find a restaurant, they’ve all been worth it.

That brings us to the consumer. End users will benefit from today’s announcement in a mostly indirect way. I suspect a lot of features announced won’t be cosmetic but rather aimed at expanding the development feature set. Other than Kevin Rose’s (probably correct) prediction that copy-and-paste functionality will be included in today’s announcements, I can’t imagine there will be more tangible updates for the user to look forward to in the iPhone interface.

But of course, no one ever really knows until it happens. Especially when it comes to Apple.

Update: Macworld is reporting that Apple has over 100 features for end user including, as reported, cut, copy & paste and shake to undo. (Developers have over 1000 new features to play with including a notification system and peer-to-peer connections via WiFi or Bluetooth.)

Update 2: In the end it looks like there are a lot of great new features that users will immediately benefit from and a whole lot more that developers can sink their teeth into. Rather than summarizing all the new features here I’ll point you to the Apple site, now updated with all the features in the coming software update.

Oh, and a word about Vancouver: Go.

Follow my posts on the Teehan+Lax blog or via Twitter @derekvaz. I’ll try to keep the posts less technical and more about how IxD is shaping the world we all live in, designers and non-designers alike.

ImageSpark officially goes live today.

This is one of the most creative and fun projects I’ve had the chance to work on. What started as a simple idea – to store, share and discover inspirational imagery – evolved over some long weeks (and weekends) into the site you see now.

Though the ImageSpark team was officially six-deep (IA, Designer, Developer A and B, Project Manager and a Partner overseeing it all) this project has touched many hands to get it to this state.

The best part is that this is really just the beginning (read:Beta); As we monitor feedback via Twitter (@imgspark) and use the site ourselves, we’ll be constantly considering how we can improve this great little tool.

Cheers to my colleagues at Teehan+Lax on a cool idea, now live.