I’ll be giving a talk on the 8 guiding principles of prototyping at our great space in olde city Philadelphia this Thursday, July 24th at 6:30 pm. Get directions.

Updated: Slides are available 8 Guiding Principles of Prototyping.

Stage Hand is an application that let’s you control your Keynote presentation from your iPhone. I’ve always used the white remote to control my Keynote presentations. Not only can you control your presentation, but there’s a built in highlighter feature that allows you to highlight a spot on your slide by touching your iPhone screen.

The group at IIT has put together a video on doing ethnographic-based research.

Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer from Gabe & Kristy on Vimeo.

Looks like this might be a handy tool for HTML prototypes — Protonotes. Unlike other models, which are either browser specific, or require a plug-in, Prototype notes is just a single line of Javascript you put in the header of your page and works on all major browsers.

I haven’t tried it yet, beyond the demo, but I think I’ll try it out on our next prototype.

From the site:

Protonotes are notes that you add to your prototype that allow project team members to discuss system functionality, design, and requirements directly on the prototype. You can think of it like a discussion board/wiki in direct context of your prototype.

To enable Protonotes on your prototypes, all you have to do is copy and paste a few lines of JavaScript into your prototype. That’s it. Once you do that, anyone who visits your prototype can add/edit/delete notes. They don’t have to install anything or sign up for anything. You can even hook up Protonotes to your own MySQL database with a single line of JavaScript.

I had a professor in university once who said “It’s a shame that when we grow up, we lose that child-like ability to dream. Don’t ever stop dreaming.” I’ve always held onto this advice.

Randy Pausch’s last lecture is about having childhood dreams and achieving them. If you’ve never heard Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture, take an hour and watch it. This CMU professor, who is currently surviving with pancreatic cancer is an inspiration to anyone.

Don’t give up your dreams.