So. Quite by accident I found it!

Under 'Spaces,' click on the gear next to the 'Space' you want to edit, and select 'Customize…'

Now as soon as it shows you the wonderful themes you can select, click cancel. Yes, cancel. We don't want to edit the theme, we want to manage posts and that's why we've come here!

Once you cancel, be very careful - you're now on a page that allows you to edit and mess with posts from the past (and I'm guessing drafts and such) all in one place. But don't click on a tab at the top, because you'll never get back here again without feigning that you want to customize your theme.

That's right, it's easy as pie to get to a feature you use maybe, um, once a month if your fiddley, once *ever* for most, I imagine, but to get to a feature many probably use every day it is:

• not intuitive where it is located
• eclipsed by other features of questionable usability
• I don't think it's even supposed to be there…

Honestly, I was expecting all that stuff to be lodged squarely under 'Activity…' but apparently I don't follow anybody (or maybe all the dozens of people I do follow aren't going for this social shit right yet) but that tab is useless.

*sigh*

(download)

Click here to download:

posterous-spaces-rocks-xCcyFIcAavfwmFzGCrkz.zip (420 KB)

And THESE are the problems I experienced the first time I used the new app…

What error occurred?

Also, this YouTube/google thing is ridiculous and I run into it everywhere. Wudupwitdat? I don't blame the guys at posterous here, but it colored my initial experience a bit as I player around.

Final complaint: blog posting iPhone app with no textexpander support. Pfffft.

All kidding aside, the new(est) app is neat, easy to use, kinda sparkly. I'll probably use it. But it's little details. Especially when you built a service around emailing and posting to a blog from ANYWHERE including twitter. That's really easy, but ironically I think that power was lost on normals for some reason. An app to win back mind share with the "duh"s has to nail it. This is very very close!

From Veerle's Blog, a look at Adobe's design process for the new branding of CS5.

I find it a fascinating read. Count me among the people that really enjoyed the branding that went along with the most recent two Adobe Creative Suites, though the branding completely falls apart when you're not using an entire suite of apps. I really don't like the monolithic approach to selling the entire package but I think the color wheel metaphor was a really apt one for the company and was the right solution after Adobe acquired Macromedia and had to tie all their products' identification together into one core image.

A couple of things I find interesting from the article though (emphasis added by me):

Everyone missed the more whimsical imagery that was such a big part of Adobe's heritage and wanted to surprise and inspire our users and give them something new.

... followed immediately by...

They started by defining a set of experience goals for their work:

• PROFESSIONAL - Accomplished, skillful, sophisticated
• EXPRESSIVE - Alluring, delightful, engaging
• REFINED - Cultured, polished, discerning, elegant
• INTENTIONAL - Calculated, systematic, purposeful
• UNIFIED - Systematic, integrated, uniform, consistent
• UNIQUE - Inventive, timeless, own-able, surprising

Adobe, being such a larger corporation means that many people need to have their say, marketing, product and suite managers. These discussions resulted in a set of business requirements:

• VISUALLY DISTINGUISHABLE - Maintain distinction across multiple concurrent vintages of a product
• EASILY RECOGNIZED - At small icon sizes, on file icons, and in docks and toolbars
• FLEXIBLE - Structured to accommodate variations across the product line and file types
• ACCESSIBLE - For the color-blind. Identities to incorporate shape letterforms, or tone
• SYSTEMATIC - Each identity expresses a clear relationship and is the sum of a systematic kit of parts
• CREDIBLE - Integrity of core design principals; concept, color, typography, layout
• LEVERAGE THE RECENT PAST - Build on strengths of last two iterations of the mnemonic system

I can't think of a list of words that inspire a less whimsical feeling in me, a long-time user of their products.

Read the rest of this post »