I’m very glad to announce that Timely, a beautifully simple time tracking app, has now officially launched! Head on over to the brand new marketing page on timelyapp.com and take a look.
Super-excited to finally introduce Timely – a simple, beautiful time tracking application for the web & iPhone. They say a picture says more than a thousand words, so here’s a video:
Timely is launching in late May, but sign up today on timelyapp.com and I’ll invite you to the beta trial.
Published April 24, 2013
“Everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you.”
Steve Jobs, in 1994, talking about his perspective on life:
When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.
That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is – everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.
The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.
I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
The quote is from PBS’ “One Last Thing” documentary, which aired on TV in 2011.
It’s official! From this day on, I’m a full-time freelance designer, employed by my own company with the highly creative name; Mathias Mikkelsen AS.
I’ll be designing all kinds of digital products; mobile, tablet and web applications, regular websites and everything in between. Shoot me an email if you wanna say hi.
My office at St. Olavs Plass 2, 0165 Oslo. Drop by if you’re in town!
If you’re in town visiting Oslo, don’t hesitate contacting me. I’d love to chat over a good cup of coffee. I’m sharing offices with the newly-founded Notch, a design & development studio founded by my good friends Simen Øian Gjermundsen, Henning Gjerde and their partner Christopher Einarsrud.
We managed to snatch two prizes at the WIF (Webdesign International Festival) 2012 Finals in Limoges, France! Our team – Tomato Tomato – won the best innovation prize, as well as the region of Limoges’ intercultural prize.
The finale lasted for 24 hours straight. All teams are given the same brief, and are then required to come up with an idea and concept, create a prototype and presentation. Teams all over the world qualified to the finale, from Brazil and Argentina, Germany, France and all the way over to China og Russia.
Myself, Henning and Simen’s entry was called Spring. Spring is an idea on how we can help students all over the world have a better education. Visit our Spring Presentation Site.
Here’s two articles from the press regarding the victory:
- Hjemme fra Frankrike som dobbeltvinnere (Kreativt Forum, Norwegian)
- Trekløveret fra Isobar ble dobbeltvinnere i Frankrike (INMA, Norwegian)
From left to right: Simen Øian Gjermundsen, Mathias Mikkelsen, Henning Gjerde
Cannes Lions, The 59th International Festival of Creativity, is now officially over. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to go all the way in the finals. The Cyber Lions are fully focused on creating advertisement banners, a stretch from what we normally do. But none-the-less, the festival was an amazing experience I hope to be a part of again.
Myself and Simen qualified by winning the norwegian qualifier earlier this year. At Cannes, we competed against teams of two from over 90 different countries. Our task was to come up with an idea and produce an advertisement banner for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation within 24 hours. Great fun, and hopefully we’ll get a new shot at the finals next year.
Highlights from the festival included meeting a ton of interesting people, watching a talk by Bill Clinton, being very inspired after hearing amazing speakers each and every day, having highly creative dinner talks, and of course; enjoying the beautiful beaches and partying late into the night. Cannes, we’ll meet again.
The main entrance to the festival.
This past weekend, after 24 hours straight, my team Tomato Tomato ended up as the winners of the norwegian qualifier for Webdesign International Festival 2012. There were simultaneous qualifiers all over the world, and we placed in the top ten, beating over 200 teams in the process. The finals will be held in Limoges, France later this year on May 28th – 31st.
Our entry was called Me, a service to help people get to know themselves better. You can learn more on our presentation site.
Here are a couple of articles from the press regarding the victory:
- Kreative under press (Østlendingen, Norwegian)
- Isobar-trio i internasjonal finale (Kreativt Forum, Norwegian)
From left to right: Mathias Mikkelsen, Simen Øian Gjermundsen, Henning Gjerde
We’re going to Cannes! This past weekend, at the Gullblyanten 2012 awards show, the results of the Young Lions Norwegian Qualifier were announced. Myself and Simen Øian Gjermundsen managed to snatch the top spot, and now we’re going to participate at the Young Lions finales in Cannes, France later this year.
The competition was held earlier this year. Each team was handed the same brief at 09:00 in the morning, and then we had 48 hours to come up with an idea and create a presentation. The brief was to create and plan a digital campaign for the norwegian non-profit; Natteravnene.
Here’s an article from the press about the victory:
- Priset de unge (Kreativt Forum, Norwegian)
From the awards show, Gullblyanten. Foto: Scanpix
This is a very interesting and long interview Steve Jobs did in 1995. Daniel Morrow conducted the interview for Computerworld, in relation to an oral history type of project. It’s pretty remarkable to hear his thoughts at that present, especially about Apple, when we know that only two years later, he would return to change everything once again.
Bret Victor invent tools for people. He’s a former Apple-employee, has written a highly praised essay on user interfaces called Magic Ink (which I started reading a couple of weeks ago), created the UI for Hipmunk and done a whole slew of other very interesting things.
His talk from CUSEC 2012, Inventing on Principle, got released on Vimeo today. It’s enlightening, inspiring, thought-provoking, educational and incredibly fascinating. I recommend you take the time to watch it right now.
David Ogilvy, in a memo to one of his partners, thirty-three years after starting his first ad agency:
Will Any Agency Hire This Man?
He is 38, and unemployed. He dropped out of college.
He has been a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer.
He knows nothing about marketing and had never written any copy.
He professes to be interested in advertising as a career (at the age of 38!) and is ready to go to work for $5,000 a year.I doubt if any American agency will hire him.
However, a London agency did hire him. Three years later he became the most famous copywriter in the world, and in due course built the tenth biggest agency in the world.
The moral: it sometimes pays an agency to be imaginative and unorthodox in hiring.
He was, of course, talking about himself. It reminds me of how revolutions of industries rarely, if ever, comes from the inside. It happens when people from the outside create products with a new completely new view, not bound or affected by those already in existence.
Via @tor.
Philip Newton, Director of Audiovisual for Samsung Australia:
When Steve Jobs talked about he’s ‘cracked it’, he’s talking about connectivity – so we’ve had that in the market already for 12 months, it’s nothing new, it was new for them because they didn’t play in the space. It’s old news as far as the traditional players are concerned and we have broadened that with things like voice control and touch control; the remote control for these TVs has a touch pad.
Hmm. Phones did exist before the iPhone, no? That could connect to the internet? And that had apps on them? You could call, send messages and listen to music. Yes, I think that was possible.
Samsung, and many companies like it, just doesn’t get Apple. If my mind serves me correctly, Microsoft and Nokia showed this exact type of ignorance back when rumors about an Apple-phone started to float around. And they even did so after Apple had their unveiling. How did that end again?
Tom Preston-Werner, one of GitHub’s three co-founders:
In the end, just as Indiana Jones could never turn down the opportunity to search for the Holy Grail, I could no less turn down the chance to work for myself on something I truly love, no matter how safe the alternative might be. When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.”
A good and interesting read about how GitHub got started. What really stuck with me though, is that last sentence in the excerpt above. When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.”. Hell yes, I definitively plan on doing the same.
Via @aral.
Garry Tan for Inc. Magazine:
It’s no mistake that this is very much the sort of thing that is most valued within the most effective software teams in Silicon Valley. Let’s call it “the designer who codes.” This is the sort of person can build exactly what he knows people need, with an aesthetic that compliments its use, with no back-and-forth.
Silicon Valley start-up Quora does it this way to great effect. They take the process simplicity to the next level. Every person on lead designer Rebekah Cox’s team is also an engineer. The design doesn’t happen in Photoshop. It happens in the text editor, in code.
Great article about the new breed of designers, that doesn’t just live in Photoshop all day, but can, and do, design just as much directly in code. For interface design, it’s just nothing that can match it. Facebook, and especially Quora, are excellent at this. The experience is stellar.
The article also tell’s a fun little story about Steve Jobs and the first calculator on a mac.