Color Charge

I always wanted to have my entire library of cheat sheets, code snippets, resource files anywhere I go. As I spend about 2 hours on traffic jam daily, why not use that time for study and improvement?

Some solutions I went by:

• Print everything? Carry books? No, definitely no. I love printed books, but I would carry a lot of material, would be hard to organize, to transfer information in and out, and wouldn’t save the rain forest.
• Use my laptop computer? Well, sort of. But wouldn’t be so comfortable reading it while people staring at me. No discretion at all.
• Mobile phone? Sounds interesting. Discrete, tiny, and can be integrated with my development environment. However, so tiny that wouldn’t give me the same agility when browsing with mouse or keyboard.

Developing a mobile cheat sheet

I picked mobile phones and smart phones up for a test. Did some basic mockups, and strived to get something running quickly, something comfortable to use: I still had the agility problem. Selecting and clicking was painfully slow, and I had a huge amount of information to handle on the same tiny little screen. Then I remembered the iPhone / iPod Touch user interface proposal: touchable interfaces. Better because faster than pointing and clicking, it solved the problem of agility instantly.

A few days ago I posted the Inspiration Charge - iPhone SDK. That was my initial reference, where I could find guidelines on producing content for the iPhone / iPod Touch.

The iPhone is great, but the mobile market isn’t only iPhone, so I had to have other sources of information. A great reading is the Mobile Web Design, by Cameron Moll, a must-read book if you plan to deliver standards-based content to mobile devices. I got my copy by just 17 USD, and definitely worth it :).

Basic information heuristics

I think information should be accessible anywhere I go. Should be portable, fast to scan and read. It also must be easy for me to update, easy to transfer in and out to/from my laptop computer, and other development environments I use daily. Finally, it must be easy to use, and add value to the community of designers/developers. Sounds hard to do? Sure it is, but what I have in mind was the KISS approach: Keep it simple, stupid, heavily inspired by the Getting Real book.

Imagine being able to access your handy jQuery cheat sheet, but now anywhere. Just in case… here are some clickable screenshots:

Access now from your iPhone / iPod Touch, desktop browser, or mobile device: http://labs.colorcharge.com/jtouch. “It works like magic” - Steve Jobs.

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