Those things also have a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio?? I am being serious and not exaggerating (I saw that figure on an add for one of their OLED screen in this months issue or Wired magazine. Makes your current LCD with a contrast ratio of 10,000:1 seem kinda crappy doesn't it lol

I'm workin on two project at once as we speak. I have VS2005 and VS2008 both open side by side while im working. No problems to date. If for whatever reason your compelled to, I would strongly warn that you do not copy and paste between the two programs. My only real problem with VS2008 is the ridiculously long install time (it takes less time to install Windows Vista or Adobe Creative Suite CS3, 13GB and 16GB+ respectively). Why it takes an hour to install 3.7GB's is beyond me....

Well with the ps3 having motion sensors in the controller, it technically does everything the Wii does plus about 200 other functions the Wii cant do. And to be honest you have to be a specific type of gamer to play the Wii -- super casual, almost not even interested. I personally have not been able to play ANY Wii game for more than a half an hour before getting bored on any given day. And then I stop playing. I mean swinging away in real life can be done for only so long before your either tired, lazy or simply just not willing to continue. And ya it sounds like a work out and it'd be a positive thing, but check out www.wiihaveaproblem.com (i think thats the link). Anyways in conclusion, you can spend $279 or whatever on a SD system of which 90% of the games are targeted to kids under 10 all so you have this unique motion captioning controller... OR you can buy a 20gb - 40gb ($380 - $399) respectively for a SD & HD system, which had games aimed at kids & girlfriends/wives (see: Super Ruba Dub lol) all the way through to the near sadistic gore junkie. Either model of which comes with luxurious Blu-Ray, the ability to upscale your dvd collection, free internet play, a music player, and of course lets not forget the whole draw to the Wii, which the ps3 has as well: motion sensitive controllers. Compare feature lists of the Wii and PS3 as well as the price difference. Your answer should be clear as day once you do that.

Ya I figured that, at least your not getting all offended over my comment, I wasn't trying to blast you or anything. Anyways, I just wanted you to know that we're developing a medical imaging system application and for the first time, it's UI was headed by the design team in conjunction with the programmers and thier experience in application UI. Suprisingly what we have so far is similar to what you saw in graphical difference between office 2000 and office 2007. The new office looks like it had a stong designer presence during the development. This is what I meant by why you would need us. I mean you could do it yourself, we just find that people are tired of the same old ugly gray applications. Bringing a designer into the mix essentially gives you access to new innovative UI like you found in the new Office apps. And as you can see by our company name, innovation is key to our success. But thats just us, the same old works well for others. Another example is is the new MSN, do you think the developers came up with that look on thier own bases soley on application development experience? I personally highly doubit it. Get what I mean now? Even in application development theres more use for us than just building your splash screen images lol. -- modified at 11:33 Thursday 7th June, 2007

ACTUALLY, I didnt do our internal site. I had a small hand in it (mainly in our client support side which you wouldnt have access to as well as a fair amount of actionscript) The reason for the long load time is because the intro is actually a movie produced in after effects. Anyways I understand hes most likely talking about programming so ill explain that in the post below. Lastly id like to see you do any of that with flash using actionscript to animate lol

ed welch wrote:

but you don't need a specialist UI designer.

OK, your right, theres a super small handful of people who can, but come on you cant honestly think you could put a better looking and more userfriendly UI than me. And when I say me I dont mean me in the sense that I think i'm the greatest, I mean me as someone who has been educated in the art of graphic design. You may be able to put a more userfriendly UI if you have years experience in this area as you said. But I gaurantee your design wont look nearly as good as mine nor have proper visual heirarchy, composition, or weight to it. I have been trained to relay a message through visual communication. You have not. And if you are they type who can do all this, at least one of your skillsets will be considerably lower than someone who focuses on that skillset. Take Colgate for example...they have experience with small electronics and other technology in thier devices (like electric toothbrushes) but does this mean they have a chance at breaking into the electronics department? Hell no. They will be destroyed by those who focus on that stuff like Sony. Lastly Microsoft, they want to compete with Adobe in the creative design area. They have tonnes experience developing business apps, but does this mean Silverlight and thier new Expressions Suite will ever beat out Adobe's Creative Suite and Flash?? Nope, this is what Adobe does and has always done,they are no doubt the best at it. The only appealing capability of Silverlight is that you can finally hook it up to C# or whatever you use (which again, is for the programmers.) Your right though, its natural to learn to do more stuff as you get more experienced. I just dont think your experience as a graphic designer would be able to surpass my experience AND education in design, just like my experience coding over the years couldnt beat your experience AND education in programming (i dont know if you are a programmer but lets just say..).

Im sorry but I have to disagree on one point. The fact that you use these "super" senior developers in your solution. Theres no such thing as a senior developer who can design (actual design, not just the production of nice imagery) do all technical aspects, programming and self/team management while doing a good job at all of these. Its not possible. I dont care what anyone says, I am a designer in a small development team and your structure although nice to think of, would never fly. See the problem with bosses and CEO's is they are non technical. They may be technical enough to know where the company and solutions need to be, but unless they've got some ounce of programmer in them, they dont know what it is or takes to be (or hire) a good programmer. They will also promise things that are outlandish for the same reason. They just dont know. Aside from our CEO being a Senior Developer, what works for us is having the Designer (myself) work side by side with the developers because no one is amazing at everything. I take care of the UI and if the coders come across something that wont work with my design, we'll work on it together. Same if i come up with something innovative in my design, I will work closely with the programmers to ensure the right results and at the end of the day everyone is happy. If a programmer tried to tell me how to design or took it upon himself, I'd laugh and would probably look like crap. Same thing if I went around trying to code c# and design and manage people, the coders would frown upon it as my code would be sub-par, and just simply the project would be not of optimal quality. So, I think the best way to do it is have a project manager (full time) let him manage the project and timelines. You have your 1 or 2 senior developers and 2 or 3 juniors to learn from the senior like you said. Thenn let the designer cover his own end (providing he had actual design knowledge and isnt some kid with a copy of photoshop), or if hes not good enough for that, get an Art director/senior graphic designer to work with him.