meevee.com just launched a cool part of their site that uses OpenLaszlo. I was checking out meevee tv with my 9 year old son. “What’s that?” he says as he overhears the sound on my PC. “This site was made with my software,” I tell him as I check out the “viral” section of the site. The first video, Afroninja, has him laughing out loud. Then I check out an old favorite: diet coke and mentos show, and he says: “really? this was made with your software?” It was kinda cool to be able to say “well, the movie was made with software I made a few years ago when I worked at Macromedia, the rest of the website is made with software I made working at Laszlo.”

I really like when you click on a category in the left navigation panel, how the options at the top change using a visual transition that animates up. It makes a nice connection between the user action and the consequence, which contributes to the usability of the site.

I also just had to check out the “cute overload” category, which is accurately named. After watching 11 seconds of baby squirrel on a fence, I reached my baby squirrel capacity. I did, however, fast forward a few times and we both laughed at the shot below. Jack laughed even harder when I declared that I must take a picture of it:

John Maeda talks about simplicity (via information aesthetics). The talk itself is long and rambling, but quite funny and thought-provoking and I enjoyed watching the whole talk. In his book there are ten laws. In this talk he simplifies it and presents a single law. I liked the analogies by which he presented his law of simplicity.

When presented with a big cookie or a small cookie, which cookie will a child choose?

However, when presented with a pile of laundry to fold, surprisingly, the child will not choose the larger pile.

Maeda summarizes this as a law of simplicity: living life with more enjoyment and less pain.

Why do I find it hard to apply this basic principle in my life? I don’t know what’s up with that, but I find it amusing and helpful to say to myself now and then: LESS WORK, BIG COOKIE.