This design principle finds its place in Web application development. In Client side development where you may have a myriad of technologies, which may falsely appear to substitute one another, to contend with, it is always a good thing to stick with these design principles:

·         Separate Contents from Styling Information: web design101 tells me so; content and document structure differs from formatting so I shouldn’t mix the two together. So I use CSS.

·         Separate text contents from image contents: in my little time in the wild, I have seen interesting things: things like a website in its entirety being made up of nothing but JPG files. This is not only ineffective, it is dumb. It shouldn’t be forgotten that on the web, other beings, apart from humans pay visit to our sites. Beings like spiders. I wonder how a JPG based web page hopes to attain content visibility to a search engine.

·         Separate content from behavior: this design principle is often referred to as unobtrusive Javascript. Just as it pays to segregate content from styling information. More so it pays to separate content from behavioral properties. Putting it in another way, all your Javascript codes must move out from within the <body/> tag into the <script/> tag 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Nigeria!
Cheer up ol’ man,there is yet hope.

MORAL: love PHP,hate JAVA.

Chernow’s Titan(J. Rockefeller Snr’s biography) is a grand read.

You should also see There Will be Blood.

The Lord of Hosts
Mighty is He
He shall come in his glory
And He shall switch off the internet.

I’m a man that chooses his words carefully and always read between the lines.
I’m a very big fan of technology and believe in solving my problems with it.
Always on the look out for something new.

Tell us about your PC

Yeah, I like to refer to my machine as workstation. A hp pavilion DV6500 with Core2duo 2.2 Ghz, 2GB ram, nVidia 8400GS 256MB discrete gfx card and 160GB hard drive with external 250GB drive (to satisfy my insatiable demand for space).Not bragging guys, I’ve only seen one laptop that out-performs this machine. As a 3D guy this machine is a joke, because when the work starts this so-called workstation cries out for help. I’ll be replacing this my machine before the end of the year with a real workstation that can really cut it, core 2 Quad Q9450 @ 2.66GHz 1333FSB 12MB L2 Cache, 8GB ram and NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 1GB.

You are into 3d art, how did you get started and how long has it been?

The first demonstration of 3d I can say I noticed was in Titanic. When one of the treasure hunter was explaining to Rose what happened to titanic. It made me wonder how it was made, but I won’t see any evident 3d work until 1999, when the matrix came out I was totally fascinated by the visual effect of the movie and wished I can achieve something like that. Of course the major obstacle was a computer and the necessary software. Back in those days finding a system was difficult let alone getting one to use with a 3D application installed on it. I had to wait another 4 years to have access to anything that resembles 3D and that was my brother’s system with AutoCAD installed on it.

I browsed the internet for all the available material I can find on AutoCAD. I started using this app like nobody since it was the only thing I have access to I tried to model anything I can think off, mostly complex mechanical parts, then buildings. Then sooner I realized that I can’t generate the realistic looking images I have always wanted. Then I looked for something else. Then I met 3ds max v3, we dated for couple of months and separated because she wasn’t anything like AutoCAD and was really intimidating. So I had to continue dating AutoCAD for another 1 year till I met beautiful Revit (what a wonderful day). Then I started doing building models in revit, easy to learn and use. But still won’t give me the realistic looking images I wanted. So I had no other option but to reconcile with 3ds max, now 3ds max v6 and we have been married ever since. It delivers on every project I’ve worked on.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

My inspirations come from the work of great 3d artists from every corner of the world, people like Brian Smith of 3DAS, icube3d, neoscape and phrenic. There are so many other artists that aren’t so popular, in fact I have not even heard their names before, but have done beautiful works that really challenged me.

Any other 3D artist out there that you admire their works? Any role models?

If you’re saying was there 3D artist in this country as my role model, my answer will be “no”. Not that there are no good guys, just that I haven’t seen any work that matches what is the average over there. So you’ll understand, because am still regarding myself as an amateur.

Company like neoscape has been my business model, starting from garage to a 50-person shop that handles multi-million dollar projects.

Ok now when you get down to work, what are the tools you use?

Well when there is work to be done, I analyze the requirements to know the tools to use and how to go about it. One tool is for shizzle: 3ds max. Other tools I use to get the project out of the door quickly
are photoshop, AutoCAD, revit, combustion, after effect and illustrator. But my 3ds max is not the kind you get out of the box, I have installed loadz of plugs for it to extend the functionality and to simplify some operations in 3ds max. plugs like vray, final render, illustrate, polyboost, super materials etc.

What area do you specialize in? Architectural visualization? Animation? Product Visualization? Landscape visualization?

Well I can say I do pretty much of all you mentioned above except for character animation (if that was what you mean by animation, but if you were talking about walkthrough I do that too)

What is your typical workflow? How do you get your models out?

Just like any other business you and your client go into agreement, where what he/she requires is written, how many renderings and most importantly where the shots are going to be taken. All these are what I use in my modeling because if the camera is not going to see particular area of your scene then no point in modeling it or you might just put dummy object to create illusion.

My pipeline starts with autoCAD in a situation where am doing architectural visualization or I was given autoCAD files, where I do clean up of the lines before laying out the views in 3ds max. I like to do all my modeling in 3ds max because of the flexibility, but in a situation where the project requires remodeling and producing detail drawing, I do the modeling and detailing in revit then export to 3ds max without having to model again in 3ds max (it kills me doing this though, but saves times). After finishing the renderings in 3ds max I have to use photoshop to do the clean up and remove any imperfection. Sometimes the client wants multimedia presentation, this has to be outsourced because I don’t do flash.

When it comes to open-source 3D tools, how would you rate them against closed-source tools?

Well the closest to “open-source 3D tool” I know is google sketchup and I will prefer to regard to it as free trial version because you can’t export from this version. So I don’t want to consider open-source 3d apps, because the developer won’t put the stuffs in, if you know what I mean. I don’t know why any serious 3D artist will consider open-source 3D apps anyway, because if you really look at this tools they are not that expensive like 3ds max design 2009 it’s just $3500 (about N400,000) which one project can pay for in about 2 wks. Just like operating systems, if you look at the big picture open-source 3D apps won’t cut it.

What do you think of the recent 3d craze in Nigeria?

I’ll say “father forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing”. Just like any other craze in this country they rush out as quickly as they rush in because the passion is not there and these people that are crazy about 3d don’t know anything about the application of 3d. They think 3d is just creating visual presentation at the end of project design, whereas this is not. I have been following 3d application for some years now and been to some big companies to know that they are still not leveraging 3d tools in every step of their workflow. That is where my company comes in to be their consultant and help them reduce overhead when changing designs during construction and coordinate these changes across the board, which will allow everybody to be on the same page.

What opportunities are there in 3D? Especially in the Nigerian Context? Can I make money out of it?

The opportunities are endless in this country because it’s done by few; the market is far from saturated. Cisco CEO talked about it last month that, that is where revenue is going to be generated for companies into the stuff in the coming years, because people are using 3d like second life these days, from high-end visual presentation for civil works to detail reenactment of crime scenes. 3d takes out the guess work and gives life to architects, designers and engineers idea. It’s just a matter of time before Nigeria catches up.

What are, if any, are the things impeding the growth of 3d artistry in Nigeria?

I won’t say anything is impeding 3d growth in this country, in fact the only thing impeding the growth is the few number of people doing it, and the very very old generation at the top calling the shots.

What do you recommend for people starting out, especially on a shoestring budget?

Well, the first thing is, you going to have passion for what you do, learn all the things you should learn before starting out and never stop learning because new tools come out everyday that will make you chores simpler or improve your work.

Do you have any Last words for us?

The best is yet to come? Watchout!

Developed by Twelfth Imagination, the company powered by segun okin, whom we featured here on 60minuteswiththegeeks a while back, linkSMS is Facebook application that allows friends send SMS messages anywhere in the world via Facebook: the largest social networking platform in the world. Both the sender is required to add the Link SMS application to his/her Facebook account. LinkSMS like the mobile phone and internet, connects users irrespective of location, distance or mobile network.

Still keeping friends connected, users can always contact each other even when they change locations or mobile numbers. All they need to do is change their registered number on the LinkSMS application and their friends can always reach them. Link SMS is non-intrusive and ensures user privacy is always maintained as mobile numbers are never displayed.

In addition, there is the LinkSMS Toll Free Service which is really cool, it makes it possible for users to allow selected friends reach them at no cost.

On installing the application, each user is granted 4 free SMS messages and another 4 for every batch of 10 friends who install the application via the users’ referral link. Additional SMS messages will be purchased by users.

When sending messages, each message sent is equal to one SMS on the application, irrespective of location. Link SMS was launched on Facebook on the 10th of July 2008.

Why not try it out?

Update: You can find the application here

I will be instructing from the 24h to 26th of July and will be covering the following topics:

1:Introduction to the 3-tier architecture
2: Installing and Configuring of WAMP
3: Introduction to Programming
4: PHP 101
5: SQL 101
6: Interacting with MYSQL Server via PHP
7: Launch of techHead Videos

Invitation is open to all. For more information you could call the man behind the whole show, peter on the following numbers: 08051648564

When dealing with high tech products or services, similar goal is expected: make someone pay for your software or get someone to subscribe to use your web app. As a marketer, this involves coming up with ways to ensure that the marketing decision made by your potential customers favor your product or services.

Its all about coaxing or convincing and in high tech marketing it is not uncommon to see marketers listing features their software comes loaded with in other to coax customers to make a buying decision that will favors their offerings.

But going in the direction of features listing might not be quite a productive strategy, especially for services like software. Ideally the logic behind feature touting goes somewhat like this: “List the features, let the customers know all the cool features they will be buying so that they will know the benefits they will enjoy and how our software will help solve their problems”.

Well it so happens that things don’t normally play out that way. Customers might not necessary see the benefits, straightway from your litany of features. And this is why playing it strong on the feature listing side might not be that effective. Instead of feature touting, I will advocate Benefit touting .

In stead of strictly feature listing, enumerate the benefits offered by your software in explicit language.

Not that listing features is wrong in itself, but we have to keep in mind that our aim is to elicit an action: persuade potential customers to make a decision to buy, and this is easier done when your customers can grasp the relevance of your solution to their peculiar challenges.

The problem with feature listing is that it is not an effective means in communicating the benefits of your offering to customers.

Truth is, if you have features, you should have benefits but you have to take into consideration that half of the time, majority of your customer might not be that techie savvy, so they might not, at once connect the dots of your features to get the benefits. This is why it pays to sell to them by explicitly stating your benefits. This will make buying much easier.

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One need to take into cognizance that decision making is powered by emotions, so it will make more sense Listing benefits not features since it will be a faster way to make customers easily identify what they will gain from your software, how it will make their work (or life) easier, thereby generating the necessary emotions that will propel them to sign that cheque.

Doing this makes buying easier like I said earlier on. Have you ever wondered why most people resist selling but enjoy buying? Why is this so? Its simple, buying becomes enjoyable when backed with the knowledge that the Good or Services being purchased is really the solution to a problem. List the benefits and people will find it easy to connect your solution to their problems, list the features, well….

So what is the lesson being learnt here?

“It is a better marketing strategy to design your marketing campaign around benefits listing than feature listing.”

In this day-night
I heard a voice of the mourning
It was heavy with sorrow
And broken in places

What I heard, I shall quote:

THE RAPE OF GIDEOLU

The wells now dry are filled with dust
Dust, dust, Ah! Dust.
The hag’s breast, long unsuckled
Hang down, an ungainly sight
Once they stood twin hills, firm
At the dawn of morning

Her grown sons were first to rape her
Then they fed fat
Off the proceeds of her whoring
They fell out, drunken
Woe! Dog ate Dog
For they are no men

Now blind, she dwells in a windowless hut
Where there is no difference
Between dark and night
Her fence is broken
And none will care for her
None to cover her nakedness

She has long been a reproach

To her neighbours in the Committee of Nations.

EPILOGUE

I awoke, stabbed in the chest by fear.

Adebiyi Olusolape is proudly Nigerian.
In this ‘Nested Poem’ he expresses his concern for the Naija source code. From now on he should be a regular feature on this site.

He is very interested in Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks.

He sings, reads and plays chess for fun.