welcome back

After a long time leaving this blog all by itself I decided to come back and use it as a new inspiration tool which I will add anything I found interesting and inspiring..

What happened during the time?

Well I finalized my thesis and graduated..

I made a detailed research on non-native english speakers and english as a second language learners.. What type of problems they face when learning and pronouncing the language. English is a phonetic language and one can not read the words simply as they are spelled. As a non-native English speaker, I have experienced difficulty pronouncing the English language. Therefore I have decided to create a visual and graphical solution so English learners can more easily memorize the correct pronunciation of words.

How do we physically and biologically accomplish speaking, hearing, reading and therefore learning a new language? I designed a book that collects all of this research. As the visual project of my thesis topic I researched the existing dictionaries in the market and designed an electronic dictionary prototype that has various new functions to help learning english and it's correct pronunciation.

You can view a demo video illustrating the project here: http://neslihankaplan.com/index.php?/projects/thesis/
also please scroll below the same link to check out my thesis book.

oSkope visual search

oSkope is a visual search assitstant and it helps you to organize the products you'd like to purchase from sites like amazon,Ebay, Youtube or Flickr. It lets you browse and search images and products from these popular websites. Soon more sites will be added. While you're searching, thumbnail images will be added on your screen and more information comes when rolled over with the mouse. You can click on the image to zoom in or you can play it if it's a video and a special link opens the original webpage. I found it similar to the experience of using Adobe Bridge for your most visited websites. I loved it, check it out: http://oskope.com/

LOGO

So decided for the name Phonaetic and these are some variations of my logo design

Icon Design

I know everyone in this group started to focus on their icon designs nowadays so I thought this link would be useful to all of us. It talks about what Not to do when designing icons. Check it out I found it helpful..

The Crisis of Credits

This a great visualization of the credit crisis.. I was reading some economy news to understand what's happening to our financial system and came across to this video. I thought it simplifies good points and explains with great graphics and funny language what happened to America's economy, check it out it comes in 2 parts.

Interactive Video Advertising- INNOVID -

Going beyond conventional video limits.. That's how they identify themselves.. What they do is basically interactive video advertising.  The static format of video integrates with the interactivity of the web. The way of brand and ad experience will surely change..

Here check it out:  www.innovid.com      

It's pretty cool to see what Flash is all capable..

When I first opened the page I thought the guy in the video is going to click on the wall, but he didn't :) After waiting a while (actually a long while) I finally thought to drag my cursor on the red spot and realized its interactive !

I was totally amazed to figure out a video could be interactive and looked over all other pages, the same video keeps playing in a loop but the background changes interactively. You can click on the buttons inside the video and go to different pages. The second yellow room is a pong game, it took me a while it's pretty tough :))

This is the link for ad gallery in case you missed it: www.innovid.com/gallery.php

Back to my Device _ Here's a Scenerio

Bora has just moved to the United States from Turkey. He is an ESL student and he came to America to practice English.

He bought a mobile device. He is sitting in a coffee shop, listening music from his mobile device and reading an ESL e-book that he downloaded via Internet from the same device. He zooms into a word that he never saw before and highlights it. A pop-up window appears that has three options. First he clicks on the translation option, then to pronunciation. This is an option where he can see a graphic correspondence to the specific word he just highlighted. This option helps him to memorize the correct pronunciation and spelling. Then he enables the audio option. This way he visually and auditory learns a new vocabulary.

After a while a Polish girl comes close to the table. She’s the girl that he met couple of days ago at the ESL Networking application he just downloaded to his mobile device. It’s a socializing website that contacts ESL students to each other. They start a nice conversation and he impresses the girl with the new word he just learned. They watch together the video tutorial that is saved in his mobile device and record themselves repeating the same example and compare with the video simultaneously how successful they were. It’s fun to study together. They will meet again the next weekend to go to a museum. So he adds this date on his organizer using the same device. He checks up the map feature of this device and gets an idea where the museum is located. It’s not far from his ESL school.

They walk together to the subway station and take different trains back home.
During the ride he is watching a pod-cast Business English class. After a while he takes off his headphones and enjoys understanding the people talking around him in the subway. He thinks that NYC is a great city to live.