After all, only moments after Path released its beautifully revamped “v2.0″ app into the marketplace on both iOS and Android, respected tech blog “The Next Web” was already touting the improved application as “…the Facebook app that Facebook should have made.”

So what makes Path such a sexy and fun experience for the everyday user? The simple answer to that, as cliched as it sounds, is that it’s the “little things”.

Hopefully you’ll get a bit of an idea of what I’m talking about in the few screens and features I’ll take you through below, but minute, yet noticeable details like the clock icon timeline scrollbar, the paralex scrolling user cover photos and the arc of sharing options that pop out from the prominently displayed share “plus” icon, all combine to provide users with an intelligent, fun and easy-to-use way of sharing details of their daily happenings with friends.

Sure, the user-base at this stage is, like all other relatively new players going up against the likes of Facebook etc, kind of pathetic, but it may only take a few influential users to get the ball rolling within their social online circles to get the buzz and momentum going for Path.

Getting started: Signing up

Signing up for a Path account is an interesting process in that it flips the traditional process by asking for you to select your profile and cover photos first before any kind of email/password combination and demographic info. This way, users get a sweet mini-preview of the beautiful design style that awaits them on the other side of the registration process.

Providing a few more required (and optional) details, you’re transferred to your brand new home stream already featuring the imagery you selected upon signing up. The best way to fill up your rather sparse timeline? Find some friends to add!

Adding Friends

A pretty straight forward process this one.

There’s the usual option of connecting with your Facebook account and finding fellow Path users that way, then there’s the simple option of running through your own personal address book, matching up listed email addresses with registered Path users.

Using either method, or both, should hopefully connect you to at least one or two friends you can start interacting with.

If not, there’s always the option of sending out pre-formatted invitations to your nearest and dearest via a few clicks and access to your phone’s address book. Selecting the phone number or email address of your invitee determines if they will receive their message by SMS or email. Simple.

Creating a “moment”

Gowalla referred to a user’s status update that included text, location data and images as a “story”. For Path users, your updates containing combinations of images, text, tagging of other Path users, location check-ins and even music sharing are referred to as “moments”.

To start composing a “moment” simply click on the red “+” icon at the bottom left of the screen on your home stream and select a media type to submit. From there it’s just a matter of following the prompts to complete and submit your “moment”. Some of the cool things to look out for are:

• A number of image filters are available for when taking pictures with the camera. Unlike Instagram where the filters are applied post-shot, however, the filters in Path are shown in real-time as you actually take the shot. Pretty cool.
• If you wish to let everyone know about a cool song you are actually listening to as you create a moment, Path will find out what song is playing and automatically suggest that song as the one to publish. No searching required.
• You can even, if you’re so inclined, let people know you’ve called it a night by clicking on the moon icon and selecting “Go to sleep”. When you wake again in the morning, hit the wake button and Path will greet you with a weather and temperature update in your timeline. Kind of gimmicky, but cool at the same time.

Commenting and liking

Like any decent social application, you have the opportunity to add comments, likes and in a quirky new move “emotions” to your friends’ posts. That’s right, leave a comment, a heart (like) or a smile to posts that appear on your home stream.

To add comments and likes, look for the grey smilie face at the top right of each post. Just so you know, too, the little number next to the smilie is the total number of people who have viewed that “moment”. A neat little running viewing stat!

Posting to your other networks

The obvious question some of your friends may ask you as you attempt to enlist them to your newfound love of Path, is – “why join if it means I have to post updates to yet another network??” The answer to this one is, you don’t have to!

By connecting your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare accounts to your Path profile, you can easily and automatically post your “moments” to any or all of these accounts each time you post something to Path.

In a clever, similar fashion to the popular photo sharing site Instagram, each time you post new content, an individual, specific webpage is created for that post so that your friends from other networks can click through to view your individual, shared Path content without requiring an account. The stylish “moment” pages look something like this:

As I sit here typing this, my mate Adam just posted a sweet time lapse video he shot using his phone and posted to his Path profile as well as Facebook and Twitter. Check it out here.

Other streams to keep your eyes on

Your home stream isn’t the only place in Path that you can keep an eye on what’s going on. Access your settings menu by either swiping your home stream screen to the right, or by clicking on the 3-bar icon at the top left of screen. From this menu you can access a number of other options:

• Home – The main Path stream you’ll keep your eye on for 90% of the time and a timeline of your friends’ moments.
• Path – Think of this as your profile and a running timeline of your moments.
• Activity – A running list of what activity has been going on surrounding posts by you and your friends. You can even find out WHEN your friends have visited your path from here.
• Settings – Change your personal details, profile and cover photos, and set your notification settings.
• Sign Out – If you must, you must.

How’s all that sound?

While hopefully I’ve given you enough of a taster above to get you hooked, nothing beats giving it a go for yourself. It may sound like I’m really “pumping the tyres” of this wee app, but honestly, I’ve given a bunch of these types of things a go over the past couple of years, and this is the most fun I’ve had with one of them combined with a truly beautiful and well thought out user interface.

To get your hands on Path now, visit http://www.path.com.

I’m really excited about this re-design as I firmly believe this is one that I’ll stick with for quite a long time going forward. There’s been a tonne of stuff added in on the back end to make things easier for me in terms of composing posts, and I’ve done my best to strip away a lot of the “bells and whistles” I used to employ on the front end, to make the viewing experience a lot clearer and more enjoyable for you!

The idea is to present you with a Blog that is easier to navigate and read (there’s now larger type for the oldies out there!) and that will enable a greater emphasis on imagery, in particular my photography. I’ve got some awesome plans for this year so there’s going to be plenty to see and read about.

Apologies if there’s any of your favourite posts or galleries that haven’t made the jump to the new design… yet. I’ve had to reformat every post in the archive one-by-one, so it’s going to take me a while to have them all back online. I’m working on it though!

So, if there’s anything you particularly like about the new design, or miss about the old one, please let me know in the comments section below. I welcome any feedback, no matter the nature of it.

Cheers and enjoy!

Through the combination of a bright and colourful grid of post-it-note-like panels and fun doodles, the site presents daily fun and quirky facts accompanied by simple, related cartoon drawings.

Assuming that the user submitted facts are indeed legit, there’s a wealth of interesting, yet probably useless ditties on offer such as the following:

• Humans share about 50% of DNA with Bananas
• Bats always turn left when exiting a cave
• Cola would be green if colouring wasn’t added (that one gets you thinking eh?)

To make it easier for you to keep up-to-date with the release of new facts, there’s both an RSS feed and also a Twitter feed you can subscribe to or follow – kudos to the authors for those additions.

Don’t take my word for it though, go check out the site for yourself: http://cargocollective.com/learnsomethingeveryday.

Acting as Carmen’s trainer for the past month, Brian approached me to come up with a new logo and subsequent business card design to help him promote his highly regarded services over the coming year.

The idea behind the logo design was to stylistically simplify and modernise Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” which Brian had used as a symbol for his business in the past. Combining this new design with a warm and energetic colour palette, I came up with the designs you can view by clicking on the images above.

To find out more about BrianFit, visit his soon to be redesigned website at www.brianfit.ca.

I’ve already drawn everyone’s attention to my mate Christine’s Vancouver based clothing design company “thorn & vine” following her successful graduation exhibition at the Emily Carr Institute earlier in the year. Now Chris and her business/design partner have got their business off the ground and are finally going commercial with their distinctly Vancouver-themed t-shirt designs.

This Sunday 24th September, “thorn and vine” will have a stall set up at the Portobella West Markets at Vancouver’s Plaza of Nations between 11am and 5pm where they will have a number of their t-shirt designs on display and available for purchase.

The story behind “thorn and vine’s” creative inspirations is cool and goes something like this which I have extracted from their new “MySpace” page:

A bit about thorn & vine: thorn & vine is a collaboration between 2 emerging designers, which began as an extension of their graduation project at Emily Carr, based on developing a graphic visual language for Vancouver.

The project began from Vancouver’s mixed reactions to the 2010 Olympic logo. This formed the catalyst for their project. We found there was a lack of a unified contemporary identity for the city and felt that Vancouver needed a new form of representation. A personal, more intimate take on what it is to be a true Vancouverite.

We collected and created an inventory of photographs, images & drawings of Vancouver dealing with aspects of culture, entertainment, food, landscape, & environment. We wanted to create icons that were flexible and diverse in style, simple enough to use as building blocks, to pull apart and compose to create conversations about awareness, knowledge & issues.

With fashion as our canvas we used the illustrations to develop graphics for clothing. Every T-shirt has a unique story & explanation based on the city.

We researched the cult of the t-shirt as it is a form of expression & identity. When people travel they often collect t-shirts as keepsakes. We thought that if the people of Vancouver would wear our graphics then our images were successful & would create a new sense of pride for the city.

If you check out the “pics” section of their MySpace page, you can see some of their designs in greater detail. I LOVE the “Gate Love & Hate” design I have featured in the graphic above featuring Vancouver’s much loved “Lion’s Gate Bridge”.

A final big THANKS to Chris for being sweet enough to link to my site from hers too… thanks hun!