Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know that I will be out of town the rest of the week so there won’t be any posts till Monday.
Until then, here are a few articles and such to keep you busy. See ya Monday.
7 Habits of a Highly Successful In House Web Designer
So the other day I got a new project. Nothing all that fancy, but the trick was, the company does not have a presence at all…no logo, no previous designs…nothin’. A clean slate.
A lot of designers love this situation. It allows them to be completely creative with no strings attached. Others have a mental coronary and have no idea where to begin. I fall right about in the middle myself. I enjoy the challenge, but that first step is always a doozy.
In this case, the challenge inspired me to keep track of the steps I went through to take a blank slate to a finished design. This article is aimed at beginners, but it will contain a lot of links that may be useful to the hardened vets out there as well.
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Today Netvibes is launching their next “big thing” (6pm Eastern time). I found out about it on Friday from a press release sent to me by my contact with the company (because of the upcoming interview).
The big thing is called “Netvibes Universe”.
So what the heck is it? Well according to the press release it is…ahem…
With Netvibes Universe, users can collect, design and syndicate their entire digital world in just minutes. Moving beyond traditional blogs and social networks, Universes bring together and deliver on a single Netvibes page all types of rich online media, including RSS feeds, websites, podcasts, videos, blogs, and photos, along with web services, including del.icio.us, Digg, eBay, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, and widgets from nearly any platform.
Starting today, users can enjoy content in over 100 Universes that have been created by Netvibes pilot content partners. Furthermore, Netvibes will soon announce the availability of tools to allow all Netvibes users to create their own Universes and use them as outlets to express, showcase and share their complete Web life with others.
So, as of yesterday Microsoft announced at the National Association of Broadcasters conference and through its various blogs that it is now calling WPF/e…wait for it…Silverlight.
Why is this important? The name isn’t, but the technology behind it is. The name simply gives us something much shnazzier to call the WPF/e (that didn’t really roll off the tongue). WPF/e as I mentioned before is the next wave of web technologies courtesy of the guys in Redmond. Releasing the new name is simply the first of many announcements regarding this tech that will be coming over the next few months.
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Karate Kid was just one of those movies that was so cool at the time, and now is just pure cheese.
Wax on…Wax off
The crane kick (you would soooo get your butt kicked if you tried that in real life)
BONZAI!!!! (nothin’ is more exciting to a 16 year old than a little tree…)
I love it.
This shirt from 80stees is a great example of the over-the-top dialog in this movie. Definitely on my “gotta get it” list.
When designing an application, whether online or off, creating a new logo is often part of the process. For a new designer this can be quite a daunting task…especially if you are one who can’t draw (*raises hand*).
When I come to this particular crossroad, I find that inspiration of looking at other logo sites is good. To help with this, I have culminated a list of helpful sites for logos. Some are logo galleries, others are logo generators, and there are a few articles on logo design thrown in for good measure. Enjoy.
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I love pulling for a good underdog story. Here is one for the web.
COLOURlovers is up for a webby against some stiff competition (delicious, yahoo!, threadless), and is calling for votes.
Normally I am not a fan for this kind of stuff, but I like the webby awards, and I think that this is a cool site, so I for one am rooting for them.
If you are a fan of the site, or you just like to see David whup Goliath you can read more about it or you can just go on and vote.
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Am I just old? What is up with Twitter?
“What are you doing right now?”
That is the whole premise of this service. You log on, and type what you are doing right this second. For instance…right now I am writing a blog article (who wants to know that)?
Another way of looking at it is “mini-blogging” (or blogs for the ADD crowd).
The idea, as I understand it, is that over time you can get to know someone by reading through what they were doing over a period of time. So if I updated it say, once an hour or four, you could get a feel for who I am.
Is it just me, or is that creepy? Its like you are being virtually stalked or something.
There are now “fan sites” of twitter getting released. TwitterFiction is a site where you write a story in 140 words or less. Its like a Haiku, but not as poetic. This is the first I have found, but I am sure there will be more.
What am I missing here? I know it is the “flavor of the month” right now, but I just don’t get it. Can someone explain it to me?
Over the past few days I have been going over the Yahoo! User Interface or YUI for short. Up to this point I have discussed the Tab View and the Connection Manager.
For my last trick I am going to dive into the Dialog control. The dialog is really sweet because you can get a “popup” that looks and behaves like it would on the desktop. Now I will tell you upfront that I normally shy away from popups because they interrupt the flow of the app (don’t get me started on popups on top of popups…*shudder*).
However, for the real estate site the dialog provided a nice way of logging into the site, as well as a data collection form. For this article, I will focus on the login form.
Smashing Magazine (nice logo by the way) has just released their “Best of March 2007″. Basically this is a big list of all the sites that they found interesting over the last month. Its a longer list than you would expect for a single month, and there are some really nice links.
If you get a few minutes of free time, its worth a look.
