Recent Blog Posts
Blogs » Archive for May, 2008
@media 2008: Exploring The Alternative Web
The @media 2008 conference is held in the South Bank Centre which is a wonderful location for any visitor to London. We enjoyed our morning stroll along the Thames past the London Eye to get from our hotel to the venue.
The opening keynote was from Jeffrey Veen, I was pleased to actually get to his talk this year as two years ago I missed it, due to last minute preparations for the panel I was on. Veen is an accomplished speaker and always enjoyable to listen to, and I felt that I took a lot away from his talk (even as a non-designer) on “Designing our way through data”. Veen talked about how designers could make sense of bare data, adding meta data to help describe the data and then using design to make that data accessible and readable. He warned against the temptation to add decoration, something he termed as “chart junk”, asking us to “tell the story” that is in the data, not just make it look pretty.
After this the conference split into two tracks, I opted for, “For Example: BBC Home Page & Clear Left”. This was two mini presentations kicking off with …
15 Million Reasons Why Twitter Sucks…
Throw the question “What do you think of Twitter” to a room full of geeks and you’ll soon realize that Twitter’s one of those unique creations that you either love to death or just can’t stand hearing about.
For Sale: Web Application – Unused
It seems to me that web applications market is heading for its very own dot com-esque bust. The basic ingredients are all there, VCs investing huge amounts of money in start ups. A general air of: if you build it, they will come. Then (of course) Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft will buy it. Underlying all the hype there seems to be an increasing number of start-ups going to the wall. Why? A few of the reasons (IMO) are:
- they are incredibly niche
- they are frivolous and of little practical use
- their revenue models are fundamental flawed
New web apps are launching because VCs are throwing money at new startups in the hope that they will get in on the ground floor of the next Facebook or YouTube, and therefore, be part of the next billion dollar sale. A lot of these startups seem to be missing the most basic business principle of — making money! I’m all for startups, but if you are going into business it should be about building a product that can stand on its own two feet without being bought out by one of the big three.
A lot of the current wave of web apps are just time …
Adobe Fireworks CS4 beta released
Adobe have made the new Fireworks CS4 beta download available, and the good news is anyone with Fireworks CS3 — either standalone or as part of the web suites — can take it for a spin.
- You’ll need to have an account at Adobe and login.
- You’ll then be directed to the download page. The downloads are 336 MB for the Win version and 633 MB for the Mac.
- Once installed and launched, you’ll be asked for a serial number. Warning: This is NOT your current CS3 serial (which is what I tried originally). You’ll have to go to this page, enter your CS3 serial, and then you’ll be issued with a new Fireworks CS4 serial to enter into the app.
Maybe it’s just me, but when you’re told you’ll need your old serial number, and soon after an ‘Enter your serial here’ screen pops up, it seems perfectly logical to enter your old serial there — which, of course, failed and left me feeling silly.
I backtracked and figured it out, but I bet others are making similar mistakes — and flooding Adobe support. Perhaps issuing the new serial THEN offering the download …
Button Up! More Photoshop Goodness…
Today we published the second part of Corrie Haffly’s current series of Photoshop tutorials, Build Beautiful Buttons In Photoshop, Part II.
As with Part I, this is an excerpt from Corrie Haffly’s book, The Photoshop Anthology, which is currently available in PDF format for FREE (that’s the complete book, not just a preview). If you like the article, you’ll love the full thing.
A huge thank you to our sponsors of this PDF giveaway, 99designs, for making it possible.
Some interesting feedback that come out of the first article in this series — while most people loved it, a few readers commented that the buttons looked a bit dated. It’s definitely true that some of the effects introduced in this series should be used sparingly or tweaked to achieve the style you’re after. One thing worth keeping in mind — this is an article about using Photoshop techniques to implement an effect. Once you’ve mastered these techniques, you can apply and tweak them to achieve all manner of trendy, sexy (or ugly — it’s up to you!) user interface elements.
If you’re looking to improve your design skills, you could do worse than check out …
ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 is Out!
Long-time no blog, eh? I am slowly climbing back into the saddle here after life got sidetracked by a combination of personal and professional issues that were consuming 27 or so hours a day. I’ll post a full .NET on the ‘Net update next week, but for now I will leave you with a round-up about a very important new product. In case you missed it, ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 is out. See Scott Guthrie’s announcement for a feature run through; Scott Hanselman’s screencasts for an introduction and Phil Haack’s updated Northwind Application for a sample. To really get jiggy with MVC (and a host of other modern development techniques) don’t miss Rob Conery’s series of screencasts on building his MVC Storefront sample application. It might seem long, but they are definitely worth the time. Enjoy!
Serve JavaScript Frameworks Faster with the Google AJAX Libraries API
Google has announced an extension to their Google AJAX APIs service: the AJAX Library APIs. They’ve assembled a collection of the most common JavaScript libraries and made them available on their content delivery network.
A common criticism leveled at JavaScript framework libraries is that the same code is downloaded from all the sites that use them, wasting bandwidth and creating duplicate files in the browser’s local cache. Google’s initiative is an effort to relieve that burden and create a kind of JavaScript Shangri La where all the frameworks hang out together, making efficient use of their time and possibly singing. if there’s a better way to ruin a decent plane-crash-survival movie than singing I haven’t seen it! Frank Capra has a lot to answer for.
Anyway, if enough sites use the Google CDN for their JavaScript libraries, the better the chance that the browser has already cached a local copy of it and can avoid having to download it again. Everyone reaps the performance benefits!.
Using the service is simple. You can directly reference the libraries via URI like so:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/prototype/1.6.0.2/prototype.js”>
</script>
Alternatively, you can use Google’s API thusly:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.google.com/jsapi”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
google.load(”prototype”, “1.6.0.2″);
</script>
The first argument …
The Conversation Is More Important Than The Topic
In a meeting here at SitePoint HQ the other day, we were discussing blogs—what were our favourites, what makes a blog successful … someone in the room made the comment that the conversation is more important than the topic.
5 sure fire ways to make yourself look like an idiot
When you’re presenting direct offers to customers either through direct mail, email marketing, telemarketing or door to door sales, here’s five sure fire ways to ensure you’ll never make a sale…
Send your customers an offer they can’t accept
There nothing quite like sending a customer a letter, or an email with an offer so wonderful that they’re ready to buy. Only to find out “sorry – we don’t ship there” or “that service isn’t available at your address”. Don’t make promises you can’t keep!
Give customers a call to action that doesn’t work
The main purpose of a direct mail piece is to get a customer to act. That action might be to click a link, visit web address, or dial a phone number. If your direct mail achieves that – its done its job. So when that action is completed, you better be ready for it! Nothing converts quite like a 404 page or a phone number that’s disconnected.
Send your customers better deal on a product they already own
Talk about rubbing your customer’s noses in it. These days people are aware that offers change over time. How many of us have bought a TV, only …
Adobe Flex/AIR Article Competition: And The Winners Are…
Our competition to write articles about Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR has come to a close, and we’ve selected our winners.
We were amazed at the quality of entries that we received, and deliberated for some time before choosing our winners.
Articles were judged on the following criteria:
- English: How strong a command of the English language did the author have? How well did they explain difficult concepts to the reader?
- Technical: Were the concepts and techniques described best practice? Did the sample code run successfully?
- Educational value: How useful were the concepts taught in the article for a reader? How good a foundation was laid for the user to begin developing with the technology on their own?
- Interestingness: I think Flickr might have trademarked this term, but I’m going to use it here anyway. Does the article really grab the reader and command their attention?
So without further ado, here are the winners:
Best Adobe Flex article
- Winner: Jack Herrington for his article Build 3D Configurators With Papervision and Flex.
Jack will receive a copy of Adobe CS3 Web Premium, and his article will appear on the front page of sitepoint.com. Congratulations Jack!
- An honourable mention also goes to Jamie McDaniel for his …
