Category Stuff to Try
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PDA Blogs 25.08.09
Making iPhone/PDA specific sites for your personal site really isn’t that fun, I’ve done it before – and it’s time consuming and tedious (although there’s something to be said for developing for just one browser). Anyways, I was pretty impressed with this WordPress PDA plugin – which will convert your blog into a PDA ready site (see above). Check it out. -
Beginning CSS Web Development 25.08.09
Recently, a few friends of mine who work in the fashion, packaging and print design sectors have started turning their attention to web. More than anything, it’s become apparent that a knowledge of web design is an extremely useful commodity for any designer wanting to make themselves truly indispensable. My advice to these friends has been to try and get a basic handling on how a website is built, and how it works – which will, of course, give you the ammo to create kick-ass sites (seeing as they’re already Photoshop ninjas).I’ve found myself shouting a lot about this book – Beginning CSS Web Development by Simon Collison. It’s what I used to get a grasp on CSS a few years back, and although I’ve read a whole stack of books on the same topic since, this is still the best by far. So if you’re keen on broadening your repotouire, or fancy brushing up on your CSS skills – I reckon this is a pretty good use for 1,924 (Amazon) of your hard earned English pennies.
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Package Illustrator 23.06.09
I’ve recently started playing around with Scripts in Photoshop an Illustrator – and although pretty useless on the most part, I’ve found one that’s been extremely useful. It’s a script that will group together all of the links within an Illustrator document, and save it ‘Packaged’ much in the same way as InDesign. Fast, clean and extremely useful. Download the script here (via Interactive Llama) -
Resumé Template 12.06.09
For the friends of mine who face uncertain futures – I found this for you… an online HTML resumé (that’s a CV to us brits) creator tool. Brilliant! -
Konami Code 15.05.09
The Konami Code is a Japanese gaming cheat that consists of you pressing, in sequence up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a on your keypad. Now log into FaceBook, do the code, press enter, then see what happens when you click on something (like text, or the white background). I love hidden stuff like this! Check out this site, which lists all the other sites that have this ‘cheat’ (like Google, FaceBook etc) -
XMarks 10.05.09
I’ve just set up my new MacBook Pro (mmmm) – and thought I’d share something that’s saved me a heap of time and effort, XMarks. It’s a Firefox plugin that shares bookmarks and passwords securely accross computers. So all I had to do was install it, log in, and I had all of my thousands of beautifully labelled and ordered bookmarks at my disposal. I highly recommend it!
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YCN Library 07.05.09
I recently learned that the YCN Studio (Shoreditch) have opened their doors to a new lending library. So I headed on over there at lunchtime to check it out/sign up. Not surprisingly, it’s a beautiful space with some really nice books to borrow, one-off posters and other prints to buy. I spent a while in there browsing around before ending up standing outside their offices for 20 minutes like a crazy person (it’s OK, I was on a call… can’t seem to master speaking and walking at the same time)! But it’s yet another reason to love Shoretich!If you get a chance you should definitely go check it out! Whilst you’re at it – you should probably also check out my newest RSS addition, SiteInspire (a Daniel Howells project).
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Spreadtweet 22.04.09
So, you work at a big corporate, huh?
And you’re not allowed to use Twitter…
Wouldn’t it be awesome if there were a Twitter tool that looked just like Excel?I love Spreadtweet – it’s brilliant. As is a LOT of Elliott Kember’s stuff!
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Real World vs. The Web 05.03.09
This is utterly insane! From GE’s marvelous new site (via ISO50)
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Lingo Bingo 02.03.09
Take ownership, We need a vision, Quick win, Mission/vision/values (all in same sentence), Can we park that for later?, Push back, High level
Next time you’re in a meeting (or a meeting about a meeting), play Lingo Bingo. Basically just list a whole bunch of hot topic, new-media-bullshit words that are chucked around these days… and see how many times they come up. You could probably add some webbie ones to it too (AJAX, user-centric, above the fold, real-estate etc etc).
Me and Russ used to play to see how many times Apple was mentioned. Quite a lot, as it happens!
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PHP & AJAX 02.03.09
There are a couple of really nice, simple tutorials I’ve come across in the last few days that combine PHP, MySQL and AJAX to create stunning results. I won’t go on about it too much, but I came across this tutorial today which enables database row deletion using AJAX. Essentially it’s performing a simple task whilst maintaining a friendly interface. Users don’t know it, but they love AJAX.On a similar note, I’ve recently been playing around with AJAX – and even made a little search thing for my blog (above and here) which I’ll integrate someday.
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Readymech 21.02.09
Came accross this site today – these little guys are flippin’ mental… going to make a few on Monday!Readymechs are free, flatpack toys for you to print and build. They are designed to fit on an 8.5″x11″ page and printed with any printer. You’ll need double-sided tape, thick matte paper, and 10-15 minutes for build time.
