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Image from last.fm
Here's a nice tutorial on how to create cartoon like images from photos. It's a good beginning, and after a few trials and errors pictures like the above one of Tegan and Sara are just a few Photoshop clicks away.
See the tutorial: http://www.revver.com/video/529459/how-to-make-photo-to-cartoon-in-photoshop/
The paper regime is quietly giving up the battle against the environmentally, and also logistically better options in several areas. One of these areas is newsletters. Electronic newsletters are getting more and more common, in the form of a pdf attached to email or posted on the (intra)website.
HTML newsletters that are sendt as email are one of the nice little new jobs that I've been getting, but there's some tricks that should be kept in mind when creating the otherwise so simple HTML for emailing.
MailChimp has collected a nice and usable list of Top 10 Email Coding Tips.
At times redirecting web pages is needed, and if it's a permanent change a 301 redirect is the most search-engine-friendly one. For instance webconfs.com provides good examples of the code bits for different languages.
I just made a asp-redirect in 10 sec - pretty nice.
I've been thinking of which aspects of media I would teach to kids/teens, and the fact that media easily only shows one of the many sides, and misconceptions are easily formed, is definitely one of the top issues worth taking a closer look at. But I must admit, I wouldn't have associated it with this sort of information campaign (by MediaFront). But I think the idea is interesting, so visit the site and form your own opinion: http://www.pornoromantikk.no/
PornoRomantikk is an interactive campaign that aims at "cutting back the number of overpick and misconceptions among the teens. The message is that every situation has several sides and thus is can be perceived and interpreted differently." The oldest kids at the junior high are the main target group. It won Silver Tag in May 2008 (a monthly a price given to the best interactive work in Norway).
A new cool website found: Polyvore! Sometimes I need to nurture my materialistic side, and luckily this can be done on the Internet, too. And in addition, I hope this contributes to a more realistic way of shopping.
My next break-activity will be creating a new set (it's like virtual scrap booking) with some interior dreams of mine.
Check out: http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/home
One of my colleagues is working on a "How to write for the web" course. This will hopefully create some more established policies and practices for us, and for other web workers.
Web as a medium creates so many interesting possibilities, but in general this topic is way too little explored. Many fancy and costly web sites keep surprising me with a complete nonsense contents. There can of course lie several reasons behind this, but I guess the most likely one is a lack of competence - simply not knowing how one should write texts that won't be printed on paper but presented on the screen for a viewer who is always about to do something else.
A sister topic of this, and a topic I actually react daily to is how people write in emails. The level of formality varies quite a lot - even in emails between same sender and recipient. Why is it so? How formal should I be? I think about it quite often, and would gladly get some advice on it.
I will get back to this when the course has shaped up a bit more. In the mean while for those of us understanding Swedish the Language Council of Sweden's Guide for Web writers is a good start.
Picture from www.mimoco.com/
USB Flash Drives are handy, and cool to have. And this one looks cool, too! Although the volume of it (1-8 GB) by no means competes with other serious, although sometimes very little, External Hard Drives, I wouldn't mind going around with this cutie. And in daily use 8G is actually not that little.
This one with the light blue/pink hoodie is the object of my desire: http://lab.mimoco.com/kingmimobotandregusbflashdrive.aspx
Picture from www.apple.no
Yesterday my life (okay, working life) got a new meaning and new facilities: I got a new 24" iMac. And it's very wonderful. Everything happens a lot faster, bigger and brighter on it than on my belowed MacBook Pro.
It is truly a lot more satisfying to work on it when things just happen! I love multitasking and now I can work with Flash, InDesign, Illustrator, Word email, Cyberduck and some other applications simultaneously without any hassle or slow-mode.
It took around three hours for the newbie to get synchronized with my old MacBook Pro, but after that everything was in place. Everything. To be honest, I experienced that a bit boring... Would have been nice to spend some time "getting to know" my new companion - although I'm not sure if I would have been able to find that time any time soon...
"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" twitter.com
I've just signed up for an account at twitter.com, after reading about it several times on Wired and other tech-savy places. Please join so I actually can get something out of it - now none of my friends are using it.
I got an iPod Touch as an Christmas gift from my employer, and hacked it right away (wasn't really hacking, but that's what others call it...) so that I could play third party games on it. (These games actually turned out to be a huge hit during various Christmas celebration get-togethers!) But soon did also Apple realize that there's no point in trying to lock the iPod Touch to Apple's own content, and some months ago a big software update could be bought from iTunes Store. Now I have the possibility to use all the same games and applications as iPhone (although some lack of functionality sort of makes it iPod Touch in stead of an iPhone). And that's pretty many apps!
Around a week ago I then a spent a whole evening just surfing around the iTunes Store. I ended up downloading and buying apps for about 10 €. The picture above shows the ones I've got. Now I'm trying to figure out which ones I actually can benefit something from. So far my definite favorite is Tris (a version of Tetris). Incredibly entertaining! I'm really addicted, and spend way too much time dragging the blocks with my fingers...
P.S. I've never really been into games so I've decided to allow myself to get a bit hooked, too. ;)
This is actually one of the questions I, too, contemplate the most. What is it that I do, or can do all day long?
1) Work (mostly in ExpressionEngine when working with website, a bit with FTP and some time on forums, and finding information [how-to's, googling to get the facts straigh]. Also checking stats on Mint, GoogleAnalytics, and some time on project co-operation)
2) Communicate (with friends in Norway and abroad, via Facebook, MySpace, MSN, Skype)
2) Play (checking LastFm stats, reading blogs, magazines, surfing in general)
3) Find information (reading magazines and newspapers, googling, following newsfeeds)
4) Wonder what else I could do in there?
At times I have this feeling of not utilizing the web enough. Despite, or maybe just because of, the fact that I actually sit in front of (or under) my Mac a pretty big part of my time, I feel like I should get more out of the Internet.
Use it more! Buy things through it, sell things through it, get information, pass on information, communicate! And what about all these things that I don't even know about - I must find out what more I can do there!
This is actually quite an exhausting feeling. Usually when it hits me big time I buy something cool from some web shop. But it only helps momentarily. And not really even then.
Should I just give up and be satisfied with the fact that I probably utilize the web more than people do on average, or should I try to figure out what more can I do?
There're quite many websites that generate favicons, but somehow I always tend to forget which ones actually do the work I wish them to do.
Here's a couple of them:
http://www.favicon.cc/
http://www.degraeve.com/favicon/
I've been into doing things by myself all my life. Although recently it's been quite quiet on that front. But things are about to change! The best way to spend time with some paper and scissors is making paper toys, and I've found the coolest (at least so far) models from http://www.toypaper.co.uk/
