Some handy TextExpander groups and snippets for your coding pleasure from Brett Terpstra. Particularly handy are the CSS3 and Lorem Ipsum groups. If everyone else could create TextExpander snippets for ideas floating in my head that would be greeeeat… mmmkay?
A little over a year ago I did a refresh of the Media-Hive company site. Based on the original design direction by Greg O’Keeffe, I set out to tie together loose ends of the previous site and simplify some of the information architecture. This resulted in redesigning the homepage to give more prominence to our recent work; re-architecting the About, Team and Contact pages into a single cohesive Company page; updating the layout of the Work page and creating a more user friendly layout for the individual project pages.
In addition, design flourishes were added to the navigation that utilized jQuery and CSS transitions. Restructuring of the WordPress templates and organization of content was also performed to provide easier site administration.
I preach pretty much every point of this site to my class. And yet I still know plenty of professionals that could benefit from reading this. But I think the creator of this site could benefit from a "How to increase the usability of your valuable content without unnecessary razzle-dazzle" manifesto.
This past Christmas, Mr. Jon Sykes bestowed upon me a macro lens for my iPhone. Hesitant to defile my pristine monolith with the sticky metallic ring required for the use of the lens, I took the plunge. And I haven’t regretted the application of that little ring since.
The macro lens comes as part of a wide angle lens that separates into two for the macro lens. Both are great and when combined with the iPhones already superb camera, they take tremendous photos.
This lens is so nice I had to buy it twice! (…because I inadvertently lost the first one). But that just gave me reason to pickup the fisheye lens as well. If you’re on the fence about picking these up, you won’t regret making the leap.
They can be purchased from the awesome Photojojo and will work with various other phones.
A great version of the spec formatted specifically for web developers that leaves out all the info meant strictly for browser vendors.
Love this. The best part is the designer is offering up the Lego Studio Builder file so you can order the bricks to build it yourself. Very tempted, but with a trip to the Lego store a couple weeks away I'm holding off… for now.
Captured at the beginning of the December 2010 blizzard.
Great set of photos of exploded views of vintage gadgets. Particularly love the typewriter and clock radio.
Over the past few months I’ve been obsessed with a little app called Instagram. It’s an app for the iPhone that lets you take square format photos, apply a filter, then post to multiple services such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and others. You may seen the links to Instagram photos in your Facebook or Twitter stream, but Instagram is more than a “make your photos pretty and post to various services” app. It’s a community.
Within the app you can follow other users, comment or “like” their photos and discover other photographers via the popular feed or hashtags. Companies such as NPR and Starbucks have begun to utilize Instagram to disseminate news or post casual photos of company life.
As of now there isn’t web presence for Instagram users aside from the photos they decide to post to various services. The main Instagram experience is contained within the iPhone app, which makes it’s current 2 million user population all the more impressive. I expect that number to grow now that developers have access to the Instagram API and they start integrating it into their own apps and services.
I’ve posted a sample of my favorite Instagram shots above. You can find me on Instagram under the username “jim”.
LiveView is an essential tool for designing interfaces for your iOS device. Comprised of software for both your desktop and iOS device, LiveVew allows you to work on your designs and view the results in realtime on you iPhone or iPad. Best of all, it’s free.
Renowned British photographer (and friend) David Sykes has branched out from client work and has begun selling prints of his personal projects. His Faux Food project has garnered attention from popular online sites such as swiss miss as well as several print publications. David decided to utilize Big Cartel to sell a limited run of his Faux Food prints, but wasn’t happy with the default template options.
David approached me for help in updating the existing template, but he didn’t want anything too drastic. He was looking for enough of a change so it didn’t resemble a cookie cutter ecommerce template and complemented the presentation of his prints. After a couple hours of CSS updates I was happy to present David what I thought was a good solution given time and scope of the project, and he agreed.
If you’re looking for some great prints to hang in your home or office, I highly recommend these (or anything David produces for that matter). As of this writing he’s currently running a Spring sale for 25% off all of his prints. Take advantage while you can.
“People may have the impression that it is easy to make interesting images with a camera app like this, but it is not the case. At the heart of every solid image are the same fundamentals: composition, information, moment, emotion, connection. If people think that this is a magic tool, they are wrong.”
Damon Winter
The theme for the 2010 Media-Hive holiday card was (very) loosely based on a Swedish dance band. Not sure of the direction we were going to take with this, we brought in a professional photographer to take various group and portrait shots. Me being my usual self decided to document the occasion with my iPhone. Some candid shots taken in front of the backdrop with my the CrossProcess app seemed to have the look we were going after.
I did a quick second shoot of portraits with my iPhone utilizing the backdrop and florescent overhead lighting. After some Photoshop touchup these portraits were sent to clients as a pack of postcards with a group shot selected from the first photo session.
View the final set of postcards and group shot.
Update: These photos have been featured on the Banana Camera Company website, the makers of the CrossProcess app. Thanks guys!
Announcing the release of Manifest v1.1 for you downloading pleasure. Here’s what’s new:
New Features
Updates
I know it’s been a while, so here’s a brief update on the state of Manifest. I had planned on releasing a substantial update to the theme about a month ago (think Manifest 2), but work and life as usual kept getting in the way. So I’ve decided to forgo the big update for small incremental updates. This way everyone can benefit from the added features as I finish them and not have to wait for substantial releases.
You can expect the first update in the coming weeks. After some tiding up of the code, this update will include features such as threaded comments and support for WordPresses native photo galleries; along with other minor improvements.
I’d also like to thank everyone who has downloaded Manifest, sent encouraging comments and donated. Since it’s release a little over a year ago, Manifest has been downloaded over 15,600 times. Far exceeding any expectation for a theme I released just so it wouldn’t wither away in my hard drive.
To keep update with the latest on Manifest, be sure to follow @manifest_theme on Twitter.
What? http://t.co/6H5npHzk 2 hrs ago
Follow @jbarraud
A little over a year ago I did a refresh of the Media-Hive company site. Based on the original design direction by Greg O’Keeffe, I set out to tie together loose ends of the previous site and simplify some of the information architecture.
Over the past few months I’ve been obsessed with a little app called Instagram. It’s an app for the iPhone that lets you take square format photos, apply a filter, then post to multiple services such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and others.
This past Saturday I had pleasure of attending the NIN/JA (Nine Inch Nails/Jane’s Addiction) show at the PNC Bank Arts Center (Garden State Arts Center to those of use who know better) in Holmdel, NJ. It was a big day for me as I had been looking forward to this day ever since I purchased the tickets a couple of months ago.
It’s been two months since I released my first Wordpress theme, Manifest. And in those two months the response has far exceeded my expectations. Which honestly wasn’t that hard since I didn’t really have any. Since it’s release, Manifest has been listed on various Wordpress theme blogs and used on countless personal blogs. It’s also enjoyed over 1100 downloads. Which still boggles my mind.
One of the key features of my recently released Wordpress theme, Manifest, is that IE6 is unsupported. This hasn’t been an issue with the vast majority of people using the theme, but there have been a couple of comments and emails asking about IE6 support. I figured I’d clear the air on the subject.