If you haven’t logged into your Veer.com account lately, your missing the latest addition to their “ideas” section. Mainly the one where you can create your own profile page, upload your portfolio, and build a community with other Veer users. Did I mention they have an Avatar option? Go ahead, check it out, and start getting advise from other Veer users and build up some new contacts in the professional design world.
Think Fresh! – Take a look at the new Stock Photo Community Site…
Think Fresh! is the tagline for SnapVillage.com, a new stock photo community site. I received a nifty little fold-out mail piece from these guys the other day and decided to check out the site. SnapVillage is a branch of Corbis, and is in “beta” mode right now (very web 2.0 of you…). I would say that the site is very pleasing to look at, and very easy to navigate – unlike some stock photo sites that become a nightmare when searching. It works very similar to a blog, you can leave comments on photos, add tags to photos, and search by categories or tags (very convenient).
What makes this a little different from other stock photo sites is you can create an account and upload your own photos to sell – you pick the price for the photo and receive royalties each time a photo is purchased (very cool for you amateur photographers out there). I think it’s definitely worth checking out – just click on the image above or the link below.
Web Standards, Anyone Please?!
After working on a recent (and frustrating) project, I am once again reminded of how much I loathe Internet Explorer. Mind you, the only frustrating thing with the project was that Internet Explorer was involved. The invention of DIV tags and CSS was supposed to make designing websites much easier, not to mention provide much more functionality and make the pages appear “prettier”; the PNG image file format is fantastic for web based graphics, especially with its alpha transparency layer, and allows designers to use one graphic everywhere on the website without needing the same graphic sliced multiple times just because of the change of background colors. Even though we have all of these wonderful inventions that have been around for years, we are now just finally able to start using them without much hassle between browsers – except Internet Explorer.
It amazes me how much time and effort developers have put towards creating hacks and work-arounds to get pages to appear correctly in Internet Explorer – I myself (not a developer) had to create two separate style sheets to get the website to display correctly in all browsers (one for Internet Explorer, and one for the rest of the world). Why can’t all browsers (mainly IE) just read style sheets and PNG files the same way? I mean it’s like having multiple gas pump fittings to cater towards different car models and makes – it doesn’t make sense.
Alright, after all that being said, I do realize that the latest update for IE7 finally resolves a lot of differences between other browsers like Firefox and Safari. I am also well-aware that Microsoft is getting ready to release IE8 soon, and that should even further resolve differences between browsers – but my main beef are the people who just don’t want to upgrade. I don’t know why, but some people just got comfortable with IE6 and don’t want to let go; this means that it takes at least double effort to program a website just to cater towards those that still chose to use IE6.
All that I’m asking is to please (at least) upgrade your browser to the latest version of IE (if that’s what you use) or give Firefox and Safari a try – they are both superior and faster browsers than IE. Firefox is great for skinning and plugins, not to mention one of the first browsers to feature “tabbed” browsing, while Safari displays the best looking websites on a Windows based computer (it has a great text anti-aliasing feature built in the browser). Just click on the icons above and please give these browsers a shot – your websites will look far better and load much faster than they ever have before.
I love Apple, but somedays not so much…
First off, I’ll let you know that I’m a bit of a computer tech geek. I love building computers, salvaging parts, and modding. Usually this comes in the territory of using Windows as your base operating system, even though I prefer the Mac OSx. So, when I saw that this company Psystar was offering to custom build a Mac OSx clone system for around $400 (equivalent to the Mac Mini in specs) I was pretty excited. That is, until I found out that the site is gone and they’ve pretty much been given the boot – a cease and desist order given from Apple.
At least that’s the speculation right now, but I wouldn’t doubt that Apple doesn’t take too kindly to people cloning their systems and selling them for a much better price. Although my modding dreams of an Apple system have been slightly crushed for the moment, I still intend to build my own custom Mac system one of these days…
Boo on Apple for the time being.
The Psystar article was originally found on Engadget, you can view it here.
Words have power, so choose them before you use them
After a brief meeting here at the studio (discussing new phrases & words to be used as a tagline for one of our clients), it occurred to me just how much emphasis people put into a single phrase pertaining to their brand – and how, with the right combination of words, it can either completely give life and meaning to a brand, or completely confuse and insult its audience.
Words have a power so great that when a single word is used to define a specific genre, group, place, whatever, it can invoke personal reactions like fear, joy, pride, affection, jealousy & anger to an individual who hears or sees that word. In fact there are people out there who make their whole careers off of developing new combinations of words to describe the same product/terminology/location but invoke a completely different emotional response with each new combination of words.
Take for instance the term “global warming”. For most of us, this term invokes unpleasant emotions – anger, guilt, fear, etc. – because of all of the negative connotations we have seen, heard & read associated with this phrase. Politicians started using the term “climate change” to describe the same phenomena because it sounds much more natural & subtle and not as harsh & alarming as “global warming”.
Right now there is the debate to eliminate the use of the term “gamer” because it is associated with the idea of a “cult” of young males who are solely devoted to playing video games into long hours of the night, in a dark room, and so on and so on (I suppose that I myself can fit into the category of “gamer”). The debate is to change the terminology to allow for a broader range of audiences to try and enjoy video games, rather than the stereotypical audience deemed by the term “gamer” (the full article posted on Newsweek.com can be read here).
Words have power, so choose them before you use them – think about the audience you are trying to reach, current words and phrases that are trendy in pop-culture, and how a culture, subculture, & an overall cultural ideology of a nation view and react to words and phrases both cliche and trendy in present day. Using the right combination of words can make a huge difference in how you reach your audience for your next big idea.