The Basics of SEO

If you wanted to the know the foundations of what SEO is this short video is informative.

Google evolution

A nice video about the evolution of Google.

TOSHIKAZU NOZAKA

Amazing tattooist based in Melbourne.

TOSHIKAZU NOZAKA from Louis Mitchell on Vimeo.

Kerning Game

Came across this cool site, totally built in javascript, slick and works really well.
http://type.method.ac/#

Part of a educational package being put together by Method of Action

Amazon Silk

With the announcement of the Amazon Fire tablet today. At $199 retail, running Android OS and coming out in time for Christmas I think these will definitely be making a dent in the tablet market.



I think this advertorial from Amazon, about their new browser 'Silk' is also worth checking out

Adobe Muse

Adobe have released the developer version of a new wysiwyg web development tool called Muse. At first glance it looks pretty slick - as a designer/developer I can see the application of this for designers or small business owners in building micro-sites.

The downside on an industry note is that a lot of designers or wanna be designers will think they know how to do web design which will fall apart if they need to design a more complex site.

The licensing will be through a subscription service @ $20 a month adobe offers hosting @ $9 month - the upside I guess this will keep all of the budding web designers that would have used a cracked version away.

If you are in the market for a website for a small business or larger, I recommend using a designer developer that will build a custom updatable site for you.

Google search results for 'www'

I typed www into google and the predictive text produced the following results.

This is interesting in that the predictive algorithm that google is using is basically listing all of the most popular websites on the web at the moment.

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology

Pranav Mistry demonstrating his research in using what is being called SixthSense technology to create new interactive scenarios and bring computing away from computers.



source: http://www.ted.com

Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles"

Eli Pariser talks about large web companies tailoring information distribution @ TED 2011.



source: http://www.ted.com

Patrick Clair

Love this animation style from Patrick Claire an aussie designer/animator who has worked for ABC and MTV. Nice one.

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

Myspace SOLD!

So myspace.com was sold today to a company called Specific Media for approx $35million.

Significantly News corp bought it for $580 million in 2005. A dramatic loss of users led to it's current demise.

Specific Media look to be teaming up with Justin Timberlake to reinvigorate the site and change it's angle towards being more a music, video, art site to increase the site's customer and advertising base.

It will be interesting to see if it can be reinvigorated.

Source: http://specificmedia.com/press/159

Google+

Google+ launched today - looks like a good community/networking tool, stripping away the much of the clunky narcissistic properties of facebook into a streamlined nice looking tool.

The circles feature is something that is integral to this new release and is a obvious, yet smart logic feature.

Check out the video below.


www.google.com

Google's SWF to HTML5 converter - Swiffy

Google have unveiled 'Swiffy' a swf to html5 converter. http://swiffy.googlelabs.com

Here is how it works:

"A SWF file is converted in two phases: the Swiffy compiler (which you can use on this website) processes the SWF file and generates a JSON file. A client-side JavaScript runtime loads that JSON file and renders it using HTML, SVG and CSS."

It looks like creating html5 animations is another thing Flash can do better than other programs.

This html5 thing is getting pretty boring with features designed to jump on the coat-tails of flash and not really providing any real innovation. With more than 99% of browsers supporting flash and increasing numbers of mobile devices I think it will be but a matter of time until Apple devices realise their mistake.

G-Speak platform - revolutionary new user interface

From the looks of things Oblong industries have been making solid progress on their g‑speak OE (spatial operating environment). If you have ever seen minority report and thought that was futuristic the systems they are building are looking set to rival the realtime data analysis tools that are seen in that movie.



Source: http://oblong.com/

White Noise generator website

I came across this website recently, in a nutshell, it plays 3 variations of white noise. 

www.simplynoise.com/

I thought it a gimmick but it does actually help you focus if there is sound around you that is distracting, and is an interesting concept.

Webhosting company hacked.

A recent attack on DistributeIT - has left that company reeling after they announced that they had also lost backups of many (possible in the thousands) sites in the attack. 

I find it hard to understand how a company can lose tape backups which I would expect any webhosting company to provide. However I have also lost a site from different hosting company in differing circumstances, where they stated they only backed up a weeks worth of history. 

This should be a firm reminder to always take care of your own files (at least in backup form) and not rely on others servers or cloud environments as the pin may be pulled by either negligence or maliciousness.

You can follow this story here: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1711718&p=60

Interface design made in chocolate

Sagres a portuguese beer maker have released a promotional site for a new chocolate flavoured beer. 

http://www.sagres.pt/sagrespretachocolate/#/homepage 

What's interesting is the site entire site is made from chocolate which is then photographed and animated in Flash.

stopAllSounds in AS3 - Flash

The old stopAllSounds() method from as2 is easy to replace in AS3 using the following code:

import flash.media.SoundMixer;

SoundMixer.stopAll();

Using Firebug to troubleshoot dynamic web pages.

When building a site troubleshooting why images, scripts, xml files aren't being accessed can be a bit difficult. The solution I am using at the moment is a combination of FireBug for Firefox http://getfirebug.com/ and Fiddler for everything else including Flash CS5 IDE.

Firebug when activated allows among other things a NET tab that shows all incoming and outgoing data transactions from Firefox - very handy is the red highlighting of broken links - e.g xml files, images that are missing or in the wrong location.

All of these incoming/outgoing data requests are turned into hyperlinks allowing you to get access to individual elements on a page.

Firebug also allows you to change the code on a page on the fly to test if changes will work, an example of this is going to a site hosted by someone else and changing the background or the style that controls the colour of text on a page. Although these changes are not saved they are displayed in the browser. Another useful tool is the ability to select an area of a page and see the code associated with that area be it a div, table, TR, TD, iFrame etc.

Fiddler has the same capabilities it allows you to change code on the fly see incoming/outgoing traffic and also includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language. Fiddler is freeware and is available here: http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/

Web browser penetration - 2011

Current browser usage percentages worldwide..

Below is a chart showing percentage of browser penetration by version, showing that IE8 clearly has the greatest footprint as of May 2011.

 

 Interestingly looking at stats showing penetration by brand as opposed to version firefox has a clear advantage over IE and Chrome with Safari and Opera trailing well behind.

The below stats show the percentage of users worldwide who have javascript enabled in web browsers:

Sources: 

www.w3counter.com

www.w3schools.com

Changing artboard dimensions in Illustrator CS5

Here is a common task that can be a little tricky.


After setting up your project in illustrator - you may need to change the dimensions of your workspace - this common task is not very intuitive.


1. Click "Document Setup" in the top menu bar

2. Click "Edit Artboards" in the popup panel

3. Edit the dimensions in the top menu bar

Voila!

Google Art Project

A very interesting use of streetview technology and information architecture by Google. Documenting many hi-res photos of paintings from some of the top Galleries around the world - interestingly the photo viewer is  built in flash 10. A nice feature is the ability to save your own collection of paintings.
I'm sure the interface will be updated to be a bit more user friendly in the future as it is a little clunky and non-intuitive at the moment.
Google is definitely on their way to creating a great art compendium.

http://www.googleartproject.com/

Gil Scot Heron

The Legendary American musician died today - I started listening to his music throught a remix collaboration he did with Jamie xx "We're new here", which is probably my favourite album this year. However through this introduction I have been making my way through his back catalogue of dark, subtle gems. This track is the title track off his recent album "I'm new here".

A legend in his own lifetime - r.i.p.

gTLD (generic top-level domain)

I have just heard about the release date of gTLD's being in June this year - in a nutshell a generic top level domain is a .com, .net etc. The release will allow registration of a variety of categories of domains - e.g brands, countries and generic. The most valuable being .usa, .xxx, .videos, the mind boggles at the options open to entrepreneurs and I see that many will see this in a similar vein to gold and oil rushes in the past.

I am only starting to read about it so will report more in the future, here are a few facts:

- The evaluation fee is estimated at US$185,000. with a $5000 deposit.
- The application window will likely last for three months.
- The evaluation process is expected to last from 8 to 18 months.

source: http://www.icann.org/

Flash Player Penetration - web and mobile

According to Adobe - Flash player penetration is as high as 99% in mature markets (these being the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, New Zealand.) and as high as 99.5% in the US/Canada and Europe.

Additionally Flash penetration on mobile devices is on the rise with the following operating systems supporting Flash Player: Android™, BlackBerry® Tablet OS, and HP webOS.

The following graph represents Adobes predictions of Flash penetration on mobile devices towards the year 2015.

















Source: http://www.adobe.com

Bones tool in Flash CS5

Bones tool in Flash CS5

The bones tool can be a great way to simplify the shape tween process in flash - shape tween can be a very klunky way of animating with the bone tool some simple shape tweens - especially limb animations are made very simple.

However this tool does have some serious limitations - such as obligatory black outlines and some erratic behaviours that will hopefully be ironed out in future revisions

I will run through a very simple example of how to use the bone tool below:

1. Create a new flash file
2. draw or import a picture of a hand and arm

3. use the bone tool and draw out a bone by clicking and dragging for the upper arm.

4. Do the same for the forearm



5. continue creating bones for the hand.

6. You can then animate the hand and arm by creating keyframes (F6) in the main timeline and clicking on the circular handles on the hand. 

- The bones have IK (inverse kinematics) which basically means there is a heirarchy - if you rotate the first handle all the bones will rotate with that handle - if you move the handle on one of the fingers only that handle will move.
- You need to understand that each bone has limits to what it controls so don't go too crazy witht the range of movement or your lines will cross over.
- You cannot edit the graphic after you have applied the bones - unless you delete the bones
- There are more powerful parameters you can access in the properties tab - but that needs to be covered in another tute.

Illustration - wedding invite

I am currently working on a wedding invite for some triathletes - the concept will be turned into a animation of the couple riding their bike to a church. I have built a demo of the animation using bones to display the concept - look out for a step by step on using bones in Flash cs5 to create this animation.

Colorzilla

I have been using colorzilla lately - a color sampling add-on for firefox.

It is quite cool and so simple - it just displays an eyedropper tool in the footer bar of firefox and you can click and choose a color from in the firefox window - so handy.

It also has a zoom and favorites which are also neat features.

http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/

COPASO - Colour Palette Creation

Found this cool site with a multitude of cool colour tools the best being COPASO.

http://www.colourlovers.com/copaso/ColorPaletteSoftware

It has both a basic and advanced control option as well as the ability to pull colours from a photo.

This is also available as a downloaded app for MAC and PC from $29.99.

I will be sure to use this tool in the near future.

Online Music Archive - topinweb.com

Came acrosss this website recently from a family friend. www.topinweb.com it is an amazing resource for free music downloads - not too sure about the legalities behind this site but they sure do have a lot of music available as mp3.