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Here’s a visual representation of my blog:

You can make your own Wordle over at, well, wordle.net

These past weeks I have worked on a couple of web pages. In the course of it I came across some helpful sites that I want to share with you.

Flash files (from good to awesomely mindblowing)

Flash Den is a relatively new site, offering mainly Flash files. They have all from small pre-loaders to full webpages. And most of them of an exceptional quality.

In addition they also have royalty free music loops, some video files and graphics on offer. Plus a few fonts. But their main business is Flash.

Stock Photos (affordable)

iStockPhotos offers royalty free photographs for all kinds of usages. You can chose the size of the picture you buy, and a photo can cost just above $1. They have gained both size and quality, but unfortunately have increased the prices, while lowering the pay-out for the original photographers.

Still, you can easily browse for hours in their exhaustive library, searching for subjects, themes, emotions, colors, even whitespaces. Additionally, iStockPhoto also offers graphics, good vectors, cheap videos and lower quality flash files. One nice feature is that you can save interesting photos in your own lightboxes, leaving them for purchase at a later point. Or you can share your lightbox with a client.

If you have some good photos rotating away on your harddisk, you can start selling those pictures at iStockPhoto. Hey, you even can get some of my photos there.

Ajaxising (without knowing Ajax)

For the portfolio section of our new webpage I used a donation-ware component by Kevin Miller, called LightWindow. Besides adding that Ajax feel to your website (opening links without having to re-load), it also enables you to play back pretty much any media format around. Lots of options.

And if you use it, send some PayPal love to Kevin, so that he can get his well deserved Power Book Pro.

Shopping Cart (open source)

If you need a cart system for your website and you want to avoid having to pay hundreds of dollars in royalty payments (and probably some monthly fees), Zen Cart is definitely worth a look. Though it has a somewhat messy admin interface, it leaves you space for many tweakings. There are numerous extensions available, such as plug-ins, language packs, buttons and a couple of free templates.

See it live on our company’s brand new (and Norwegian language) shopping site.

Content management (minus the pain)

Now 1 1/2 years old, this blog has always run on WordPress. Though I’ve had some Windows like experiences, by and large I am impressed by this powerful — and free — tool. So impressed, that I have used it as the CMS for our new webpage.

With the new version of WordPress, I can even be lax with using links. A page that is really located at, say, www.abitofmagic.no/english/services/eng-crew can also be reached by www.abitofmagic.no/eng. The magic happens without me having to do anything.

Of the many good plug-ins around, the one I want to mention today is WordPress automated plug-in, which takes the pain out of upgrading your blog. Which is especially nice when the frequency of those updates increases, and exponentially higher when you have more than one copy of WP running. I’ve used it on most of the 5+ WordPress sites that I maintain, without a single glitch.

Graphic Freebies (quality, not quantity)

One of my favorite blogs on graphic design, BitBox, regularly offers high quality freebies, be it web 2.0 buttons, high res Photoshop brushes or vector graphics.

Photoblogging (free)

Pixelpost is to photos what wordpress is to writing. One great software to easily, yet beautifully, churn your digital photos into an on-going on-line publication. Lots of followers, translating to many exciting add-ons. Recently they also took the important step of easing the process of upgrading to new versions.

For fun, I am occasionally posting pictures on my pblog over at visualnary.com

Previously I wrote about the difference between Apple and Microsoft in One Sentence, but here I stumbled upon a little video showing the fundamental different philosophies between Apple and Microsoft, as shown in their packaging.
One tries to do everything — offer the customer anything that is technically possible, and ends up in a bloated mess-up. The other boils appliaces down to their essence, and makes them look like a gem.

The top 5 priorities of Microsoft and Apple

Microsoft

1. Technology
2. Technology
3. Technology
4. Usability
5. Design

Apple

1. Design
2. Usability
3. Technology
4. Design
5. Usability

One-line Vistaâ„¢ Joke of the day

Can anyone confirm the rumor that Vistaâ„¢ Service Packâ„¢ 1 will install Windowsâ„¢ XPâ„¢?

After my recent trouble with the WordPress update, quite a few of the former features of my theme no longer worked. I could have spent some time (which I don’t have) to fix those problems, or I could spend some time (which I equally don’t have) to set up a new layout. Obviously I went for the latter one. Not quite finished yet, but more of a work-in-progress.

Thanks & Kudos go to The Upstart Blogger for the great theme.

The web can be a (as in: one of many) resources for inspiration. One of my favourite sites is BibliOdyssey, which regularly shares its visual bounty from dives into old libraries. With high quality scans and informative text, it shows glimpses of a rich cultural past.

I am just watching a presentation about the Red camera, and here are some observations:

1. The sensor is Super35mm size.
2. The camera body is bigger than it looked like on the photographs. Definitely more than a PD170.
3. Camera is natively progressive. Interlacing can be achieved in post.
4. The digital shutter is programmable. Range up to 360 degrees.
5. ISO rating is between 320 and 500.
6. Camera takes standard V-mount batteries. 90-120 minutes operating time per battery (Red Brick).
7. PL mount, takes any professional lens with a PL mount. Red also makes their own lenses, very aggressively priced. When using S16 lenses, you are limited to 2k resolution.
8. The camera takes 52 seconds to boot. I would imagine this to come down on future firmware upgrades.
9. Camera design is modular. Not only externally, but also within. Which means that when Red comes up with a better sensor, you don’t have to buy a new camera, you just swap out the chip.
10. Join the queue. If you order a camera today, you will get it in about 9 month’s time.
11. Not all feature are yet activated. No sound yet. Wait for a future firmware update. Will have 4 channels.
12. 100 fps @ 2k resolution. Mouth-watering!
13. 2gb per 1 minute of 4k resolution. Which is only 10 times that of DV. Again: impressive.
14. Soon you can edit (in 1k resolution) your 4k material on FCP. In reality this means you can edit straight from the Red media on your laptop.
15. The ProRes codec is so good, no reason ever to use 8- or 10-bit uncompressed.
16. Upcoming feature: Histogram in the viewfinder. This will be great for location shooting.
17. Shooting with the Red camera is closer to shooting film than to shooting HD/video. You don’t expose for a pretty picture, but to get as much detail out of the picture as possible – to keep the option open in post production. This is comparable to shooting in RAW mode on a digital SLR camera.
18. Camera has also a ‘False Colo(u)r mode’, which shows you clipping that would occur at the current T-stop setting.
19. The software to transfer the video data to your editing system is – at this point – Intel Mac only. But soon they will have a more elegant version out, which will run both on Mac and PC.
20. Scratch, a high-end programme for Color Correction is directly supporting RedCode Raw. Color Grading in real time, with 1k or 2k preview.
21. The Mill (Oscar winning post production company) compared side-by-side 35mm and Red 4K, and were blown away.
22. Red is a disruptive technology. Many people do not want this camera to work.
23. Red reminds one of the early Apple. People working there seem to actually have fun creating something new.
24. At least 5 major feature films are currently shooting with Red cameras.
25. The Red camera in hand-held mode weighs about 18 pounds (9 kilos).
26. The EVF is not yet ready.
27. The Red Camera is a passion product.
28. Why is the camera so cheap? They aim for quality and volume.

Gems from the Web:

• Nobody Expects the SPAMish Inquisition – An alliance of 20,000 spam-fighters in more than 100 countries are suing spammers. The suit seeks the email harvesters’ identities and more than $1 billion in damages for violations of the CAN-SPAM Act and the Virginia Computer Crimes Act.
• Photoshop CS3 New Feature Tips – Nice collection of tips on what cool things you can do with the new Photoshop.
• Morticious Thrind – Phantastic! A Blog with a Commodore 64 feel. I love it!
• Jahshaka – The worlds first open source, hardware accelerate editing and effects system!
• Gallery – Gallery is an open source project with the goal to develop and support leading photo sharing web application solutions.
• International Billboard – Phantastic overview of documentary film festivals and seminars.
• A List Apart: Articles: Contrast and Meaning – Nice list of the fundamental tools a designer has at his and her hands.
• Apple to build new features into iPhone, Apple TV free of charge – Apple said Wednesday it will leverage its proven capability in the area of software development to gradually add new software features and applications to its iPhone and Apple TV products free of charge

Been playing around with some different theme settings. (Yes, I can do flowers, too )

How do you like this one?

Last week a director told me about this story, and now, thanks to Adrian, I tracked it down:

more…

Gems from the Web:

• Witty Comics – Make a Comic – Make your own comic strip. Online. And free.
• 100 Million iPods and still going strong – Since the first iPod was introduced = 50,327 iPods sold per day since launch
• My Photo Booth Photo Blog » Why does the art die? – I decided to gather my thoughts in one and come up with the problem. And the problem is: the crucial moment in history of photography we are living these days: its end.
• It?s good to be back – I thought that Yvonne had stopped blogging for good, but out of the blue, a great writer is back again.
• Top 100 font downloads – Great selection of fonts, most of them free for personal use.
• The Fastest way to find High-Quality Freebies on the Web – Finding High Quality free files on the internet is every designers daily dilemma. Sometimes you don?t have the time to make your own swooshes, or seamless paisley background image. This is why we search, and from my experience, the search can be brutal.
• Film Exclusiv Agregator – RSS feed for film related content
• WordPress NiceAdmin Plugin Version 1.0.0 Released – It doesn?t change the usability or functionality of WordPress whatsoever, it just makes it a little easier to look at! Hope you like it!
• Can I get my money back, Wikipedia? – Now Wikipedia is adding nofollow to all external links. That basically knocks out a very key referrer to my blog, so no doubt I will lose search engine placement due to the decision.
• Ten Things You Shouldn?t Buy New – Some things are best purchased new ? lingerie pops to mind ? but lots of other stuff depreciates quickly while still having plenty of useable life left. Here are ten items where the cost vs. use equation strongly tilts toward buying used.
• The TV Is Dead. Long Live the TV – On the 80th anniversary of the first long-distance TV broadcast, the industry that evolved out of it is under siege. Old rules — defining who, where and what to watch — are collapsing, making room for new ideas and talent on air and online.
• Tactile 3D maps could help blind people navigate – A team of researchers at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece have created a system that can convert video into tactile, three dimensional maps designed to help blind people navigate.
• iPod saves soldier’s life – Wouldn’t have worked with a Zune, apparently
• Apple TV hacked for RSS and emulation, plus bounty for USB drive support – Engadget – The Apple TV has received two new abilities in its second week of availability thanks to a couple of new hacks: one, a fully functional and integrated RSS reader, and two, video game emulation for NES, SNES, N64, and Sega Genesis game consoles.