I feel that with websites like Flickr or Facebook our “personal” moments aren’t personal at all anymore. People fail to realize that uploading any pictures to these third party sites isn’t always the smartest thing to do. I realized this even more when I have been asked to see my wedding pics so many times by someone that really doesn’t need to see them anyway. So from this point on I refuse to upload any personal pics on Facebook and will only upload those pics to my personal server. Even a “personal server” or sending an email isn’t that personal being we have to use a third party site.

I was also inspired and impressed with my favorite browser Opera new add on called Opera Unite. They made things simple by taking away the third party websites and made it possible for two computers to share content with eachother directly from a web browser. To some this might sound weird, but trust me this will make a persons life so much easier. I’m not saying that this should replace all third party sites, but we shouldn’t trust so many with so much personal info. For that matter using Opera Unite is still using something third party, but obviously it’s a lot different from uploading my personal content onto a server that later stays with them even if I think I deleted that photo or info.

We assume the best, but that’s still a chance we are all taking. Opera Unite at least brings it up and gives everyone a choice. The more choices we all have the better. I think Opera Unite will make a lot of third party vendors upset and I can careless. At the end of the day it’s all about the consumer and making them feel safe. What do you guys think?

Before and After shot 1

After paying attention to the usage on my website stats and seeing how people view my portfolios and etc. I made it a little easier and simple to view these items that are important for the viewer to see. On my previous portfolio design I noticed a person viewing the site will just click on the top two links and mostly never scroll down to see the rest of the work. I figured the problem was the fact that the design descriptions were making the page too long. Now when viewing my web portfolio I have added more projects and also added some cool javascript effects to display each piece full screen and have the description within that screen, therefore making the page shorter.

Before and After shot 2

I can go on and on with my thought process of why I chose to redesign, but I rather not bore you to death. So check it out and enjoy.

Now to the easy good stuff, select the avi or any other movie file you want to add to itunes and open it with quicktime. Now once it is open select file from the menu and make sure you save as a reference movie just like my example at the bottom.

This will save the movie as an reference file, which will be an mov. Just drag that file to itunes and edit all the meta tags and etc just like if it was a native file. This files reads the original file from anywhere on the hard drive and makes it possible for iTunes to play it. Also each of these reference files should be around 3 mb each.
As you can see from the picture below I have had way too much time on my hands adding my Entourage collection with this trick.

Another trick I have found that has made my life better is adding description tags to my favorite TV Shows and movies. It’s a very cool applescript that you will love, check it out here.

Every Now and then I see a few websites that I love and just study them to see how the designers did their magic. I found Two websites that are the shh!

The first web site is located at http://infinityart.ro/. This site is for Infinity Art Studio. They are a Interactive design studio in Romania. Their site was an idea of turning their info and showcases of design into a huge pirated signal. The visitors of the website are blown away by illegal channels that would appear and etc. To me this site is simply amazing so check it out.

Another amazing website is :http://markez-models.com/index_e.html . This website is for a Switzerland train model company. It was designed by Heavyform.com
and it is a great use of flash and a small world concept. It resembles worlds like sims and etc. And I think you guys will find the intro music catchy and entertaining. So to my coworkers BADABOW! Check it out!

Everyday at work my coworkers and I have to deal with crappy problems that occur while making email blasts and newsletters. I know most people can care less, but as web designers and developers it definitely matters. For one with the improved standards with web design it has created wonders and shaped the way we all should design with the new implemented rules and etc. Now we can welcome Email Standards.

I came across email standards looking through bloglines as usual and I am extremely happy people are taking this seriously and bringing it to the forefront. They cover issues with different email clients like how the horrible Microsoft outlook 2007 isn&rsqo;t standards approved and does things like not being able to read background images within tables, floats, clears, margin and padding. With all of these similar issues within other popular email clients such as Google&rsqo;s Gmail we are forced to strict straight forward, boring designs for these emails blasts and newsletters.

With this team of developers and designers working together to get all of these email clients to be standards savy soon enough we will be able to implement CSS within these designs and make our jobs a lot more easier. You never know.

Since being at Situation Marketing I have been working on some cool projects and here is one of them. This marketing Idea for the Musical A Chorus Line has been through a lot and even extremely similar to rocawear&rsqo;s I will not lose campaign (but we had our idea first). I worked very hard to redesign this from the original concept and I think it came out well. So check it out at MyLifeOnTheLine.org!

I am not saying forget your taught skills from school and previous jobs, but to keep an open mind and be willing to change things up a little. My Junior design position at Situation Marketing is going good, but of course I have had my days where I wonder what is my next step in my career. I usually keep a list of things I want to accomplish and get done. So far I have got my position in web design, purchased my car and continue to get my name out there for my personal clients. I have also become more fluent in CSS, which I love. With the help of my new favorite book CSS Mastery by Andy Budd, Cameron Moll, Simon Collison and my coworkers Matt and Jade I am getting better and better at understand the tricks of designing and styling websites in beautiful CSS. Woooo hoooo!

I am turning the big 25 this saturday and yes it is a big accomplishment for a young black man in hoods all over the globe, but also as a young man period. My next goals are owning a home or getting my apartment, get more organized, redesign this blog and moving up in my position as a designer within this year. I believe my skills are enhancing by the minute and it feels great to feel content and free on my design choices within each project I am given.

Check it out: OPERA MINI BETA 4
Download HERE!