November 2007
2 posts
Bits O' NewMedia Has Moved! →
If your are reading this, you are still going to the old Bits O’ NewMedia. Try out the new one. It’s much better. www.bitsonewmedia.com
2 tags
Bubbl.us - Online Flowchart Application with Some...
In the past, admittedly dragging my feet, I’ve been put a position where I’ve had to research flowchart applications for clients. I’ve never really liked flowchart software. In my opinion using complicated flowchart software to plan a project only delays starting actual work and, by the end of the project, show us how arrogant we were to assume we could foresee every possible...
October 2007
8 posts
New Design for Bits O' NewMedia
That’s right. It’s time to make this thing legitimate. In the next week or so, I will be moving Bits O’ NewMedia over onto my server, updating the design, and using my own blog software. The RSS feed url will stay the same so don’t worry if you have a subscription. However, the actual site will only pull up at bitsonewmedia.com from now on.
Someone Else to Whistle While You Work
If you’re like me, listening to music while you work helps spark creativity and makes the work day seem more enjoyable and laid back. On that topic, I just wanted to make a couple of quick web site recommendations. For online radio, you just can’t beat pandora.com in my opinion. Just enter artists and albums that you like and it starts playing music. As you listen and give songs a...
25 Beautiful Minimalistic Website Designs →
This links was on Digg this morning. If you are a graphic designer (especially coming from print) you probably have the tendency to go a little heavy on the graphics. Sometimes is nice to have a little reminder that you can do a lot with just a little.
A List Apart Web Designer Survey Results →
A few months ago I pointed everyone to the web designer survey hosted by A List Apart. The historic survey is complete and the results are now in.
Remember, the IT Aspect of Web Design is...
This is kind of a follow up to a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago entitled “Don’t Send Me Your IT Department”. After writing that article, I started becoming more aware of my own attitude about the programming and IT aspect of web design. I realized that I am spending too much time explaining technical details to clients in my initial consultation meetings. To the client who...
More Mashup Tools Thanks to Yahoo!
I’ve featured some cool mashup tools on Bits O’ NewMedia in the past. Dapper.net is one of my favorite and the driving force behind my experimental site midessamashup.com. The number of free mashup tools continues to grow, though, and now Yahoo! is entering the ring with Pipes. I haven’t used Pipes on a project yet but I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with the...
Grow Collective - Web Design Co-operative →
Grow is a co-operative based in the UK. It seems like there are more and more of these types of loose collections of independent designers. New media producers tend to be very entrepreneurial and independent so the co-operative may be the solution to the cons of going it alone.
Breaking Down the Colors of the Top 20 Magazine...
Vitamin News posted a link to an article on colourlovers.com that shows the top twenty magazine covers of all time along with their color palettes. It’s an interesting study at least and a great point of inspiration at best.
September 2007
8 posts
Don't Send Me Your IT Department
“Get to the Point” a daily email newsletter from marketingprofs.com recently had an article entitled “Information Technology is from Mars, Marketing is from Venus”. The title immediately struck a chord with me. Many times I’ve gone to consult with a company about their web site and they sent their IT guys out while their marketing department was AWOL. The issue is...
LogoLounge.Com - 2007 Logo Trends →
This is an interesting article about design trends for logos in 2007. The section that really struck me was the one entitled “rubber band”. I blame the Lance Armstrong awareness bands for this particular trend. They’ve been so pervasive for so long that they’ve finally made their way through the designer psyche and materialized on paper.
Writing Well is Never Bad
In new media we frequently find ourselves in situations where we are forced to wear more than one hat. The fact that many clients use us as their complete ad agency solution is just the nature of the business. Because of this it is important that we are reasonably good writers. Common grammatical errors which are easy to avoid can be deal breakers when you are emailing a client, writing copy, or...
What Does Your Design Really Say?
As designers, whether we realize it or not, the products of our labor have a huge effect on culture at large. Specifically, web designers decide how linguistic data should be presented to the population which affect how they will interact with that data. Wow! Design matters. A perfect example of this is the recent project of design gurus Pilipp Steinweber and Andreas Koller called Similar...
Large File Tranfser Part 2: Paid Solutions
After the previous post about transferring large files, a reader brought to my attention the fact that there are paid services like LeapFile out there that basically do exactly what I am describing. If you are a web designer that likes to leave the hosting up to the client, then these solutions will be great for you. On the other hand, if you resell hosting, which I assume a lot of you do, then...
Getting Large Files From Clients is Still a...
Clients very rarely understand the concept of file size. When they try to send a 20MB file by email and it doesn’t make it through, it baffles them. For about a year now I have pointed my clients to a service called yousendit.com. Without getting into too much detail, yousendit.com allows you to send large files by email. However, you run into a problem when there are a lot of large files...
Online Video Revisited
A few months ago I wrote a post comparing and contrasting the most popular YouTube clones on the web. One of the sites I reviewed was Blip.tv. At the time I was extremely impressed with the podcasting options Blip.tv provided. But I found they were lacking in the ability to embed a Flash player into a web site. This is a feature that nearly all of the other sites had and was a big deciding factor...
Know What's Going On In New Media
In any industry, but especially in new media, it is important to keep up with what’s going on. It keeps you from getting behind the curve and it invigorates your work when you see the cool things that other people are doing. Two good places to “get your learn on” are Vitamin News and Digital Web. I think they both do a good job of keeping a finger on the pulse of new media.
August 2007
10 posts
Zeitgeist Movie : The Downside of Universally...
The success of the full length online documentary Zeitgeist is a huge step toward bringing professional video content to the web. It’s also a pungent reminder to the web community at large that we are now the gatekeepers of content. In case you haven’t heard, Zeitgeist is an elaborate and, in some cases, riotous story of far reaching conspiracies and historical deceptions that date...
Cool Today, Passe Tomorrow
This is really just a quick observation but I think it’s an important one. I was going through the proposed panel topics for the 2008 SXSW Interactive Festival and I was shocked by how much the general view of many topics related to the web has changed in just a few years. It reminded me of how important it is to not put too much stock into any one opinion. In our business it’s cool...
Managing Support Issues as You Grow... Enter...
No matter what size your new media business is, you will always be dealing with support issues. When you first start out, you can easily mange them with a handwritten to-do list; but as your team grows and your client list grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to effectively manage support issues. Unfortunately, most email support ticketing software is designed for major call centers and...
Beyond Bits O' NewMedia
As cool as Bit O’ NewMedia is (no boasting here), I am sorry to say that it will never alone be a sufficient source of information for the cutting-edge new media professional. The diversity within the industry makes it impossible to have a one-size-fits-all information outlet. I like to think of Bits O’ NewMedia as a pulse reading for the New Media industry. I won’t give you a...
A Little PHP For the Designer
We work in a strange and unique industry where the right and left hemispheres of the brain must be engaged on a regular basis to complete the tasks we are given. If you have too much programmer in you, your designs will suffer and it you have too much designer in you, your functionality will suffer. For now, let’s focus on the designers. If you are a great designer, then you need to be a...
Start with a CSS Framework : Blueprint CSS
For all the wonderful things tableless layouts have brought us, I give thanks. But you have to admit that some of the CSS browser quirks are a serious pain. Much like the author of Blueprint CSS, when I first took the plunge into CSS design, I couldn’t find a good lightweight CSS framework that would neutralize the quirks and get me started. I eventually built my own which I use on the...
The Ideal New Media Consultant: Confident but...
Confidence and humility are two very important characteristics of a good new media consultant. Your confidence gives your clients confidence about your services and your humility makes you approachable and enjoyable to do business with. Yet it can be an extremely difficult task to mirror one without destroying the other. Too much confidence and you are a condescending jerk. Too much humility and...
I'm Addicted to Changing My Desktop Wallpaper
If you’re anything like me, you are never completely happy with your desktop wallpaper. There’s always a better JPG just beyond the horizon. It doesn’t make any sense but it’s true. Possibly to my detriment, I recently discovered desktopography.net. It has a limited selection but every image is noteworthy. You’ll at least have enough choices to rotate for a few...
Stop Tweaking Your Projects: The 80/20 Rule
A huge part of being both efficient and fulfilled in the NewMedia business is the ability to stop tweaking projects. It seems like every time we finish a project, there is always something that we think we can improve. This is a slippery slope that always ends in tears (take it from me). The 80/20 rule is a great way to put an end to unnecessary tweaking. It simply states that 20% of your effort...
Web Design-isms: 7 Surefire Styles that Work →
This is just an interesting post on Vitamin about Web Desing-isms. It’s soooo true, yet it conjures up a feeling of pride over your industry isms.
July 2007
11 posts
Principle vs. Rule Driven Business
I have found that creating very strict rules for how I run my business ends up having the opposite effect of what I intend. In fact I think I have actually been pretty arrogant in thinking that my rules could account for every future hurdle I might encounter. On the opposite side of the coin is a business that is run mamby pamby by fleeting whims which is just as bad. Somewhere in the middle is a...
Giving Your Clients Control Over Content and...
Of course, by “clean”, I am referring to keeping the HTML clean. One of the biggest problems I run into when giving content control to a client is that they inevitably ruin my beautiful standards compliant XHTML templates by cramming ugly code right into the middle of it. It’s not their fault. They don’t know anything about HTML and every line of ugly code they are...
Particls: An annoying desktop version of NetVibes
Particls is an interesting take on the whole NetVibes Phenomenon. It prompts you with real time alerts when changes occur on your favorite sites or RSS feeds. Sounds cool, huh? I don’t think so. I’m going to stick with NetVibes or PageFlakes for the same reason I cancelled my Yahoo! IM account and stopped getting email on my cell phone — Sporatic and unpredicatble alerts equal...
A Really Bad Design Rip Off
31Three is a design studio with a popular blog I happen to read. Recently, they came across another group’s web site with a strikingly similar design to their own. I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but this is laughable Check it out Here on Flickr.
The Semantic Web is a Utopian Dream... Welcome to...
When Sir Tim Berners-Lee and W3C consortium first developed the concepts that would become the foundation for the semantic web, they were trying to address a serious issue concerning the web. Namely, that the potential of the convergence of knowledge found on the web could not be fully realized because of its organic and unpredictable nature. In other words, we had a big ugly mass of information...
Rising Postage Costs: Death for Independent...
Postage has gone up in price several times in the last few years but what you may not know is that the last increase included an additional increase for magazines. For many small independent printed publications, unfortunately, this may be the beginning of the end. However, necessity is the mother of invention as they say. So as a member of the new media community, I would like to encourage my...
The "MyStickies" Firefox Extension Is an Excellent...
The world of online collaboration tools can be pretty hard to navigate especially if you are in the new media business. Everyone has a favorite and there is a new one hitting the streets just about every day. When it comes right down to it, though, the actual task they are all trying to accomplish is pretty simple: Show what everyone is thinking and doing. Right? Okay, sometimes it might be a...
jQuery: The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript... →
Having a good ajax library to support your websites has become an important part of being in the web design business but libraries like the popular script.aculo.us require a lot of additional coding to produce something really useful. The jQuery library has a lot of the same cool animation functions but it also has a ton of prebuilt plugins that do the stuff you want. It could definitely be...
Wired Magazine Takes a Cue From the Web
Recently, Wired Magazine ran a promotion with Xerox in which they allowed subscribers to upload a photo that would then appear on the cover of a special personalized issue in July. Of course, I had to take advantage of the offer so as soon as I had a chance, I cropped a nice picture of my son covered in Spaghetti Os and uploaded it. We talk a lot about the web as the only future of information...
Try Referring Clients to Your Competition
I’d like to think that I live my life by the biblical concept that it’s better to give than receive; but when it comes to business that principle can be a hard one to swallow.
For example, there is a local designer here in Midland that I send clients to from time to time when I’m too busy or a client’s budget isn’t enough to get the job done. He’s a lot...
If You Want Professional Online Video Content Try...
The chaos cloud that is YouTube and most other online video content providers can be very interesting… for a little while. But ultimately, on the viewing end of things, we enjoy well produced, well informed content. PodTech.net has a little more of that sparkle we expect from trusted content providers. It also speaks to a niche audience that wouldn’t have a chance for a spot even on a...
June 2007
12 posts
Bumptop Desktop: What To Do When You Find Out...
To give credit where credit is due, I saw Bumptop on Cameron Moll’s blog. This is a great example of how we can become stuck in a one dimensional way of thinking when it comes to design. You’ve probably heard the story of the woman who cut off an inch around the edge of her pot roast before she cooked it because that’s the way her mother did it and her mother’s mother did...
Blurring the Lines Between Life and Work
Traditionally (or at least for the past 100 year or so) there has been a very clear distinction between home life and work life. I won’t get into all the cultural implications of that mindset but suffice it to say that I’m glad things are beginning to change. I am learning to view my work as a vocation rather than a career — something that my parent’s generation never had...
Are Splash Pages Really the Devil?
Well, one look at my home page (Liquid Design Media) and you probably already know how I feel about the question. But the issue is much more complex than that. The new web 2.0 generation of designers has told us to reject the splash page as an unnecessary barrier between the visitor and the information they want to see. I would agree with that assertion in most cases and, in fact, I very rarely...
Website to Earth: "I am not a brochure!"
Recently, I’ve been starting meetings with prospective clients a little differently. Right off the bat, I tell them not to think of their website as a brochure. For some reason this concept sparks a big “ohhhhh” moment for a lot of people who aren’t in the industry. A brochure is static, difficult to change, and updated once every few years. Sound familiar? More than once...
Don't Be Ashamed of Your
If you’ve used CSS based layouts for any amount of time, then you already know about all the wonderful benefits they offer. Quick and easy site-wide changes, beautiful easy-to-read html, and design/code separation are just a few of the big ones. Unfortunately, this wonderful new world of CSS design has bred a new kind of snob. If you think I’m wrong, try mentioning tables at the next...
What To Do When a Friend or Charity Needs a...
If you’ve been in the web design business for very long you know how frequent requests for free work can be. Charities need websites, your friends are constantly coming up with ideas that need websites, relatives need a family reunion website, and the list goes on and on. I’ve found that the best way to deal with these kinds of requests is to decide in advance how many free projects...
Midessa Mashup - An Experiment in the Power of...
I’ve been talking a lot recently about different tools that can be used to mashup various types of content. A few weeks ago I decided to try a little experiment based on some of these mashup concepts I’ve been going on and on about. I set out to build a central news site for two closely situated cities in my area. The catch is that the site had to rely 100% on other people’s...
Stock Photography is Out
I know it’s really easy to just go to a stock photography site and pick out a quick stock photo for your project but you may be hurting yourself more than you realize. Yeah, it looks good, but stock photography is easy to spot and gives a disingenuous vibe. People buy from people, not models. I would recommend forming a relationship with a local photographer and including their fee as part...
» Protecting your ideas is overrated » Simple and...
» Protecting your ideas is overrated » Simple and Loveable As usual, Simple and Loveable is right on the money. Generally, aspiring entrepreneurs believe that their unique idea is what will make their business great, when actually it’s process by which the idea is thrust into the marketplace. Case in point, I have a client who is a photographer (leavethecamera.com) with a...
Get a General Idea and Run With It
It would probably make me sick if I knew just how much time I have spent in preparation of projects with Liquid Design Media. Detailed proposals and flowcharts can become black holes that just keep getting bigger and I wave bye-bye to them long ago. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to manage the expectations of your client, but leaving some things up in the air can be a great benefit...
How Ads Really Work: Superfans and Noobs |... →
This is a great article about internet advertising. A big chunk of it centers around the new Google Analytics hit tracking program. I’ve used it and I can honestly say that I am impressed. They have added some very interesting reports like “Visitor Loyalty” that I have already found very helpful.