New Site Lives
It’s a work in progress, as always, but the newest iteration of this site is up and I’m quite pleased. I’ve been tinkering for the past 2-3 months with this concept and design. I’m still working the bugs out a bit, IE6 you’re last on the list, but if you see anything substantially broken feel free to comment. Also if you or someone you know is copywriter and would like a little coffee money to wordsmith the grammatical nightmare you see here drop me a note. I’ll be recapping some of the fun stuff I’m using as we move forward, I have quite a few features yet to be turned on, but hopefully I’ll get them working soon.
Blog Orlando 2008
I’ll be returning to BlogOrlando again this year and am looking forward to seeing old friends and seeing the growth of this event bring new folks into the fold. I’ll be presenting two sessions this year. First off I’ll be leading the “Wordpress Basics” discussion. We’ll be discussing how you can get started with WP, choosing a hosting path and navigating the sea of plugins and themes. Next up will be a “CSS Design with Web Standards” discussion. Well do a walk through the benefits, best practices and strategies for transitioning to standards-based design.
I’ve been part of BlogOrlando from it’s inception, assisting the first year with signs and setup. This is my second year speaking and second year coming back as a non-resident. This year the whole family is driving down (stay away hurricanes) and enjoying some kid time at the parks and seeing Florida friends. Wish us luck!
Failure
Some people have an ability to dissect and distill failure, they an innate ability to make their failings relevant and a learning exercise. I’m not one of those people. I believe it’s usually pretty obvious why something fails. Poor planning, lazy execution, no follow-through. Probably all of those contributed to the Satchelist sucking wind.
I still feel it was a good idea, a blog dedicated to laptop bags. Who hasn’t suffered through the frustration of trying to find the perfect tote for their tote-ables, especially with all the digital debris we lug around today. But alas the site’s tepid response and inability to connect with any manufacturers render it pretty useless. Unlike a food site, it becomes difficult to buy bag after bag to do reviews and talk 3rd hand about a review you read somewhere is boring endeavor for author and reader. All the awesomest Wordpress plugins and cool flickr feeds in the world won’t make up for shitty participation and a lack of good content.
The Satchelist has been put on hiatus. I’ve taken to carrying my laptop in a paper grocery bag and recommend you all do the same.
New Project Launched: The Satchelist
For some time now I have struggled to find the right bag for my laptop and mobile gear. What started out as a problem for snooty businessmen in airpots and techies and has grown to be the bane of the common coffee-shop exile. We all need a bag for our stuff (hat tip to the late George Carlin), but find that bag can be a daunting task. Hopefully that’s where the Satchelist can help. We launched the Satchelist last week and are slowly building up a listing of reviews, insight and conversation about laptop bags, mobile gear and more. If you have ideas, reviews or thoughts let us know, we’d love to hear them. In the meantime check out the site, tell where were wrong or share a story or two. We’re looking forward to sharing our passion with you.
Reminder: Free Icons
Just a subtle reminder, there’s a set of 60 Tiny + Free Icons in the downloads area. Grab them and use them as you see fit. I’m working on a much cooler set as time allows, and if there’s demand. So vote with your downloads…
A Successful Tweetup
I was fortunate enough to make it out to the Des Moines, IA ‘tweetup‘ on Monday night. I had a blast even though a headcold had me feeling like a whipped dog. There was a ton of energy and I felt like I was among people really looking to do some cool things. I was fortunate living in Orlando to meet some pretty cool people and be ‘in the mix’ so to speak. I realized the only reason I was lacking that back in Iowa wasn’t because other people aren’t out there, but because I wasn’t out there meeting people.
Well I’m hoping to be better at that (well as much as I can with everything on my plate). Life is short and as cool as social networks are, the real meat and potatoes of these relationships is face-time and meeting the people behind the avatars (although mine still rules). There’s a community blossoming here and I feel fortunate to have met some of the people working hard to grow it.
As a follow up I”ll be doing some brain-dumping about conversations that were had about BlogOrlando and if that model works in a setting like ours. I think it could, but only with the right mix of people, topics and weather.
CSS Newbie
Coworker Rob has a great site new that’s really taking off. CSS Newbie is focused on giving folks new to CSS some real world examples and tutorials. Rob has a background in both writing and technology and fuses those worlds seamlessly and elevates code-nerdy writing to a pleasurable experience, and I know only more cool stuff is on the way.
Latest post is a real winner – 7 Tips for Print Style Sheets. Check it out.
Pixish is Spec Work, Not a Boon for Designers at Any Level
UPDATE – Derek and his crew deserved the benefit of the doubt Scott mentioned in the comments below. They have deleted all design-oriented assignments and focusing completely on photos and illustrations. That’s a tremendous response, hats off to that group.
Adam Howell sums it up much better than I can in his Pixish is Spec Work pork. I get tired of going over and over this ground, but the truth is damn simple. Spec is evil, it’s not a good deal for any of the parties involved and ultimately hurts design/designers across the board.
Young designers are being preyed upon by unsuspecting ‘Johns’ looking for some cheap, quick design work. No one is fulfilled and we all lose a little something along the way – designers no longer value their work, hell they are giving it away after all, clients don’t value the work since they are paying nothing for it and the community exacerbates the problems of commodity content which extends to wholesale website design piracy, uncredited photo use, etc. Why not it’s not worth anything anyway right? Wrong.
Sony Playstation Blog Plugins – Giving Back to the Community
I’ve had the privilege to work with cnp_studio and Josh Hallet on some widget work for the Sony Playstation blog and saw that they have some exciting news to announce today. The blog is a big hit with the Playstation community, with part of the its success being the great functionality and features it provides to readers and authors alike. Two of the custom Wordpress plugins developed by Nick and the cnp_studio group to accomplish this are now being released back to the WordPress community. I think both of these plugins (one for rotating featured images and a comment reply mechanism) will find a receptive audience in the WP world. Nice work by all those involved, and kudos to the Playstation folks for having the foresight to give these back.
One More Thing Only Slightly More Important Than Scoble
Ethan posted a tidbit last week about Scoble-gate. I ran across this article on North Korean prison camps, worth the read if you’re up for it. If not that’s fine too, I’m sure Scoble will be banned from something tomorrow that’ll be all over the web.
Previously