Fab launches in Europe May 3, 12, 6:23 a.m.

15 countries today, a few more next week. A bit of an unusual choice of a .de domain for the whole Europe

Invite link:
http://bit.ly/fab_eur

Rip ...and burn May 3, 12, 5:05 a.m.

Props to skt for taking the moral high ground, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile and doing custom coding for the thief:

http://www.socketstudios.com/

vs.

http://www.dsignio.com.ar/

Retainer clients Nov 20, 11, 11:32 a.m.

I am pondering offering more of my web clients retainer agreements. I see two kinds:

– Spreading some of the initial website cost throughout a year or a few;
– Offering maintenance work for existing sites on a subscription basis.

Do you use this model a lot? Pros/cons/thoughts/advice?

html/JS sliders Jul 29, 11, 10:05 a.m.

I am looking for an image slider that is touch-device ready i.e. draggable, like these on this site:

http://updateconf.com/

Any suggestions?

PayPal Mini Cart Jul 18, 11, 6:34 a.m.

Anyone using it? Any issues?...

https://minicart.paypal-labs.com…

Fresh design magazines Jul 17, 11, 9:56 a.m.

There is that fairly new design magazine that got some attention recently I can't remember its name... it is not 8Faces but it kind of reminds me of it too. Anyone?...

MacBook Pro Battery Jul 10, 11, 1:59 p.m.

The battery in my 2007 MB Pro (pre-unibody) died. There is a gazillion of replacement offers out there but can anyone recommend a vendor/maker?

CS5.5 on sale Jul 6, 11, 4:46 a.m.

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium is on sale, apparently they're taking advantage of Apple's FCPX failure.

50% off, discount code is: SWITCH

This works out as £862.62 in the UK (in Business Store, Home is a tad more expensive I think)

What's inside:
Adobe Premiere® Pro CS5.5
After Effects® CS5.5
Photoshop® CS5 Extended
Adobe Audition® CS5.5
Flash® Catalyst® CS5.5
Flash Professional CS5.5
Illustrator® CS5
Adobe OnLocation™ CS5
Encore® CS5
Device Central CS5.5
Bridge CS5
Media Encoder CS5.5

It might be missing stuff like InDesign, but you can get it while upgrading to a different package in the future I think.

Padphone May 31, 11, 3:01 a.m.

The man said it himself: "Hahahaha..."

Freehand users sue Adobe May 21, 11, 6:25 a.m.

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.…

I said it many times here: it's Adobe, not Apple or Microsoft whose monopolistic practices screw the industry most. There are people here who have no Microsoft product and ones who don't need anything by Apple for work.
There is no way around paying Adobe their inflated prices.

Yugop phone May 17, 11, 5:12 a.m.

iida INFOBAR A01 with interface designed by Yugo Nakamura. For all that I know, it is Android.

http://tha.jp/1968

alpha.gov.uk May 11, 11, 5:50 p.m.

Alpha.gov.uk is an experimental prototype (an 'alpha') of a new, single website for UK Government, developed in line with the recommendations of Martha Lane Fox's Review.

The site is a demonstration, and whilst it's public it's not permanent and is not replacing any other website.

It's been built in three months by a small team in the Government Digital Service, part of the Cabinet Office.

http://alpha.gov.uk/

Fab.com invites Apr 14, 11, 6:55 a.m.

Trying to figure out what it is. As the guy who invited me said:

"some sort of ffffound, with a shop."

Invites here: http://fab.com/n7zrhb

Wordpress maintenance Mar 28, 11, 8:21 a.m.

What is the standard approach to charging for standard WordPress maintenance (backing up, updating the whole site and plugins, fixing user edit errors, ensuring it runs etc.).

Do you charge on a retainer basis, something like, say, two hours monthly?

Brain tumor Mar 19, 11, 6:04 p.m.

One copywriter's daughter has it, a bad one. If you feel generous today, all they're asking is $8 (PLN 25) for proton therapy that could save her and prevent further brain damage.

http://www.ddb.pl/savemalina/

http://www.facebook.com/event.ph…

Bump the thread if you donated to encourage others.

Windows XP users... Nov 9, 10, 11:44 a.m.

Could you please tell me what text you see in the red box?

http://www.useragentman.com/test…

Also, are you using ClearType for font smoothing?

Thanks, much appreciated.

Crowdsourcing Oct 9, 10, 5:59 a.m.

I understand that this word must bring an instant allergic reaction when thrown into the designer crowd. But other than undermining the comfy situation of being paid what we like to be paid for work, from a client's perspective, I can't really see anything wrong with it.

This especially applies to public work, so let's set aside crowdsourcing in general and ponder the type of jobs where it is taxpayer money being spent. People spending public money should have an obligation to do this in the most effective way possible. Am I right?

Take the case of London Olympics 2012. What would be more cost/result effective:

— have Wolff Olins do branding for reported £400,000;

or

— crowdsource the work, so thousands of design students would have a chance to make a name for themselves. Prize: say, £15K, not terribly bad even for a seasoned freelancer.

Who is to say crowdsourcing the Olympics brand would not:

— yield better result, ie. better brand;
— cost the taxpayer (a.k.a. everyone) much less.

As a taxpayer, every time public design work is given to superexpensive established agencies, rather than crowdsourced, I feel I am being scammed. Am I alone in this? (of course I am, this is a forum for designers)

Lybian domains Oct 6, 10, 7:05 a.m.

As it turns out, a .ly domain can be removed if the website isn't complying with Sharia law.

http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010…

Best of Twitter Sep 26, 10, 10 a.m.

@wefail
The word impossible is not in my dictionary. *turns page* .....oh...no wait... there it is.
http://twitter.com/wefail/status…

Dropbox upload tricks Sep 11, 10, 12:49 p.m.

I just noticed a strange thing happen for the second time: I put a rather large file for upload to Dropbox (800mb) and it was online in about a minute.
The upload rate of my internet connection is so slow I should have been expecting this to take hours.

What happened? My hypothesis is they are checking uploaded files' checksums against files on other users' accounts and use those files if checksums match. So they saw someone else had that file and just copied it into my folder. A technically doable trick and would've saved them plenty of bandwidth.
In this case, it wasn't a unique file, chances were someone uploaded it before to their account.
Any other ideas?

<shameless>
BTW, if anyone is looking to register with Dropbox, you can use my link and we both enjoy extra free disk space
http://www.dropbox.com/referrals…
</shameless>