Google Chrome has been available for people using Windows a couple of months now and it seems as if all Mac users soon can take advantage of it as well. Ok, I don’t know if all these Mac lovers, including me, want to use Google Chrome as the standard web browser since Google has a tendency of acting and appearing as “big brother”. But that put aside it at least seems as if they have begun to see the end of this, apparently, very complicated process. Now, my question to you is (which means that I probably haven’t put the issue aside ): What do you think about Google Chrome in general and if you are working on a Mac – will you use it when launched?

/David

Want to market yourself as a competent web designer? Spread the word that you are open for business?
Then I recommend designing a free unique and stylish Wordpress theme. Not only is this a perfect opportunity to show off your web design skills, design the theme mind-blowing enough and you’ll have a great number of webmasters using it in no time.

Visitors by the thousands will flood your online portfolio in search for a hi-quality free Wordpress theme or freebie as it is also referred to. In fact, free hi-quality Wordpress themes are so hard to come by nowadays, it’s like gasoline in Mad Max, so don’t be surprised if Smashing Magazine themselves make space for your theme. This popular online web design magazine is devoted in bringing Wordpress freebies to their readers. If you theme is hot enough, they’ll surely pick it up.

Your site will also get better ranking in search engines thanks to the link you’ve included in the theme footer leading back to you the creator. More potential customers will find you site and contact info hopefully leading to more work for you.

In any case, making a Wordpress Theme of great quality and top notch web design will at least prepare you for future web design projects. Already a market has expanded around the Wordpress CMS with more and more websites using it, thus increasing the demand on unique and differentiating themes. Becoming a Wordpress Theme devoteé is entirely realistic as there are whole agencies doing it already.

Here are 2 examples of freelancing web designers who have gotten great recognition thanks to their impressive designs of free Wordpress themes:

Andrew Lindstrom, WELLMEDICATED – created free theme ZinePress that got picked up by Smashing Magazine and embraced by the Wordpress web design community.

Paul Bennett – creating the Viewport theme this web designer not only broke new web design territory with an innovative theme design, but used the good name of Wordpress to prove his skills and potential.

I recently read an article in the USA Today which said that about one in four American adults don’t use the Internet and that many of these don’t have any desire to go online either. Close to one third of these adults apparently don’t have any plans to use the Internet – ever.

These figures must come as a slap in the face for Mr. Obama and his colleagues as they’ve just set aside a couple of billions for broadband expansion. I’m obviously all for this expansion as I like every improvement of the web. The reason for this alienation of a huge part of the population apparently has to do with costs for switching from dial-up to broadband and the fact that these adults don’t know how to use the Internet.

Ok, I can go along with the fact that people aged 80+ (of course there’s exceptions) might not be a good target group for the web. But what about the rest? Perhaps it’s just me but I would feel handicapped if I wouldn’t have access to the Internet each and every day. And I really mean EACH and every day. I can’t even resist going online when I’m on vacation. You know, just to check my email or browse the web for something totally useless. Anyways… I just think it’s funny how America, the great superpower, is slacking behind on the usage of the Internet. I’m sorry, but sometimes I keep thinking about the good old states as hillbilly-nation (hence the picture)…

I recently read an article about how the Internet has made millions of MP3’s available for us with a click of a button and that it at the same time, paradoxically, also has made it harder to discover new music. Being the music enthusiast that I am I felt as if I had to write a little something on this issue. Yes, it’s true that the Internet has made millions of songs available for us but I don’t agree that it at the same time has made it more difficult to discover new music. I am stumbling upon new artists/groups that I like as good as every single day. The article mentions four different approaches to finding new music: Pandora, Mufin, Lala and eMusic. All of these seem to have some kind of technical mumbo-jumbo techniques of analyzing music and your taste in music.

The Hype Machine

How about The Hype Machine? I use it every day and it’s more of a “human” way of getting your hands on great music. Simply type in an artist or a song that you like and you’ll get a list of all the music blogs that have written a post about it. Most of these blogs will also provide an MP3 with whatever is was that you were searching for. A blog posting something about a song/artist that you like will probably also have other posts about something that you’ve never heard before and still could like. Just take a quick look at the blog and you’ll notice quite quickly if they have a similar taste in music as you. Music blogs tend to be quite “niched” so if you visit a blog operating in your favorite genre from time to time you’ll for sure discover something new. I mean – it doesn’t have to be all that difficult…

A list of blogs that’s posting MP3’s

When searching for a song or artist (in this case Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen) you’ll get a list of all the blogs writing about it. Click “Read Full Post” and you’ll be redirected to the blog. You can also listen to the music directly from The Hype Machine.

I’ve already written posts about how you can improve the look of your website through using the proper typography and by taking a good look at the details. Hope that it helped you somewhat and that you maybe at least got inspired to look at things from another angle. I know that it’s not easy to break ones normal pattern but it could be good.

Well, now I’m back to tell you about how to improve the performance of your website. Yes, I know that there’s a lot written about on the web but I thought that it might be a good idea summing the best tips up. What it’s much about is scaling your site down so that your visitors won’t have to wait forever for your pages to load. Actually, I’m not going to talk so much about it here but I’ve written an article on the topic so please check it out here!

As many things in life is web design much about the details. Paying attention to all those small little things might take your website from ok to brilliant. When you rough out the first idea of a site/page you obviously won’t be able to make it a 100%. Half of the work will probably remain to be done. Start thinking critically and start looking at various different ways of fixing the design.

Even though you might be under pressure of getting the design done you shouldn’t rush this moment through. There might be some late nights but it will be well worth it. Start polishing the site’s design and when you start having trouble focusing it might be time for a short break. When you come back you’ll probably be able to watch at things in a new angle.

Experimenting a bit (it’s better to have tried something and rejected it than never have tested it out) might be a good idea but remember to still keep it consistent. If for example the pixels don’t match on a site you risk the chance of creating something very messy looking.

My last advice would be completing everything. If you intend to leave something semi-good you might as well not do anything at all. And whatever you do – don’t forget to take a look at the details!

Cheers!