March 20th, 2009
If you do not already have an online portfolio it is about time for you to create one. The traditional portfolio is increasingly becoming a thing of the past as geographical situation do not mean that much anymore. Potential clients will be able to find you online at all times so make sure that you do not miss any important part of your online portfolio.
- The Basics – What do the clients need to know?
Begin with asking yourself the question: What do my potential clients need to know? Try to put yourself in their situation. What you will display obviously depends much on what kind of assignments you wish to get in the future.
- Keep it simple!
It should be easy to find and use your online portfolio. Be open with what it is that you want. Are you looking for assignments? Put a sign with the text: “For Hire” and a link to how to actually hire you. Make sure that your best material is the first thing that visitors get see. Describe yourself and your work in just a couple of words.
- Let people know about you
Your work should always be in focus but do not forget to include a good “About Me” page. Let people know who you are and what your background is. Have you been mentioned in the media? Link! Can you get your clients to write a few lines about how it was to work with you? Excellent!
- Contact
Information on how to get in contact with you is of the essence. The link to your contact information must be easy to find. It is not a bad idea to have the most basic information on several places, such as at the bottom of each page.
- Let people know what you are doing
Your clients might not see the value of your previous work through a screenshot of a website or a free-standing illustration. Let people know what the assignment was. Where is it published? What problems did you solve for your client? What was the result of your work?
- Build traffic
Share your experiences. You can for example record a video when doing a photo shoot. Start a blog, the more text on the site, the easier to get snatched up by search engines. Link to others that are creating amazing things – it will pay off in the end.
- Be search friendly
Google and other search engines are responsible for most traffic to websites. Through optimizing your site you will have a much greater chance of getting found by new clients.
Tags: entrepreneur
Posted in Industry insights, Reliability | 1 Comment »
March 20th, 2009
Irresistible is made for the personal blogger. This theme is free for download and usage and a real treat from the dudes over at Woothemes. With sections such as MyWritings, MyLifestream, MyVideo and MyPhotos, this theme gives your site or blog that personal touch that will make the site feel like home.
Woothemes are known for their high-quality theme productions, free and premium, and Irresistble is no exception. Handling this theme in the admin is no problem at all. And regarding the design, I like it so much I might even use for my own online cave.
Screenshots
Footer
Post page
Tags: irresistible, wordpress theme
Posted in Wordpress | 12 Comments »
March 15th, 2009
Dot Eco Limited announced its partnership with Al Gore, the former Vice President under President Clinton, and his philanthropic arm, the Alliance for Climate Protection.
Different from other top level domains (TLD), the .eco domain name registrants will be paying part of the domain costs to charities. There will a set of environmental and ecological non profit organizations that will receive the fund to support green viable initiatives.
Mr. Gore said:
We fully support Dot Eco LLC in its efforts to secure the .eco top level domain through the ICANN application process and look forward to working with Dot Eco LLC to promote .eco. This is a truly exciting opportunity for the environmental movement and for the internet as a whole.
The approval by ICANN (the governing body of domain registrars) must still pass but chances are high for Dot Eco LLC to receive the new domain extension.
What remains to be seen is how the .eco domain will be regulated. It is intended for green companies, environmental non profits, wildlife and ecological communities, and people supporting the green revolution. But, will people abuse it and create crazy domain names just as everyone else has done with .mp, .us, .sg? Regulation and information will be set up to guide the process once it is cleared.
Posted in Domains, Green web hosting | 2 Comments »
March 13th, 2009
Happy Birthday Linux – 15 years! Happy happy joy joy. The lovable penguin turns 15 today (actually the penguin was created two years after the kernal introduction). Linux also gave birth to some of the most popular flavors of open source : Ubuntu and Red Hat. And the lovable managed to battle the biggest company in the software industry, sometimes been called bad names, Microsoft. Here’s to you, Linux, sticking it to all those big bullies out there.
Apple unveiled a new iPod Shuffle this week. It is smaller, sleeker, smaller, buttonless, speaks to you, and comes with headphones. Wait, did you say the Shuffle has no buttons? Yes sir, it just has the hold button that serves as a hold/off/on. I have a feeling people are going to mistake these miniature mp3 music players for sticks of gum. I still do not who Apple is trying to market with their Shuffle; kids, toddlers, small pets? They already have a special sports one so no point in reinventing the wheel. Oh, and there is only one color to this ipod: silver.
Facebook revamps its homepage. Luckily it is only the front page that got a makeover. For me, it won’t do. It’s more confusing, more crowded, and more visually stupid looking. I love FB and have been using it for a few years now, but come’on, is this what the team thought as better? Whatever happened to usability and web design? Besides the fact that loading times are terrible and links don’t always work, Facebook has failed on the user interface. I hope next time they have a bigger test group telling them what makes sense.
Posted in Fun | No Comments »
March 13th, 2009
It is happy times for web designers at the moment; the technique is easy and things are constantly evolving making it very interesting. With the help of CSS you will get quick results as well as being able to create beautiful websites that have every possibility of getting positive remarks by its visitors. The basic idea with CSS is very simple; separate the appearance from the content. This way you will get a very flexible website that is easy to adapt to new platforms.
When you are designing websites is it important that you constantly check that they look good on various platforms. Setting up an easy and good environment when creating your design, is truly of the essence. The basics can be:
- Local web server – Mamp (Apache, MySql and PHP5) is easy and good for Mac if you never have staged a server before. The name for Windows is Wampserver. IIS is a good alternative if you wish to run a Dotnet environment. Most web servers today are very easy to stage – Mamp is for example installed and up and running in just a few clicks.
- Both Mac and PC environment –It is extremely important to check your design in both a Mac and PC web-browser. If you do not have two separate computers you can, via Parallels Desktop, install Windows XP or Vista on your Mac.
- A set of web-browsers; Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Opera – all of these will get you far. A tip is to check out Browsershots.org that renders your design in a diverse set of browsers and platforms. If you want to run Google Chrome on your Mac you will have to wait or install Crossover Chromium, which is a translated version of Chrome for Mac OSX. Remember though that it is only in a test version and you should not entirely rely on its stability.
Tags: css
Posted in Building Websites | 1 Comment »
March 13th, 2009
I have made it a routine to crawl the web at least once every week to find a new Wordpress theme worthy to tell you guys about. Let me tell you, as I dugg deeper into the web design community, I found Imprezz. A theme made for any good old fashioned blogging in a modern package.
Imprezz is a free hi-quality theme that has been created by Gopal Raju and promoted by Smashing Magazine. This 3-column theme contains all design elements to be called a modern Wordpress theme.
If you entered this site looking for web hosting and want your site to look like Imprezz, take these steps:
- Go to our Wordpress Hosting toplist to find a cheap hosting plan that supports Wordpress (MySQL, PhP). Set up an account.
- Return to this blog post and download Imprezz.
- Extract it on your local computer and upload the files to this directory on your hosting account: wp-content/themes/
- Log in to the Wordpress admin and activate the theme
Full screenshot
Tags: free wordpress theme, imprezz
Posted in Wordpress | 5 Comments »
March 6th, 2009
The trial is over and the world is now awaiting the judgement. The outcome will not only have impact on the legislation in Sweden. No, this is a global issue and it will pretty much set the tone for file-sharing all over the world. It has been quite the battlefield in the court room and being the good Samaritan that I am I will clarify the arguments of both parties.
The Prosecutor & Plaintiff
It’s not the technique that is the issue; it is the fact that there are Torrent files available on The Pirate Bay. Consequently, the site is guilty of distributing copyright protected material. Also sites linking to illegal material can be found guilty in the Supreme Court.
The accused have knowledge that copyright protected material is distributed through their site and they have done nothing to prevent it. The accused can be sentenced even if their site is a form of search engine. This according to previous sentences.
An agreement among the accused to form the company Random Media shows that all four should be held responsible. Three of the four have signed a contract and the fourth is mentioned in it – all according to the prosecutor.
The Accused
The Pirate Bay is nothing but a search engine. It is not possible to convict the supplier of the infrastructure for what the users are doing.
The prosecutor has not been able to show where and when the violation was committed, hence they can’t be convicted for being accomplices. It is not even clear that the violation was committed on The Pirate Bay.
Three of the accused maintain that they can’t be held personally responsible for the site. Only one of the four accused admits that he is operating the site, also adding that the purpose never has been to spread any copyright protected material. Nowhere on the site are visitors encouraged to file-share copyrighted works.
Posted in Fun, Industry insights, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
March 5th, 2009
Ohhhh!!! The shenanigans are over in what could be an epic trial of the year, of the century, of the internet age.
Officially putting Sweden on the map, the TPB trial will establish precedent whether their website and services facilitated illegal music file distribution or their service cannot be held liable for what people do with it. Because The Pirate Bay never hosted any music, the defense claims they have not violated any copyright laws. The prosecution is convinced, along with the movie and music industries, TPB is the next living kin of satan. Hyperboles and exaggerations ran amuck at the trial.
Pirate Bay Trial Famous and sometimes, Stupid Quotes:
“Songwriters and publishers all over the world are dependent on having their rights protected by law. The Pirate Bay is disregarding those rights and abusing the creativity of the people who own them.” – Ger Hatton, ICMF
“You are welcome to send some flowers to my wife.” – Roger Wallis, professor at KTH (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) in Stockholm
(his wife received over $4000 dollars worth of flowers in a day)
“It is common sense, if they couldn’t get it for free they would buy it and when we ask them, they confirm that.” – John Kennedy, CEO of IFPI
“Big companies from foreign nations trying to affect the outcome in a Swedish Court of Justice with straightforward bribes. Now the copyright lobby is showing its true face” – Rickard Falkvinge, Swedish Pirate Party
“It’s a trial regarding four individuals that have conducted a big commercial business making money out of others file-sharing … copyright protected works.” – Monique Wadsted, Prosecutor
If found guilty:
Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström could face two years in prison and a $12.7 million fine.
Well, the verdict will come out April 17th, till then we hope for more mudslinging.
Posted in Competitions, Fun, Industry insights, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
March 5th, 2009
Since its full launch less than a year ago, Sportify has had its share of intruders. Only this time it’s not about illegal audio-file downloads or spyware to remove advertisements. This time the users, over 1 million member-base, are been directly threatened.
Stolen Passwords
On March 5th 2009 news sources reported that Spotify yet again had become the victim of “hackers” who this time got access to a large number of user passwords and personal information. In a statement to the papers, Spotify spokesperson spoke to all Spotify users, strongly recommending that if the same password is used elsewhere, it should be changed directly. This to avoid the “hackers” accessing your email account or even worse, accounts where your credit cards info is registered.
To learn more about Spotify, check out Davids post Spotify – So Hot Right Now
Tags: hack, spotify
Posted in Industry insights | 2 Comments »
