(FRDK) The Blog

Server Change

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:58:53 +0000

Over the weekend we had to change servers for this domain. We are now happily living at Servage , a European hosting company with many benefits. Like, being in Europe just as we are.

The end of dragons?

This change also marks the very end of my collaboration with James Wilkinson through Dzyn Lab. Unfortunately it never got off the ground in the way we hoped and anticipated, but at least we managed to part as friends. If you have done business with us previously, or were considering it, feel free to contact me . I’m certain we can work something out.

The server change has meant some issues with the email system, mostly because we’ve introduced a stricter spam filtering policy, and haven’t yet managed to add all our old contacts to the list of trusted friends. Some of you will get verification requests when you contact us, even though we’ve known each other for years, but the good news is that you only need to verify your address once. We’re sorry for any inconvenience and hope to have all this sorted quickly.

Interviewed

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:42:02 +0000

My friends at crowdSPRING wanted to do an interview with me, Of course I agreed. No press is bad press, so do press when you can. crowdSPRING is an award winning new service where design buyers and creatives come together to do real work on real projects. To find out more about how it works, visit the crowdSPRING site

Crowdsourcing At Its Best

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:04:46 +0000

Lately I’ve found myself spending way too much time over at crowdSPRING one of those uppety startups that no real person has heard about but everyone else wants to be a part of. Seriously though, it’s a great place for creative people and for people who need to have things created.

crowdSPRING is, quote, “a marketplace for creative services”. A bit like Guru or Élance then, you say? Well, yes. And, not at all. Here’s how crowdSPRING is different: at normal design marketplaces, like the aforementioned, buyers post jobs and watch creatives climb over each other to try and win the contract. Then the real job starts . The buyer can’t be guaranteed that the creative actually will come up with something useful. And at some of these marketplaces, the creative might end up toiling many hours to complete a project, only to discover that the buyer doesn’t want to pay for the work (yep, happens). At crowdSPRING however, a buyer posts his-her project (hopefully eloquently described), sets a reasonable project runtime, and sits back and watches as interested creatives submit real design proposals. Yep, real. And at the end of the project runtime, the buyer chooses the proposal that he-she likes the best. Work done (with some tweaks during runtime or after the pick, or both); the money is guaranteed upfront; buyer and awarded creative are happy. Yay!

I know this because I have already been fortunate to win more than one project. But more about that in a separate post.

crowdSPRING is an infant yet, only one month old in the eyes of the public, so naturally there are teething problems, and the community we’re trying to build over there is slow in forming. But it’s fun, it’s inspirational, it’s aggrevating, it’s competitive, it’s rewarding. Hop on over and see for yourself.

iPublish (sNews)

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:20:45 +0000

In between other, more lucrative projects, I’ve been working on a couple of new web templates. The first one is released to the public right now. It is called “iPublish Zine”, is currently available in a flexible-width version which will shortly be accompanied by a fixed-width 1024px version. It is built with standards compliant HTML 4.01 Strict – unlike most of my previous templates which are XHTML 1.0. And it looks a little like this:

There is a demo site available at ball-ball.net and the package, including sNews 1.6, can be downloaded from this site’s downloads section .

A couple of modified versions of this template will follow, when time allows. Hope you enjoy the new theme. ;)

Choices

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:30:00 +0000

“The problem, is choice.”
Neo, The Matrix Reloaded

To Experiment, or Not To Experiment

I thought I would take the time to discuss some of the choices and details that went into this version of frdk.com ... who knows, it might be of interest. The first decision I faced was if I should continue using this site for experimentation, or not. Experimenting, “living on the edge” as some call it, is half the fun of web development. On the other hand, if you experiment too much, chances are that your audience will find it off-putting. Especially if they can’t really partake in the experiments. In the end I decided to keep it up. Because it’s fun. ;)

The main experiments on the site at this moment are a) use of “web fonts” and b) use of CSS3 elements like border-radius and box-shadow . While these effects may not seem all that experimental (they’ve been in use for years via images after all), they actually are. Web fonts, or the @font-face rule, is currently only supported by Webkit nightly builds ; border-radius and box-shadow are only supported well by Safari/Webkit and Firefox 3. Firefox 2 handles border-radius, but not all that well. So, this iteration of the site design uses all CSS rounded corners and drop shadows (on some objects), without a single image being used. That’s an improvement.

As for web-fonts – while Webkit supports the use of @font-face (see other post on this subject), the support is somewhat shaky, and inconsistent between processor generations. Intel Macs fare worse than PowerPC Macs. I have no idea how Webkit Wintel behaves. So it’s an experiment. The good thing about the experiment is that it degrades gracefully: if your browser doesn’t support an experimental feature, the fallback look isn’t that far removed from the desired look. (Screengrabs to come.)

To be continued...