Noteworthy

Browse a selection of noteworthy sites, articles or neat 'stuff' that I've found on my wanderings around the web.

Helpful hints for DVD producers

Craig provides some top hints for DVD producers before they all drive him utterly insane. I’m in total agreement.

37 Signals: Goodbye IE6

37 Signals are phasing out support for IE6 as of the 15th of August. Good stuff.

Adobe Fireworks Team Blog

Nice to see Adobe putting a bit more effort behind communicating what’s going on with Fireworks.

Rawnet prototyping Ubuntu OS UI

Rawnet are working with Canonical to prototype the UI for the next-generation of the Ubuntu OS. Wow, exciting stuff, congratulations guys!

Some background

The body tag has been used forever as a good place to put a background image. But there might be a problem lying in wait.

Featured in .net Magazine

Been featured in .net Magazine, post your Flickr photos here and wallow in the kudos.

Custom Illustrated Avatars

Anton Peck is offering custom illustrated avatars with source PSDs all included for a mighty fine $65. Surely the new hotness.

The Eco Zoo

Awesome Flash site, uses Papervision 3d I think.

MultiFirefox

Run any number of versions of Firefox side by side on OS X.

Firefox 3 in the wild...

Firefox 3 is out, yes the final build. Go get it while it’s hot. FF3 FTW!

Design Coding - SEO Rapper

The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper) describes how web standards and proper design can affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site. – Awesome!

Mac Medium

An old post but I’m still hoping for a Mac Medium too…

Clickable World

Visual search coming to iPhone, seriously cool.

Urgency is poisonous

Urgency may get things done a few days sooner, but what does it cost in morale?

Video on Flickr!

At long long last Flickr add support for Video! Pro account holders only though. :)

New UK Coin Designs

Nice to see some real contemporary design applied to our currency a long last. Brilliant.

Is transparency always a good thing?

I’m not sure… after reading three entries I’m fairly convinced WordPress isn’t for me.

BBC iPlayer Promo

Making the unmissable, unmissable.

Armadillo v3

Drew re-aligns.

Maintaining your Personal Brand Online

Great write up on maintaining your personal brand by Jonathan Snook.

Code Computerlove Offices

The amazing ‘code computerlove’ basement offices in Manchester by Andrew Wallace Architects.

Luellas Boudoir

Really nice job, Paul’s first Expression Engine site, nice Shopify implementation too. :)

Boom Blox

Games like this make me want to run out and buy a Nintendo Wii! Looks highly addictive!

10 Ways To Get Design Approval

Great write up on how to ensure that the design you produce is the one that gets built.

24 Ways 2007

Some link love for 24 ways…

Email Standards Project

The guys behind Campaign Monitor launch the email equivalent of the web standards project.

Final nail in the coffin for Director?

Adobe demo some of the amazing new features in Flash Player 10 (Astro) at MAX 2007.

o2 have the iPhone

o2 bag the rights to the iPhone here in the UK as predicted. No 3G though!

The Rissington Podcast

Oxton and Hicks, broadcasting from the ex-RAF base in Upper Rissington, UK. Fantastic.

What I learned from starting my own business

In this excellent article Veerle shares some of her experiences of starting her own business.

Nathan Pitman Vs Mike Skinner

Paul Cripps asks the question, you choose. :!

The BBC's Fifteen Web Principles

#3 is a particular favourite of mine.

Expression Engine 1.6

1.6 is out, check out the change log!

Safari 3 for Windows

Apple makes beta of Safari 3 available to Windows users.

New 31Three Website

Jesse relaunches his site with a simply beautiful new look.

Web 2.0 Ticker Tape?

Return of the ticker tape, courtesy of the new Technorati website.

'Tufte' Mint Theme

...focused on maximizing data-ink and minimizing chartjunk and decoration.

Goodbye JPG Magazine

Rewriting history is not worth losing your founders (or credibility) over.

The State of Textpattern

Help me cajole Drew into switching to EE…

Andy Clarke on EE

“after only a few days of working with EE, I was hooked”

Colour Contrast Checker

Brilliant little tool written by Jonathan Snook. Well done that man.

Sony DRM narking customers again

After the rootkit fiasco you’d think they would learn!

Folding on Xbox 360?

Rumours abound that Folding might be coming to Xbox 360 via the Rosetta@Home Project.

8 Things: Work Happy

8 Things Intelligent People, Geeks and Nerds Need To Work Happily. via forgetfoo.

pMachine no more...

pMachine is now EllisLab!

Sony Blackballs Kotaku

With every step they take Sony seem more and more determined to destroy the PlayStation brand, the mind boggles.

swfIR

swf Image Replacement, looks like a fantastic solution to an age old problem. Can’t wait to give it a try.

Euro PS3 has reduced backwards compatibility

Backwards compatibility of ‘new spec’ Euro PS3 in doubt. PS2 chip removed to save Sony some greens.

BBC iPlayer Petition

Sign up, sign up to ensure cross platform goodness.

Cameron says farewell to freelancing

A few final lessons learned over the course of 540 days of self-employment.

A Web 2.0 Valentine

Brilliant!

Steve Jobs on DRM

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats.

Spanning Sync Public Beta (Re)Opens

The service that syncs Apple iCal with Google Calendar. Yes, bidirectionally.

Is your Company Website in breach of UK laws

Did you know that companies in the UK must include certain regulatory information on their company websites and in their email footers from 1st January 2007 or they will breach the Companies Act in the UK and risk a fine.

After 100M IE7 Downloads, Firefox Still Gaining

Internet Explorer 7 hit the 100 million download mark last week. Yet in the three months it’s been available, Firefox’s market share has continued to grow.

Flash Player 9 for Linux

The officially blessed version of the Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux (x86) is out.

Microsoft takes email design back 5 years

Outlook 2007, released next month, will stop using Internet Explorer to render HTML emails and instead use the crippled Microsoft Word rendering engine.

HTML Email Testing

Quickly test your email newsletters and see how they’ll appear in a wide range of mail clients.

5 Reasons Why the PS3 Isn’t Selling

Some interesting thoughts on why the PS3 isn’t selling as well as people thought it would.

Jambor-ee

A resource for web designers, developers, webmasters, and site producers interested in using ExpressionEngine.

Anti-Jotspot/Google Post Deleted Under Pressure

Another good reason not to use hosted applications in business, and another good reason to take a look at applications like coACT

24 ways is back

Hoorah for it is that time of year again.

Cease & Desist

YouTube sends Techcrunch a Cease & Desist. What

JotSpot Acquired!

Google has acquired JotSpot, no details on how much they paid though.

Firefox 2 available

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Posted a Day Early

Firefox 2 is coming

I’ve been using the most recent release candidate for a while. It’s really rather nice but a shame it doens’t ship with some kind of integrated online bookmarking.

IE7 out in the wild

Do the sensible thing and get yourself a copy of the much more usable ‘Mozilla Firefox’ instead.

Job Pile

Aggregating the Best Job Boards on the Web.

Authentic Jobs

Cameron Moll rolls out a nice niche job site.

More Giraffe!

Jeff Minter you tease, this game just looks awesome.

coACT intranet software

So I finally got round to putting together a micro site for a product we’ve been working on for a while @ Nine Four.

Simple Commerce

Expression Engine 1.5 now includes a ‘simple commerce’ module. It just keeps getting better.

PS3 delayed in Europe

Sony has announced that the release date for PlayStation 3 in PAL territories has been pushed back until March 2007. XBox 360’s all round at Christmas then.

Space Giraffe

Jeff Minter working on a XBLA sequel to Tempest 2000/3000. Woot!

CSS improvements in IE7

...we made over 200 changes to improve CSS2.1 compliance…

Aptana

A robust, JavaScript-focused IDE for building dynamic web applications.

Relay, Ajax Directory Manager

Fed up with that lame old directory manager your hosting company provided you with for you website or blog?

Photosynth

...takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space. Very clever work from Microsoft.

I'm a winner baby (kinda)

The rather brilliant Simon Kemp wins a Photography Competition via a shot of Isla and my hairy chin.

Leaving the BBC and going freelance

Best of luck to Mark in his new venture. :)

A Challenge to Zoho, Empressr and Thumbstacks

Can we all graduate the Microsoft school already?

Interviewed at mcville.net

I did a short interview with Marko over at mcville.net…

The Biggest Unsolved Problems of Web Design

What are the biggest unsolved problems facing web design in 2006? Have your say.

Congrats to Relly & Paul

Paul and Relly welcomed their baby boy Toby into the world this morning.

FLV Codec Comparison

A fantastic little tool for comparing Flash Video encoding solutions.

Depressed Web Server

Boy that’s one depressed web server.

iPod Nano class-action suit was a huge mistake

Straight from the mouth of the accidental plantiff. (via Niggle)

My Xbox 360 is blogging!

Freaky what a console will do with a web connection when it’s bored.

PS3 screen interface

Actually looks pretty smart, tho I’m still ‘really’ liking the 360 blades.

SLIMP3 up for grabs

I’m selling my SLIMP3 on eBay, it’s a steal, it’s a deal. Plus if you collect in person, you get to meet me! Bonus.

Spanky Corners

Pure genius.

Nintendo wee.

Hilarious! Even worse, yes they are serious!

Five Business Mistakes

Nice write up by Derek on five mistakes he feels he made in business during the last 7 years.

IE7 beta 2

Now available for consumption.

The Web Broke Lisa

Posts were in-frequent but worth the read. Hopefully Lisa will get fixed up sometime soon.

Next for Expression Engine

Major EE forum module update, Wiki module, eCommerce system and EE 1.5. Hoorah for pMachine.

Boot Camp

Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac.

Hungy? Want another bullshit sandwich?

Those who say that poorly designed websites are partly responsible for some companies’ success are feeding you a load of crap. And too many of you are eating it up.

Anti-marketing design?

Sites that are ugly are well known to pull more revenue, be more sticky, build better brands, and be more fun to participate in

Strategies for brochure design

Q: What do you think of my brochure. (via Lealea)

Lightbox v2.0

Lightbox v2.0 includes image sets and fancy pants transitions. Nice work.

Making the Sony Bravia Ad

A great 7 min feature on the making of the Sony Bravia ad with the 250,000 bouncy balls.

Basecamp gets an API

Maybe now some clever kid will write an export/import tool. Would be nice.

Pre-pixelated for Reality TV

Stop worrying about whether or not the Reality TV show you’re on will pixelate your t-shirt. Beat them to the punch.

Windows Vista Launch Delay

Microsoft has delayed the launch of its next operating system until next year.

Punct!

A fantastic little HTML entities tool.

Bad week for a freelancer

John says: “Of course this is a work of pure fiction, I have never had a week like this, ever!” Hmm, yea… ditto. (!)

9charities

9charities picks nine charitable organizations per year and provides web consulting and design free of charge. Nice one.

Writely acquired by Google

Another Web 2.0 acquisition, Google have snapped up Writely, the web word processor.

Real Life Simpsons Title Sequence

Pure Genius, Brilliant, Love it.

Internet use outstrips TV viewing

Surfing the internet has overtaken watching television as the UK’s favourite activity.

IE7 mix 06 improvements

Looks like the IE team might have pulled a rabbit of the hat, looks promising. Maybe, just maybe we won’t have to spend hours fixing our CSS after all.

OS OS Bang Bang

...the next version of Mac OS X (“Leopard�) will actually ship in twenty-six different flavours. Brilliant.

IE6 Active Content Changes

Microsoft rolls out changes to IE6 in response to the ongoing Eolas Patent.

Veerle's Blog

Lush Expression Engine powered blog.

Code Igniter

Rick Ellis unveils his Open Source Web Application Framework that makes writing PHP programs simple. (Via CollyLogic)

Tango Icons

Nice Icons from the Tango Desktop Project.

Squeaky Clean CSS

A hodgepodge of simple, practical CSS authoring tips.

Go It Alone!

Bruce Judson has released his excellent book ‘Go It Alone’ to read for free on his website. (Via PixelMeadow)

What makes a good business card?

Mark Boulton asks the question, some of the responses are well worth reading.

Google acquires Measure Map

And it’s not even out of private beta!

Getty Acquires iStockphoto

If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.

3d Web Browser

Pretty pointless but a lot of fun. Uses OpenGL to render Mozilla generated pages in 3d space.

250,000 bouncy balls

250,000 bouncy balls released on a San Francisco hill.

SimplePie Feed Parsing

A very fast and easy-to-use class, written in PHP, for reading RSS and Atom syndication feeds.

Expression Engine Shootout

$15,000 worth of prizes up for grabs in the EE shootout.

Scalable logos

Neat trick by Oxton to have your logo scale with your text.

technoranki

Could be amusing…

Hotel 70 degrees

Amazing architecture, would be nice to see it saved.

Dell bundles Firefox

Dell UK has started bundling the open source Firefox browser with its desktop PC systems. Woo!

The next big thing from 37s

Sunrise is apparently going to be CRM-ish.

IE Tab

A truly amazing Firefox extension which renders IE tabs within Firefox!

Helldesign

This simplicity and polish of this site is heavenly.

The Box Office

Lets you wrap/float/contour text around freeform images for usage in (X)HTML pages.

Yahoo buys del.icio.us!

Yes, it’s true, Yahoo is buying every decent web 2 app out there… who’s next?

Moo Flex

AJAX Rich Content Management System on it’s way to us from Rome.

Eolas all over again

Microsoft has announced that they will be changing the way IE handles ActiveX controls and Java applets to avoid liability in the Eolas patent suit.

Safari CSS Hack

Particuarly useful for hacking font sizes about in Safari, since they’re always bigger than in other Browsers.

NTL to become Virgin?

NTL to merge with Virgin Mobile in £817m tie-up?

Search Highlighting

PHP based search highlighting snippet.

Nice Icons

From famfamfam.com.

TXP Comments

Custom comment previews in Textpattern 4.0.2. Woohoo!

Email design trends

Email Design Guidelines for 2006.

I Don't Care About Accessibility

10 Reasons Clients Don’t Care About Accessibility.

New TextDrive Website

Luverly new TextDrive website, now includes Daily Oliver!

Joyent Acquires TextDrive

Wow, congrats to the TextDrive team!

CES 2006

Really nice integrated use of Flash

Firefox 1.5

Firefox 1.5 now available, plus there’s a new cleaner look for Mozilla.com.

Four Nine

Nine Four’s evil twin?

AOL Search

New AOL search in kinda nice.

Web 2.0 checklist

Give us your email address, we’ll let you know when it’s ready!

Best of British

Best of British – Creative design in the UK

World Press Photo

50 years of World Press Photo, some real hard hitting photography.

Ajax Examples

A nice collection of real-life Ajaxian systems

Dark Eye

Living Design Showcase, some nice AJAX anyhow…

OSX on x86

Installing OSX ona PC.

fileNice

A free php file browser.

Splintered Experiments

Some nice bits and bobs here.

Dojo Rich Text Editor

Rich text (WYSIWYG) editing with a nifty little widget. Wonder if this can be made to output textile?

Lush new PSP ad

Playstation Portable: A Day in the Life (via Hicks).

Sony transformations

Tyson Ibele created this amazing experimental Sony ad. He’s only 18. Very nice.

the next small thing

A superlightweight, ultratiny, megasmall javascript effects library.

Maniacal Rage, now even better

I loved the old site, and was sad to see the design go, but having read this post I’m convinced.

Textpattern 4.02

Lots of yummy fixes and improvements.

XBox 360 First look

A nice look at the XBox 360 interface, boot up sequence etc.

Basecamp Coupon Code

Get $10 off a Basecamp upgrade

What Clients REALLY Want

hey may not tell you, but clients expect—even demand㬆 things from the creative firms they work with.

Visualcomplexity.com

For anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks.

Gravatar gone... again?

Not Found: The requested URL / was not found on this server.

31three

Just luverly…

iBelieve

iBelieve is a truly religious replacement lanyard for your iPod Shuffle.

Google drop GMail

Trademark dispute forces Google into dropping the Gmail brand

Lealea Design

Simple, clean, crisp, love it.

Macromedia Labs

Flash Player 8.5 and ActionSciprt 3.0

Basecamp re-fresh

There’s a basecamp re-fresh on it’s way, looks good.

MSN and Yahoo interoperability

Wow, that’s kinda big.

A-list apparently

I think this guy lady must have tagged me wrong.

On Going it alone

Great article on going it alone, read it!

Screenspire

Seems I was featured on screenspire way back in August. Nice. :)

Position:fixed in IE

What a savior this little script is, no complicated CSS rules, just plug this in and off you go.

IKEA matrix style

Great immersive photography, worth every bit of the load time.

XHTML live chat

Another great AJAX based chat script.

Lace - AJAX Chat Room

If you’re looking for a chat script which isn’t frames based, this is a great starting point.

The Million Dollar Homepage

Sorry.., I just don’t get why anyone would advertise here.

Side Job Track

Invoicing, Reporting and Project Management!

Drunkey Love Icons

Great web app icons, and they’re free.

Typetester

Neat tool for comparing screen type.

Embrace the scroll

All that nonsense about people not scrolling is complete bullshit.

Delineateit

Currently in beta, could be a Mint competitor?

Opera free

Opera removes ad banners and licensing fee.

Fireworks Guru

A new resource for Fireworks users

Sweet Vanilla

Vanilla is a PHP/MySQL based Web Forum that is 100% open-source. You can take it and alter it and use it free of charge.

Ruffles is Threadless

My mate Mr Ruffles has a Threadless submission on the go, vote!

ScreenGrab (it all)

How very useful.

Firefox 1.5 beta

Check it.

Engadget 1985

Flat panel screens? Like that’ll ever happen.

Teeny tiny iPod nano

It’s teeny, it’s tiny, it’s the nano.

Textpattern Data Backup

Finally I can sleep easy at night safe in the knowledge that I’ve backed up my blog.

Tag Cloud

Your very own tag clouds.

.htaccess tricks

Some neat .htaccess tricks

Textpattern 4.0.1

Not bursting with features, but lots of smoothings and salvings.

Have a Mint

Minty fresh site stats by Shaun Inman.

Joshuaink

You are so desperate you are imagining this post, it’s not really here

CSSVista

From the guys that brought us SiteVista. This looks very exciting. Can’t wait to try it out.

Screenweaver not dead... yet.

First it seemed Screeweaver was gone, now there is hope! :)

Reflections are the new drop shadow

Luverly reflections and a nice product too.

Textpattern 4 Stable Released

Yes, that’s right, the final, stable, complete release has landed.

Del.icio.us.ness

If you haven't already tried Greasemonkey, then this script alone is reason enough.

Web Page Speed Report

I use it to check total page size. Very handy.

CSS/XHTML Compression

Neat little tool for compressing CSS and XHTML. Makes a reasonable difference too.

iPod My Baby

Bonkers but cute.

Hello, my name is...

Ian Coyle's personal website moves like Flash, but it's all XHTML and CSS.

Expose for Windows

Some discussion over the best offering to emulate that luverly mac feature.

Campaign Monitor

If you've ever had to manage an HTML email campaigns then this will float your boat.

NTL first to 10

NTL first to make 10mbps it's standard broadband offering.

Simplicity

Kinda like my own design, I like it for the er... simplicity!

A blog is born every second

According to Technorati, blog tracking is up from 7.8m in March to 14.2m at the end of July.

Apple Mighty Mouse!

Click, Roll, Squeeze, Scroll...

Textpattern RC5!

That clunk you hear is the sound of feature lockdown until Official Release. Woohoo!

Yahoo! buys Konfabulator!

Yes it's all true, now Konfabulator is free!

Archived Oxton

The joshuaink archives are back!

Notable Words

A site that showcases bloggers who can actually write, unlike myself. You might want to go check it out then...

CSS and Email, Kissing in a Tree

Good article on how to maximise the potential of CSS with HTML email, no more tables! Hoorah!

The inbox makeover

Spend less time treating e-mail as an end in itself and more time using it as the tool that it is. Good tips.

Gravatar.com gone?

Gravatar.com it seems is on hold, how bizarre.

Oldest .coms

100 oldest .com domains.

The Joshuaink Forums

Johns plans for world domination continue, this week it's the Joshuaink Forums.

WaSP & Microsoft sitting in a tree...

WaSP announced it has formed a task force with Microsoft to provide support as Web standards support increases in its products.

Gravatar 100

100 Most Popular Gravatar Enabled Sites.

The Death of 2Advanced

The flash wave that was seemingly going to be the 'future of the internet' is taking a shot in the side.

del.icio.us direc.tor

Prototype for an alternative web-based rich UI for del.icio.us.

MIT Weblog Survey

Write a blog? Take the MIT Survey.

SiteVista

See screen captures of your web pages viewed with a wide range of different web browsers, sounds neat.

I'm non-design

Something [I] have wanted to do on my site for a long time but have never been able to pull off to my satisfaction is what [I] call the non-design.

Shaun Inman re-designs

How very yum, just love those sliding navigation tabs.

Rock your face off

Ever wanted to be in a music video... this guy did.

The Lifecycle of a blogger

How true...

No more CSS hacks?

There is something fundamentally wrong with how hacks work.

elegant web design

Superb site by Yorkshire based designer Steven Urmston.

Name Voyager

Check the popularity of your name over the past 10 decades, very smart Java.

More Scrolling

Such a simple concept, beautifully executed.

Scrolling comment goodness

Yummy scrolling comment goodness from 'snook'.

Tidy transparent custom corners & borders

Ever wanted to make a resizable CSS box with custom corners, custom borders, and a transparent shadow?

Nifty Corners

Nifty rounded corners with no images.

IE7 to get tabs

At last, hoorah... IE7 will have tabs.

New media designer/developer

Mirashade are looking for a new senior new media designer/developer, could this be you?

Custom Comments

Want customised comment handling in Textpattern? This is essential reading.

Unmatched

Kudos. My site is featured on unmatched style.

noscope stagecraft

These are simply lush. Brilliant illusions of depth.

Web fashion

Five fashionable web design accessories.

Compress your CSS

Neat little tool to cleans and compress your CSS in a variety of ways.

Backpack

37 signals release Basecamps little bro.

Welcome Nathan Pitman

Mr John Oxton syndicates my content for the month of May.

Textpattern RC3 available!

Woohoo!

Enhanced form widgets

Clever stuff with CSS and JavaScript.

To Scale or Not to Scale

Is it any less impressive if somebody creates a beautiful CSS site that completely falls apart at a different font size?

Hey good looking

10 things your clients should know about website accessibility.

Just nice

There's just something nice about Grant Robinsons website. Clean, simple and full of great content.

IE7 beta 1 details

Some notes from the IE team on how '7' is shaping up.

Good behavior

The 'Behavior' website has some nice touches with regards to typography, simple layout and clean integration of flash.

Re-design Inspiration #5

Coda.coza for the whole grey on black thing... I tried it but just couldn't make it work myself. Nice brand too.

Re-design Inspiration #4

Maniacal Rage for it's archive page... mmm.

Re-design Inspiration #3

Agency.com for it's visual depth.

Re-design Inspiration #2

Subtraction 7.0, massive amounts of information, yet simple to access.

Re-design Inspiration #1

Signal vs. Noise for it's article titles and comment invites. Love em.

She Said "Yes"

Only in America...

May 1st Reboot

The May 1st Reboot is a community project that brings together web professionals from all over and encourages them to collectively launch redesigns of their sites on May 1st.

Work smarter with Fireworks symbols

Andy Clarke has authored a fantastic short article on the benefits of using Symbols in your Fireworks layouts.

Basics of SEO

Nice article by Roger Johansson on Search Engine Optimisation.

Textpattern 1.0 RC3

If you're a textpattern fan like me this news will make you very happy. Dean has spoken.

IE7 Beta

According to the Microsoft IE team blog, betas of IE7 will surface this summer.

Don't Link

A little out of date, but worth a visit for a laugh.

Resetting defaults

A really neat trick for improving cross browser CSS compatibility on your sites.

Is that natural?

Inspiring movement by David Elsewhere.

A noteworthy link

A super collection of txp plug-ins.