Erin McNaught does FHM Magazine (tags: Erin McNaught does FHM Magazine) The Sexy Pamela Camassa Does Fox Magazine (tags: Sexy Pamela Camassa Fox Magazine) Lindsay Lohan s 2006 Partying + Cocaine & Alcohol Time Line (tags: Lindsay Lohan s 2006 Partying) Britney Spears s chronic boozing takes a harsh toll on her looks (tags: Britney Spears) Britney Spears continues her out-of-control antics Pop beauty Britney Spears continued her out-of-control antics during a drinking spree at Hollywood s trendy Le Deux nightclub Wednesday night, Dec. 20 reports Star Magazine. Britney was drunk off her ass. She was completely trashed. She couldn t walk (tags: Britney Spears) Keith Urban Cheats on Nicole Kidman, with Amanda Wyatt ? Just months after slamming rumors of banging a hooker during a booze filled bachelor party, ex-coke user Keith Urban has been accused of cheating Sexy Amanda Wyatt says that Urban was unfaithful to his superstar wife, Nicole Kidman throughout their cou (tags: Keith Urban Cheats on Nicole Kidman) Not So Blind Item: Ray-J Sex Tape with Kim Kardashian or Superhead? Desperate times call for desperate measures! Sources say a certain R&B singer, who has never really caught a major break, is peddling an X-rated home video to adult entertainment companies in hopes that it will do for his career what it has done for Paris (tags: Kim Kardashian Superhead Ray-J Sex Tape) Seal and Snowbunny in Aspen Seal and his sexy snowbunny model wife Heidi Klum were spotted over the Holiday in Aspen where they are vactioning with their kids. For some reason, I think this couple will last longer than the typical Hollywierd shelf life of 1-3 years. (tags: Seal) Cheating Michael Jordan Just Can t Call Timeout with the Ladies NBA great Michael Jordan hit town last week and played the role of ultimate wingman for friends like Derek Jeter and Patrick Ewing. First, Jordan had a dinner at Tao with Ewing and Charles Oakley, where the trio rang up a tab upward of $1,000 and tipped (tags: Michael Jordan) Video: The Killers - A Great Big Sled (tags: Killers) Beyonce in New York (tags: Beyonce) Britney Can t Handle Her Drink Alcohol had a Toxic effect on Brit at the popular Hollywood club Les Deux, for after downing drinks till about 2 AM, she puked all over the place the former Princess of Pop also made such a mess that no one wanted to clean it up [The] singer s han (tags: Britney) Sam Heuston Crotchless Panty Upskirt. (tags: Sam Heuston) Jennifer Lopez See Through Boob Shot From Christmas Past (tags: Jennifer Lopez) Kid Rock Visits Troops in Iraq for Christmas (tags: Kid Rock) GIRLS GONE .NOT SO WILD (tags: GIRLS) BEACH BODY ALERT: JESSICA BIEL EDITION (tags: JESSICA BIEL) Eddie Murphy s Worst Nightmare Mel B pulled out the big guns in her ongoing paternity suit with Eddie Murphy and hired some hot shot lawyer I never heard of who represented Cher, Fleetwood Mac and Meatloaf. That must have been back in the 70s. Anyway, she want half Ed-die! (tags: Eddie Murphy) REVEALED! THE DISHY, SCANDALOUS DETAILS BEHIND THE DONALD-MISS USA SCANDAL! (tags: DONALD-MISS USA SCANDAL) OOPS! BRITNEY BINGE DRANK AGAIN DON T READ THIS IF YOU RE EATING RIGHT NOW! (tags: BRITNEY BINGE) Paris Hilton Gets Googled [edstrong.blog-city.com] Paris Hilton has topped the list of Google news searches for 2006! I mean, can you believe it? (tags: Paris Hilton) Google Holiday Doodle 2006 count the seconds till new year right on the Google homepage (tags: Google Holiday Doodle 2006) Kid Rock s XXXMas in Iraq If there was ever a dude that appealed to the troops, it s Kid Rock . The Detroit native got to bang Pamela Anderson , gets to screw tons of groupies, and he rocks out! Rock just spent five days visiting the troops in Baghdad and Kuwait, giving hope to ou (tags: Kid Rock) Milena Roucka - Random Hot Chick of the Day (tags: Milena Roucka) Saddam to Hang: American Mob Lynching The real reason he s been sentenced to death is because he dared to challenge US foreign policy and to condemn its Zionist ally. He stood against US hegemony in the face of a decade of bullying, blackmail and collective punishment by foreign powers. (tags: Saddam) Use 8GB SDHC cards with Treo 650 and Treo 700p What s so great about SDHC? Well, it can hold up to 8GB capacity at the moment, and there are already a few relatively affordable cards out in the market. For example, you can buy the 8GB 60x Class 2 SDHC Secure Digital Card by Ultra from Amazon at just (tags: Treo 650 and 700p) Palm - Support - Infrared (IR) Software Update for Treo 700p Smartphones This software update is designed to resolve an issue when using the IR port on Treo 700p smartphones with certain 3rd party devices. Once installed, the Treo 700p smartphone will work as expected. (tags: software treo Infrared (IR) Software Update) Amazon.com: Ultra 8GB 60x Class 2 SDHC Secure Digital Card: Electronics Ultra 8GB 60x Class 2 SDHC Secure Digital Card (tags: Ultra 8GB 60x Class 2 SDHC Secure Digital Card: Electronics) Paris Hilton @ Seductive Photoshoot Paris Hilton @ Seductive Photoshoot (tags: Paris Hilton) Paris Hilton Bikini Pictures Hmm there is something very odd about these Paris Hilton bikini pictures. For instance, where are all the people at the beach and why is she sunbathing alone? One begins to wonder that perhaps these pictures aren t authentic candids and just a staged (tags: Paris Hilton Bikini Pictures) Top Ten Sex Questions of 2006 What are people really thinking about sex? When they can ask sex questions and get answers with anonymity, what do they really want to know? Taking the sexual pulse of any society is near impossible. How can we distinguish media hype from actual experienc (tags: Top Ten Sex Questions of 2006) 2006 Sex Blog Awards Actually, this is not really a sex blog (thank goodness or it would be very boring!) but if you want to nominate me for Sexiest Sex Blogger, be my guest. I would recommend surfing on over to Viviane s Sex Carnival for most of my favorite sex bloggers both (tags: 2006 Sex Blog Awards) Beach Gallery (tags: Beach Gallery) Toyota 400HP hybrid sportscar / 0-60 in 4sec / $35,000 = Nice knowin ya GM (tags: Car cars Concept hybrid Toyota 400HP sportscar) Photos of iPAD Tower in Dubai (tags: architecture) Flaws Detected in Microsoft s Vista (tags: vista security windows software microsoft) Paypal announces FREE Virtual Debit Card - throwaway online credit cards Those of you that are jealous of the Visa throwaway credit card that creates a new unique one-time use number for your online transactions can stop worrying, anyone can now get on the fun! Paypal will offer this service FREE to all users once it leaves be (tags: paypal Security SHOPPING web) The Reason Why Widescreen is Better (tags: widescreen movie movies tv DVD hardware video) Paint.NET Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. It started development as an undergraduate college (tags: software graphics freeware Photo tools Free images) Convert PDF + TXT Files To An MP3 Recording Using a few tools such as Mp3 My Mp3 which I previously demonstrated could easily record Skype calls, you can turn PDF and text files into an mp3 file. Mp3 My Mp3 records sound directly from the sound card, so it should be noted that you can t have any (tags: MP3 pdf howto audio recording Hack RSS) Google Predictions, 2007 Google had an exciting year in 2006 stealing headlines with almost everything they did, even if the news wasn t particularly exciting. Will the excitement carry forward in 2007? Like most of you, I don t know, but I have a few predictions about what w (tags: google 2007 prediction enterprise apps blog health) Permanently Activate Windows Vista by Skip Activation with Patched TimerStop.sys Crack Hackers are going all out to crack Windows Vista activation procedure which is enhanced by Software Protection Platform (SPP). (tags: vista WINDOWS crack activation hack) Naomi Campbell s Nude Livescan Gazelle-legged, phone-brandishing, housecleaner-disciplining glamazon Naomi Campbell took a much-needed break from her anger management classes to train her genetically perfect snarl back toward a camera for a few hours, and posed nekkid for photographer (tags: Naomi Campbell s Nude Livescan ) Global Orgasm For Peace (tags: Global Orgasm For Peace) Taschen s Big Book Of Breasts (tags: Boobs books) Jelena Veljaca Sex tape Jelena Veljaca is a Croatian soapstar, but if we take a good look at her home made sextape she could easily have been a (future) pornstar. Jelena has neither confirmed nor denied being the peson in the tape. We feel she should not feel ashamed and simply (tags: Jelena Veljaca Sex tape) Prehistory of Netporn The word Amateur in connection to Porno has always been used. But in the early days of Netporn it was popularised along with another one, Action. Amateur Action (AA) has been the most popular porno BBS ever, and it has an interesting history. Launched in (tags: Prehistory of Netporn) Denise Richards & Neve Campbell - Oh Yeah Video Denise Richards & Neve Campbell (tags: Denise Richards & Neve Campbell Video) Console Websurfing Test: Wii vs PS3 (tags: hardware web wii) Your Wii and the secrets it holds (tags: Wii) YouTube - DONALD TRUMP VS. ROSIE DONALD TRUMP VS. ROSIE (tags: DONALD VS. ROSIE funny Trump video)
Source: feeds.feedburner.com

HOW to Reminisce
Looking back at the 2007 HOW conference it really was an eye opening event. First and foremost I was in awe with all the talented graphic designers around me. It was nice to become a part of the herd. That being said, I’m using this format to invite Hillman Curtis to participate in a podcast with me about his presentation which was canceled due to weather. That was the main reason why I went to the conference, but I didn’t let that get me down. I loved to listen how these top professionals thought about the design process. I can not pick up a brush and paint well or even draw well but design goes so much deeper than knowing how to draw. It is about shapes and text and space and lines and color and understanding how to use everything to represent a product or a message. HOW provided us with a resource center that allowed us to grab for free samples of different types of paper, stock imagery, software, web applications, design schools, magazines, t-shirts, printing needs and of course free door prizes. It was great. But where was Apple and the software team? I’m sure a good number of people are professional photographers not to mention one filmmaker. You let Adobe display their software and wow the attendees. No worries, I got your back…for now. Another thing I felt that was lacking were representatives from online resources such as: flickr photobucket CafePress lulu youtube facebook linkedin The one thing I love about conferences are meeting like minded people. I believe Bethany and I gained a new respect for each other and a new friendship emerged between co-workers…which helps company morale. My brother gave me a ring and told me that Tina Roth Eisenberg, a friend of his was attending the conference and we should meet up. We met up at the closing reception at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. Tina it was a pleasure sitting down with you and talking. He was dead on. Your work is amazing. The Closing Reception: Celebrate your love of type at the 2007 Descenders Ball. This year, the annual end-of-the-Conference bash takes its theme from one of the most important aspects of design: type. But you don’t have to be a typographer to participate find any old t-shirt with writing on it, and you’ve got a costume (but we’re guessing you can do better than that). Then join your fellow type-lovers at the Georgia Aquarium the world’s largest for drinks, dancing and live music. Online Videos by Veoh.com What an amazing closing of the conference. A band in the middle of the biggest aquarium in the US. We had access to all the exhibits all night, well until about 11:15…but fun none-the-less.
Source: feeds.feedburner.com

The Sights And Sounds Of Lost In Transition
It is getting closer and closer to the time of release for my first book, Lost in Transition.  It is due out mid-summer and as we continue through the process, I am excited to share some of the sights and sounds of the book. First the sight.  This is what the cover is going to look like. We decided to go with a classic look rather than a busy look with pictures/images, etc.  Thanks to Lynly, my graphic designer, for doing such a great job. Now for the sound.  Along with the book, I am also getting an audiobook published through Tate Publishing’s sister company, Tate Out Loud.  We are just in the sampling stage right now but here is the introduction- Download sample_intro.mp3 .   Enjoy!
Source: feeds.feedburner.com

Talking Tech, Friday, April 27th
[[libsyn_player]] 0.30 Mark and Duncan are back (still no Kevin) to talk about the good quarterly results from Apple and Microsoft. 1.12 Is Apple s growth sustainable or is just a fad? Duncan compares Apple to Madonna and thinks that, for now, its growth is sustainable BUT, will the hype around the iPhone bring the whole house of cards down? 2.37 Mark brings up the movie Helvetica and every design person interviewed had their trusty Mac in screen. He thinks that the iPod gave users permission to buy Mac computers and wonders if the iPhone could take that permission away? 3.51 How will the stock options controversy affect the Mac aura? If Steve Jobs needs to step down, Duncan predicts Apple s stock will drop $30 - $40 in a day. 5.27 Mark asks Duncan to explain why so many wealthy, high profile execs back date stock options. Duncan explains that the accounting rules have changed and now back dating options can put a hit on the company s earnings. 7.01 Mark is surprised so many people are so surprised at Microsoft s success, which was largely driven by Vista. Duncan explains Vista s attractiveness to the consumer and reseller as illustrated by Microsoft s software revenues growing 69 per cent. 9.35 Duncan reminds us that the entertainment side of Microsoft s business isn t doing so well its revenues dropped 20 per cent. 10.01 The guys move onto the strategy behind the Nintendo Wii. Instead of competing with high end graphics machines such as the Xbox 360, the company dumbed down its product and went after everyday consumers. Duncan uses this as a classic case of disruption coming up with a just good enough product, rather than a perfect product.  Another example of this is Slacker a satellite radio/mp3 player combination. 12.35 Dalsa lost its CEO this week and this is a great springboard for discussion on the changing landscape of the Canadian tech CEO ecosystem. Duncan doesn t think there is a single CEO of a public company has been in office for more than 10 years and thinks this talks to the need for management talent in Canada. 14.34 Local entrepreneur Randy Charles Morren s RSS email service, Rmail, gets some love from Mark after selling the company to NBC Universal. 12.28 Duncan has a new job at Deloitte as Director of Canadian Research for Technology, Media, Telecommunications and Life Sciences. He ll be writing some original research but will also be Canadianizing global research and meeting with up and coming businesses. Audio or text comments for Mark, Kevin and Duncan can be emailed to heytalkingtech@gmail.com. Our announcer is the lovely Amber Mac and the music is No Mojo by Anthony Stauffer and Holy Smoke which is available on the pod safe music network.
Source: buckpost.libsyn.com

Interview: Jeff Veen
Download the MP3 (9.02 MB) Topics we cover in the interview How designing for the web has changed How to measure the impact of usability checks Life at Google - and how Measure Map is playing out The state of the industry URLS Mentioned Measure Map The blog analytics tool Adaptive Path Full transcription of the interview SD: This is Sarah Drew for Vitamin and I’m sitting here with Jeff Veen, who’s had a long and illustrious history and is at this moment in time at Google. I’d like to start with design and what you see as the evolution of design that may be happening, and understanding design in a much larger context than what we’ve maybe traditionally understood it. JV: Yeah, I think that’s true. Even if you look at the past couple of decades it’s changed phenomenally from the print-based, what-you-see-is-what-you-get design to being much more interactive. There’s a lack of control that’s going on in a lot of the design that we’re doing and I think that has historically been kind of difficult for a lot of designers to make that shift, but what’s really interesting now is I’m seeing designers who have come up only having ever designed for the web and while they may lack some of the finer nuances of typography or things like that, what they’re really good at is thinking about what the web is good at, what the web has in terms of constraint and working with that, and being really native to the web. So yeah, that’s changing an awful lot. SD: Do you see a wider application of how we understand design, I mean in the sense that design is applicable to genomes, to architecture, to graphics, to language, to urban design, to maybe even companies, and as a [web’ designer do you find yourself using a wider application of design…? JV: Well, I find myself doing design a lot differently. In the past I don’t think we had to think as much about use, and what people are trying to do with our design, and that’s an interesting set of disciplines. I think that product designers in the past have thought about those things, ergonomics and things like that, but people who are working with documents, graphics, layouts, that sort of thing, they never really had to consider that. A book was a book, and you knew what the constraint was and you designed to it. That’s so different now, so I spend far more of my time now understanding technology, doing user research, doing basic ethnography, anthropology, stuff like that which I never considered was going to be part of my career. That takes up probably more time than the actual design process itself, the actual arranging things on a screen that makes sense to people (…) is trying to build that level of empathy for what people are trying to do and try to embody that when we sit do to do that design. So, yeah, it changes a lot. SD: A lot of your work has been in the areas of both UI design and usability - how to track that, how to quantify that, how to communicate that, how to design and optimise that… JV: Well, usability is a little piece of that. Usability is a little bit like spell checking, like just making sure that the decisions we’ve already made, we’ve made correctly. I think a lot of people got on this usability bandwagon and put a little bit too much faith into it, to try to use usability to help them decide what to do rather than whether or not they’ve done things right. Deciding what to do, that’s the job of design, right? That’s where you have to figure out what people are trying to get done here, how can I help them do that, what are the expectations people have, what are the conventions that they already understand. Usability doesn’t help us with any of that, but it does help us understand whether or not I did it right, and so there’s an awful lot of different techniques. We try to go out and talk to people all the time, I do telephone interviews with potential users, I demo the thing that I’m working on to anybody who’ll take a look at it. I just want to make sure that I understand the kinds of things they’re trying to do, and that I can help them do that. SD: Do you find that when you’re showing a product to someone that general patterns tend to come up or is there a unique user experience that you’re seeing when you’re showing it? JV: There’s definitely patterns. Humans are wired to work a certain way, especially when you have everybody looking at a screen, everybody using a mouse, there’s certainly patterns there. There are also differences in those patterns based on the different types of audiences that we’re working with. I created an application for people who have weblogs. Those are people who have a desire to publish on the web, have a little bit of technical understanding, they’ve maybe edited a template before,so there’s some assumptions that I can make about that audience as opposed to an audience that’s trying to get information about their healthcare. That’s a much broader set of expectations that people have, perhaps a lot [of] different backgrounds in the kinds of experience they have with technology so we can’t just necessarily take for granted that people are going to understand all of this unless we have a really good understanding of who those audience segments really are. SD: I would imagine at Google that you have a lot of time for really researching your user base, right? JV: There’s no time! There’s no time for it. That’s the terrible irony about what we do. First, I don’t think that a lot of people understand the value of the research because it take time, and it’s time when people aren’t writing code or designing pages. It is all very qualitative, almost nebulous - I mean, you can create a research plan and you can follow the plan and everything, but it takes time and it’s kind of expensive when time is very expensive. So a lot of the research we do on the fly, really ad hoc, and I think that’s totally fine because a little research is always better than no research at all. But Google is the kind of company that really wants to invest in user experience, understands the importance of research - but even so we’re all doing a million things at once and we still want to get out ahead of the competition, so it’s always this balance between those things. SD: It was interesting to me in your talk how you contextualize Web 2.0, and I think we’re very much creatures of story: tell us a story and we will often as a group follow it or aggregate towards it, if you will. What do you think is the new story is for us? JV: I studied history when I was in school, it was my major, actually; ironically, here all I feel I do is work in the future now, but in the presentation I gave today at this workshop I started with a bunch of stories about how this cycle has happened in the past, how there’s been some sort of technological innovation that nobody expected. That’s happened throughout history, whether it was the steam engine or the Model T or the web browser, and a tremendous amount of capital tends to flow towards those technological innovations, so a bunch of people get really rich and it changes the way we do something, typically business - that certainly happened in the late nineties. There was this innovation and suddenly every business changed, some of them subtly, but some of them fundamentally, in the way in which they did their business because of web technologies and a tremendous amount of money went into funding and financing that, and a bunch of people got rich, and people thought this would continue forever. Of course it doesn’t, there isn’t an unlimited supply of capital. Eventually something has to pay off and everybody got scared and there was a big bust. Well, that’s going to happen again, inevitably. I don’t know if it will necessarily happen in this industry with these Web 2.0 companies that are getting funded now. Perhaps it won’t, perhaps it’ll shake out and things will level off and that will be good, but even if it does happen again there’s a lot that we can learn this time around: right, there’s these design techniques, there’s this way about thinking about our audiences, there’s this openness that these new companies have that old companies, traditional companies, never had before, and that’s the kind of stuff I try to tease out of these stories that I look for. SD: I also think just in talking with people and watching it seems that there’s definitely is a sense of people really building their foundations at this round in a way that was maybe not there before, I mean understanding that incremental growth and smaller, strong foundation, kind of lean and mean instead of bloated… JV: I wonder about that. Maybe I’m skeptical because I went through it before and certainly there aren’t people going out saying, “I am going to change way people buy groceries and I’m taking this company public and we are going to be a two billion dollar company next year.” That’s not happening, thank God that’s not happening, because that was exhausting. At the same time this idea of keeping things very small, trying to build a business first and then take the funding, like, those are great principles. I don’t think those principles, while they may be spoken a lot, are held by a lot of these companies to be honest, and again I might just be cynical about this, but I think everybody is doing this for the American Dream, right, well, not everybody, but a fair amount of people are getting into this thinking “I can build a web app, I can sell it, I can get rich”, and that’s not going to happen to most people, but I think a lot of people have the potential to think, “I can create a web app, I can build a community of users that like it, I can make a good living off of that”. Ryan Carson is inspiring to me, the way they have done their little web apps, that they are turning it into a business, it’s a great lifestyle for them, things like that and I’m sure there’s a potential reward out of all of that but perhaps y’know, making a living off of a web application, not a terrible thing, so we’ll see. SD: I appreciate that you have both the wide, the long, and also the deep view. Can you talk a little bit about the company you were at before Google? JV: Sure, about five years ago, 2001, at the worst possible time in the industry, the absolute bottom of the bust, I started a company with six of my friends, all peers in the industry, all designers in various fields of design, we started a company called Adaptive Path. It was a great time, frankly, to start a company, it was a really bad business environment but still there was projects going on and were able to find the little projects to get started and we sort of grew up out of that. We followed this rebirth of the industry and it’s been an absolutely fantastic experience to have because we tried to embody a lot of the principles of good design in our company and I think we’ve followed through on that pretty well. I miss it a lot, I mean I’m down at Google now, we did a product inside of Adaptive Path called Measure Map which we sold to Google and I went with that, to bring that over but I absolutely miss Adaptive Path as well, it continues to be a fantastic group of people doing really, really important work. SD: Measure Map, can you tell me a little bit about how that’s playing out as people are starting to use it? JV: Well, Measure Map was kind of interesting to me in that, much like Evan Williams who started Blogger and now is doing Odeo, he said in his talk today that he needed to make applications that he wanted to use. That’s what Measure Map was for me. I had had a blog for three or four years, I knew it was doing well because I got email, and people would leave comments, but I had no idea how well. I looked at all these analytics tools that were out there, the stat counters and so on, and I couldn’t figure them out. I thought, “I’m kind of a smart guy, what’s going on here?”, and it turns out that most of them were either enterprise level or very powerful open source tools for sysadmins that were managing servers. There was nothing to help people understand what impact they were having with a blog. So I said well let’s do a web analytics tool just for blogs, specific to that kind of traffic, to that kind of web site, and instead of measuring hits or advertising conversions or any of that stuff why don’t we just measure participation, how the blog is doing, and what you can you learn from that. We tried to make it as simple as possible. When you log into Measure Map, there’s just four numbers - how many people came today, and what did they do, did they link to you, did they leave a comment, how many posts did they read… Four simple things - you can drill into that, get a little more detail, but we really just wanted to show cause and effect. It’s like a garden, you pay attention to it and it will grow. SD: Within Google are you being asked to work on the next generation of the visual UIs for the display of data? JV: Well, I’m taking a variety of approaches to working in a giant company like that. I really have no intent on redesigning Google. I don’t even want the opportunity. We’re taking Measure Map and they have a Google Analytics product and we’re working with those guys to bring best practices together and help people understand how their traffic is doing and stuff like that. There’s a lot of amazing design work that’s happening at Google right now and we’re sort of looking at what the best practices are for this kind of audience, for these kinds of applications, and seeing how there’s all these points of integration and that’s kind of the work we’re doing so I think there’s going to be an awful lot coming out of all of this. SD: So, for our listeners, any last jewels you’d like to give? What would be your advice, from your professional career? JV: One of the things that I’ve always told designers is to go make stuff. Always be making stuff, and frankly it could not be easier now. It doesn’t matter if you’re a designer, a developer or what, the risk in building web application or frankly in visualising your ideas is so much lower now. Ten years ago it cost millions of dollars to try to visualise something. You had to buy very expensive servers, you had to get very expensive software to run on those servers, you had to pay for very expensive advertising before you could even get started. Now we have cost per click advertising for pennies, servers that are dirt cheap, software’s all free now, and the software is so good now. We developed Measure Map on Ruby on Rails and it was remarkable how little effort it took for us to iterate and change our ideas and to visualise stuff as quickly as possible. So that’s my thing, if you have an idea it’s a lot easier now to just go try, and that’s what I encourage everybody to do. Yeah, absolutely. SD: Well, thank you, really wonderful interview. Thanks. Transcribed by Scott Morris Like this article? Digg it!
Source: feeds.feedburner.com

A War Game and a Meta-Cognitive Approach for Learning How to Learn in a Network-Centric World: F2C2
Podcast / mp3 file Future Force Company Commander, developed by zombie.com for SAIC and the U.S. Army, is a gorgeously designed game. It is clear, well-organized, and has fantastic graphics and it has a high authenticity quotient. It gives you a sense that you’re doing something in the way that it’s really done. You’re learning how to learn in the new network-centric environment. You’re teaching
Source: feeds.feedburner.com

Bushy Tail Award Addendums
Show 599 Link to Nominations in the forum. Enjoy the show, - Two Blind Squirrels (( Download ))Related Article:Site Promotion Through Web AwardsBy Scott Lindsay Website promotion is not an easy task, because thousands of new websites are created each day, each of them striving for a position in the first search engine results, some using ethical techniques, others try to fool the search engines. If you want to achieve a top 20 position you have to compete against spam content sites, black hat SEO sites, made for Adsense sites and powerful websites created by the most skilled web developers. The good news is that are not so many websites of genuine quality out there, so webmasters who really focus on usability, valuable content, improving user experience and so on, do have a chance to reach the top positions. However, it is not enough to create the perfect website. The job is done when the website is known and recognized, when people come back, mesmerized by the information and design, in one word, quality. That s also the moment when a website starts paying back for itself. Webmasters and online entrepreneurs employ many tools to make a website known. From the simple directory and search engines submissions to complex advertising means, pay per click, banner exchange and ads, nothing escapes the trial. A less popular method is submitting websites for web awards. While many web awards are not really meaningful, there are a few that can mean a lot for the award wining website. If you have a website and you are serious about doing business online, applying for web awards couldn t hurt. Generally, awards show a commitment for excellence and quality, exactly what web users are looking for. The psychological impact is great. A web award is not just a pretty picture on your website, but a statement. It underlines values and encourages visitors to trust your company and make a purchase. For example, a Webby award-wining site is actually recognized for excellence in Web design, creativity, usability and functionality. A World Wide Web Award serves the same purpose. Both these awards are prestigious and very difficult to win. They are significant because experienced web developers who make every effort to create compelling and innovative websites, for a better Internet, choose the winners. To have any of the two can bring important benefits to your website, including increase of traffic, media coverage (both online and offline), a boost of popularity and, as already underlined, enhanced public credibility. Usually to qualify for a web award, a website needs to be developed according to the W3C Standards, to have original, quality content, to be spam and scam free, family and children friendly eventually apply for a free ICRA label, to respect copyright laws and to promote moral and universal values. If you apply for a web award you have to make sure all your links are fully functional that means no coming soon or under construction pages, no broken links, and no other technical difficulties (dead graphics and pictures, lack of proper alt attributes, heavy flash, etc). Winning a web award could bring you recognition offline too. Just ad the award on your brochures, fliers and other promotional materials to let people know that your company strives for excellence in everything it does. Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites.com at: www.highpowersites.com Article Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Lindsay
Source: mylifeministries.org

Creativity Podcast Series- #2 Amber Nussbaum
This podcast is the second in a series of podcasts with highly creative people. I am interested to see if there is anything to learn from creative people in terms of reforming education, especially as it relates to digital and media literacy. Amber Nussbaum is a  24 year old graphic designer for a Fortune 500 transportation company and my oldest daughter. She is without a doubt one of the most creative people I know. In this podcast she shares her own thoughts on creativity, her growth as a blogger (she has been at it for 8 years), and her memories about receiving her education as an unschooler. Here are Amber’s Show Notes:1. Amber introduces herself. 2. Examples of the creative projects and venues with which she finds herself involved. 3. Amber describes some of her home improvement projects and the magazines that have featured her work.4.She defines creativity: "Looking at what you enjoy most in life and putting that as an outward manifestation of yourself."5. Amber started blogging at 16. She didn’t know that was what it was called at the time. It started as a Web site where she would post her poetry and her ideas trying to find her voice. She had something to say and wanted a place to gather her thoughts. She wasn’t as concerned about audience when she got started as she was about documenting her thoughts.6. Next, she moved to Moveable Type, she has been using it since the first version became available. She began promoting local band’s shows and would post news, pics and blog about upcoming shows and after show performance reviews.That was when Amber’s site really started getting some real traffic. She wrote for BlogCritics.org for awhile, writing record reviews.But then when she switched Web hosts she lost a lot of her files and took her site down from frustration.7. Aug. 2004 she put her domain back up. She describes her blog as a mishmash of her life and creations. But rather than just blogging as a journal or diary, she uses her blog to document her life in photography and as a way to help others learn how to do the projects she has recently mastered herself.8. Amber averages about 1500 unique hits per day. (After this podcast recording Life Hacker featured an artsy home improvement project she did and she got 6000 hits in one day.)9.  Amber helps out artists who display their wares on Etsy.com, a site with all original pieces by independent artists. Typically, she will feature one item and it will sell in a few hours due the numbers of readers looking at what she posts. Amber says it is satisfying to feel she is helping the artist while giving the person who buys the object a beautiful piece of art and giving her readers something lovely to look at on her blog.10. Amber describes how her unconventional schooling experience helped her to become the self-directed, creative thinker she is today. She credits he way she was taught for her ability to think critically. People will say to her, "Oh you are a knitter… Where can I take a knitting class?" Amber  didn’t know how to respond as she never took a knitting class. She believes in using books, the Web, and folks in her network online to learn new things. Just like she use to do in her homeschool.11. Amber encourages us all to go after things yourself rather than depending on someone to teach you. She describes how the web provides community and how by reading "do it yourself" information found on other like-minded blogs, she has made real life friends. Some folks say that socializing on computers distances you from true human touch. But Amber argues that it is not so today with blogs and other social networking sites. She connects with others all the time who like the same things she does. No matter how obscure what you are into is– the web will help you find others who love it too.12. Amber shares how her early experiences online shaped her Internet use today. Only old people used Telenet and talked about it, no one her age. But she knew about it and connecting with others online in 1993 in our homeschool got her attention. She felt invested in the Internet as a communication medium.13. The creative process for Amber begins with being somewhere and seeing something wonderful and taking out her camera and capturing the moment and then coming back and blogging about it. Often her real life experiences will inspire her creations. In terms of her Web site, Amber fears that some might think it is "nerdy" but pretty much all the time she lives her life thinking this moment would be cool to post about. She likes sharing her experiences online.14. How can creativity improve education overall? Amber shares creative lessons she remembers from her middle school experience. "Giving a kid a camera is giving them power. The power to create." She recalls having to be "in character" all day as part of a book report project.15.Teachers might be intimidated by giving their students the amount of control over their learning she had in her educational experience.But Amber feels that being in charge of her learning helped her graduate in the top spot of her college class. Her education taught her to make decisions.16.Amber compares college "read a book and take a test" to the more organic way she learned in our home. She said when you are vested in the learning process, you want to learn.17. Amber describes the learning experience of going different places… being there and doing it.  "Retention is amazing when you are taught like that."18. She feels college should be more project-based. She describes an engaged, creative lesson done in one of her art history classes.19. The most incredible moment of the interview was when Amber called me a dynamic instructor who is passionate about what she is teaching. It was a defining moment for me, both as her teacher and her mother.20. A passionate teacher is "that teacher"- passion makes the difference!21. Forced learning doesn’t appeal to Amber at all, even in the world of work. If you feel vested then you are going to be 100% there in the process making it happen.22. Her theme is "If you feel you have a stake in what you are doing you are going to give it your all."23. Since she has an authentic audience via her blog she puts more into refining her writing. She feels this would work for students as well.  24. Problem/project- based learning requires more work from the teacher– but cool things will come out of it. Teachers will have to give more of themselves, but it will make the product more valuable. Being creative means taking risks.26. "How many of you remember stuff you did in the 6th grade? Well I do. Because I was a part of the learning. I was in charge."27.Give a kid responsibility and they will act responsible. Give them the opportunity to create. Listen to the interview in MP3 format
Source: feeds.feedburner.com

Keywords: Printing,Publishing,Graphic Design,Printing,Color Copies,Publishing