While reading Digg today, I ran across an interesting link to an article posted on the BBC website about how web users are skipping all the formalities so to speak and going right for the information they want. Users are going right for search engines and skipping home pages. You can find the article here.
Today, I was reading through a web developer forum and I ran across a noobie web designer asking for help with one of her school projects. She was looking for a place to find a cheat sheet. (It was apparent from how she asked her question that she didn’t know much about web design.) As I was scrolling past her post, I noticed that someone had posted a reply. I was scanning the reply when I came to an abrupt halt and shifted my eyes up a few lines to see what the poster was talking about. The reply was from a self proclaimed developer who was trying to explain how the web development world works. Here is what he said, which got me thinking:
In web development, there are designers and developers. These 2 different jobs, which overlap, have 2 different philosophies. Designers generally think in the term; form over function. How the page looks is more important than how it works. For developers it’s the opposite; form follows function. A functioning site is more important than a pretty site.
He goes onto say that the best sites are usually a balance of the two philosophies. However my question is whether a developer can be a good designer and vise versa? I would love some feedback from other web developers, what are your thoughts on this?
A few days ago I was reading through the Invisible Children blog and I stumbled across The Biggest Online Dance Battle. Invisible Children has decided to support the Adam / Chu Dance Crew (ACDC) by selling their t-shirts which are sold right out of the Invisible Children store. By purchasing a shirt you aren’t only representing the ACDC crew, but also helping support Invisible Children with your purchase.
To sum it up, ACDC challenged Miley Cyrus (why they chose her I don’t know) to “The biggest dance battle You Tube has ever seen”. And well I have yet to see Miley’s video, it seems as though the ACDC Crew dominated.
Above is the dance video ACDC made, below is their video about the shirts and donating all the proceeds to Invisible Children.
For more videos, Jon Chu’s got ‘em on his YouTube page.
Photo Credit: InvisibleChildren.com
Today, my company (Lifespent Media), switched to a new project management tool called Basecamp. Although this is not my first time using it, I am still impressed. I used Basecamp while I was working with Design is Fuel on one of their projects. I will admit its hard trying to stay organized and keep track of files, emails, and client contact information. Basecamp has really made my life easy by storing everything in one place. Now my clients can login, post feedback, keep up with their to-do list for their specific project, view upcoming benchmarks and even chat live with our developers. Its especially helpful for my clients who aren’t local, they don’t have to waste an email or a phone call to check on the status of their project, now they just login and check it in real time.
But, like I said, we have just started to use it within the last 24 hours, so I will post again in the near future and see if I still think Basecamp is worth the coinage. So far so good though!
After literally years of contemplation I decided (more like talked my self into) it was time to buy a Mac. Thats right, I gave in and purchased an iMac and wow… am glad I decided too. The responsiveness, tools, eye candy, and usability to name a few are reasons enough for me to have bought this Mac.
The responsiveness of this computer out weighs anything I have seen with a PC. What do I mean by responsiveness? Well lets just say when I tell this thing to “wake up” while its been sleeping it comes up immediately unlike the PC which seems to have its own snooze button and takes a little longer to get out of bed.
The tools available for web development and graphics design have everything covered that a PC can do and then some. I enjoy using the Adobe Creative Suite with Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash and Illustrator. While the Adobe Suite is run on Windows as well, the speed at which the applications open and run on the Mac leave the PC in the dust. I have since found a simple and light weight text editor called TextMate (to replace Dreamweaver), not only does it recognize HTML, XHTML, CSS, PHP, and much more but it also recognizes Ruby on Rails. Before with my PC I would run different programs for the different languages I was programing in no longer is that the case. Speaking of ROR (Ruby on Rails), developing applications is a breeze considering its pre-installed on Leopard. Saved me a lot of time from having to download and install repositories and hope it worked like I have had to do in the past on Ubuntu.
But I have got to say that the best part of using a Mac isn’t that everything works, or that the applications load quick, or even the lack of the “blue screen of death“, no the best part for me is the usability that Leopard offers. Everything from spaces to expose’ to the dock. Leopard makes life easy on the user with the logical order and organization of files and folders. Everything is straight forward with a “what you see is what you get” mentality.
In all, I am really just trying to say that I enjoy using a Mac and if you happen to be on the fence trying to decide if they are worth the money, in my humble opinion they are worth every cent!
Photo Credit: Apple Inc.