Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Well, this week has been a busy one for me filled with project proposals and new business meetings. However, I did find the time today to step across the street from our offices to visit the Wired NEXTFEST at Millennium Park that is taking place from now until October 12th. I only had a few moments to visit the event but I wanted to share an exhibit that really caught my eye today.

Today I received an email from one of the readers asking what would be the correct path to pursue a job in web development (including back-end programming). I originally started out on this track taking a number of computer science course, however I ultimately decided that I enjoyed design more and switched fields of study. Since I never completed this program, and I am not officially a developer I am hoping that the community can help answer this question:

To put it bluntly, I hate Comcast. Pretty much everything about the company and its offerings are mediocre, and now they are going to help the US become mediocre with them. Comcast recently announced that they will begin capping downloads after 250 gigs of data has been transferred per month. While arguably high compared to some other nations, the problem lies in how this will impact innovation. Just as we are beginning to see the web develop into a place where rich media is not only possible but maturing at a rapid pace Comcast decides to send us to a screaming halt.

I was reading wired.com today when I stumbled upon this article featured on the new webmonkey about how starting today dynamic flash documents would start showing up in Google’s index. Apparently Adobe has supplied Google with a special searchable SWF library that will allow it to do so. According to the original press release, Yahoo! is also working with Adobe to achieve similar results. For the most part I have decided that this is a generally positive move for the technology, however I wonder what impact this improved search functionality will have?

On one side of the spectrum this advancement in technology could have little to no effect (which I will explain below) or it could be a major disruptor in terms of established “rules” of web design. Most likely it will fall somewhere near the middle, however I believe skewed towards the no effect column.

I was thinking earlier today that it would be a great idea to convert the background graphics that I have created for my Twitter themes into iPhone wallpapers so that the two could match. If you haven’t already downloaded a free Twitter theme, check out the links in the related articles section below.

Web 2.0 has been around for some time now and the buzz is finally starting to die down, at least amongst web professionals. One thing that doesn’t seem to be going away though is the perpetual beta. Every day I run across a new site that is in beta (and has been for a very long time), while not a huge problem and probably overlooked by many it is annoying. Some people may question why it even matters, but the reason why is because it’s nothing more than a diversion tactic.

Company logos used for example only, this is not an attack on the companies / services pictured

It seems like every day I read about a new web app however none that have caught my attention like CushyCMS. In fact I was desperately seeking a way to easily supply a simple CMS for a client that needed to edit just a couple of small space on their brochure site. The hard part about this particular client is that they have had the same hosting plan for over 5 years and for some reason have no database. This made finding a simple solution somewhat hard, that was until I stumbled upon CushyCMS today.

Some of you that frequent Positive Space may have noticed that some new advertisers have signed up over the past couple of days. I just wanted to give them a quick welcome and introduce their services. Each of these advertisers was hand selected by me based on the quality of their offerings.

PSD2HTML

PSD2HTML.com provides fast, high quality conversion of graphic Web design into Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and its extensions. They accept source files in all common formats, including PSD, PNG, AI, and even HTML (existing markup).

FLASHLOADED

Flashloaded.com offers innovative and affordable Flash components to enhance your Adobe Flash projects. Their Flash extensions are easy to use, add exciting new features to your web sites and save you time.

COPPER PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Copper revolutionizes project management, offering intuitive client, project, and task views, custom project reports, gantt, file management, timesheets and other features that become indispensable for everyone in your organization. View a demo at copperproject.com

DESIGN FLOAT

DesignFloat.com is a social media site dedicated to the design industry. Design Float aims to collect and organize design-related content from across the web while letting the community float the best articles to the top pages of their categories and sink the most irrelevant one’s to the bottom.

Advertising space still available

Advertising space on Positive Space is currently still available but going fast. There is one remaining display ad which can be obtained through buysellads.com and seven icon ads which can be purchased by visiting my advertising page.

Remember that these advertisers are helping to keep Positive Space going while allowing me to get away from those ugly and annoying Adsense ads. If you may be in need of similar services please give them your consideration.

I hate tag clouds, there were obviously must have been created by a programmer (no offense). The default offering completely lack any sort of hierarchy or organization. While increasing the size of the tags does convey which tags are the most popular, it certainly is not the most elegant or clean solution. Up until a couple of weeks ago I had no solution other than to remove the tag cloud, or just give a simple list of tags which is more of a copout than a solution. That was until now, or before I conceived the idea for the tag grid, which I will share with you in a step-by-step how to.

One of the reasons that I love twitter other than its addictive properties and ease of integration with other services is the ability to design your own templates or themes. Part of the reason I love this feature is because it is so easy to use. Instead of flooding users with numerous features you are supplied with an easy to use and simple system that allows for almost endless customization. Part of the creativity involved in twitter themes is actually exploiting the system in order to create a beautiful result. That being said, I have decided to share some of the themes I have used recently with my readers. Also, depending on the success of these themes, I will be adding more in the future.