designertoday.com has a list of 225 different Illustrator tutorials; from beginner to advanced. Because you can never have enough tutorials or bookmarks to save them.
It seems “more” is surely in… every time I have seen a collection of tutorials during the last month the number just keeps growing 10 – 20 – 50 -100 and now 225 tutorials for Illustrator; because I guess 200 tutorials were not enough.
But then again, who am I to complain about free? Enjoy.
Here is an actual review, not just first impressions, of the MacBook Air by Ars Technica. This review deals with only the standard 4200rpm hard drive version – they will do another review for the solid-state hard drive version of this laptop on February 5th.
Big points of the review are:
Read the full review to make your opinions… but seems quite a disappointment for some of us. I could have lived without the DVD drive. I could have lived with the slower performance (on the go only!!). But such a short battery life is really a disappointment; especially for a computer that is made to take with you everywhere you can take a manila folder.
For those of us that can actually listen to music while we work, I highly recommend last.fm
This is more so now that since last week you can listen to full albums right from your browser. It has a bit of a long process to install, but it is simple. Just create the free account, download their software, integrate it with the music player of your choice and it will look for your favorite songs, genres and artists. All this happens in the installation program so it is not as complicated as it might sound.
After installation, the system on their website will automatically start creating a play list of songs that you should like based on your favorites from the media player you chose during installation. It might take a few hours to find the perfect songs for you but wait until the site is done and come back later.
Ok, you came back and now your last.fm account has your profile and play lists ready. Just hit the play button and start listening to their recommendations. Don’t like a song? Just use the skip button, or the BAN button, and the system will learn your music taste based on your decisions. Love the current song? Click the LOVE button and your play list will continue to be filtered by those choices. The more you train the system by letting it know which songs you like and which you don’t the better selections it will give you.
And now you can select an artist and scroll down to the albums, now you can just select and play the full album. Not all of the albums for each artist are available but the collection is quite good. Enjoy!
The title should come as no surprise; but thanks to that fact we can drive developers and programmers crazy sometimes.
We are picky on what goes where (layout), picky on which color to use (color combination), picky on how images should display (image manipulation), and if you are head of the project – specially picky on how the system works (design usability) and finally picky on the details that make the project look complete. These are pieces of the puzzle that some programmers and developers only pay light attention to. Just look at design-police.org for guidelines; yeah we have that many.
Although a system can -work- correctly, it might not display correctly or it might not give the impression a finished system should give. On the other side of the coin, programmers do pay attention to other parts of the system that we might not pay as much attention to. A programmer, somewhere, is mentioning this concept in a programming blog.
Every year the electronics community gathers to see what is the future of those lovable gadgets and plasma screens every technophile salivates for. This show is called the CES; the Consumer Electronics Show and this year it was celebrated January 7 to 10, 2008 in Las Vegas.
The lucky guys at Gizmodo where there and have created a list of what they think were the best offerings at the show. Everything from 150″ TVs (yep, that is right 150 inches of pure imagery), media players, geek appearances and weird gadgets you weren’t expecting. Like for example a leopard skin taser with built-in MP3 player – what? Don’t believe me? Just follow the link.
And that is why we love CES; a bunch of gadgets that we won’t get anytime soon, if at all, and a lot that are just fun reading about – because you don’t really want them.
Smashing magazine has an great collection of Photoshop tutorials. Anything from rendering products, lightning effects, retouching photos and improving their look, reflections, creating product boxes… you name it and it is probably there.
The list of tutorials is over 30 pages long, and that is not counting how long each tutorial is. So if you have a lot of free time to master your Photoshop skills this is a very good place to start; also a great page to bookmark since you won’t be done with those tutorials in a while and you might need them later.
If you are into usability and interface design these are a must; a great book collection by Smashing Magazine. If you are a web designer or developer some will actually help you not make common mistakes, others will take your techniques farther, but understanding them will surely improve the usability of your projects.
Here is their list:
About Face 3. The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann and David Cronin
Prioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen, Hoa Loranger
Designing the Obvious. A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design by Robert Hoekman, Jr.
Don’t Make Me Think. A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
The Design of Sites. Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites by Douglas Van Duyne, James Landay, Jason Hong.
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design by Jenifer Tidwell
Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices by Dan Saffer
Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge
Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte
This is only a partial list; for the complete list (they include editor choices) and for more information on each book read the Smashing Magazine article.
Apple lovers, keep in mind this is just a concept and not coming to stores any time soon so don’t go asking for it at the Apple store just yet.
The iRing, a concept design by Victor Soto, is meant to connect to the iPhone or iTouch via bluetooth. (although the iTouch doesn’t have bluetooth right now) It would control functions like volume, move back and forward through you songs or media, and mute. All this through touch sensitive controls on the surface of the ring; it also employees a lock mechanism so you don’t go changing the volume because you moved your hand.
A bit ahead of it’s time in terms of actual implementation, but I believe it is a nice idea on what the future can hold for device control. It was made with the Apple products in mind, but imagine music systems and TVs that can be controlled this way.
Imagine never running around the house trying to find the TV remote, it is always in your hand. I surely want to imagine that.
Just wanted to give a shout to those visitors from the GLCC ads. The GLCC is about to have their annual Stars of the Rainbow gala and celebration; their way to congratulate those that helped the GLBT community during the past year.
Save the date Sunday, February 17th 2008 and RSVP for this year’s gala. Contact Nicole for info.
For those of you that don’t know, Apple released their MacBook Air January 15th 2008 and it should start shipping the first week of February. The lucky guys at Gizmodo have received one already. How does it compare to other ultra-portables in the market? How does it compare to the Sony VAIO?
Gizmodo has an article about it. Looks like a great machine for those that don’t care to lose a bit of performance for commodity and design, it sure looks nice. Check it out.
