Fixing Your Mighty Mouse Trackball
I found a great article a few months back that actually worked for once. Mighty mice are great but the trackball tends to stop working (a little too often) and you actually don’t need to return it for a new one…
This article has all the information you need to fix your trackball; it’s actually quite simple.
37signals & OpenID
I have three different accounts with 37s: two business Basecamp accounts and a personal Backpack account for GTD. Until now, it’s been super annoying to keep logging into every single one and keeping them in different tabs.
37signals now offers Open Bar, which works something like this…
1. Set up an OpenID account at http://www.myopenid.com
2. Login to each 37s account and click “Use OpenID” instead of using a username/password
3. And that’s it, now you can just switch between accounts by choosing the account at the top of the window
Excellent.
Taking a Breather…
As you well know, I haven’t posted here in quite some time and I’m here to say it will still be quite some time.
Lots of new and exciting things are happening and I just don’t have the time to write like I’ve always wanted. I will, although, try to come and post up some recent work and projects as they come about.
For now, get ready for the full launch of Neue Interactive (dot com), coming around July first or so.
Pixish.com Revisited
Yesterday I posted an entry about Derek Powazek’s newest idea, Pixish.com. Over the course of today, I’ve revisited the site a few times and I’ve gathered what it’s truly all about.
Let me say right now, Pixish is going to be huge.
As Pixish is in beta, Derek’s main focus is user feedback. The feedback, all in all, has been pretty positive; with a few people bringing up the question of spec work. And with that, he’s rapidly produced a response that, in my opinion, was dead on.
The purpose of Pixish in its core is to connect visual artists, designers and photographers with people, organizations and businesses requiring their skills.
Just that in itself has a lot of potential.
Until now, we as designers haven’t really found an true outlet to prospect for work with such influence coming from our industry. The primary concern at Pixish is the designer, and making sure that the work that we do is appraised, and compensated for, at a price that is widely accepted by the Pixish community at large.
If Pixish becomes widely used by those outside of the design world, in that big companies begin using it for requesting major projects, the creative community at large will prosper significantly. We will not only have a specific place to prospect for new clientele but we can rest assured we will receive the compensation that our peers and ourselves think is right.
Over the course of Spring 2008, I think a weekly, if not daily, visit over to Pixish for work will begin to be added to every designer’s checklist across the nation.
Hats off to you, Mr. Powazek.
PureEdit is Live.
Michael Dick’s CMS PureEdit has been in development for quite sometime. I’ve been going back frequently to watch his screencasts.
But it is finally available! Check out www.pureedit.com.
Pixish.com
Derek Powazek’s new community bringing artists and publishers together in a marketplace community atmosphere.
From Pixish.com: Pixish is a place where people who want images and people who make images can easily find each other and collaborate on creative projects together.
CES 2008
It’s 4a.m. Monday morning, I roll out of bed and drive up to Dulles Airport and jump on a plane to Las Vegas. After a cramped flight and a thousand knees to the back, we arrive in Sin City.
After picking up a rental car, we headed up to the Venetian for CES Day 1. CES Day 2 was over at the Las Vegas Convention Center…
My CES Favorites:
1. Panasonic’s debut of the world’s largest LCD television at one hundred fifty inches.
2. The newest generation of the iRobot, the smart vacuum that cleans your house while you’re at work, on vacation or just out and about.
The additions to the iRobot are level sensing, stopping the vacuum before falling down anything and ability to clean hardwoods and carpet with one machine.
3. (Dare I Say) Microsoft Surface is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life. The Surface at the show was 36 inches, full touch-sensored, coffee table style. I have to say, it was truly a thing of beauty and class.
The overall experience in Vegas was great. We hit most of the casinos, checked out the strip, visited the Hoover Dam (Transformers) and even went to the mall to visit the Apple Store.
I would recommend the Consumer Electronics Show to anyone who likes discovering and learning about new technologies, and also is able to walk around…a lot. Seriously though, it was a great trip, a great vacation, and I plan to attend CES 2009 without a doubt.
Expect a Flickr set shortly…
New iPhone Features
Flipping through Ryan Sims’ digital photo-album, I came across something intriguing. What’s this, change the positioning of the home icons can we?
The dream is here…download the new iPhone firmware update and you’re free to move the icons wherever you want!
WebClips are here now as well. Go on Safari, find the site you love, click the “+” and click “Add to Home Screen”. An icon will appear on your Home screen that will take you directly to that link. Delicious.
Want to make your website WebClip ready? Go to Apple’s iPhone Dev Center.
Easy Way to Access Favorites on iPhone
I was just playing with my iPhone and accidentally pressed the “Home” button twice. Instead of it just staying on the home screen, it went directly to Favorites.
To make sure it didn’t just bring up the last screen I was viewing, I went into Mail (and back to home) but sure enough from the home screen, if you press the “Home” button twice, it will bring you to your Favorites.
What a fun little discovery.
Using the Holidays to Your Advantage
Some great ideas over at Freelance Switch.
Facebook Removes “Is” From Status
There’s joy in the streets, the cutest of small animals and babies alike frolicking and giggling because today, today Facebook removes the default “is” from statuses.
Closing The Deal Online.
As web professionals, I’m sure we would all love to be able to close our deals online, without putting on a nice outfit and driving to the prospect. Unfortunately for most of us, that just isn’t the case.
Yet, if we were to break down why we can’t close deals online when we can in person, only a few reasons come to mind.
This is how I plan to eliminate them.
1. Display testimonials.
Still to this day, people do not trust that you’re really you, or that you really do what you say. By displaying as many testimonials as you can, you begin to alleviate that uncertainty. A contact number might also be nice. :)
2. Explain everything.
As much as we wish that our clients would just “get it,” the fact is that they don’t; and many never will because they simply do not care. We as web professionals have to understand that despite our love for standards, obsession with separation of content and presentation, et cetera; our clients don’t share in those.
Symphony 2.0 Sneak Peek
Check out the sneak peek here.
The Email Standards Project
“The Email Standards Project works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email.”
As a strong believer in Campaign Monitor and using email to prospect and notify, I am in full support of everything they’re doing.
Check out their site and find out what you can do to help.
Finally! Google Desktop For Mac
After far too long, Google has finally released Google Desktop for Mac.
I personally loved it when I used PC’s, and even with the beauty of Finder, I know it’s going to come in handy.
Check it out and download it here.