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» Site News & Updates

Guess what! There are actually things happening with the site a little now and then and most of the time the changes do happen over the weekend. Here are some news on what’s up!

New Sub-header

Alright so I’ve updated the sub-header from the old cutoff and generally buggy featured tutorial viewer because I felt it was just taking up space and not doing that much. Instead I’ve added a little three part info box. The latest blog headlines, the podcast episode (latest) and the latest tutorials (or featured ones). I hope you like it!

Brand new poll!

I thought since Photoshop World is coming up this week (more on that in a couple of days), that it would be a pretty good to change out that poll. Instead I’ve changed it to ask which your favorite blogging platform is as I’m really interested in knowing. Now I do know that I can’t fit all in a poll, so I’ve listed the most major ones and then included an other one, if there’s a platform you think should be there. Leave me a comment.

Articles Coming

I have written and I’m in the process of writing more more photography and web design articles for the blog as I feel the news posts need something more per day. I’ll still go on with the posts but also do more article posting and so on. Look out for the first one tomorrow!

New CSTT Podcast Epsiode

Sorry for the no-podcast week this past week. I was down with a cold and couldn’t record which is why. I’m uploading this weeks show right now and you should be getting another one coming tomorrow to make up for it.

That’s it for this weekends updates. Look out for some new things coming soon

» The Winners of the Worldwide Photo Walk!

It’s the time! The winners are now revealed! But before I give you the link to go and check them out I want to talk a bit. In the post Scott’s made, he posts how he chosed the winner and the ten runner-ups, below here, I’ll explain how I chosed the winner for the Gothenburg walk and who that person was Now though, without further ado, here are the winners of the worldwide photo walk!

Choosing the winner of the Gothenburg walk

Now, I’m going to tell you up front that it was a really hard task to do. There were so many amazing shots taken that day and just looking at all of them uploaded it seemed like a pretty impossible task at the beginning to pick out the best ones, let alone pick out one winner. What I decided upon doing was making a quick scheme that allowed me to select the ones I really liked. Of course it’s really up to my taste (rest assured, I did get many peoples opinion before being able to decide) and that’s it. All the shots with any tilted horizons etc. were gone right away and the ones that spoke to me with a good message or feeling were in. After I had gathered it down to a bunch of favourites I looked over those over and over before deciding and also asked quite a few people for their opinions. In the end it came down to one final image which I really really liked, among with everyone else I asked.

Therefore it is now my pleasure to reveal the winner of the Gothenburg Photo Walk!

Smooth as Cream

by Jenny Jeppsson

» Thursday Newsreel Post

 

I’m down with a cold and didn’t have enough power in me to write a newspost yesterday evening however now you’ll get almost a double day post

• Yesterday marked the release of Status, a cool web application that allows you to check in what you are doing and where, perfect if you are working in a team. I asked co-author of the app, Chris Coyier to sum it up in one sentence and he said, "Status is a lightweight communication tool for private groups", something I definitely agree on after trying it out. You can get more info on Status over at the official site or at Chris’s blog where you can also view a demo screencast.
   
• Panic has released a new version of the popular code-editor for mac, Coda, which brings it up to version 1.5. Some major feature additions include subversion support and find-and-replace through many files (and a lot more). The update is free for current users. A new license costs $99. Discounts are available for Transmit owners as well.
   
• More software updates. RealMacSoftware has released RapidWeaver 4.1, an update to the RapidWeaver application that allows you to create a website really simply, the iWeb way, only much more powerful and better. For current license holders (4 or 3.6) the 4.1 update is free and for new users, a copy of RapidWeaver costs $79.

» Wednesday Artist Interview: Juha M. Kinnunen

This weeks artist interview is with amazing landscape and nature photographer, Juha M. Kinnunen. He’s an all around great guy plus an amazing photographer (as you’ll notice here):

Tell us a little bit about yourself?

I am a photographer from Oulu, Finland. I started as a landscape and nature photographer but slowly I have progressed to other photographic fields as well such as wedding and corporate photography.

Do you have any formal training/what’s your background in art?

My background in art is 2 obligatory drawing classes in upper secondary high school. I actually started to study art more after I started photography already some years ago and currently I am doing art history as a minor subject with my university studies.

» Nikon releases the D90!

Nikon has today released the D90 which is set to replace the older D80 model. The specifications of the D90 is pretty remarkable in times. It’s the first dSLR that can shoot in HD video quality. It’s got a 12.3 Megapixel sensor and all the goodies we’ve again come to expect by now. 3" LCD (with a 170° viewing angle), Live View and ISO ranges from 100-6400. The live view mode has a special face priority mode you can choose as well and the viewfinder coverage is at 96%. The battery life is said to be good for a whole 850 shots.

The Nikon D90 is said to be available in September, body only for £699.99 or for £849.99 with the new 18-105 ƒ/3.5-5.6G VR lens.

» Tuesday News Stuff

Here’s what’s up this Tuesday:

• I’m going to start today by apologizing for the podcast being late. I had some archiving troubles on the podcast host site and thus I couldn’t upload any new episode (it is going to be fixed by tomorrow though). Look for a new episode coming tomorrow!
   
• Over at Copyblogger they ran a very interesting article called Are you Trustworthy today. It’s a pretty good article that talks about gaining your readers trust which is vital to any blogger who are looking to survive. A good read.
   
• WP Candy has a lot of different goodies and articles about WordPress and the latest today is about Frameworks, Child Themes, Filters and Hooks. It’s a pretty extensive article but it brings up a lot of good things and tips when designing for WordPress and how you can be helped using certain elements using the Thematic framework.
   
•  The iPhone has been out for a bit now and although there are quite a lot of applications in the business category of the AppStore, there are no big names released yet. Over at CIO.com they speculate in why.

Finally before we end for this news post I want to make a shout out to a buddy, Dave (known to some as PhotoshopDB). He and his wife had a very cute little baby this weekend! Congratulations guys!

» The Gothenburg Photo Walk

Here in Gothenburg we went on a Photowalk as well and if I may say so, it was really fun and went really really well. Happily enough we had no rain and actually pretty good weather for close-up abstract shots that didn’t involve the bland skyline (great light). The couple of photos above are taken by members of the walk (the one to the far left is of me taking a photos right upwards of a cool shape).

In our Flickr group we are seeing some great photos come up and it’s going to be such a hard time deciding the winner in a days time! If you want to check the magnificent works from the Gothenburg walkers out, check out the Flickr pool! We’re also building up a second pool for shots of the walkers and the event itself here, sadly at the time of writing it’s empty but you can check it out nonetheless.

So, lastly I’m posing this question to you! Did you attend any of the Photo Walks, did you have fun? How did it go? Post your experiences and results in the comments, I’m keen on knowing!

» Yawn-starting Monday News

 

It’s another start of the week and after a full weekened, I’m pretty tired, yet it’s back to school again for another week. Here’s the news:

• Over at Viget Inspire they have a cool article about Creating Unique Shapes Using Actionscript and Flash! The article has some really nice demonstrations on what you can achieve with this and also allows you to download the source files for it.
   
• John Nack posted on his blog a reply to some rants sent to Adobe through the cool website, Dear Adobe. Some of the rants were very well formed and said while others are the opposite. Both the blog post and the Dear Adobe site is worth checking out!
   
• There are rumours all over that a new iPod Nano design is coming and not a day goes by before we see something new or tweaked. The addition to the rumours come now from a case maker who’ve already made and is selling a case for the rumoured upcoming 4-gen nano. We’ll see where this all is going.
   
• To wake up and start the week, we all need a bit of insperation. I’m going to send you to the portfolio of a buddy of mine, Andy. He’s got some really good photos there which he are also selling, limited edition (hence the name, One of 42).

A blog post will come up later today about the Photowalk this weekend! I say now though that it was a great event and I’m happy to be able to share some photos with you later.

» Tomorrow is Photowalk day

The sole reason why I’m not posting a news post today is because I’m loading and gearing up for the Photowalk tomorrow which I’m leading here in Gothenburg, Sweden! I want to hope everyone has a good day, filled with nice shots and all before I go to bed now. To everyone here, see you tomorrow; for everyone else, have an amazing day and get to know a lot of new friends. And remember, no whining!

» Pros and cons of making a website “the easy way”

 

In this day and age it’s possible to make a website relatively easy and if you know Photoshop it’s definitely super easy. There are many programs such as Sitegrinder 2 and even Dreamweaver that helps you with this process and that could be all good, at least it seems all good. There is usually just one big flaw, the code is no good.