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» Late Tuesday Things

It’s busy times right now preparing the shop windows and all for the summer and sales and I’m a bit of the in-house web designer and design/tech guy so I actually get to do a lot of it.

• Microsoft has released a critical update to Office for Mac 2008 bringing it up to 12.1.1. It should fix several things mainly stability and performance issues. The update is available through the Auto Updater which you can get to by going into either Office application and choose "Check for Updates".
   
• Here’s a little tip for you, something I always do. If you are trying to design something, start with a piece of paper and a pencil (having an eraser nearby would be pretty nifty as well). This way you can lay up a lot of things and write comments to yourself before working and finalising it on the computer. Also very easy to show to other people near you for quick-feedback.
   
• If you are looking for an advanced text editor also for the Mac that greatly supports coding, then you should look no further than Smultron. It’s a really good editor that supports all major code languages you want to code in mainly for the web but also for more trivial tasks like doing a to-do list. Check it out!
   
• I’m in the market for a new lens, mainly a macro lens (can’t be too expensive so the Nikon 105 VR is out unfortunately) and if any of you have any experience with one, post a comment and tell me because I’d love to hear it! Needs to be good for macro and portraits. I have a pretty good idea on what to check out but any input and hands-on experience wouldn’t hurt.

» Late Wednesday Quickies

It’s getting late here when I’m typing this and I’m almost about to head to bed but I thought I should do a little update before. I just finished an extremely busy evening. Right after school I had to go to a three hour intro course to driving, which is mandatory for everyone wanting to start practise driving here in this country, feels good to have it done but it was painfully slow, especially knowing you have a french test tomorrow Wish me luck.

• Free books are always cool and the guys over at SitePoint has right now got a full book available to download, yours to keep forever, called "The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques". It’s said to be a great book for designers and I just downloaded it myself. It’ll be a little time before I can read it myself though. Got to much on my plate, but it sounds cool and you can only download it for free for the next 30 days!
   
• I’m becoming more of an InDesign addict and really starting to using the program a lot more (it’s fun). Apart from noticing that in the tutorial index I’ve found a cool site for you all other InDesign users as well. It is called InDesignSecrets and run by Anne-Marie Concepcion. It’s a really good tips blog that makes a good read any day.
   
• If you do a lot of RGB to CMYK or CMYK to RGB colour conversions, then you’ll probably appreciate this little colour conversion tool available online, for free!

 

» Thursday News Update

Congratulations to Scott Kelby

I want to congratulate Scott Kelby on the news that his Digital Photography Book Volume 1 is the best selling photography book ever right now! What’s even more is that currently his Volume 2 of the book is selling much more than volume one did for the same amount of time when it was released! Many congrats to Scott on this big achievement!

New online class from Kelby Training - Creative Integration with Taz Tally

Kelby Training has launched yet another new online training class called "Creative Intregration" hosted by Taz Tally. In this class you’ll be walked through how to set up the different creative suite applications to work better with eachother and how to use them together in a good way. I’ve watched most of the lessons in the class and I must say Taz has done an amazing job with it!

Web Design Forums

There are a lot of forums on the web and if you are a web designer, chances are that you might be looking for one to be a member on or you are at some already but want more to be on. Smashing Magazine posted a good list today with a little synopsis following each forum in their list. What they’ve done is listing a couple of forums they like with thumbnail and info.

 

» Tuesday Article: The future need for web designers

 I’m going to touch on a subject that I’ve been pondering for a while and have a few different thoughts on this time and that is the topic of the current need and the evolvement of the web designers in todays world. We are greatly evolving the techniques and the ways of doing things and it is getting a lot more accessible for people to make their own sites. Read this full article, after the jump.

» Webdesigner Thursday!

Since it’s soon going to be weekend, everyone should have time to update their websites (I hope). So for this post, I decided to share some different webdesigning stuff.

First link, will go to Smashing Magazine, that has an awesome article on how you can create a very successful portfolio.
Also we have the Astheria blog, that will give you even more tips on how to get a better portfolio.

And when you design a portfolio, colors is a must!
Therefore I searched for some sites that gives you some great palettes!
Take a look here, here and here.

And finally, Copyblogger has a great  article on how you can write better!
Check it out!