Placehold.it is an ingenious, simple service for anyone working on UI designs that entail ads. A total timesaver.
(thank you Andy)
ConnectTweet
Shelley Bernstein, today’s Brooklyn Beta Keynote speaker, mentioned ConnectTweet in her presentation today. Heading everything Social Media at the Brooklyn Museum, Shelley started using ConnectTweet to make sure that the Brooklyn Museum Twitter stream stays personal and interesting. (Nothing worse than an institution twitter stream that is taken over by boring marketing trolls.)
When you look at the Brooklyn Museum Twitter stream you notice that every tweet has a name attached to it, that then takes you to their personal stream.
I think this is a *fantastic* solution for companies/institutions that are trying to solve the ‘who should own our twitter stream dilemma’. Or as ConnectTweet put it on their site:
ConnectTweet allows the contributors to your central Twitter stream to continue to use their personal accounts that they are familiar with, no new logins to remember. This approach also allows your organization’s followers to discover the Twitter streams of the unique individuals that make up your company.
loosecubes
Loosecubes is a community of independent people building a global network of shared workspaces. They bring together people who have great space and people who want to work in it.
At Loosecubes, they want to change the way people work. Their members need the flexibility to work at home sometimes and in an office sometimes. They want the freedom to travel anywhere in the world and not have to worry about finding an internet connection and some intelligent people. They don’t think that Loosecubes hosts will participate just to make some extra money. They think they will participate because members are people they want to get to know. They’ll participate because they believe, that the only way to be truly independent work-wise is to have great workspace available when you need it – without paying an arm and a leg.
Find a big space and invite your friends and colleagues to work together. Spend a month coworking or a few weeks in another country.
Fantastic idea. We might just have to expand and put some desks up on Loosecubes here at swissmiss studio.
Interhoods
Weightshift just launched Interhoods, a real-world directory for designers and developers. The sign up process is incredibly simple: Log in with your Dribbble or Github accounts and identify your location in New York, San Francsico or Chicago (more cities coming soon). I agree with Khoi, it’s cool to be able to see who is physically near you, neighborhood by neighborhood, and will be even more useful if it achieves critical mass. Well done, Naz and Scott!
Check it out and register your location at Interhoods.org.
(via subtraction)
Image Search Tools
This Image Search Tools post over at one of my favorite blogs called Brainpickings.org made me look. (If you’re not already subscribed to Maria Popova’s avalanche of awesomeness, please do so.)
CompFight is a Flickr search tool that also also doubles as a visual inspiration engine. It lets you search based on tag or text, spitting out a pleasant wall of thumbnails. Particularly useful: The CreativeCommons search option, which filters results by image rights license type.
gridulator
Tell Gridulator your web-layout width and the number of columns you want, and it’ll spit back all the possible grids that have nice, round integers. Just the thing for pixel-based designfolk. There are inline previews, courtesy of the canvas element, and when you’re all set Gridulator can crank out full-size PNGs for you, ready for use in your CSS, Photoshop docs, or what have you. And there’s full keyboard control for you snazzy power users.
(thank you zoya)
Contxts
We all know the scenario, you just got back from your gathering of professionals and you want to connect with all of the people that you met. So you pull out your stack of cards and you go through your social network of choice searching for each one by one. Or, you were at an event and ran out of cards, or forgot them, which happens a lot to me. Fear no longer, Contxts is here to help!
Instead of giving your new friend your printed business card how about you, save a tree and, txt them your virtual one. This action automatically places them in your online contact list and if they have a profile on contxts.com you both are connected. There are two ways to connect with another person. Regardless of whether they have a profile on contxts or not you can exchange your credentials.
From your phone, you txt “send 3034759204” to 50500 (where 3034759204 is your recipients 10 digit number): Your recipient will receive all of your contact information.
Or
Your contact txts “username” to 50500 on their phone: You will receive a request confirmation (unless you have it turned off). Upon accepting, your contact will receive your information.
Your txt business card is not just an exchange of credentials. It’s also a request to connect profiles through our network. Each and every contact that you make is added to your virtual rolodex. From here you get access to whatever additional information they provide (flickr, twitter, linked-in).If the person that you are connecting with doesn’t have a profile yet – no problem. When they do create a profile all of their information in your rolodex is automatically updated.
Want to give it a try? Get my info by texting SWISSMISS to 50500.
(via jason santa maria)
Digital Tools helping in going Paperless
Based on my question from two days ago, I would like take the conversation a step further by asking the following:
What tools do you use (or know of) that help us in the quest to go digital and say goodbye to paper?
Here are some of the ones I use on a daily basis:
JotNot iPhone App, basically a scanner in your pocket. Email your photos as a PDF, back them up with various different services like Evernote or fax them. Fantastic app, highly recommend it to turn that receipt, that you might otherwise lose, into a pdf and store it in your files.
Don’t own one yet, but it’s on my wishlist: Neat Receipts Scanner and Filing Software.
Online based Project Management Tool Basecamp keeps me from printing out documents, knowing they are all up there in the cloud, always accessible.
Dropbox. Best $10 I spend every month. All my files, always synced on my various computers, at all times. As well always accessible on my iPhone and iPad. I have all my files on me at all times, at a click of a button. No need to print anything. Ever.
Google Docs. I used to bring a print out of my Class Rooster to class every week to keep track of attending students. No longer. I now log onto my Google Docs account while in class, check the boxes and save. Voila. Done.
What services do you use? Or dream of? What services does your company use to help you go digital?
FollowUpThen
FollowUpThen is made for people that email people like me. (Yes, I admit it.) It’s a free and easy email reminder service. On your next email just include time-interval@followupthen.com and they will follow up after the time interval you specify. No Account Required.
(via corey)
Rainbow Office
Designed by Dutch architecture firm Hofman Dujardin, the DLA Piper office is a playful space intended to accentuate the variations in sunlight throughout a typical working day. What does that mean? The side of the building that receives the most sunlight is balanced with cooler tones, while the side that receives the least is compensated with warm tones. Meanwhile, the giant gradient of carpet connects the four main meeting rooms, while also creating a simple and clear sense of orientation within the building.
I am pretty sure this will make my studiomate Jessi’s head explode. (She’s the rainbow birthday lady)
(Thank you Rion!)
Gmail Priority Inbox
Email is great, except when there’s too much of it. Gmail is rolling out a new feature today, called Priority Inbox. It automatically identifies your important email and separates it out from everything else, so you can focus on what really matters.
Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the “spam” folder. But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important—bologna, or “bacn.” So they’ve evolved Gmail’s filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this “bologna” from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.
As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you. You can help it get better by clicking the or buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the three inbox sections.)
Priority Inbox will be rolling out to all Gmail users, including those of you who use Google Apps, over the next week or so. Once you see the “New! Priority Inbox” link in the top right corner of your Gmail account (or the new Priority Inbox tab in Gmail Settings), take a look.
Email overload? Try Priority Inbox
Can’t wait to try this. Patiently waiting…
Interactive Sketching Notation 0.1
The interactive sketching notation is an emerging visual language which affords the representation of interface states and event-based user actions. Through a few simple and standardized rules, what the user sees (drawn in greys and blacks) and does (drawn in red) are unified into a coherent sketching system. This unification of both interface and use, intends to enable designers to tell more powerful stories of interaction.
Hat tip to by Jakub Linowski for creating and *sharing*!
(via Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits, PDFs and Resources on SmashingMagazine)
Call Phones From Gmail
Google just announced a new feature: Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.
Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates.
Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name. If you have a Google Voice phone number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID.
For more information, visit gmail.com/call.
Pictos
Pictos are Drew Wilson’s hand crafted, infinitely scalable and royalty-free icons for user interface designers.
Every Time Zone
A handy little tool for checking timezones around the world. Excellent for meeting planning. EveryTimeZone.com
(via @aaron)
SimFingers
I was googling away trying to find the best solution on how to create a demo video of an iPhone App. Until it occured to me, that my new desk neighbor, iPhone Ninja Larry Legend might know the answer. I asked and BOOM, there it was:
Use SimFinger. SimFinger itself is composed of two parts. One is a fake “frame” that sits ontop of the simulator. It adds some shine and gives it an iPhone 3G-look. Clicking anywhere on it will just click-through to whatever is below. The other part is a little nub that follows around your cursor. It “indents” when you press down with your mouse, indicating what would be a “touch” on the phone.
The idea is to position iPhone Simulator below this facade and do a screencapture of just this area. You’ll need a good screencapture tool. (iShowYou?) It has to have the option to capture just some sub-region of your screen, and also the option to not capture the mouse pointer (which you should use, unless you want to ruin the illusion).
With SimFinger running, go to the Control menu and select “Set Fake Carrier Text…”. Enter the text “ATT” then, relaunch the iPhone Simulator. You’ll notice the (dead-givaway) “Carrier” is replaced by “ATT”. Do the same for the “Fake Time Text”. Apple typically uses “9:42 AM”, I do the same for my screencasts.
The last step to the puzzle is to give your app some friends. SimFinger comes bundled with “Fake Apps” that mimic Apple’s built-in apps. In SimFinger, goto Control – Install Fake Apps…, then restart the iPhone Simulator one more time. You’ll see a ton of stuff was installed, but it’s probably in the wrong order. Go ahead and re-order the icons to match the screenshot below (the “official” order).
See a sample video done with SimFingers.
Download a copy of SimFingers.
Please make sure to make a donation for the creator of SimFingers.
Your Portfolio on LinkedIn
Finally: Linkedin now let’s you display your portfolio.
It seems that all of us, and every designer we know, is on LinkedIn. Why? Its the defacto professional directory, and its where our peers, big companies, agencies, and clients connect with us.
But there has never been a way to showcase our portfolio work on our LinkedIn profiles.
For over a year, Behance has been working with the LinkedIn folks to develop a special application within LinkedIn that allows ANY creative professional to showcase their multi-media portfolio.
The new “Portfolio Display” application allows anyone to create a free portfolio, display it on LinkedIn, and keep it in sync across other sites like AIGA, the Art Director’s Club Young Guns site, and the Behance Network. (YAY!)
You can create unlimited projects (with unlimited images, videos, multimedia) and upload them, via the Behance Network, to display on their LinkedIn profiles.
The application allows the 70+ million LinkedIn members – as well as hundreds of millions of visitors – to ACTUALLY SEE your creative work (rather than just read your resume).
If you are a creative professional on LinkedIn, you should join the Behance Network and then sync your portfolio with LinkedIn.
If you are already a member of the Behance Network, simply install the Creative Portfolio Display application on your LinkedIn Profile.
This is fantastic! Hat tip to Mattias and Scott of Behance.
reSPECt
AIGA Metro-North’s reSPECt is a civilized dialog between advocates and opponents of speculative branding and design work.
Is speculative (spec) work productive and fair? Can it enable clients to achieve goals that are not possible with traditional work-for hire practices? Does it advance the fortunes of some at the expense of others? What are the rewards and perils of speculative work?
Once a rare practice, spec, or “try before you buy”, work is being requested a growing number of businesses-startups to global organizations. Many believe that the call for unpaid work is being fueled by changing mores, new forms of crowd-sourcing, and economic stress–but whatever the cause, spec work has the potential to upend the economic model of the industry.
Moderated by New York State Supreme Court Justice Colleen D. Duffy, our diverse panel explored if, why, and how spec work has a rightful place in the way projects are structured. The evening’s goal was to outline a way forward that meets the functional, economic, and ethical needs of clients and practitioners.
The panel included:
• Ric Grefé, Executive Director, AIGA
• Brendán Murphy, Senior Partner, Lippincott
• Jerry Kathman, President & CEO, LPK
• John Gleason, Founder & President, A Better View
Held June 24th, 2010 at the The Ossining Public Library’s Camille Budarz Theater.
reSPECt (an AIGA Metro-North Event) from Scott Lerman on Vimeo.
ManageFlitter
ManageFlitter is a useful tool to manage your Twitter account. It let’s you clean up and manage who you follow, find out who isn’t following you back, find out which inactive accounts you follow and let’s you easily search inside your Twitter stream.
(via amritrichmond)
Bounce App
All of you webdesigners and developers, listen up, here’s a fabulous little app that will make your life easier. Bounce is little app from ZURB that let’s people quickly add feedback to any webpage and toss that back and forth with other people. This is fantastic. #yay
To see a quick example I just created, visit this link.
Notable
My studio mate Erica just told me about Notable, a nifty way of providing feedback for website projects. Notable allows you to quickly and easily give feedback on design, content, and code on any page of a website or application without leaving your browser. Bonus: It works on iPhone, too!
Demo of Notable from Bryan Zmijewski on Vimeo.
