Category: design

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January 2010 Desktop Wallpaper: X Marks The Spot

For the past couple of years I’ve downloaded a free desktop calendar each month from Smashing Magazine. This year, I’m going to try and design one each month. If I do it on time, and it’s up-to-scratch, I may even submit some for the monthly gallery. We’ll see. Here’s my first attempt. It’s called: X Marks The Spot. No profound story behind the name. It’s originally a photo taken at Town Hall Station in Sydney, just above the ticket gates. Let me know what you think. I think it might be too red??

Download: 800 x 600; 1024 x 768; 1280 x 800; 1280 x 1024; 1440 x 900; 1920 x 1200

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Best of 2009 – Top 5 iPhone Apps

Best of 2009 round 1:  Albums. Round 2: iPhone Apps. I’ve had an iPhone for about 4 months. It really has been a handy productivity tool, and it also makes phone calls! The following are Applications that I use most days.

  1. Trip View Lite – super smart and super useful train (and bus + ferry) timetable. The paid version enables you to save your favourite trips. Triperrific.
  2. Dictionary.com – the best thing about this app is that you don’t need to be connected to the internet to use it. Also has a thesaurus. Wordelicious.
  3. Cash Trails – we enter spending into this app and then email it weekly as a spreadsheet. Good for keeping an eye on spending and budgeting. Cashtastic.
  4. Ultimate To Do – there are a billion ‘to-do’ apps. This one syncs with toodledo and follows the principles from David Allen and the GTD cult system. Just do it.
  5. ABC News + Media – good up-to-date news and other media from different ABC websites. ABC are leading the way in Oz in embracing new media. Sexy news.

Got an iPhone? What’s your #1 app??

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Deliberately Lame (can) = Cool Marketing

Sometimes being deliberately lame is just lame. But sometimes when someone is deliberately lame – it only adds to their rating on the coolnessometer. Dunlop Volleys have nailed it with their website Dunlop Valley Warehouse (their main site is good too) and their viral videos. I like Volleys – I’ve been a long time wearer. Check out their lame campaign. What do you think? Follow them on Twitter. Here’s the GIG VIEWER video:

See below for 3 more vids.

Continue reading “Deliberately Lame (can) = Cool Marketing”

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Is Posterous the future of blogging and social media?

I recently started experimenting with Posterous. I use it as a way of sharing twitter pictures and videos. It’s really quick & easy to use and it’s a tidy & attractive spot to store things. Here’s my posterous account: davemiers.posterous.com

davemiers.posterous.com

Having now used it for a couple of weeks, I think it’s much more than just a place to store pics. While I’d probably still recommend WordPress (free or self-hosted) as a more flexible and comprehensive platform for blogging, Posterous is a really good way to do quick and simple blogging. Read more below…

Continue reading “Is Posterous the future of blogging and social media?”

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Windows 7 Super Cheap, It’s Not Cheating!

Microsoft have some sweet deals on software for students. They now have their new operation system, Windows 7, available as an upgrade for only $49.95. Check out www.itsnotcheating.com.au for some action. (It’s called www.theultimatesteal.com in the US and it’s $29.99US – click on the icon in the top right corner for other countries)

pic from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1168889

I’m currently using Vista, I don’t really have a problem with it – it takes a bit of time to boot, but other than that – it does the job! Anyone updated yet? Is it worth it?

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Top 5 websites for making free church graphics

I was asked after a recent sermon where I got the graphics from the PowerPoint and sermon handout. Here’s my answer that I emailed to the staff and leaders at Willoughby. Copied below for your convenience.

pic from http://www.creativemyk.com/gallery.aspx?id=3891

  1. www.creativemyk.com – some of the gear on here is a little bit cheesy, but there’s plenty of good stuff. I just subscribe to it via RSS (What  the heck is rss?) and anytime I see a good one, I download and store in folder on my computer.
  2. www.sxc.hu – good range of free stock photos – they are also royalty free – so if you publish a book – you can use their pics without giving royalties. They’ve also got a good paid service – but I think there’s enough good stuff you don’t need to pay coin
  3. www.simplyyouthministry.com – there are some very very very cool backgrounds on here. Download all their folders, unzip them – and then put them into one gallery on your hard drive for quick viewing. The newer ones are better than the older ones (ie – the ones from 2002 are increasingly uncool design!!)
  4. www.stufficanuse.com – these guys have some fully pimped gear. You can download photoshop files etc.
  5. www.dafont.com – there are lots of really bad font sites online – and plenty that have annoying pop-ups. This site has some good gear and no pop-ups. I typically won’t download the ones that are “free for personal use only” – ie I’ll get the ones that the licence allows using on church material without having to buy the font.
  6. www.irfanview.com – yeah I know this makes 6, but this isn’t strictly somewhere to download gear. I have some sweet design software (adobe creative suite) – but often for something quick – I’ll just use PowerPoint. Put some fonts on your background – copy all – and then paste it into irfanview – you can easily crop and then save as JPEG (or any other number of file names).

Hope this is useful!