April 26, 2010
Writing What You Know: Realia
Filed Under Cllents, Print | Leave a Comment
Margaret Roach Inc. is also a print publisher. Hot off the presses is the memoir manual Writing What You Know: Realia by Marion Roach Smith–Margaret’s sister, but no relation to me. Described as “the essential, eccentric guidebook for anyone telling their own story—in print or on a blog. Stop treading water in writing exercises or hiding behind ‘writer’s block,’ and learn to write memoir with intent, starting today. Marion Roach Smith’s disarmingly frank but wildly fun and unforgettable tactics, gleaned from the sold-out class she has been teaching for 13 years, will teach you how.”
I designed the cover and the interior, thoroughly enjoying being back in the realm of paper and ink. Of course, it is all done on the computer, but the process and results seem so different than web design.
More details are here at thesisterproject.com.
Buy Writing What You Know: Realia, just $12.95 plus shipping, from:
April 18, 2010
The Lumpen Institute of Fine Arts is a social network on ning.com for friends who share my interest in politics and art. It has also proved to be a good example for my clients who need a network site. Ning is similar to Facebook. For example, Steve Brodner uses it for his illustration class at SVA and my son-in-law uses it for organizing his companions on their trek up Mount Rainier. (No links to either of those as they are private.) I am blogging about it here because I have found many clients and associates to be unaware of ning.com. And because I just made a post there.
Like Facebook, ning.com is free. That’s not quite the same as Open Source but it is all part of the the “the new economy.” That’s a loaded phrase, but yes, the internet is changing our culture, including how we do business. I am fascinated with this change. I am part of it and trust my posts here are informative to clients and visitors about how that affects our shared interests.
Most of my website design for the past two years has been done using WordPress software as a CMS–content management system. WordPress is Open Source. (This last link will take you to Wikipedia–also Open Source.) Its advantages and disadvantages effect my designs. Go to Is Open Source a New Economic Paradigm? if this interests you. I will make updates about economics and philosophy there and about how it affects my design and my clients here.
• The April Wired magazine cover story How the Tablet Will Change the World has a pant load of information about our changing computer culture. Steven Levy outlines the brewing battle between Apple’s proprietary OS and Google’s open source Read more
January 27, 2010
JavaScript Panoramas from Rio
Filed Under Cllents, Photography, Web | 2 Comments
I have taken many panorama photos over the last ten years and used Flash scripting to put them on the web. (See Italia) But since 2008 I have limited using Flash for websites. Friend, colleague and mentor Uzi Halimun first alerted me, saying “Steve Jobs has it in for Flash.” (Do a search and you will see.) Once I saw that Flash did not run on my iPod Touch (or the iPhone), I knew Flash would not be in my future until that changed. Mobile computing is the future. This week I did stumble upon this usabilitypost.com post that addresses just that. Many of the features that make Flash so flashy can now be done with javascript and that is where I am going to develop my skillz.
I am very pleased with this example. I miss Rio de Janeiro and my family and friends there. But this being late January, I miss the sun, the beach and especially the Aterro where I would go almost every day to draw and play basketball. I love this panorama. Does it seem a little jerky? It is a big file.
I just looked. It does run on my iPod Touch. Maravilhosa!! I have set it to scroll automatically upon loading but there are controls that can be set to scroll left, right and pause. This went fairly fast. Good, because I have clients waiting.
UPDATES 2.10.10: Remy Sharp’s HTML vs Flash is another in depth post about the limitations of Flash and the future web standards.
2.19.10: It has been widely reported that Steve Jobs told the editors of the Wall Street Journal to forget Flash. Handsome Phil Elmer-DeWitt gives his expert opinion as to why Jobs is so obsessed with Flash. And Flash creator Jeremy Allaire explains that this is a battle for the future of web content.
4.29.10: Steve Jobs shares his thoughts onWhat Is Wrong With Flash
-Phil Elmer-DeWitt comments of the Fortune tech blog: Steve Jobs Says What Is Wrong With Flash
-As does the New York Times: Apple’s Chief Makes Case Against Flash
8.12.10: Evan Blackford sent this link http://gigaom.com/2010/08/08/open-source-and-economics-how-the-hold… It has excellant insight and historical notes about Flash and Open Source.
November 12, 2009
Typography on the Web
Filed Under Cllents, Web | Leave a Comment
Typography on the web
…..
The large lettering above is not a graphic but done with HTML CSS styling. Notice that you can select and copy it. This is very cool. I saw this on the design blog idsn.org. Check it out for a good review of the history, future and politics of website type. (My take: Open Source VS Microsoft, more or less)
This may seem like a topic for designers only but it is not. Google can read and rank HTML type more accurately than text that is displayed as a jpeg, png or gif image. Very important for your SEO (search engine optimization). Also, the fonts used give your site identity making it memorable. (Are you going to make me say the word “branding”?) My Delicious bookmarks on Type can be found here.
July 24, 2009
Damn That Spam
Filed Under Cllents | Leave a Comment
Spam stats from Net-Security Org
About six months ago I started receiving spam emails from kbs(at)kennethbsmith.com that I most certainly did not send. They appeared to originate in China because they were promoting an ecommerce site that had a lot of Chinese letters in the headlines and captions. Since then I have been receiving more and more emails from kbs(at)kennethbsmith.com. I am not using the “@” symbol because I believe that they (the bad guys) can get my email address from anyplace that has it listed publicly, like this blog post. A bot can harvest it, put it on a list and then that list is sold to whomever. You have probably noticed that many netizens disguise their email address in this way. This has also resulted in me relying more on Yahoo! and gmail for my email correspondence. So many email accounts. So little time.
Sadly, spam is part of internet life. And is seems to be getting worse. I recently read that 75-85% of all email is spam. (Net-Security Org spam stats) Geesh! Googling, I see there is even a Spam-o-meter! Curretly 88.5%
Yesterday I received an email from a client who had just received spam from herself. (I looked and I had also received spam promoting 1001 Postcards From: kbs(at)kennethbsmith.com.) She wanted to know what she could do.
Read more
June 26, 2009
Recently I discovered two website features that could be of interest to my clients: Apture and Mobify.
First Apture. Apture gives a web page reader hyperlinks without having to leave the page. You can see it at work in the text on this page of drawings I recently did on my iPod Touch. (Or see it now by clicking on the iPod Touch link.) I think it is a great advantage to not leave the page to see maps, video or Wikipedia snippets, but you will be the judge of that. Another great feature of Apture is that it can be added by the client without special software. After I add some code to the selected pages, he/she can edit the Apture links from within his/her browser (Firefox, Safari, IE). There are some quirks to it. Or maybe it is me, but the more I use it, the more I expect I will master it and the developers at Apture will improve their code. See the Apture website for more details. It is not as simple as drag and drop, but for certain sites, the payoff is well worth it.
Now Mofiby. I sent the Flower Series page to a friend to beta test and got back the reply, “Sorry, Flash is not iPhone friendly.” Damn! That’s right, I use Flash to show the time lapse drawings. I also know that Apture can demand a lot from the iPhone Safari browser. Though it is much improved on the OS 3 upgrade, it should still be thought of as Safar Lite.
I love my iPod Touch and believe that smartphones are definately the future of digital data. My web sites need to designed to account for this. If you are viewing this on a smartphone now, the Flower Series page is a good test for adapting rich media pages to the small screen. I had heard of Mobify from web guru Chris Coyier but had not had a chance to explore it. Mobify is also a bit glitchy. But like Apture, I am in the process of mastering it and believe it can be a good solution for this web development issue.
slideshow
-
-
-
Kenneth's bookshelf: read
Berger wrote this while Picasso was still alive. Quite interesting to read why this Marxist critic thinks the communist artist failed.
First in the trilogy and my favorite. He reminds me of Louise Ehrdrich. I wrote and told him so.
