Damn That Spam

Posted by kbs
Spam stats from the February 2009 report
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.
Continue reading →

Apture, Mobify and Flowers

Posted by kbs

25-tulips450Recently 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.

Magazine Writing and Design

Posted by kbs

Last Thursday, May 15, I visited Jamie Malanowski‘s Marymount Manhattan class Writing for Magazines. Jamie was my editor in the Notebook section of Time magazine for two years and he asked me to share my ideas (and war stories) about the relationship between designer, editor and writer. I had never done this before, nor had I heard of any design peers talking to editorial journalism classes. It is a great topic and shows (once again) Jamie’s originality and insight.

I talked about the shared goals and  the dynamics of the art director/editor relationship. There was good discussion about using design, photography and illustration to make the page inviting, engage the reader and maximize the impact of the article.

thinking-with-type-ellen-lupton-paperback-cover-artOne reason I am posting now is to add some thoughts I had about this subject, post class discussion . One book I thought the class might want to look at is Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students, by Ellen Lupton (Princeton Architectural Press, 2004).

Another is The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. This might be of less practical interest to writers but as it is a typographic bible, written by a poet-turned-designer, I am mentioning here. I learned a lot from his thoughtful approach to reading words and how they should be used on a “page.” His basis is the spoken word. Now there is also The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web.

I wish I had asked how many in the class have blogs? Besides the obvious educational benefits to them as magazine writers, I think this is a perfect opportunity for them to deal with their words and design.

I also believe they should all be photographers and even know how to shoot video. That would have been a lively discussion.

This is a good place for me to archive links to relevant topics about magazines and journalism. I will start with these:

Bill Moyers: Buying the War
Bill Moyers: Stopping the Presses; David Simon
NYTimes: Online Publisher scribd.com

Border Hopping with Cory Mawhorter

Posted by kbs

cory150

In mid February, I undertook a tutorial about changing fonts on a web page*(see footnote at the end of this post for details).  I had tried other solutions but this one called FaceLift was better. I am using it here on this blog. Notice that all of the headlines are in a slab serif font? See also Pages,  Categories, etc. in the sidebar? This is Gold to a web designer. This enables me to give my clients unique design (aka “branding”), my raison d’etre.

I like to learn more about these authors. Many are engineers in school or just out. Always interesting to see what other projects  they have done and what kind of work is in their portfolio. http://facelift.mawhorter.net/ was the homepage. Odd thing here was that the author, Cory Mawhorter, was not very forthcoming. No portfolio. Just one other project which looked like a precursor to FaceLift.

I started digging in his personal blog and found a post from October that he was finalizing plans to take his van on a quest to see America. 50 states in 52 weeks. He had a number of delays, but by the time I was reading his blog in mid February, he was three weeks into his trip. It was the Monday before Mardi Gras and Cory was in New Orleans…. Continue reading →

WordPress as a CMS

Posted by kbs

My name is Ken and I am hopelessly addicted. (response: “Hello Ken.”) Last November I joined The New York City WordPress Meetup Group to meet other WordPress junkies. I wanted to see what they score and where. Always looking for that Blue Magic plugin. (see American Gangster)

wpsmallIn February, I went to a MeetUp titled WordPress as a CMS: The Strategy of Content Publishing. It was well presented but it wasn’t what I had expected. (That could be another post: expectations. But not here.) My comments did lead to some good discussion with the presenter Johnathan Andersen, who started a message board thread about CMS. Below is an excerpt of my post there. I am including it here because I think it begins to explain my evolving approach to web site design.

What do you think it means to use WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS)?

I have been designing sites for about ten years. Most of my clients are writers, photographers illustrators, a book publisher and a few small business owners. The more computer literate have been using Adobe Contribute to edit their sites. I started using WP about three years ago with some of my authors. Publishers Weekly wrote that an author should be blogging whenever they have a new book coming out. That’s when I added WP blogs to their sites. I have always wanted my clients to maintain their own sites and WP seems like a great solution.

WHAT IS CMS TO ME?
Content Management. For starters, that means pages for Press, Bios, News, Coming Events, Portfolios (Galleries) and Contact as well as posts for a Blog. It also means an eCommerce Store, though I have not had any demand for that yet. The traditional Blog and the Magazine formats can accomplish this.

I want to do some work outside of the available Theme Templates. I am a graphic designer. This is what I love. I also believe original site design gives my clients unique branding. But that probably doesn’t apply to this thread, except to say that I am learning to design my own modular WP sites (Thank you Chris @ www.css-tricks.com)

Because I want my clients to have as much control of their site as possible, I have been building some sites with Chris Pearson’s Thesis theme. (see www.thesisterproject.com) This has great promise, particularly because of the two extra Thesis Dashboard panels.

I will be very interested see if this generates any discussion. I have only been to two meetups but am looking forward to seeing what develops. It is great to get out from behind the monitor and meet with people. Even better when we are sharing the techie bong.

This is Valentines Day. I love my wife. (and my new iPod Touch)

113011UPDATE: see Smashing Magazine articleHow WordPress Took the CMS Crown.

Netizen of Elsewhere, USA

Posted by kbs

Elsewhere, USA

In early January, I received an email from Dalton Conley announcing that he would be at a Barnes & Noble in Greenwich Village reading from his latest book “Elsewhere, USA.” I have known Dalton for thirty years. He was twelve years old when his father and I became friends while working together. In 2002, I got to know Dalton even better when he asked me to design a website for him that organized the books and papers he had authored.  It was then that I read his memoir “Honkey.” Dalton was beginning his professorship in the sociology department at  New York University. Currently he is the acting dean.

As an artist, books about zeitgeist like Christopher Lasch’s “The Culture of Narcissism” and David Brooks’  “Bobos in Paridise” have always inspired me. I don’t know if Dalton’s book will meet that standard but listening to him talk provoked me beyond my expectations. I went to his reading out of curiosity and support but given how much my work and thoughts this past year have been about computers, the internet, websites and blogs, I was fascinated to hear Dalton, the sociologist, address these issues from a historical and cultural perspective. Continue reading →