A Beginner's Look at Adobe Fireworks

This guide shouldn’t be seen as a dig at Photoshop though, it is simply here to assist designers who want to start taking advantage of the time-saving, efficient features that Fireworks has to offer.

There are a staggering number of solid tips for Fireworks users in here. Many I had either forgotten or had not encountered myself.

July 14, 2011

Watch Out for Wet Paint

This site recently relaunched which I must assume you haven't noticed because the traffic I get to the site is fairly insubstantial. Apart from the new coat of paint I made a change to the underlying technology that powers this site. Previously, I used Mike Watts' static blogging engine [staticDimension][2] but I have since made the switch to the ever popular [Jekyll][3].

Switching to Jekyll brought a number of advantages, not the least of which was finer control over the functionality and generation process.[1] I wanted to make my archives section more accessible, to streamline the updating process, and expand my own horizons if only slightly. It's questionable whether I accomplished any of these goals in the switch, however, I'm not letting that stop me from rambling on.

Working the Archives

[3]:

  1. I am no coder, I can hack into things rather terribly but whatever hasn't been already done I cannot do for myself in this regard. Hence, extending Mr. Watts' software to better suit my needs was out of the picture. ↩︎

The Internet and Raves

Jeff Samuel:

"Part of the experience of contextualizing or processing what had happened at that party was sitting down on Monday and typing out my review," says Stallings. "It was sort of the digital water cooler for the ravers. I stalked people in classes whose name I'd seen on Hyperreal because I knew they were involved in the rave scene. There was definitely a lot of back and forth between the virtual world and the reality of rave."

A very interesting read documenting the spread of rave culture coinciding with the growth of the internet. The early internet provided the means to solving a number of difficult issues that facilitated the growth of these events, particularly organization of transportation and providing reference for drug quality(?).[1]

(via Kottke)

  1. Kids, say no to drugs. ↩︎

Hotmail's New Security Features

In short, the Hotmail team has added the ability to mark your friend's compromised account as "hacked", opening the door for the Hotmail staff to recover the account, also certain passwords are no longer allowed to be used by users (e.g., "password", "123456", "ilovecats", etc.).[1] I think both of these are terrific (simple) steps towards a more secure email for people who are not informed enough to protect themselves better online.

(via The Next Web)

  1. This feature will be introduced for new accounts and when users change their passwords. There is no mention of a prompt, or similar mechanism, to change passwords for those whose passwords are currently insecure. ↩︎

What it's like to Work for AOL

Oliver Miller:

When it comes to an article, what AOL cares about is the title, and the “keywords” that will make the article more likely to show up among the top results on Google. You type phrases into “Google Trends,” and it suggests the most popular combination of words associated with that topic. You then stick those words into your title and first paragraphs. Rinse, wash, and repeat. The article itself was just ballast.

(via BoingBoing)

What Will iOS5 Bring for Photographers?

Charlie Sorrel:

This is a nice way to allow quick access to the camera without compromising security. Just don’t leave you phone lying around at parties or you’ll be sure to end up with photos of somebody’s junk.

What a showstopping conclusion, thanks Wired.

What is this Place?

This is the weblog of the strangely disembodied TRST. Here it attempts to write somewhat intelligibly on, well, anything really. Overall, it may be less than enticing.

Places of Note