Entries from March 2007 ↓

It is tempting. Very tempting. You work for the Man and dream about being on your own, working flexible hours, choosing projects you like, calling yourself a full-time webdesign freelancer. Before you make your decision to “jump”, living your current employer, find out what professionals have to say about realities of being a freelancer. Maybe it is not the right moment for you? Maybe you are not good enough yet? Or maybe you don’t see great advantages of your current workplace? Good research is the key point so you can base your decision on facts not feelings and expectations.

Here are a few links that should be useful:
Cameron Moll - http://cameronmoll.com/
- Full-time freelancing: 10 things learned in 180 days (Cameron Moll)
- Full-time freelancing: 10 more things in 360 days (Cameron Moll)
- Farewell to freelancing: Final lessons learned (Cameron Moll)

Digital-Web - http://www.digital-web.com/
- Redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site (Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain)
- To Dance the Dance of Freelance (Matthew D. Jordan)

You Suck at Web Design - http://www.yousuckatwebdesign.com
- The Freelancer Employee Handbook (Matthew D. Jordan)
- Seven Ways to Get Your Client to Pay (Matthew D. Jordan) - don’t read it at work because you won’t be able to stop laughing!

Mainframe.gr
- 24 Freelancing tips (or the alphabet of a freelancer)

Do you know any other useful link? Feel free to leave them in the comments.

In this video, Jeff Han and Phil Davidson demonstrate how a multi-touch driven computer screen will change the way we work and play. This looks like a perfect experience with PC -more natural and efficient. But is it really the way you would like to work for 10 hourse a day? After an hour your hands can become tired.

Remapping the Universe

Of course, you can change an orientation of the presented screen to horizontal but still I think the future is in the devices where a small move of your fingers, or even your thought, simulates movement presented in the video. Like a trackball - little effort and a pointer goes from left to right.

And what about Brain-to-PC interface launched by an Austrian firm?
http://www.dailytech.com/Austrian+Firm+Launches+BraintoPC+Interface/article6447.htm

Try to predict interface of the future and leave your comments to this post.

It looks ordinary on the first glance but when you scroll down to the bottom you realise it is not so casual. Being creative sometimes means to show simple things in a different way. Have a look: http://www.recycledhuman.com/vitae.php

For my projects I use Google Analytics because it answers all the questions I have about the traffic on my websites. Although I realised it is worth to have a deeper look into the available stats solutions when I found Crazyegg on the Internet. It allows you to “Get a clearer picture of where your visitors are clicking and enhance your site’s results”.

I haven’t tested it yet but it is worth attention.

One of the reasons I have started sharingmatters.com was to collect links of ‘must-read’ articles found on the internet.

Does Your Copy Hold Up To A Quick Glance? is one of such editorials. It is a professionally written article, based on eyetracking researches, aimed on explaining how to keep the visitors on your website and let them read your content insted of just scanning it. If you have anything to do with webdesigning, you’ve got to read it!

This post is also a great occasion to recommend you the website where the above article is published: www.digital-web.com

We Are What We Do is a new movement inspiring people to use their everyday actions to change the world.

They say the average Briton uses 167 plastic bags every year - 10 billion in total. The answer is the creation by Anya Hindmarch bears the slogan “I’m not a plastic bag”, and is aimed at encouraging people to reuse bags when they go shopping.

A designer bag due to go on sale for charity for ???5 is being touted on the auction website eBay for up to ???175.

The reusable cotton bag was launched at London Fashion Week and handed out to a limited number of celebrities and fashion insiders.

Read more: ttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6448687.stm

If you live in the UK you can claim back your bank account, credit card and store card penalty charges. BBC publish a step-by-step guide how to do that:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6170209.stm.

Banks are making billions of pounds each year from penalty charges. But now the legality of these charges - which cost their customers an average of ???30 a time - is being called into question and thousands of customers want their money back.

Read more here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6169539.stm

Wikipedia is a free encyklopedia where people all over the world manage the content of it. You can find the answers to many questions very quickly and without paying a penny. But you need to be careful because this is not as reliable source of knowledge as Britannica.

It came out that one of the promintent editoris and administrators of Wikipedia, Essjay, was found to have posted false information on his Wikipedia userpage. “He had claimed to hold doctoral degrees in theology and canon law as a tenured professor at a private university he was in fact a community college dropout from the U.S. state of Kentucky and had relied on sources such as Catholicism for Dummies when editing articles”. He had edited over 20,000 phrases on the Wikipedia.

Read more about this story

PhotoshopNews.com publishes photos from a Quark expedition to Antarctica:
http://photoshopnews.com/2007/03/08/im-back-from-antarctica-but-im-on-the-road-again/. You may probably never see such landscapes in your life so it is worth imagining you are there and relaxing for a few minutes. Also, you can find out something about professional photographers in action.

Their previous expenditions can be seen here:
http://photoshopnews.com/feature-stories/antarctica-expedition/.

Leave some comments below and let me know what you think about it.

When surfing the Internet many times we click on images to see an enlarged versions of them. Usually it is done using simple pop-up window that appears on our screen. But there is a nicer way to achive this. Lightbox is the answer. Simply click on the image, the screen goes dark and you can see an animation revealing bigger picture you wanted to see. It looks pretty and allows you to save a lot of effort and place because it has a slide show option implemented as well. Useful solutions for webmasters (you can donate the author to show your appreciation) and for users. If you build a website and want to use a Lightbox on it, think how much time you save as ready-to-go solution is waiting for you.