Digitally Refreshing

Okay, last time I said I would build a new Ubuntu nature wallpaper using the GIMP, on my Ubuntu box. But I couldn’t find the time to get back in to the swing of it, so I used Photoshop instead. Hope you don’t mind!

Download this wallpaper now.

I’ve opted for a more natural look this time, a slight departure from my previous Wooden themed Ubuntu wallpaper.

I created a site for my photography called matthewbowden.com, if you’re using Firefox 3.5 or Safari you’ll see the wonders of the CSS3 @font-face rule. More browsers need to step up, come on Chrome!

I also make use of PNGs (this is old news though) so I can swap out my background image easily.

I can’t take credit for the workings of the POP-ups though, this is all down to Highslide JS. Highslide was great for usability but not so for Google Analytics. I won’t bore you with the details here but I struggled to get the onClick tracking for the thumbnails. So have resorted to using onmouseup to track clicks and onclick to launch the POP-ups. It’s not ideal as I still need to work out how to track when someone uses the left / right controlls. But the way it’s set up now I can tell that the image I’ve used at the top of this post is the most popular.

Next step, get random background images to load up behind the thumbnails.

Completed another great site with the help of Ron Olivier down in South Africa.

Esias & Esra Bosch’s work really appealed to me, and I suggest you have a look around for yourself!
Esra Bosch is a ceramicist known countrywide for her attractive range of individual and functional ware. Her work reveals excellent decorator skills, flair for colour and an impressive sense of pattern. Esra’s dedication to her craft spills over into her surroundings, and she has created a warm, welcoming atmosphere in the studio where her ceramics are exhibited. The Bosch Studio – which bears the inimitable stamp of her father, celebrated artist Esias Bosch - has been a sought after destination for lovers of ceramics and art for some fifty years. Personal attention to customers has become synonymous with the studio, so that visitors return to it time and again when they visit the Mpumalanga Lowveld.

Here you go, please take a look at my first natural wood style Ubuntu wallpaper. I’ve only built it at one size for now, which is: 1440 x 900. If you’d like any other sizes I’ll gladly make - just write down what you need on this blog post.

Update: New! Ubuntu nature wallpaper

Spice Lumb is an event production and design company, producing very creative bespoke events since 1997, winning awards along the way. The company deals with all aspects of staging a successful event from venue finding, concept and production, set design and art direction, show production, live entertainment, creative consultancy and catering.

So, they needed a website which reflected that! I worked closely with Hattie who supplied a great deal of the graphics as she wanted to ensure that her style was carried throughout the site.

www.spicelumb.com is a great example of a keen and involved client working directly with a designer to produce a fantastic experience.

I arrived in Vegas a few days before the MIX09 conference so I could revisit my birth country (my family and I left when I was 9) and take in a few of the sites.

Sunday was spent on an Adventure Photo Tour which was a great sightseeing opportunity but hardly a ‘Photo’ tour as the website suggests. Pitching up with my Canon 5D and tripod must have seemed odd to the camera-phone wielding group. I charming couple even asked me how to switch off the flash on their automatic so it wouldn’t startle the helicopter pilot.

Monday and Tuesday were really exploratory days. Me, with camera, on foot. The sun was out and it was hot, I mean really hot, so my bar stops were many and quite frequent. This obviously took it’s toll on me and I spent the rest of the week alcohol free. Probably a good thing as then I could focus on MIX09!

The conference

Watched a great opening presentation, setting the pace and excitement for the next three days. I especially liked Bill Buxton and all his energy. Stack Overflow (a bit like a Yahoo! answers for programmers) is technically great and a fab resource too. Netflix showed just how good Silverlight can be. And if you’re still not convinced take a look at the Rolling Stone back issues site (not live yet). Great design and love the way it feels.

See Expression Blend in action, from concept to production. Need too many words to explain, so just watch.

At the end of a long day I attended the launch party at TAO, where I met some great people - mostly Microsoft partners, all out to have a good time and talk about technology.

Friday was probably my favourite day. This was down to fascinating presentations by Luke Wrobleski (I even bought his book) - Web form design and Dan Roam - The way of the whiteboard.

Both sessions were packed full of great ideas and examples that I can bring back to PruHealth and PruProtect and implement on our sites.

Overall the conference was great, the venue fantastic and the people, both presenters and attendees friendly and interesting. I’ll definitely pester my boss for the budget to go again next year!

And finally, a big thanks to Conchango for inviting me!

Further reading and viewing:
A list of all speakers

Check out some photos taken at MIX09

I’ve been editing PruHealth (the company I work for) profiles on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn today. Although certainly not the first company to publish themselves onto popular social networking platforms - it’s certainly the first time I get to see what’s going to happen behind the scenes.

I’ll be looking out for:

• who joins the group, just employees?
• whether or not this becomes a platform for people to complain about or praise what we do
• suggestions around how to improve our product
• referring traffic from Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn to our site

I’ll keep this post updated with anything interesting that I find, which I can share with you.

This is the third of three emails all with similar layouts but with different messages.

Interestingly, they know I have a bank account in SA (I live in the UK) so has someone purchased Standard Bank’s email database? I hope not, but if they had surely Standard Bank would know this – and then send out a secure message to it’s customers?

Here is an extract from the email

I searched the web for examples of this scam – to see if anyone else had posted about it – but there’s nothing out there. I can’t be the first – if you’ve seen this email too, post to this blog and let others know.

Here is the security alert page on the Standard Bank website  I see no mention of the email scam but there is a good page on email phishing.

Keep your eyes open for scams like this – always check to see where links in the email take you. In most cases banks will not email you anyway -  so always be careful.I tried one of the links to see what would happen and Google Chrome prevented me from visiting the page – thanks Google!

I long for another phone (but not an iPhone yet).

I’ve been using my HTC Diamond for 3 months.

I’ve persisted with the touch screen, I’ve researched speed issues, I’ve trauled forums, I’ve edited settings and I’m still unhappy.

I’m fed-up with having to restart my HTC Diamond to get the menus to work, or having to switch the power on and off (the small black button at the top of the handset) to kick start the thing into reposnding.

I spent 2 hours yesterday trying to figure out why Gmail won’t send emails, but will receive them (you have to actually delete the Gmail account and start again).

I hate the way Windows 6 Mobile pokes its ugly head through the HTC Diamond’s (redeeming) slick look and feel.

The browser is not good. This dissappoints me as I’m a desktop Opera user. it’s not clear when you’ve tapped a link, nor is it clear when something is happening - or how long it will take for a page to load - the green loading bar doesn’t work for me.

Screen gestures just aren’t clever enough, I end up tapping when I mean to scroll and vise versa. I don’t know how Apple do it, but gestures are practically flawless on my iPod Touch.

The Accelerometer, when used with the browser, is sluggish and jumpy.

The battery life is abismal - but this isn’t out of the ordinary for a device such as this.

I could go on, but this is turning into a rant …

Download now: http://www.google.com/chrome

Google have built a browser and they’ve called it Chrome. You can read the Google Chrome press release for all the technical and aspirational commentary. Read on for my take …

Things I like:

Tabs
Yep, all browsers have tabs - thanks to Opera (at least that’s where I first saw it years ago) but Google have done it better. Without getting into the complexities let me just say that now a tab can crash horribly and it won’t crash your whole browser session - fantastic!

Tear off tabs
What a pleasure, use this all the time - maybe because I have 2 screens in front of me and like to reference two pages at the same time. For example, I can see Chrome now whilst I write this - I don’t have to ctrl+tab constantly.

Most-visited thumbs on new, blank tab
A great interpretation of what Opera have been doing for ages. Last time I looked/updated which was several months ago I had to set up my favourites manually in Opera, which I did - but I lost interest quickly. Google Chrome does it for me, handy little thumbnails of my favourite sites laid out nicely for me.

A Private mode
Great for when you’re gift shopping for someone else who has access to the browser in your household. No more sifting through your history to delete that one ‘give-away’ website. Just launch the special private surfing window (it’s not a tab) and surf away.

It’s faster - by far
Check out these stats to see how quickly Google Chrome runs JavaScript.

There are things I need when I browse, such as Web Developer Tool Bar made popular by Firefox and Drag and Drop Attachments - but I expect these will come in time. I also wish that I could double click in the empty tab space to launch a new browser - but now that’s like clicking on the window itself.

So, I like Google Chrome (love it really because it will force M$ to build a better browser or knock it out of the market all together)