Tuesday, April 12, 2005

My latest article about intellectual property, copyright and Creative Commons for web designers is out today in Issue 4 of Design In-Flight. Here's an excerpt:

Who owns your portfolio?
It might seem logical that you own the designs you create; but it's not always true.
With the advent of the first graphical internet browser came a whole new design discipline – web design – and with it came a new way of getting work. Instead of collating examples of their best work in a book to be carried from interview to interview, designers started to use websites to display their talents. Online portfolios allowed designers to include not just a set of images, but links to the finished sites so that prospective clients could examine code and functionality. Now designers of all ilks can send not a physical portfolio but a simple URI to new employers, and can promote themselves online using their website as their business card.
But the very thing that makes an online portfolio so useful – the ease with which it can be found – is also its biggest drawback, because if you include content which one of your former clients or employers thinks is infringing their copyright, they can quickly and easily find you and take action.

If you want to read the whole thing, then you can buy a copy of Design In-Flight for just $3, or you can get the first four issues for $10. Editor, Andy Arikawa has consistently drawn together some great writing from some of the industries best designers – so it's always well worth the investment.
Other cool stuff in this issue includes: Eye on type 01, by Hrant H. Papazian; Feeling your way around grids, by Mark Boulton; and The more things stay the same, the more they change, by Molly E. Holzschlag. So run, don't walk, and get your copy now.

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Squee! Mac OSX Tiger out on 29 April!

by Suw on April 12, 2005

Just got a press release from Apple to say that the long awaited next version of Mac's OSX, code-named Tiger, is going to be released on April 29. Yay!
Here are the bits I'm excited about:

Spotlight is Apple’s new lightning fast way for users to find virtually anything stored on their Mac. Much like users can instantly find songs in iTunes® by name, artist or album, Spotlight searches the contents inside documents and information about those documents, or metadata, to find just about anything—emails, contacts, appointments, images, PDFs, and almost any type of document, including Microsoft Office documents — then automatically organises and instantly displays the results. Because Spotlight technology is built right into the core of the operating system, it automatically updates results instantly whenever files change and enables developers to incorporate Spotlight technology into their applications. Apple has incorporated Spotlight search technology into several Tiger applications including Mail, Address Book, Finder and System Preferences, and several third party developers are expected to introduce applications with Spotlight search technology in the coming months.
Dashboard is a new world of beautiful accessory applications called widgets that appear instantly to give users immediate access to information like stock quotes, weather forecasts, airline flight tracking, unit of measure, currency conversions and a phone book. With a single click a user’s favourite Dashboard widgets instantly appear with up to the second information; with another click they’re instantly gone and the user is right back to where they left off. Tiger ships with 14 widgets, and because Dashboard is based on standard web technologies such as HTML and JavaScript, it’s easy for third party developers to create new widgets that users can easily add to their Dashboards.
iChat in Tiger supports the stunning new H.264 video codec for dramatically better picture quality over the same Internet bandwidth. Users can now create audio conferences with up to 10 people and video conferences with up to four people in a 3D virtual conference room, just as if they were all seated together at a table*. In addition, contacts on a Buddy List can now see which iTunes song a user is playing and view it in the iTunes Music Store with just one click.
A full featured RSS reader is built into Safari™ to provide instant access to the most current information from leading news organisations, community web sites and even personal weblogs (blogs) directly from the browser. Multiple RSS feeds can be merged into one easy-to-read interface to create a user’s own personal news clipping service.
QuickTime® 7, the latest version of Apple’s standards-based media player, with H.264 support, live video resizing, zero-configuration streaming and extensive surround sound.
Mail 2, a dramatically enhanced new version of the Mac OS X built-in Mail application with a new user interface, Spotlight searching, .Mac syncing and full screen slideshow.
iCal® 2, with support for birthday calendars, calendar groups, improved printing and Spotlight and Automator functions.
Font Book 2, the updated font management utility included in Mac OS X that now supports libraries for installing fonts anywhere on the system or network.

And at £89 (inc. VAT) for a single user license, it's a snip, although I probably won't bother getting it for this ol' PowerBook, but will try to find somewhere the money to get a shiny new one with Tiger pre-installed. Yay! Excitement abounds!

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That voodoo hoodoo that you do

by Suw on April 12, 2005

(08:55) Suw: It was so good yesterday to go see my acupuncturist. He's sort of a bit of a therapist too, i suppose. You get to spew out everything that's bothering you, then he sticks pins in you, and sticks magnets to you, and then you feel much better. it's great.
(09:00) kevinmarks: heh sounds like irc, but with magnets
(09:01) Suw: i remember when i first went, last year he took one looks and said 'Hmm, you're a bit stressed. I am going to put a stop to that' and when i came out it was like he'd found the off switch. i was completely calm, completely relaxed.
(09:02) kevinmarks: spooky. so you lie there face down and moan and he sticks pins in you and you feel better?
(09:04) Suw: bascially, yes
(09:04) kevinmarks: sounds like voodoo
(09:04) Suw: the moaning is optional
(09:04) kevinmarks: somewhere a doll is in great pain

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