TalkingApes

Thoughts on the new CNN.com Beta

If you haven’t seen it already, you can check out CNN.com’s new Beta site here. It’s a new look for the news site, which looks like a “Cheap-ass blog” according to my friend Donavon. I kind of like what they are trying to do, but there is too much wasted space for my taste.

I like the tech page shown in this thumbnail; more specifically the usage of the photo going across the top. I don’t like that the header goes all the way across and the body doesn’t. It just doesn’t match with the rest of the site. It does have some more personalization features, like local news and weather integration. There’s also a hot topics string of links under the top navigation with the top keywords people have been looking for recently.

IMO, they should have went with a layout like FanNation.com or SI.com, which are very clean but use space wisely. Still, it’s not as bad as USAToday.com’s latest redesign, which many have labelled as a disaster.

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Rounded Corners in CSS

Airtight Corners

Here’s a quick number on how to produce a box with rounded corners using only one image, and off-setting that image for each corner.
Feel free to view the source code to reproduce this effect on your own site.

A good tutorial on how to create rounded corners using CSS and 1 image.

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Tables with Style

24 ways: Tables with Style

It might not seem like it but styling tabular data can be a lot of fun. From a semantic point of view, there are plenty of elements to tie some style into. You have cells, rows, row groups and, of course, the table element itself. Adding CSS to a paragraph just isn’t as exciting.

For those that really don’t want to give up Tables in their designs.

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CSS Drive Gallery- CSS Compressor

CSS Drive Gallery- CSS Compressor

Use this utility to compress your CSS to increase loading speed and save on bandwidth as well. You can choose from three levels of compression, depending on how legible you want the compressed CSS to be versus degree of compression. The “Normal” mode should work well in most cases, creating a good balance between the two.

Could come in handy for those learning CSS (like Lisa) and wanting to refine their code.

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50 sources for web design inspiration

50 sources for web design inspiration by Fuzzy Future

If you ever need inspiration when designing your next site, FuzzyFuture.com lists 50 (+5 more) sources to help you get off of that hump.

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Free, Online version of Photoshop within 6 months?

Adobe to take Photoshop online | CNET News.com

Hoping to get a jump on Google and other competitors, Adobe Systems plans to release a hosted version of its popular Photoshop image-editing application within six months, the companys chief executive said Tuesday.

Rumor has it that it will be a vastly scaled-down version of the imaging powerhouse application and will be free users with an ad-based revenue model. The online version would help curb piracy of the full desktop version of the product since most people just want to use it for the basics. “We recognize there is a customer there–we recognize they are not going to pay us, necessarily, directly,” said Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen in the cited Cnet.com article. Chizen noted that the ad revenue would allow them to get something where they currently get nothing.

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Advertising Age – Local TV Goes Mobile

Advertising Age – Digital – Local TV Goes Mobile
Internet Broadcasting, which creates websites and sells ads for 79 local TV stations, has forged a venture to get news and weather onto the so-called third screen. The Minneapolis-based company has signed a deal with Crisp Wireless to deliver content to phones and other wireless devices. Internet Broadcasting, itself owned by three major station group owners — Hearst-Argyll, Post Newsweek and McGraw Hill Cos. — will deliver local fare such as weather radar images and sports headlines and scores.

How are other companies, (like Media General for example), going to compete with this when their sites are so far behind already? The Mobile frontier is the next great format, especially with the iPhone and devices like it on the horizon. Still, many media companies haven’t even embraced RSS, Blogging (done the right way) or even dynamic content across all affiliates.

Bravo to Internet Broadcasting for realizing what people actually want and doing something about it.

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Live like a King in “Asia”, get a 50K signup bonus, and more! Really?

Techcrunch.com has an ad on the site today promising a 50K signup bonus (After the 6 month probation period) for Web Developers and Designers willing to move to “Asia”.

The site, located at http://207.218.248.46/ promises to:

“Provide you with a private flat, fully furnished, 007 style with all the latest gadgets you need. Peace of mind with your own chef, housekeeping, driver and security. Their team works and lives on the top floors of a state-of-the-art skyscraper”.

The DNS resolves to EV1servers.net out of Houston, Texas – http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=207.218.248.46

So where exactly in Asia is this? Probably not Japan or South Korea. It would more than likely state that it was one of those places if it were. Where else has state-of-the-art skyscrapers? Singapore does… as does China. Hong Kong maybe?

My biggest questions are, “Is this a scam?”, and if so, “Why would TechCrunch perpetuate a scam?”.

It’s got to be legit, because it’s a prominent ad on TechCrunch.com, which to this point has been very reputable. I don’t think they’d lead us astray.

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JournalNow.com’s Wake Forest Football Orange Blog

One of my current projects at work now is creating a new blog for our Orange Bowl coverage.

Our corporate office wants us to use Expression Engine, however most of my experience is using Wordpress. I had to basically learn how to use, set up and skin EE in about a day.

It’s not that bad. I think it’s a decent CMS, and I’m looking forward to working with it more in the future.

At any rate, check out our Wake Forest Football Orange Blog at http://www.journalnow.net/index.php/wake/index/ (soon to be located at http://wake.journalnow.net ). It’s not 100% finished, but will be soon.

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Two recent creations go live

We just went live with 2 of my recent web designs –

The Tailor of (East) Kings Highway

jdjk.com

I constructed and conceptualized the design, while David Eleuterius finished up the tidbits of the text and photo gallery on To(E)KH.

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