Graphic Euphoria

Diana takes one for the team – facebook username mischief

This story has flown around the internet today via social networks such as Digg, Reddit, Twitter and Facebook. It’s one of those situations where you just can’t help laughing at someone in an unfortunate situation. If this doesn’t make you laugh you really don’t have a sense of humour… … maybe you should add Diana as a friend. It started as a Reddit thead: Facebook girl “loves an*l” but apparantly doesn’t know it Basically, to some up, someone who is probably close to Diana has been able to access her account and choose her username. They chose ‘I Love An*l’. Now, if you type in http://www.facebook.com/i.love.anal you go to her page. I am, of course, assuming she didn’t do it herself. The original person who found this out was good enough to try to tell her… This didn’t go down too well! Reddit also became aware of how much publicity the thread achieved. A new one was started up pointing out the results if you Googled the girls name. Reddit has now removed the above picture as the joke ‘went too far’. They were probably right, everyone was queuing up to tell Diana what has happened. She will almost certainly be a well know name for at least the next 24hours. Just goes to show what happens if you leave yourself logged in somewhere. (please note i have not mentioned her name anywhere in this article, i’m assuming facebook will change her username very soon, hopefully she will soon fall back into obscurity) So, pick your usename name! http://www.facebook.com/username Facebook should have done this from the start! or you could end up like these people (found via the reddit thread): http://www.facebook.com/cumonmyface http://www.facebook.com/cock.eater http://www.facebook.com/gayer Tags: facebook, reddit, twitter

Save IE6 – if only Internet Explorer 6 was as good as this site

Just like every other web designer i can’t wait for Internet Explorer 6 to be gone. There are some people who do not share this view. Maybe IE6 does have some good points. Just maybe it might be worth saving… visit Save IE6 Ha! Tongue is definately in cheek. Forget about IE6 for a second and you are looking at a nice site, it even works perfectly in IE6. Check out the download link where you are forced to complete a compatibility test first and then sign the petition. I’d like to think the writing is on the wall for IE6 and that it won’t be around for much longer. In that case it really does need your help. Let’s hope it’s too late! Tags: browsers, ie

Did you notice it’s the 1st April – a round up of some of the best hoaxes

What is April Fools?

Every year on the 1st of April it is traditional to try to April fool somebody before the clock strikes midday. To do this you simply have to convince your gullible friend or colleague about a fictional or misleading non-truth. Basically you feed them the most unbelievable hoax, laugh at them when they fall hook, line and sinker and finally give them a pinch and a punch (for the first of the month) for their troubles. The day itself is a bit of a mystery even Wikipedia doesn’t give a definite answer. The best guesses include the name given to fools who plant their crops too early or people who kept to the old calendar where the year started in April not January. Either way it makes a great excuse for some fun.

Ok so what happened today?

It seems every year the web design community get more and more involved with April Fools day hoaxes. Today was no exception; Gmail announced an Autopilot feature to auto-respond to those annoying messages. It is ran by CADIE google’s Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity who has it’s/his/hers one blogger homepage and favorite places! Google Chrome release their new 3D plugin Smashing Magazine introduced IE8 Eagle Eye the all conquering update (they got in their nice and early too) Youtube went all Ozzie on us Mootools announced a new name Opera announced a new feature called face gestures! Sitepoint announce the impending reboot of the internet at 11:59am The Guardian switches to a twitter only news feed Silktidestudios announced the second National Naked Developer Day! Expedia sell flights to mars! Dial a Phone sell a coin and card operated phone Thinkgeek announce an array of amazing products including a unicorn chaser and squeez bacon! The Uk government plan to give out free Wii Consoles Kodak launch the genius eyeCamera Microsoft launches a Alpine Legend game controller? Some people have far too much time on their hands! Brilliant none the less! Roll on next year!

Inspired thinking – I Wear Your Shirt

Do you remember the guy that created www.milliondollarhomepage.com to get himself through college and pocketed one million dollars? Everyone was jealous because they didn’t think of it first. Well, someone else has updated the concept and it still works! Jason is a web designer from the states who has designed and created www.iwearyourshirt.com. The idea is simple. Everyday he will wear a t-shirt with a company’s name and brand on the front of it. That alone will get you nowhere but Jason has cleverly linked up his idea with blogging and social media platforms to provide really good marketing posibilities. He posts daily on youtube, flickr and twitter to make sure the t-shirt gets noticed. The daily price goes up as the year passes, it originally started a $1, this makes sense as more people will know about the site by December! Top idea Jason. Good luck. (i wonder what he will do with 365 used t-shirts in a years time?) Tags: flickr, twitter, youtube

Goon City – A pixel art world

Ryan Allen is a member of the something aweful forums and together with the forum members has produced a pixel art world. It instantly brings back memories of the original simcity games and is very similar to the works of eboy. Using a few photoshop brushes you can create a plot of land for this map in no time at all. You can tell some of the artists have spent a long time of theirs. I especially love the sense of humour in some of the creations.

The site was originally created with a google maps platform but suffered from a huge hit rate and was taken down. I’m very glad to say it is now back up and surprisingly it is now built using the Microsoft silverlight platform. This is one of the first times i have seen a practical use of the silverlight over adobe flash. A hint of things to come perhaps? Tags: Photoshop, silverlight

A Tasty Blog – This is why you’re fat!

Thanks goes out to Stephen Fry on twitter for tweeting this amazing website! Thisiswhyyourefat.com A simple but brilliant idea for a blog. Everyone has a weakness when it comes to food, some peoples idea of gastronomy is hardly gourmet, and yet they all look so delicious. Personally, i can’t wait to try a pizza burger. Now where did i leave my cholesterol tablets? Tags: blog, twitter

Is IE6 dead? – how much longer do we have to wait!

It’s a question on every modern, dynamic, aware and forward thinking web designers mind.. Is IE6 dead? – yet? This site is cool, i have no idea who made it or how they calculate the date, but i hope they are wrong! Get IE6 out now! Tags: browsers, ie

The Best Interactive Flash Websites?

I recently stumbled across a few 100% fullscreen interactive flash websites. Now, if there was an award for the ‘Best Interactive Flash Websites’ out there, these would have to be contenders! I would love to have the opportunity to see the source code and fla’s for these:

http://www.scifi.com/tinman/oz/

http://samorost2.net/plantage/plantage.swf

http://www.adobecards.com

http://www.potatoparade.co.uk

http://www.nawlz.com

http://www.zunejourney.net/

iGoogle gets an update and now i can check Gmail at work!

Land Here

Your browser homepage is more important than you think. The days of the old Google are long gone. You can personalise a homepage to include many optional extras such as email, RSS aggregators, calendars, ebay listings and even weather forecasts. Not only that but there are a multitude of similar solutions available. Live.com, yahoo, netvibes to name a few. I have experimented with netvibes and live.com but every time I find myself back with Google.

Why?

Well, these solutions are limited by two problems. Compatibility and speed. A huge percentage of the add-ons are made by independent programmers and as such they sometimes don’t include all the features you would expect, have compatibility issues and sometimes they are not maintained. The second issue occurs when you add many add-ons to your page thus increasing the load times. Some solutions offer a tab system which only load the visible add-ons but this can still be a problem. As a result I now only have three add-ons. Gmail, google calendar and a to-do list. Personally I have found anything else is worthless to me as I find it easier to go the site. The only other one I tried was the Google Reader add-on. Again, this simply did not perform well enough to stop me needing to view the actual web app. I now have a streamlined and efficient landing page. It shows me the information I need to know when I first start surfing and ONLY the information I would automatically check every time.

What’s changed

Google has updated iGoogle! Some would say it’s long over due, I would have to agree. The minimal Google look is surprisingly looking a little bit dated! (strange i know) It’s looking a lot more like netvibes, round corners and more effective tabbing. Check out the screenshot.. It gives it a more friendly feel. I much prefer it. There are practical benefits too; you have the option of viewing your add-on at full width and with the more developed add-ons you get much more functionality. The two which have impressed me the most is Gmail and Google Calendar. Click on the side nav and you basically get these two as fully functional sites. I now can cancel Gmail from forwarding all my mail to my work email account and can receive it right here in the browser, even though it is blocked. Fantastic. Good work Google. Thanks! (ps my iGoogle page has the radiohead theme) Tags: google

Digital Temple – a new digital creative magazine

Wow this digital magazine really rocks! Issue two has just been released so it’s still in it’s infancy. It is packed full of creative montages, illustrations and photography. Sadly i can’t read french but who needs to, the content speaks for it’s self. So if you have a spare 20 minutes, check out Digital Temple magazine Tags: design, Photography