Vitamin News

oEmbed

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:26:41 +0100

Flickr, Pownce and OpenDNS programmers released oEmbed last week a "simple API [that] allows a website to display embedded content (such as photos or videos) when a user posts a link to that resource, without having to parse the resource directly."

Color wheel history

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Been itching to learn some color wheel history? Well then Colour Lovers has the ointment.

Kyle Meyer's initial impressions of Silverback

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:55:22 +0100

Kyle Meyer gives his initial impressions (and takes lots of nice screenshots) of Silverback.

Why Yelp Works from NYT Bits blog

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:59:26 +0100

Why Yelp Works. "Yelp understood that, as with Wikipedia, a small group of people can create something that the rest of us can take advantage of."

Graphic Leftovers

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:46:37 +0100

Graphic Leftovers is a "haven where professional designers and illustrators sell or donate their unused, unsold or unfairly rejected pieces of art online." Nice idea.

New site NETTUTS

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:00:00 +0100

NETTUTS, a new site from the same group that does Freelance Switch and PSDTUTS, has a nice post up about its development and design called 7 Crucial Tips for Designing and Maintaining a Large Site.

Derek Sivers' Some things I’ve learned this year that turned my world upside-down and I’m ...

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:38:07 +0100

Derek Sivers (owner/operator of CDBaby) covers cloud computing, Google's mailserver features, businesses not needing employees and more with his post Some things I’ve learned this year that turned my world upside-down and I’m still trying to wrap my head around.

Seth Godin's Avoiding the Passion Pop Gulf

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 06 May 2008 02:18:20 +0100

Seth Godin's Avoiding the Passion Pop Gulf is a nice post about either catering to the edgy/obsessed crowd or the vapid/trite crowd — and making sure you don't end up catering to neither.

Techdirt's Is The Era Of The Amateur Blogger Over?

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:23:39 +0100

Techdirt's Is The Era Of The Amateur Blogger Over? and Megan McArdle's Blogging goes professional are two interesting looks at how blogging has changed over the last 5 or 6 years.

Who Should I Follow?

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Who Should I Follow? is a cool Twitter app that gives you recommendations of people to follow based on people you're already following.

Moleskine art site

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:35:05 +0100

Just a little link to 'skine.art, a fab little site dedicated to 'moleskine lovers and their art',

The Evolution of Websites: How 10 Popular Websites Have (And Have Not) Changed

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Wake Up Later's The Evolution of Websites looks at how 10 sites — Apple, Amazon, etc. — have and haven't changed over the years.

Yahoo! Open Strategy

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Even though there's nothing to see yet, Yahoo! joins Google and Amazon in the brave new world of cloud computing by rolling out their welcome mat to developers with Yahoo! Open Strategy.

We All Hate Quickbooks

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:09:58 +0100

A really cool example of both parallax scrolling and using Twitter to market an app at We All Hate Quickbooks, developed by Less Accounting (via Dan).

Startup School roundup

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

If you weren't at Startup School and don't have the time or inclination to watch all the videos, here's a good roundup of the key points from the day in just a few paragraphs.

Structured Procrastination and How to Get Things Done

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Structured Procrastination and How to Get Things Done are two great looks at how to use procrastination to your advantage. I especially liked this bit from the former, "[p]rocrastinators often ... try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation."

Going to be at Startup School tomorrow?

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:07:19 +0100

If you're going to be at Startup School tomorrow and want to hang out during lunch or something, feel free to send me an email at adam at thinkvitamin.

Jeremy Keith's detailed FOWD blog coverage

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:00:51 +0100

Jeremy Keith's detailed Future of Web Design blog coverage.

AdAge's

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

AdAge's It's Web 3.0, and Someone Else's Content Is King is an interesting look on the "no reporting, all aggregating" trend that sites like Hacker News and TechMeme, as well as more focused efforts like EveryBlock, have obviously capitalized on in the past few years.

Grid layout tools

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:31:08 +0100

Jon Hicks is speaking at FOWD now - just mentioned Grid Layout and Grid Calculator, handy tools for designing to grids.

Crazy internal Microsoft Vista video

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:33:40 +0100

Lately have you found yourself looking for yet another reason not to use Windows Vista? Well, here you go.

GAE lock-in FUD already disproven

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Are you wary of trying out Google App Engine due to the lock-in concerns? Well, on top of the fact that its open source, it's already been ported to Amazon's EC2 infastructure. So, you know, don't be.

Impressed with Hulu

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Anyone else impressed with Hulu as of late? They seem to have overcome the initial rush of bad press and are creating a really useful, and valuable, site.

Using Django with Google App Engine

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:31:57 +0100

Using Django with Google App Engine. Step by step walkthrough of getting a Django project up on GAE, a great counterpart to the GAE docs.

Fuel! New London conference for businesses

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:37:20 +0100

Carsonified is pleased to announce that registration for Fuel, our brand new event dedicated to helping businesses harness the power of the web, is now open! It's in London on June 13 and costs £195 inc VAT (includes eats and drinks!). More details and registration at fuel-conference.com

Brian Fling leaves Blue Flavor to form Fling Media

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:02:09 +0100

Blue Flavor co-founder Brian Fling is leaving to form his own company, Fling Media, and he's already started a cool new project in Six Sites.

Web Development bookmarklets

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

These Web Development bookmarklets might be old news to some, but I've somehow never seen them before. The "test styles" one is especially handy because it lets you tweak CSS without worrying about losing your changes when you switch tabs, unlike Web Developer Toolbar.

Django reaching its tipping point?

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Lots of chatter recently about the web standards crowd choosing Django and the growing Django trend. And when it hits 1.0 this year the buzz will only get louder.

EveryBlock on how they created their mapping platform

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:43:41 +0100

EveryBlock on how they used open source programs like TileCache, OpenLayers and Mapnik to create their own mapping platform (example here).

New .net podcast

elliot@carsonified.com (Elliot Jay Stocks) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Our friends over at .net magazine have just launched a new weekly podcast called Web Design TV, which is hosted by regular .net contributor Paul Wyatt. Each week Paul provides a free tutorial on a particular area of web design or development, so go and check it out!

Your April Fool's Day joke continues to suck

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Don't forget, your April Fool's Day joke continues to suck.

WordPress 2.5

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:51:01 +0100

WordPress 2.5 is out and after using it for a few posts, I think I like it a lot. The ability to upload a folder of images is a godsend for my family blog and Happy Cog's admin revamp is not only cleaner, it feels a lot snappier, too.

Scans of lovingly designed WALL•E promo postcards

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Are you as excited as I am about Pixar's upcoming WALL•E? Then you'll probably really like these fun and lovingly designed promo postcards.

From Oxford to Silicon Valley, part six

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Kulveer Taggar — one of the founders of Auctomatic, a Y Combinator company recently bought for $5 million — writes about the acquisition process in the article From Oxford to Silicon Valley, part six.

45+ jQuery plugins

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:01:27 +0100

A big, and helpfully illustrated list, of 45+ "fresh out of the oven" jQuery plugins.

Competing points of view about startups

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:53:12 +0100

A couple of competing points of view today with Five reasons why a recession is a good time to start a company and Matt Maroon's Why not to do a startup.

InformationWeek's Solo Entrepreneurs: Big Bucks From Tiny Computing Startups

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

InformationWeek's article Solo Entrepreneurs: Big Bucks From Tiny Computing Startups profiles "one-person companies that are currently reaping more than $1 million in revenues annually." It also introduced me to Working Solo, a site I'd never heard of before.

Post-mortem of the Clickpass launch

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:56:15 +0100

I'm back from vacation so news posts and articles are now back on schedule. Clickpass — you might remember Peter Nixey's Vitamin article about Clickpass last year — launched last week and founder and CTO Immad Akhund gives a post-mortem of the launch here.

Acid3 test released

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

The Acid3 test has been released — here's what it's supposed to look like — and every current browser fails it miserably.

CodePad lets you permalink executed code

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

CodePad is a cool little app that runs code for you in multiple languages and lets you permalink it, like this.

Best new designs for this week

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:32:30 +0100

It's Friday, time for new designs. Colibri (I really like the header background ... and the typing bird), Elston Hardwood Flooring (straight-forward and, dare I say, polished ... zing!), Vectips (well executed blog design complete with a very excited guy on the computer), cleanhotdry (the label logo is so nice and understated), StrawPoll (another well designed and thought-out Twitter piggyback app).

Web App Charts results are in!

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:20:50 +0100

Thanks for voting in the Web App Charts. We just announced the results - showing your top ten favorite web apps - at FOWA Miami. You can check em out here

FriendFeed Changelog

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Much like an opensource project, FriendFeed is publishing its changelog so users can see daily what bugs are being fixed and features being added. Nice bit of transparency, even though it might be a little too technical for regular users to parse.

BBC redesign

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:41:17 +0100

Though I think the clock in the top right is a bit much, the BBC's redesign of their new customizable homepage is otherwise very impressive.

Brainstorming over bagels

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

It may be a little bit frothy, but Brainstorming over bagels is still an interesting read (Update: Hrm, sorry, looks like it's already gone behind the subscription wall, man what a genius business model ... bugmenot!).

Last week's and this week's best new designs

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

5 of the best new designs from this and last week: AIGA LA (unecessarily uses tables, but still looks great and is complete with a dozen or so different skins), discountbox (icony goodness), C82 (the gorgeous blockup really makes the site), PrintHuge (pretty, even if it is unfortunately "optimized for Firefox"), Sundance Documentary Film Program (an Electric Pulp production and another great blockup).

Commuter Feed uses Twitter to keep users updated on traffic

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:01:03 +0100

No offense to Dan's Foamee but I think Commuter Feed is the first really useful "Twitter piggyback" service I've seen. Just twitter "@commuter(SPACE) citycode(SPACE) incident" and people who are subscribed to your city will see your latest traffic updates.

Professional JavaScript and Ajax Workshop - 26th March 2008 London UK

keir@carsonified.com (Keir Whitaker) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:04:23 +0100

Join us in London and learn the secrets of giving your sites and web applications the rich interactivity they deserve. Our next one day workshop "Professional JavaScript and Ajax" by Thomas Fuchs, author of script.aculo.us and Rails core member, will provide real-world examples and practical knowledge to enable you to make the jump to using Ajax and JavaScript.

Find out more about the workshop on the Carson Workshops web site.

File Destructer 2.0

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

This link from waxy is supposedly old but it's new to Andy as well as me. File Destructor 2.0 creates fake trashed files — examples being .doc, .zip, .ppt, .xls, etc. — so you can blame that missed deadline on a faulty computer.

Carsonified is hiring a web designer!

ryan@carsonified.com (Ryan Carson) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Carsonified is looking for a tremendously talented web designer who is passionate about Web Standards, accessibility, blogging and beautiful hand-coded CSS and XHTML (print design experience is also a bonus).

We work a 4-day week, give you 35 days holiday and give you great gear (iPhone, 23" Cinema Display, MacBook Pro and Aeron Chair). One of your first jobs will be do re-design Vitamin :) Please note that you'll need to work from our nice new office in Bath, UK.

You can apply today - move fast as the job will probably get filled quite quickly.

2008 Vitamin Reader Survey

gill@carsonified.com (Gillian Carson) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Tell us what you think of Vitamin by filling in our 2008 Reader Survey and you could win a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and a free ticket to any of our forthcoming events.

Amazon has their first big AWS outage

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:04:09 +0100

Looks like Amazon's had their first big AWS outage. Down for 2.5 hours early this morning and not much communication so far from them as to what the problem was. It'll be interesting to see what the reaction is.

Interview with EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 06:52:12 +0100

A good interview with EveryBlock founder and Django creator Adrian Holovaty touches on the most challenging parts of EveryBlock, why they built their own mapping application and the open-source nature of the app due to the grant money they used to build it.

NextUpdate

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Garrett Dimon's blogging the rest of the development process for his upcoming bug tracking app at new company site NextUpdate. Most likely worth a subscription.

NY Times article Small Companies are Finding a Home on the Web

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:00:00 +0100

Interesting tidbit from the NY Times article Small Companies are Finding a Home on the Web: "[i]n its first survey of small-business Web sites last April, Jupiter Research found that just 36 percent of all businesses with fewer than 100 employees had a Web presence". Huh.

Netdiver 100 Best

ryan@carsonified.com (Ryan Carson) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:04:59 +0100

Netdiver has just released their top 100 designs for 2007. Great list for browsing.

Last few weeks to vote in the Web App Charts

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:42:22 +0100

Over 2,000 votes in the Web App Charts now, with apps like Gmail, Flickr and WordPress holding strong positions. And thanks to the support of their communities, niche sites such as Webjam and Ravelry.com are chasing for the top spot too. If you haven't already voted, please do! Results will be announced at FOWA Miami.

Best designs of last week

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:40:52 +0100

What better way to gear up for the week ahead then to look back at the week that was in new designs? Il Frutteto (click on a nav link, mmm, JQuery goodness), Griffin Technologies (a refreshingly constrained corporate site), Chyrp (YAWDCMSS: Yet Another Well Designed CMS Site), Deaxon (I believe it's what you'd call "polished"), Vineyard Vines (absolutely nails the white and blue beach aesthetic) and Impress Lab (paper and paper clips done well).

Want to run DropSend.com?

ryan@carsonified.com (Ryan Carson) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

If you love the web industry and want to lead DropSend, a small web app start-up ... we've got a job for you. Benefits include: 4-day work week, your very own iPhone, 23" Cinema Display, Aeron Chair, MacBook Pro, traveling with the team to Miami, NYC, London and a company pension plan. Read more about the job.

Heroku

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Heroku. Build, test and deploy Rails apps without ever leaving Firefox. Wow, what an app. If this had been around 3 years ago, all those hours and days of frustration getting a server up and running (again!) or updating my local environment (again!) could have instead been used to do productive design and development.

Snap, RSS for doing stuff

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Matt Webb and Tom Armitage are working on a new idea they've called Snap — it's essentially RSS for doing stuff. An example would be if you could use your RSS reader to not only track incoming bugs for an app, but also accept them and assign them, all inside the reader. A presentation on the idea is here.

Typesites - a new type showcase online

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:58:28 +0100

Typesites is a bi-weekly showcase of websites with interesting typographic design. Go check it out!

Free Survival Kit: A-Z of How to Build a Web App

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Ryan Carson's Survival kit for the workshop 'A-Z: How to Build a Web App' is now available as a free download at the Carson Workshops shop page.

This week's best new designs

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

It's almost weekend, and what better way to spend Saturday and Sunday than looking at the best new designs of the past week? NOFRKS (the day and night themes are a nice touch), Design Sponge (no sponges, but plenty of fabric background images), Protagonize (what a great name for a site about writing, looks nice too), TillyMoss (homemade MacBook covers stylishly presented) and Sideshow (clean site with a lovely blockup).

Automattic introduces Prologue

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:32:44 +0100

Automattic, the people behind WordPress, have built a new theme called Prologue, which enables you to have Twitter-like many to many messaging - it's open source, so you can hack it how you want. Matt will be speaking at FOWA in Miami next month.

Conference in a Box reduced!

gill@carsonified.com (Gillian Carson) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:17:30 +0100

All our Conference in a Box packs for past events, Future of Web Apps Expo London 2007,and FOWD London and NYC 2007 are now only $150. You get all the video presentations from the day, plus the presentation files from each speaker.

Etsy's first five years

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Etsy — a truly impressive company and community, and one of my favorite sites to get lost in, browsing through people's handmade products — announced its new round of funding on its blog complete with a companion video of a reading of the children's book Swimmy. Great news for a very cool company.

Gabe and Max's How To Get the Dreamlife of Your Dreams Using the Internet

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:48:13 +0100

With the day winding down why not sit back for a few minutes and watch Gabe and Max's How To Get the Dreamlife of Your Dreams Using the Internet? Their 430 part system is the total system you need!

Sky News dev competition

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:29:37 +0100

Sky News has a competition for developers to pimp their feeds, it does end on the 31st Jan, but if you're quick you could be in with a chance of winning 10k GBP!

Five of the best new designs from the last couple of weeks

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Five of the best new designs from the last couple of weeks: Beach Freak (very nicely done header, though the wear on the surfboard looks a little off), Krysáci (you just can't beat animated Czech mice), Why We Whisper (very well layed out and organized book site), Bookkeeping in a Box (the colors! the illustration! the ... accounting kit!?) and Vision Forum Ministries (what is it about well done Christian websites? Web 2.0 could learn a little something from the Lord).

Worried about getting laid off? Act!

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:28:32 +0100

Scoble has a great article - even if the title is bleak - on how to climb back up the career ladder if you get pushed off.

EveryBlock launches

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0100

"What's happening in my neighborhood?" That's the question newly launched EveryBlock — founded by Adrian Holovaty — hopes to answer, starting with the Chicago, New York and San Fransisco areas.

12 Things You Wish You'd Known Before Building a Web App

gill@carsonified.com (Gillian Carson) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:51:41 +0100

12 Things You Wish You'd Known Before Building a Web App - is now available on SlideShare

Sign up at Djangopeople.net

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:41:44 +0100

Do you do Django? Show yourselves at djangopeople.net

Facebook Dev Garage in London tonight

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:19:31 +0100

If you're in London today, the next Facebook Dev Garage is taking place tonight from 6:30 - location and more details here

Top Ten Myths of Entrepreneurship

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:36:41 +0100

In case you missed it, Scott Shane's post over at Guy Kawasaki's blog earlier this month is full of interesting stuff. Like "[t]he typical start-up only requires about $25,000 to get going", "the odds that a start-up company will get VC money are about one in 4,000. That’s worse than the odds that you will die from a fall in the shower" and "[o]nly the top ten percent of entrepreneurs earn more money than employees."

Pownce opens up its doors

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:30:52 +0100

Social network and microblogging tool Pownce has today opened its doors to the hoi polloi. Get your account at pownce.com! FYI developer Leah Culver is speaking at FOWA Miami.

New Andy Clarke CSS workshop in London

gill@carsonified.com (Gillian Carson) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:12:32 +0100

Andy Clarke will be giving a workshop on advanced CSS in London this May 14. Booking and more details here - seats are limited!

iPhone and iPod Touch icons

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:58:43 +0100

Elliot Jay Stocks gives a miniscule history of the iPhone and iPod touch icon development activity that's been going on in the last week!

The challenges of internationalization

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0100

As if programming for multiple languages wasn't hard enough, the Blogger UX team recently designed new graphics, templates and site layouts for the right-to-left languages of Arabic, Hebrew and Persian.

Future of Web Design London tickets are on sale now!

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:40:00 +0100

FOWD returns to London, April 17-18 2008. Join Jina Bolton, Jon Hicks, Andy Clarke, Larissa Meek, Andy Budd, Elliot Jay Stocks and more... Early bird tickets on sale now!

Rotten Tomatoes redesign isn't fresh

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Hrm, Rotten Tomatoes — a site I've been a dedicated user of for several years — has redesigned, I'm afraid, for the worst. The old design was always busy, but it was at least polished. This new design looks half done at best and makes the site practically unusable. Metacritic, get ready for an influx.

Joyent's BingoDisk and StrongSpace downtime

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Joyent's BingoDisk and StrongSpace — the company's online storage solutions — have been offline since yesterday, evidently due to a corruption issue with ZFS that's causing the hardware to not even boot. Hopefully the users who entrusted their files to these not inexpensive services haven't permanently lost anything.

Best new designs

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0100

A quick dump of the best new designs from late last year to this past week so we can get all caught up: SpinVox (Skype-esque, which is a compliment), Wishingline (great redesign by the Canucks at Wishingline), Lockerbie Square (gorgeous neighborhood site), Toggle design (simple and it works), Aaron Mentele (that's a nice blog) and pontual, raphael (a portfolio that starts at the bottom).

Big news in data portability and OpenID

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Could 2008 finally be the year of true data portability, and maybe even bring us one step closer to one login for many sites? Google, LinkedIn, Six Apart, Facebook and Flickr have now all joined the Data Portability Working Group — what really comes of that, though, we'll have to wait and see — and there's an unconfirmed rumor that Google, IBM and Verisign might join the OpenID Foundation.

Guy tattoos firefox icon on his arm

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Most of us use Firefox daily and would call ourselves "fans" of the browser. But this guy's the only one of us to tattoo it on his forearm. That's dedicated ... and at the same time very, very shortsighted.

Wikia Search launches

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:57:05 +0100

Wikia Search launched today. It got railed by TechCrunch and I personally have no use for it, but folks like Matt Mullenweg find it potentially useful so judge for yourself.

Win a ticket to Future of Web Apps Miami 08

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:31:35 +0100

Fancy getting your hands on a ticket to the Future of Web Apps Miami? We have 3 full passes worth $595 each to give away to Vitamin readers. These tickets will get you into the conference day, the workshop day, and the beach party. To chance your arm, email me with the venue of the beach party on 29 Feb lisa@thinkvitamin.com

The Human Flipbook

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:21:36 +0100

If you've got a few minutes check out the Making of the Human Flipbook. It's a nice reminder that something new and creative is often all you need to grab people's attention.

2007's web and technology acquisitions

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:29:01 +0100

A complete list of 2007's web and technology acquisitions. I'm thinking we can expect more of the same in 2008.

Happy Holidays!

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 16:37:06 +0100

Thanks to everyone who made 2007 such a successful year for Vitamin. We've taken the holidays off but will be back in 2008 with more great content, week after week. Happy Holidays!

How Remember the Milk began

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Insight into how two people (and a stuffed monkey) started a simple to-do list webapp (Remember the Milk).

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:28:04 +0100

Now that the hype cloud around Amazon's SimpleDB has blown over check out Ryan Barret's thoughts on the new service (via waxy.org).

Journalists, Bloggers Have a Sorry History at Startups

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:58:33 +0100

Mark Glaser's Journalists, Bloggers Have a Sorry History at Startups is an interesting look at how hard it is for anyone — not just journalists and bloggers — to predict the success of a startup before they join but why they do it anyway.

Tweeterboard - a new analytics tool

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:45:16 +0100

Tweeterboard.com is a new analytics demo from Gene Smith that tracks a (limited at present) number of Twitter users and ranks them according to influence - who they talk to and who talks about them.

A Dopplr Tour

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Dopplr — "an online tool for frequent business travelers" — gives us an in-depth tour of their latest redesign.

For the typograhpy buffs among us ...

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0100

For the typography buffs among us — Trajan is the movie font and red is not funny (via kottke).

ColourLovers adds customizable patterns

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0100

ColourLovers launched a new section for creating and sharing patterns yesterday. The best part part is you can customize the colors of your new pattern directly on the site before you create it. Fun stuff.

Youaretv.com for sale on Ebay for $25,000

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Anyone care to go halfsies with me on a video startup?

This week's best designs

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 22:43:14 +0100

For your weekend perusal, this past week's best designs: PixelResort (because pixels never go out of style, though, the ads on the right are a bit off), Gifts with Love (a supremely well organized commerce site), StudentMarket.ro (the floating heads are well done), TurboTax (they took Crazy Egg's pricing page one step further) and Fast Eddie Chambers (I love how "fast" is in quotations).

HugMyMac.com Live

ryan@carsonified.com (Ryan Carson) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:18:08 +0100

After four insane days for Carsonified Idea Week, we've built and launched Hugs, a set of 9 hand-crafted, limited edition MacBook and iPhone covers. They're free and you get to enjoy them and then pass them on :)

iPhone on Rails - Creating an iPhone optimised version of your Rails site using iUI and Rails 2

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:02:58 +0100

Slash Dot Dash's iPhone on Rails - Creating an iPhone optimised version of your Rails site using iUI and Rails 2 is a great, in-depth article on creating an iPhone friendly version of any Rails app.

Two amazing speakers and all the social details for FOWA Miami

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 09:47:07 +0100

We're excited to announce that TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld and Google's Kevin Marks have been added to the FOWA Miami line-up, plus news of all the socials.

Amazon Web Services start-up challenge

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0100

The Amazon Web Services start-up challenge ends Thursday of this week. Go here to watch videos of the seven entrants — Justin.tv and UserTesting.com among them — and vote for your favorite. The winner gets $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in AWS credits and an investment offer from Amazon.

Best new designs for this past week

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:22:53 +0100

November's ending (wow) and that means we've got new designs: Fray (can't keep that Powazek down, awesome illustration), Buffalo (an expertly crafted site), Vancouver 2010 (I'd hazard to guess this is one of the better olympic websites ever built), Meomi (I want to live in that little treehouse) and Beanstalk (simple site that get's its point directly across).

10 semantic web apps to watch

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:43:40 +0100

Richard MacManus at Read/Write/Web lists 10 semantic web apps to watch out for.

The Wufoo Form Gallery

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:14:23 +0100

The Wufoo Form Gallery is a "resource for web developers and designers to help get a head start on data collection." You can choose from templates for surveys, invitations, online orders, etc. and then either download the XHTML/CSS or save it to your Wufoo account. Pretty cool.

Email Standards Project

elliot@carsonified.com (Elliot Jay Stocks) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:08:59 +0100

Today sees the launch of the Email Standards Project, whose goal is "to help designers understand why web standards are so important for email, while working with email client developers to ensure that emails render consistently." It's something that's been needed for way too long, so congratulations to our friends at Freshview and the rest of the ESP team!

High-Performance JavaScript

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:10:05 +0100

High-Performance JavaScript is a great set of slides from a talk given by Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect at Plaxo, at Oscon. Lots of really insightful approaches to making your app's JS run as fast as possible.

FOWA Miami - early birds save 25%

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:25:39 +0100

As winter begins to take a firm grip, our thoughts are turning to next Spring when we'll be heading to Miami for some sun, sand and conference fun with Future of Web Apps. A limited number of early bird tickets - saving 25% off the price - are still available, check out the FOWA site for full details.

Best new designs from this short workweek

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Before I take off for a nice, long holiday weekend I wanted to post the best new designs from this short workweek: life in mono and Henry Jones (both similar in background and feel, as well as favicon), Mouse to Minx (well done commerce site full of throwback women's clothes and lingerie).

10 question survey from students at the Art Institute of Atlanta

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

This 10 question survey from students at the Art Institute of Atlanta presents you with various interfaces and asks your preference. Some of them are pretty arbitrary, but the results are still interesting.

ies4osx: run all the IEs right inside OSX with wine

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Are you a Mac user who's tired of firing up Parallels every time you need to use IE6 or 7 (or, god help you, 5 or 5.5)? Then I'd hazard to guess you'd be interested in ies4osx — run all the IEs right inside OSX with wine. It's a little slow at times, but great for bopping in, checking a site and bopping right back out again.

Last week's best designs

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Here are a handful of last week's best new designs: Drew Wilson (love, love, love the abstract background), Tim Lahan (I like how his pocket is a quick visual summary of what he does), LuckyOliver (stock photos with a surprising style about it) and National Cottonseed Products Association (a lot going on, but I think they pulled it off).

Dorky quizzes

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

How many HTML elements can you name in 5 minutes? How about CSS properties?

Jens Meiert's Choke Web Development Framework

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Jens Meiert's Choke Web Development Framework is "is an easy-to-use, easy-to-maintain, and future-proof platform for web design and development, and it includes everything you need to build great websites, from HTML to CSS to DOM scripting to comprehensive documentation."

Fortune's The PayPal mafia

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Fortune's The PayPal mafia goes into all the new web companies that have come out of the $1.5 billion sale of PayPal to Ebay in 2002: "besides Facebook and Slide, there's Yelp, Digg, and YouTube. (Peter) Thiel and (Max) Levchin, the don and consigliere of the mafia, figure that all told, there are dozens of enterprises worth a total of roughly $30 billion."

Design Observer's How to be Ugly

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Design Observer's How to be Ugly covers the recent graphic design trend of intentional uglification. Don't care for the vertical and horizontal scaling of type? Too bad.

This week's best designs

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 05:59:11 +0100

For your weekend perusal, this past week's best designs: The NBA Store (take that NFL.com), Design You Trust (great logo and background image), Wishlistr (the welldone illustration almost makes up for the lost 'e') and dibusoft (the little widget with the arrows is fun to play with).

Google to speak about Android at Future of Mobile

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Wow - we've been asked by Google to change their talk on the Gmail mobile app at Future of Mobile next week to discuss Android and the Open Handset Alliance instead. It's going to be the first time they speak at a conference in Europe since the announcement on Nov 5th!

UX Magazine's Investing in UX

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

UX Magazine's Investing in UX: "On November 1, 2006 we invested $50,000 of our company’s money into a fund consisting of 10 companies we felt did a great a job at user experience ... In the 365 days we owned our stocks the value of the portfolio increased 39.37%".

DivCounter

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

DivCounter is a potentially useful little tool that counts up your opened and closed a, strong, div, etc. tags, displays them for you in a graph and highlights the imbalances.

FOWA Miami 2008 - registration now open

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:21:23 +0100

Exclusively announcing the Future of Web Apps Miami event, taking place 28 Feb - 1 March, 2008. Join us for conference sessions, workshops, BarCamp and a beach party - limited early bird tickets now available. It's spring break for geeks!

London developer meet-up - December

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:19:07 +0100

PlugLondon is a new developer meet-up supported by the teams at Skype, Yahoo!, eBay and PayPal. It takes place on 8 December - more details and registration at www.pluglondon.org

Surfin' Safari announces a new CSS feature

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

Last week Surfin' Safari announced a new CSS feature they're working on — animation. An example would be a transition from 1 to 0 opacity on hover and it'd look like this: "-webkit-transition: opacity 1s linear;". The animations degrade gracefully and you can even rotate an element 360 degrees. Now I don't know why you'd want to, but hey, you can.

Only a few standout designs this week

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:15:39 +0100

For whatever reason there were only a few standout designs this week. The Superest (extremely entertaining), I Am America (the high resolution pictures of Colbert throughout are impressive) and Pear Hosting (very simple, but I like it).

design:related is a promising site for designers

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0100

design:related looks to be a social network, of sorts, for designers with lots of promise. There are sites that do similar things — upload your portfolio, inspiration, design news, etc. — but it stands out in a crowd with its strong design.

When Failure Is a Good Thing

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:59:51 +0100

A very interesting statistic in the NYTimes' When Failure is a Good Thing. People typically guess that 90% of dot-com companies failed, but according to a few academics "a random sample of all dot-coms that received venture capital financing in 1999 showed that about half (48 percent) were still in business five years later". This low failure rate says to them that "too few entrepreneurs were funded and too few ventures launched". Huh.

Just one week to Future of Web Design

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:28:09 +0100

There's just one week to go before the Future of Web Design. The last few tickets are going fast - so snap em up if you plan on going! We'll see you in NYC.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:58:56 +0100

If you're looking for the definitive review of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, John Siracusa's Ars Technica article is where you want to be.

Mint Email

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:03:36 +0100

Mint Email is a temporary, disposable email service that, upon arriving to the site, conveniently copies your 4-hour lifespan email address to your clipboard for easy pasting. It then checks in the background for emails coming to that address, no page refresh needed. Handy.

A wrap-up of this week's new designs

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:36:42 +0100

Who knew Friday came so often? Lots of big, bold, beautiful designs this week. Radiant Plumbing (a simple idea, mosaic themed design, executed perfectly), Wired Science (what a great blockup, and the inside pages are just as nice as the homepage), Destination Organic (there seem to be lots of good designs coming out of New Zealand lately), Kindred Spirits (simple and effective), LadyBugsPicnic (I might be biased, having a little one of my own, but this design is spot on), Siena alberghi vacanza (this design has some spacing issues, but I included it anyway because the background's just too good) and Kineda (I've never read the site, it's more or less a celebrity blog, but it's always been sharply designed).

Updated website galleries’ Alexa rankings

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:15:09 +0100

Updated website galleries’ Alexa rankings. There are somewhere around 137 website galleries. 137! Seriously? Is there like a kit you can buy online or something?

Jason Fried's "career path"

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:41:30 +0100

37signal's SvN post Can I build a product business if I'm just a designer? gives us a nice look into the "career path" that led Jason Fried to where he is today.

Vitamin master feed fixed

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:29:58 +0100

Sorry for all the repeat articles in the Vitamin master feed, we hope to have finally fixed a problem with old and repeat stories.

Photoshop CS3 review

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:31:48 +0100

Photographer and Zooomr.com CEO Thomas Hawk posts on how and why he uses Photoshop CS3.

diggnation live London at FOWA

ryan@carsonified.com (Ryan Carson) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:19:47 +0100

I'm spending a late night watching the live recording of diggnation at FOWA. Holy crap, it was a good show. We had over 1,200 people show up and I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Goooood stuff.

The San Fransisco Chronicle's 'Yes, some blogs are profitable — very profitable'

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:00:00 +0100

The San Fransisco Chronicle's 'Yes, some blogs are profitable — very profitable' details TechCrunch's $240,000/month in ad revenue, Federated Media's $20 to $30 per 1,000 ad views and several other interesting factoids about blogs as businesses.

Try Mixa

ryan@carsonified.com (Ryan Carson) — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:04:49 +0100

Brendan Dawes and the mN crew just released Mixa. It's sweet - you get to design your own USB cassette tape. That's right - cassette tape! It's rad :)

Web design podcasts

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:03:24 +0100

Congrats to Paul Boag who is recording his 100th podcast live today. Also to Andy Rutledge, who has just launched the Design View show.

This week's best sites

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:22:45 +0100

Wow, Friday already. Time for this week's best sites: DNA (is it wrong for gray to be my favorite color?), Kent District Library (my library's website sure doesn't look like this), Current (great job on the redesign Al!), Burnett Dairy Cooperative (cool header and, hey, you can buy their cheese online).

A List Apart 2007 Web Design Survey results

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:29:08 +0100

A List Apart has done an amazing job organizing the information they collected in their 2007 Web Design Survey. From job titles to salaries to weekly hours, it's required reading.

The newly launched Design Deadline

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:00:00 +0100

Miss the CSS Reboot? Tired of settling for the May 1st Reboot? Design Deadline is a new project of mine that "helps designers set a hard deadline for their new design". Starting Feb. 5th 2008 — and continuing the first Tuesday of every month after that — new designs will launch and users will be able to comment, rate and favorite them. More info can be found in the post What is Design Deadline?

Eric Meyer's Diagnostic Styling

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:39:00 +0100

Eric Meyer's Diagnostic Styling introduces smart CSS rules meant to aid in development. For instance, a[href=""] {background: fuchsia;}. highlights links with empty hrefs and img[alt=""][title=""] {outline-style: dotted;} outlines images without alt and title tags with a dotted line. Handy.

Application of Fitt's law in modern web design

natbat@gmail.com (Natalie Downe) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:00:35 +0100

A new post by Kevin Hale from Particletree (the people behind the beautiful quick-form app Wufoo) describes the relevance of that age old HCI rule "Fitt's Law" with relation to today's web design.

Best designs of the week

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:22:39 +0100

So many great new designs this week I saved them for your weekend perusal: Reason (great blockup graphic and text) , Pay.PerClick (well done hand-drawn look), Irvington Development Organization (very smart use of color), Pixel Farm (there aren't enough chickens on the web), Rob Cummings (Matt Brett's done a nice job with this blog design) and American Portable Mini Storage (the clever background image makes the entire site).

Fadtastic's post Big, Bold Backgrounds

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:23:48 +0100

Fadtastic has a nice post on the use of big, bold background images in blog design. I've always been a fan — though there is fine line between too much ornamentation and just enough.

Interested in managing DropSend?

ryan@carsonified.com (Ryan Carson) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:36:44 +0100

We're looking for a full-time manager for DropSend. If you've got a passion for web apps and a little marketing experience please email me on ryan at our company's domain. You'll need to be willing to work in Bath (1.5 hours from London).

New York Times readers ask Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster 25 questions

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:14:04 +0100

Freakonomics author Stephen J. Dubner has New York Times readers ask Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster 25 questions, like "How do you manage 450 massive classified Web sites with only 24 employees?" and "Are there any plans to redesign the site and update its look?"

How to build a Facebook app in 15 minutes

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:07:21 +0100

While trawling through comments on FOWA, found a post by Eyvind A. Larre on building a Facebook app in 15 minutes.

Webkit engine now supports CSS @font-face rule

natbat@gmail.com (Natalie Downe) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:34:36 +0100

WebKit, the browser rendering engine behind Safari, OmniWeb and of course now the iPhone browser has recently joined Opera and announced support for the CSS @font-face rule. In a nutshell this will mean that arbitrary fonts can be used on the web without the need for flash or image replacement. A recent A List Apart article discusses the practicalities this in more detail, however there are some interesting licensing issues relating to web download-able fonts that are only just coming to light.

Web Allstars 2001

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:43:21 +0100

How has the web changed since 2001? "A lot" says Compete with their post Internet Allstars ‘01: Where are they now? The big losers are sites like AudioGalaxy and Excite, the big winners companies like Google and CNN.

Win tickets to the Future of Web Design in NYC!

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:24:47 +0100

We're giving away conference tickets to the Future of Web Design to 4 lucky Vitamin readers. To enter, email lisa [at] thinkvitamin.com with the name of New York venue where FOWD is taking place by Tuesday 16 October.

OpenID.net launch funky new redesign

natbat@gmail.com (Natalie Downe) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:53:55 +0100

OpenId.net have just launched their funky new redesign. If you ever saw the old version you will know what a huge improvement this really is. The site now offers a clearer explanation for end users, a cute 'whats hot right now' type feed and generally a more approachable feel.

Scrolling research by ClickTale

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:06:08 +0100

According to very interesting research done by ClickTale "almost identical percentages of page views (15%-20%) reach the page bottom regardless of page height". Read the rest here.

Newsvine gets acquired

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:04:55 +0100

MSNBC.com acquires social news gathering site Newsvine.

The week's best designs

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:18:10 +0100

In celebration of the week that was, here are its best new designs: Further (there's a lot going on, but it's all well organized), LinksGuy (I just can't get enough illustration), Mozilla Store (the shirts are dorky, but the site is cool), Teaching Excellence Network (very warm and inviting), We Heart Web (well executed clutter) and The Lyric Theatre (the logo and header perfectly compliment each other).

Adobe launches revamped Dev Center

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:28:35 +0100

Check out Adobe's new look Developer Center. They're looking for writers - so get in touch!

KickApps' Nine Steps to a Successful Online Community

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:00:00 +0100

New York startup KickApps has written a whitepaper titled Nine Steps to a Successful Online Community and it's actually worth a read. Download it here.

Colors of the top 20 magazine covers

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:00:00 +0100

Colors of the top 20 magazine covers. Colour Lovers once again dissects art down into color palettes.

2007 Insomnia Film Festival

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0100

Apple's 2007 Insomnia Film Festival is Saturday, Oct. 13. You've got 24 hours and a top-secrect list of elements (props, dialogue, etc.) to create a 3-minute video short with, that's then voted on online. Got a camera and some willing friends? Might be fun.

Coudal's Layer Tennis

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0100

Inman vs. Cornell. The first bout of Coudal's newly christened Layer Tennis took place today and it's a joy to look through John Gruber's play by play. Volleys 1 & 7 are my favorites.

This weeks best designs

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0100

Some amazing new designs this week: Wire & Twine (an online t-shirt store design that manages to stand out from the crowd), 2008 Sundance Film Festival (Greg, I've got to hand it to you and Airbag, this is nice work), Talk Show (yes, more work from Airbag, they've really found a style all their own) and Edgewater (illustrated goodness).

Apple online store redesign

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 03:47:35 +0100

The Apple online store's been redesigned. Looks great, of course.

Grid Layout Javascript

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0100

GridLayouts.com has a piece of Javascript, inspired by Jon Hicks, that "enables web-developers to stick to a Grid Layout quickly and simply by including the Grid Layouts Javascript file and simple XHTML code."

New design for Merlin Mann's 43 Folders

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 08:55:48 +0100

Merlin Mann talks about the newly redesigned 43 Folders in the post Hi again.

The Seed Conference

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0100

The just announced Seed Conference is "a one-day conference on design, entrepreneurship & inspiration, by 37signals, Segura Inc. & Coudal Partners" and takes place in Chicago October 29th.

The best of this week's designs

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:38:00 +0100

The best of this week's designs: Most Sliced (little details like the Photoshop selection outline used here can really make a site), Sam Brown (a very well done tumblelog), Rifat Ergör (the right hand nav looks great) and Coffee Supreme (there's a whole lot going on here, but you've got to commend effort).

Enter your favourite web app and win a free FOWA Expo pass

ryan@carsonified.com (Ryan Carson) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:48:31 +0100

Enter your favourite web app and win a free FOWA Expo pass.

Last Day for Voting at SXSW Panel Picker

gill@carsonified.com (Gillian Carson) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 09:57:43 +0100

Vitamin has proposed three panels on this year's SXSW Interactive Panel Picker. Today is your last chance to vote for them.

Sneak peak at new digg

ryan@carsonified.com (Ryan Carson) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:40:13 +0100

I just got a sneak peak at the new digg features ... and you're going to love 'em! Watch the site as they'll be launching later today.

2007 logo trends

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:27:25 +0100

2007 logo trends. From "dos helix" to "eco smart", all with great examples.

jQuery UI

adam@thinkvitamin.com (Adam Howell) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:30:31 +0100

jQuery UI is "a set of themable widgets and interactions, built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library, that you can use to build highly interactive web applications." The demos are nifty.

Grants for new media training and development in Wales

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:44:29 +0100

NESTA is a new media training and development programme in Wales for graduates/companies trading within their first year - with an opportunity to pitch for a grant of up to £5,000 at the end of the course. Final call for applications – deadline 24 September 07. Email Claire.heat[at]wales-uk.com

Google Presentations is Live

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:49:35 +0100

Google's Presentations web app is now live. Mashable has a write-up.

Expo passes to FOWA Oct

lisa@carsonified.com (Lisa Price) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:00:00 +0100

Cheap as chips! That's what Expo passes to the Future of Web Apps this October 3-4 are. If you're in London and fancy popping along to the show, you can get Expo-only passes for just £5 (exc VAT).