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Infrequent Links of Intrigue and/or Interest

Seems like lots of work recently has been revolving around web development recently. Below are a few things I came across this week That I found immediately useful.

4096 Color Wheel - there are literally hundreds of color tools online, but this one is handy for looking for that perfect shade quickly. No clicks involved - hovering over a color immediately reveals its hex value.

As Button Generator - An easy tool for making buttons for your site with quite a few customizable features.

Ajax Edit Comments - A WordPress plugin that allows commenters to edit their comments for a limited amount of time after they have been submitted.

Candy Apple Pie - This really has nothing to do with web development - directly. It would be great to have on as an excuse to take a break from work, though. mmmm…

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Infrequent Links of Intrigue and/or Interest

The Infrequent Links are going to take the place of what had been the “Super Happy Fun Time Friday” links I used to do. I’m just not reliable enough to post that regularly. The sad thing is that I’ve had some of these links saved in FF tabs so I wouldn’t forget to post them, athough some have been lost along the way. Today I’m cleaning house:

• hCard Creator - Build your contact info in hCard format the lazy way with this handy tool.
• Google Map Maker - is a service that allows you add or edit features, such as roads, businesses, parks, schools and more. Using Google Map Maker tools (see below), you can visually mark locations and add detailed information about these locations. Once you have submitted content, this information may be edited by other users or moderators. At a later time, this content may be published in Google Maps for others to see and use. Shares many features as Google Maps.
• The Ultimate Collection of Photoshop Actions - One of Smashing magazines “Ultimate” list series. Actions aren’t only great for saving time, but also for learning more about how to achieve different effects. Stepping through actions can be very enlightening.
• Lumens - Great lighting collections for your home

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Super Happy Funtime Friday

Image by Anita Gould on Flickr

Why is it that we look forward to summer all year, to the vacations we will take and the beautiful weather, but seldom take much time off save a week or two? Despite the call of summer frolicking there are still many places online that capture my attention.

Midatlantic Wildflower Field Guide - A photo set on Flickr of closely photographed wildflowers collected by Anita Gould, named and measured in some cases. She has also started a Midatlantic Trees, Shrubs, Vines, Gardens set that is equally as detailed.

Schmap - Schmaps are interactive maps and guide content that are dynamically integrated, allowing intuitive, real-time access to reviews and photo slide shows for places of interest. You can create your own or browse through schmaps that others have published.

Multi-column Liquid Layouts - 7 (free) CSS layouts by Matthew James Taylor that are iPhone compatible. Even though I’m not an iPhone owner I have to say that the device is certainly causing a lot more focus on mobile-friendly web sites. Yay, accessibility!

Transparent Gradients in Illustrator - How many times had I banged my head against this one before finally Googling a solution? I’ve lost count.

Made in England by Gentlemen - Cookie and Paul are hiking the Continental Divide as part of their summertime fun, and documenting their progress on a beautiful blog using a Nokia N82.

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Super Happy Fun Time Friday

Stephane Tartelin’s portfolio - I don’t think I’ve ever seen gesture drawings exude so much attitude.

Twiddla - An quick online white board app with chat and a few extra surprising features.

Honibe - One teaspoon-sized serving of dried honey per lozenge. Who knew it was possible to dry honey?

YETII - Yet Another Tab Interface Implementation. If you need tabs on your web page this is quick and easy to customize and has a few extra features.

UCSD Podcasts - Recorded lectures from UC San Diego. I’m exploring the cognitive science-related ones now.

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Super Happy Fun Time Friday

There is a lot of cool stuff I came across this week, but no backstory. The University took the day off today for spring break, which meant I didn’t have to go to work. I did go, however, because like a genius I forgot to bring the power cord for my laptop home with me when I left work Thursday. Fortunately, I set off the office security alarm and had to call the campus police - otherwise no one would have ever known I showed up on a day off (a Friday no less). On with the links:

• Logitech diNovo Keyboard - They must have know I’ve been looking desperately for a thumbpad for the PS3 to surf the internet from my couch.
• Phun - and it is! This little program adds some physics to your drawings. Sodaplay is somewhat similar space for creative experimentation and is a little more social.
• Plates from Owen Jones’ book The Grammar of Ornament can be viewed as a set on Flickr. EricGjerde, who posted the set, has a few other (sets) that are equally as interesting. [via]
• I also picked up a copy of the latest release by [dj] Cheb i Sabbah titled Devotion (his website - warning, it is Flash and frustrating). Yes, I did it because I heard that piece on NPR. Admittedly, I’m a sucker for the tabla.

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Super Happy Fun Time Friday

A couple years ago my parents came up for a visit to Alaska. Part of the trip involved some campground “camping”. The kind with those giant bath houses that have concrete floors and many shower stalls. One night while I was in there brushing my teeth, mom walks in and asked what I was doing. Of course, I immediately flashed back to childhood and tried quickly to think what I was doing that could possibly be out of the ordinary. She asked why I was running the water while I was brushing my teeth - like I don’t pay for it at home. At that moment I realized I had - for all my years, been running water down the drain the entire time I brushed my teeth. I had never even stopped to think about it to that point. This video illustrates the potential impact my simple act of changing that one aspect of my routine could make.

• Beautiful posters at ISO 50 - particularly this one
• Charis Tsevis’ “small pieces” mosaic illustrations. Amazing attention to detail.
• PicLens - yes, it is cool. Magical? I wouldn’t go quite that far
• Hacking Flickr - Add refferer information to comments you make on Flickr with this GreaseMonkey script. There is also a Flickr Hacks group I never thought to look for

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Super Happy Fun Time Friday

Actually on a Friday this time. Hell just might freeze over today.

• Piwik - Weird to say, but cool in concept. This is a web statistics tracking project aimed to develop a open source competitor to Google Analytics.
• jQuery Tutorial - Think jQuery can do cool things, but don’t think you’re up to par? This tutorial is a good place to get started if haven’t yet gotten the hang of it (like me).
• Custom laser engraved stuff from moleskines to laptops. The laptops are particularly beautiful. Too bad these Flickr photos aren’t organized into a set of all this guys engraving or I would link directly to it. [via Brian Faust - who also has an awesome Friday list]
• The wiki dictionary of Obsolete Skills
• GlassBox - Vista-style api with translucent borders and fade transitions. Released under the MIT license. Might try this for presentations.

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Super Happy Fun Time Friday

I was going to post this yesterday, but I’m glad I didn’t because at a small get together last night a few of us found the End of the Internet. Yes, like the guy in that commercial that surfed all the way to the end of the internet. His wife says, “I thought you were surfing the internet.” and to that he replies, “Yeah, but I finished it.” Well, if you go to endoftheinternet.com you too can get to the end of the internet. I don’t know why none of us had ever thought to go there before last night - or maybe we had never been that bored until right that moment. The links below are much more interesting - I promise.

• A “Best of” list of tutorials for Illustrator from Smashing Magazine
• Design by Humans t-shirts - yes they are t-shirts, but if you’re going to have them anyway why not get cool ones?
• TiltViewer - an interesting (interesting, but sort of crazy and cool at the same time) way to display your Flickr photos using Flash. Here are mine tagged “alaska”
• CSS Type Set - Prototype text displayed using CSS. Great for explaining what can be done with type using CSS, and great for developing too.

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Super Happy Fun Time Friday: Sunday Edition

The past three weeks have been a flurry of work, leaving little time to read. Fortunately, the weekend has been a nice break to finally catch up and download. It comes as no surprise that a couple of links from Open Culture have found their way into this week’s Fun Time Friday. That blog is an autodidact’s dream.

Foreign Language Lesson Podcast Collection - Foreign language audio resources from Arabic to Vietnamese. While we’re talking about languages, Mango is flash-based language learning website where you can learn French, Japanese, and Pig Latin just to name a few.

Audio Book Podcast Collection - This list features books as well as some podcast sites.

BookMooch - Lets you swap books with others based on a point system. It is free to join and participate, save the cost of shipping books you’re swapping. They also have a mobile accessible site.

HelloTxt - Another messaging service. Sends messages to Twitter, jaiku, Tumblr, Meemi, beemood, and yapped all from the same page. I noticed last week while I was playing with a Nokia 770 that I couldn’t login into the Twitter site using the device browser (I assume it was an ajax issue). This is one way to get around that.

rsizr - This site is pretty cool if you need to resize an image to a different proportion without smashing everything. If your name drops two or more vowels does that mean you’re cooler than web2.0?

SIMS 141 - Berkley class lectures are now available on YouTube. This class is Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business.

EM-X270 - Embedded Mobile Device - For the DIY’er in you. This is a fully functional mobile device that arrives ready to use. All you need is to design a super cool enclosure for it. This would be a fun and inexpensive project to play with, but I have to admit I’m currently wishing I had a Nokia N810.

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Super Happy Fun Time Friday

15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography - a collection of sites displaying informed treatment of type, collected by ilovetypography - another really great site. Yes, I know everyone is linking to this today but it is really good, so I am too.

Projekttriangle Design Studio - Work by a German graphic design studio. Beautiful.

Black Box Sculpt Studio - a Second Life in-world sculptie editor.

Particle Wizard - Create particle systems for Second Life without all the scripting. Buy in-world on Horowitz

Magento - Open source ecommerce solution for the web. Demo.

The Classic Mojo Shirt - from bearskinrug.co.uk. Because everyone needs an under enthused monkey hero.

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