Photoshop CS6 Preview ready for download

Try it out now, stop everything and download the preview edition of Photoshop CS6 ... and while you wait that the download completes look at the videos by Russel Brown and Juleanne Kost.

Web Designers holler - Photoshop CS6 gets Paragraph & Character Styles ... Now let's see if we can import them from other applications. Also the content aware move is great and useful, the other features presented by are meh ... but let's play with them to see how useful they are in real life. #photoshop #cs6 #download #beta

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John Nack on Adobe : Come download Photoshop CS6! Blazingly fast performance and a modern UI — Experience unprecedented performance with the Mercury Graphics Engine, which gives you near-instant results when you edit with key tools such as Liquify, P...

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5 ways to use the SMS Group Service SendHub.com

I've discovered today an awesome service - SendHub.comThis service allows you to create a sort of SMS newsletter service. You create a group and can send messages to this group via mobile text. The best thing is, that people can join this list by texting - just like the big shot text services you see on TV.

This functionality has never been exposed on a self service way and makes it easy for small businesses and organizations to reach their customers/audiences with a tool accessible to everyone.

But also consumers can use it in their private life ... how many times where you feed up because you couldn't setup a group on your mobile phone.

Here are 5 uses that I thought of just now

1. A health organization can offer a daily motivational text 2. A Hockey Club can send updates to it's players about training times 3. Friends can use it to schedule meet ups - Yes, they can send a text back 4. A shop can text special offers to this "vip" group and also wishes for the holidays 5. A business can ask questions and mini surveys

Beyond this use cases SendHub.com has a nice API that seems pretty easy to use - Looking forward to see the first integrations ... Maybe ifttt.com might want to do something here.

Have you any other ideas how to use this service? #sms #campaign #inspiration #selfservice #mobile

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SendHub. SMS for Organizations. Send Texts to Individuals and Groups for free. SMS for Organizations. Watch a Video. Easy Communication. Send and receive text messages from individuals and groups with no hassle. Free. Simply Text to Join. Your contacts can text to join your grou...

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Combine Gaming and Charity

I like to game sometimes, on my Android, but also on my PCs, so the Humble Bundle is always a great fit as it gives you not only nice games, but it also helps a charitable cause. It's for Android, but not only as PC, Mac, Linux and Steam Downloads are available.

Set your own price and play :)

PS: They also have a nice HumbleBundle App now that helps you with updates - a sort of separate App store - very much appreciated.

#gaming #android #steam #charity

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The Humble Bundle for Android 2 (pay what you want and help charity) Pay whatever you want and get instant access to five epic games: Zen Bound 2, Avadon: The Black Fortress, Cogs, Canabalt, and Swords & Soldiers -- all while supporting vital charities. Each game i...

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Google Authorship - Must have Wordpress Plugin

I've tried a couple of the plugins out there which help you to get your picture next to your articles in Google Search results. To be honest, they don't really work - especially if you have multiple authors. So I kept hacking around - this plugin might be the right answer.

#wordpress #plugin #google #seo

Reshared post from +Fraser Cain

Google Authorship Wordpress Plugin

A few weeks ago I asked the community if anyone knew a way to implement Google's rel=author protocol for Wordpress sites with multiple authors. So, each different author of the blog would get their own little picture in the search results.

Since there didn't seem to be a plugin out there, we created one. This is really basic, but it does the trick. It works on single author blogs too, if you don't feel like hacking your themes to make that work.

Every writer will need to add their Google+ profile to their Wordpress user info, and then "claim" it here in Google+ profile as a "Contributor to".

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Announcing: Rel=Author Wordpress Plugin For Multiple Authors Have you noticed the pictures of authors beside Google search results? These Rich Snippets are displayed by the newly released rel=author tag supported by Google. In order to support this feature, you...

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Levelling up in an App or website?

While I'm catching up with some SXSW talks through my Huffduffer Account (don't tell me you are an avid podcast listener and you don't know about Huffduffer), I came across the talk Tapworthy Touchscreen Design. While most of the talk was pretty straight forward to anyone who is a interface designer, the concept of using a level system for an application of website was new and intriguing. Not the average gamification bla bla - but just like in a game, where you get more capabilities while you progress, you would setup the application to expose more and more functionality the longer a user interacts with it.

I still have to wrap my head around how you could use this in an extended way, but I can see immediately the advantage of an uncluttered interface in the beginning, which you then fill with more and more functionality.

#ux #interfacedesign #gamification #development

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Teaching Touch: Tapworthy Touchscreen Design Discover the rules of thumb for finger-friendly design. Touch gestures are sweeping away buttons, menus and windows from mobile devices—and even from the next version of Windows. Find out why those fa...

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Facebook New Brand Page Boilerplate

Most of you designers out there have setup Facebook Brand pages for their clients. In two weeks, those pages will get the new timeline design and you have the space on top for making the page look branded more than before. I found this great boilerplate PSD template to make it easier and quicker to create this graphics, as I know - you may have to update more than one page.

#facebook #brandpages #timeline #template #psd

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Free Facebook Brand Page Timeline Cover Photo PSD Template

Get a Free Photoshop template for the new Facebook brand page coverphotos.

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Help me Translate my How Much Euro App

I would like to make my free Sales Tax aware currency convertet "How much Euro?" available in more languages. So please help me make this possible. I'm looking for translations of the in App copy and the description used in the AppStore and Google Play. If you speak Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish please spare 10 minutes and contribute.

http://www.getlocalization.com/howmucheuro/

I use the free service Getlocalization.com as I wanted to test it out and it looks promising. They also provide integration with Github, but I have to test that out a little further.

Thank you in advance.

New tool from Adobe called Shadow helps Web and App Developer alike

If you are using tools like Phonegap/Cordova to create apps, you might need to check out this new application from Adobe called Shadow. Ars Technica has a nice write up on the desktop/mobile app tandem and I have tested it.  It works pretty well - and to be honest it is a little bit spooky.

Here is the direct link to the download: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/shadow/

#adobe #html5 #testing #mobile #phonegap

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Adobe Shadow aims to ease mobile Web development headaches with simultaneous browsing Adobe has prereleased Shadow, a new tool that allows developers to control multiple smartphones and tablets from their PCs, so they can test their sites across a wide range of mobile devices with ease...

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Cudos to Apple for changing the naming scheme for the iPad and updating the developer...

Guess what, not only has the iPad dropped the number from it's name, but it has therefore followed how "normal" people talk about technology. I'm not only favorable for how Apple handles things, but that John Doe comes into the store and wants "the new iPad" sounds true to me. So why not just embrace it. They talk about making things simple, and with 7 different iPad Versions the easiest way is to not use any specifics in the name. Customers on the other hand will talk about their iPad after the purchase, not about their iPad 3 4g LTE 32Gigs ...

But how about developers who have to identify the different versions. Well, Apple has already updated their development website - they call the "new iPad" just high resolution iPad - so alle the iPad HD rumours where not so wrong.

PS: After further inspection not all developer pages are yet updated, but I guess they will follow.

#apple #ipad #development #branding

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iOS Developer Library — Pre-Release Apple Developer. Search. Search iOS Developer Library. PDF Companion File. Table of Contents. Jump To… Download Sample Code.

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Use Git to update your customized Wordpress Themes safely

Using Git to manage Theme Versions in Wordpress is a little bit geeky, but can help you a lot if you customize off the shelf (premium or free) themes. As good as these themes are to get a wordpress site up and running quickly, they also need some tweaking. Preserving these tweaks is not as easy. How can you keep track of sometimes multiple files you modified? Why not use a version control system that helps merging code bases. It let's you test out your tweaks, giving you a quick way back if you break something and it's the best tool to merge your changes into an updated version of the theme. Git is such a solution and it's fairly easy to use, once you pass the first hurdle of grasping the concept.

Git (and Github, the web service where you can host your git repositories) are subject in books and many articles on the web, so I leave that part out. In this little step my step I assume that you have Git installed on the web-server you host your Wordpress installation and have command line (ssh) access.

Setting up a theme with Git

1. Install new theme with Wordpress Install as usually with the management tools provided by Wordpress  
2. Create a new repository on the web-server SSH into the /wp-content/themes/ and create a new repository git init                         // create new repository git add .                        // add all files in folder git commit -m "original version" // commit with comment  
3. Get ready for future updates git branch ready4update          // add new branch This will create a branch in which we will then copy the updated theme files when we need to update
4. Make your modification to the themeNow you can make your changes to the theme as you like - you will continue to make changes to the master branch. You need to commit your changes to register them with git and I highly advise to use the workflow approach described in ProGit to make your work even more efficient. To commit your changes just enter git add .                                // add all files in folder git commit -m "Insert your comment here" // commit with comment  

Update the theme

Now comes the neat part. You have an updated theme and you need to merge it with your customized one. To do this we need to activate the branch we prepared in step 4.

1. Install new theme files git checkout ready4update     // go to branch

   Now copy the updated theme files into the folder and overwrite everything and commit the changes to the ready4update branch.

   git add .                     // add all files in folder git commit -m "updated theme" // commit with comment  

2. Get Master branch ready We go back to our master branch and make a temporary branch to have a save update. git checkout master          // go to master branch git checkout -b tempupdate   // create new temporary branch from master and change to it  
3. Merge the update into the temporary branch And now we merge the two branches git merge ready4update       // merge with tempupdate

   The trick here is that the master and ready4update branch have the original theme as common ancestor. Git can merge this way the changes made by the author of the theme and yours - and if you have conflicts git will help you resolve them.  

4. Test the website Since we have created a tempupdate branch we are working in, even if something brakes badly you can still go back to your previous stable master branch (git checkout master).  
5. Merge into master and get ready for next update If the test went well and your wordpress site works well you should get ready for the next update git checkout master         // go to master branch git merge tempupdate        // merge the branch into master git branch -d tempupdate    // delete temporary branch git branch -d ready4update  // delete ready4update branch git branch ready4update     // create new ready4update branch  

Now you are ready to update your theme or make additional changes to it. Believe me - it looks more complicated then it actually is, so go ahead and try it.

How much Euro? Mobile App

  How much Euro? is the first sales tax aware currency converter. In the US and Canada prices shown in stores are mostly without sales tax. This messes up the result of any normal currency converter.

Not "How much Euro?", which calculates the tax and adds it before converting dollars to euros. This helps travellers, exchange students and other visitors to the US and Canada to understand quickly how much an item costs in Euro just like they are used to in their home country.

If you would like to stay up to date with the latest news about this App:

[one_half]

JUST TOUCH NO KEYBOARD

• Easy enter Dollar amount - just swipe right or left - result updates instantaneously

[/one_half]

[one_half_last]

WHAT IS THE REAL COST

• Shows Euro amounts with and without tax
• Up to date exchange rates through online update
• App stores latest Dollar amount

[/one_half_last]

[one_half]

EASY SETTINGS

• US & Canadian Dollar supported
• Shake your phone to reset Dollar amount
• Easily adjust to the local sales tax by swiping

[/one_half]

[one_half_last]

USE IT OFFLINE

• Stores the last updated rates
• Convert prices without internet access

[/one_half_last]

[one_third]

Android

Download "How much Euro?" on Google Play [/one_third]

[one_third]

iOS/iPhone/iPad

Coming Spring 2012 [/one_third]

[one_third_last]

Windows Phone

[button color=grey url=/contact] Request it[/button]

[/one_third_last]

[alert color=green]Help me Translate this App - [button color=grey url=http://www.getlocalization.com/howmucheuro] Start now [/button][/alert]

How much Euro? My first App ... and the excitement is back

It's done, my first Android App has been submitted to the Android Marketplace. I must admit that I'm proud of myself - it's the first time in years, that I have breached into a new "medium". By that I mean, that I feel the rush to have published something in a way I have never done before, much like the first time I uploaded a website to a server back in 1996, or when my first "Hello World!" was printed on the screen with my C64.

I also felt the same when I saw the first leaflet I designed lying on a counter in a bar - this "I did that, it's my creation and others use it actually".

That someone "uses" something I created is probably the most important part and the most exciting. In all my work, may it be design or development I always try to make something useful (I'm not against beauty, but a chair on which you cannot sit is pointless to me).

An App (native or on the web) is therefore the perfect medium for a "digital product designer" - someone who lives on the bridge between design and development. It contains not only design elements, but usability, development challenges and real world interaction (sometimes). People do not just "visit", they "use" the application.

This excitement will probably fade over time, but I try to keep this excitement alive by learning new stuff all the time. It is the excitement that keeps me searching for new challenges.

How about you, are you still exited about your work? How do you keep the passion for it going?

PS: Here is the link to Google Play

https://market.android.com/details?id=bz.frankie.howmucheuro

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Indesign still not ready for right-to-left languages - yes and no

In this "globalized" world I find it remarkable that inDesign still today has problems with languages who require right to left writing. Even better is, that it actually can layout text for these languages, but it's not exposed. I found this Script which helps you if you need to access this functionality.

#script #indesign #arabic #hebrew #javascript

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InDesigning.net :: Right-to-left, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi ... in InDesign CS4 (none-ME)

My name is Thomas Silkjær and I am currently living in beautiful Aarhus, Denmark, with my wife and daughter, while working as a professional graphic designer in a small design agency, specialized in b...

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Some typographic basics - not just for the web designer

Typography is not only about what font to use, or how it "looks" - it's about making a text easier to read. The rules presented in this great article will help you to make every text more accessible and better looking. In fact, this basic rules work so good, because type designers taylor their fonts to work best when this rules are applied. So go ahead and refresh your memories for a more readable future ;)

BTW: If you are writing or editing text in another language than english, the rules are quite different - so be warned.

#typography #tutorial #guide

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Mind Your En And Em Dashes: Typographic Etiquette - Smashing Magazine | Smashing Magazine An understanding of typographic etiquette separates the master designers from the novices. A well-trained designer can tell within moments of viewing a design whether its creator knows how to work wit...

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Contemporary free display font Archive

I like the all caps display font called Archive because it has a great balance in weight, modern elements and readability. As seen in the examples it works great if you age it, but I think it might show it's best use as a logo font for a tech startup that doesn't want to get lost in the see of soft shapes and script fonts.

#font #free #typography

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Free Fonts Download, Fonts for Free Our goal is to create high-quality Free Fonts which stand in a unique class of their own, and which will serve as a good base for any designer project whether it be web, print, t-shirt design, logo et...

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Easy scanning without alignment just by swiping your mouse

Ok, not with every mouse - but with this new mouse from LG you can scan in a casual fashion. There have been hand scanners in the past, but the software wasn't that flexible. I like this approach very much. I find it especially useful for home offices, where you need to scan sometimes something but don't have the space for a full flat bed scanner.

#products #design #innovation #ux

[asa]B0053T0HNI[/asa]

Reshared post from +Giles Pettipher

LG Mouse/Scanner..

It's a Scanner in your Mouse...

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Let's get Ultrabold, with Bemio a new font from the Lost-Type CoOp

Bemio is an ultrabold sans with an extensive character set. It bridges the gap between old signage and craftsmanship with modern forms and simplicity. With more than 1000 glyphs, and full Language Support, Bemio is versatile and robust.

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http://www.losttype.com/font/?name=bemio&source=e

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Walt Disney and Salvador Dali - Destiny (Destino) - a 58 year production - very surreal,...

Reshared post from +Sean Cowen

Walt Disney and Salvador Dali - Destiny (Destino) - a 58 year production - very surreal, of course, and fascinating to watch...

The film tells the story of Chronos, the personification of time and the inability to realize his desire to love for a mortal. The scenes blend a series of surreal paintings of Dali with dancing and metamorphosis. The target production began in 1945, 58 years before its completion and was a collaboration between Walt Disney and the Spanish surrealist painter, Salvador Dalí. Salvador Dali and Walt Disney Destiny was produced by Dali and John Hench for 8 months between 1945 and 1946.

Dali, at the time, Hench described as a "ghostly figure" who knew better than Dali or the secrets of the Disney film. For some time, the project remained a secret. The work of painter Salvador Dali was to prepare a six-minute sequence combining animation with live dancers and special effects for a movie in the same format of "Fantasia." Dali in the studio working on The Disney characters are fighting against time, the giant sundial that emerges from the great stone face of Jupiter and that determines the fate of all human novels. Dalí and Hench were creating a new animation technique, the cinematic equivalent of "paranoid critique" of Dali. Method inspired by the work of Freud on the subconscious and the inclusion of hidden and double images.

Dalí said: "Entertainment highlights the art, its possibilities are endless." The plot of the film was described by. Dalí as "A magical display of the problem of life in the labyrinth of time."

Walt Disney said it was "A simple story about a young girl in search of true love."

#salvadordali #dali #surrealism #surreal #disney #waltdisney #art #animation

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A comprehensive overview on HTML5 Video, and if you should use it

Everybody talks about video on websites and if you create websites you are sitting on the fence all the time asking yourself if you should already go with HTML5 Video or not. This overview can help you make the decision - and the guys know what they are talking about - they are the maker of the very popular JW Player.

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The State Of HTML5 Video

HTML5 has entered the online video market, which is both exciting and challenging for developers in the industry. With both the HTML5 specification and the various browser implementations in constant ...

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Designing the Modern Atlas

Great Article and poor comments - people ask for features when it's about a design process. Reshared post from +Google Maps

Ever wondered about the design process for Google Maps? Step behind the scenes and learn how two members of our user interface team, +Willem Van Lancker and +Jonah Jones, design the modern atlas. http://goo.gl/S691F

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