New Google Feedburner UI spotted - a quick overview

Feedburner is a service for webmasters and website owners to track their RSS-Feed subscribers and much more. RSS did not make it to the general public as everyone hoped, but still are very important. Google bought the company behind Feedburner a couple of years ago and beyond a small integration into Google Analytics and Google Adsense nothing happened for years. Today I spotted the "Try the new beta" and here are some screenshots of the interface.

The new Dashboard features messages, your top items and top feeds.

The Feed list features a neat little graph of your reach. Note if you have more clicks than views you are using your rss feed on Twitter or Facebook.

The Feed overview is very well structured and gives you the ability to hide values from the chart. At the moment if you select all time in the date selector it shows only the last two month - I hope they will import the old data over from the classic Interface. But it's proof that they build it from scratch since they clearly have a new database as source.

The single Item display does not show much - but I'm sure they will improve this.

The Subscriber overview has just got more colorful, nothing special I can see here.

This on the other side is interesting. It shows you the endpoints (formerly known as "USE") where your items have been shown and clicked. It would be great if you could reach out to the url shorteners and import their data as well to see effective endpoints even for shortened urls.

All in all it loads quite fast and works well. It gives me a better overview and maybe I start to analyze my feed stats again.

How to show silence

Objective

How to show the advantages of a doorstep insulation? How to make the customer understand how much a reduction of -54 dB is?

Solution

Easy - take real world noises and reduce them in the Soundeditor by 54 dB. It was realized for the Tecnogramma Audio Podcast and reused with a slideshow on the website. Here the video for your enjoyment.

Moving and viewing

I can now officially say that I'm moving to Canada. My first stop will be Vancouver. Everybody who I talk to tells me that it is the most beautiful city in the world - let's see. I think from what I've seen it will not be a disappointment. The plain leaves on 22th of November and from then on I will be ready take on jobs. So if you need an experienced art director/graphic designer let me know. In the meantime I will update the portfolio section with many more examples - I noticed going through my archives that I want to show much more.

And one of the things I want to share as well are my photographs. I'm in no way a professional photographer, but I like capturing the moment and since I also love to retouch photos why not shoot the Raw-Material myself. I share my photography on Flickr and I have integrated the Flickr Slideshow as a background to this site in the section Photography and this page as well. And as a final note - this page also exists in the mobile version of this site - neat.

5 techniques to get your creativity started

I've got an email from a reader of this blog with a common problem... how to get creativity started:

I am into graphic design, working as a finalizer for the last 10 years. I'm working in an Advertising Agency, I want to become an art director. I look at the ads on Ads of the world and get inspired. I found them very easy but when I'm trying to do something my mind doesn't open. Is there any exercise where i can learn and fullfull my dream of becoming an art director.

Being creative is one part of being an art director - and for sure the most fun part. As you can see from the blog there are other activities (organizing, planning, guidance to people) involved in real art direction. But as for creativity there are now really good resources and tools.

1) The word Creativity is a misconception

In advertising and design you mostly don't "create" but you "combine in a new and interesting way" - Don't get fooled by the word creativity - you don't have to reinvent the wheel, just use the wheel in a new way. To read more about this - here is an extensive lesson about "Creativity on demand"

For example: A friend of mine "stitched" his book on fabric instead of printing it on paper.

2) Use the tools the right way

So many people think that they know how to brain storm - but they don't. There are many creativity tools like leathering, brain storming, fishing etc. - but if you don't use them correctly you will not get results. I covered brain storming in this blog post - so read this and storm on.

3) Creativity comes from having many interests

One of the best ways to "open" your mind to creative ideas ist by having a "open" mind all the time. Don't just be interested in graphic design. I'm interested practically in everything (except passive sports = watching someone else doing sport). I want to know how the people lived 100 years ago in Siberia. I cook, hike, bike, run, go to museums about just everything. I listen to podcasts during work about the most desperate themes and from around the world. You don't have to remember everything but sometimes there are things that remain in your mind. And by taking this things from around the world into a new context you are really creative.

An example: It's quite usual here to collect stickers of soccer player for kids in Europe... everyone did this - I used the same principle for a firm. They made stickers from their employees and an album. Who finished the collection has received a price. And the benefit for the firm? All employees have finished the album and in the end everyone knew anyone in every department.

4) Creativity is Teamwork

The image of the lonely creative mind is still present in the minds of everyone. But actually the best creative ideas come from teams - small teams to be exact. Only by interacting and discussing your ideas you have the possibility to expand them and to iterate on them. A modern system for creative temawork is featured in my blog post on this site here.

5) Books and Cards that help

Here is a collection of books and Cards that can help you

• Creative Advertising, New Edition
• Creativity Workout: 62 Exercises to Unlock Your Most Creative Ideas
• Visual Creativity

Download Nikon D3000 18-55 and 55-200 Kit-Lens Profiles for free

The Nikon D3000 is a entry level DSLR and the kit-lenses you get with it are not the best lenses in the world - but with the new lens correction introduced in Photoshop CS5, Camera Raw 6.1 and in the forthcomming Lightroom 3 will help you get better pictures even if you are just entering in the semi-pro digital photography.

Since Adobe and no other user has yet supplied Lens Profiles for this "cheap" lenses I've made them on a rainy sunday. So just download them and put them in the according folders to enjoy them.

The zip files includes the profiles for the NIKON D3000 with Nikkor 18.0-55.0 mm f3.5-5.6, and the NIKON D3000 with the Nikkor 55.0-200.0 mm f4.0-5.6 lenses.

Download

[button color=green url=http://frankie.bz/files/2013/10/nikon_d3000_kit-lens_18-55_55-200_profiles_derfrankie_v1.zip]Download Nikon D3000 Kit Lens Download[/button]

Download

Install

To install them place them in one of the following folders.

a. For Windows XP: C:Documents and Settings(User Name)Application DataAdobeCameraRawLensProfiles1.0 C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataAdobeCameraRawLensProfiles1.0

b. For Windows Vista or Windows 7: C:Users(User Name)AppDataRoamingAdobeCameraRawLensProfiles1.0 C:ProgramDataAdobeCameraRawLensProfiles1.0

c. For Mac: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/LensProfiles/1.0

My Week on Twitter for 2010-04-11

Recaping my Twitter Posts of the last week

• Happy easter to everyone and a note: Facebook Fanpage posts last longer than you think. It seems many Users just look at their FB on holiday #
• SmK (german): Entwicklungsland in Sachen Arbeitssicherheit http://cli.gs/4HQPy #
• What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Freelancing | Design Informer http://ow.ly/1vahD #
• Burg Hocheppan im Frühling http://bit.ly/9Cy7e3 #
• fn_28032010_blumen_041_web.jpg http://bit.ly/bVLFgd #
• fn_07042010_burgenweg_eppan_186_web.jpg http://bit.ly/cs3QhZ #
• Finally setup my Home office the right way - now working is even more fun :) #