My "Best of 2009" music list

The end of 2009 is almost here, so its time to sum of the music year for my part and I have created a playlist on Spotify. The order is more or less chronologically from when I discovered them. Though some tracks might be older than 2009, but they are on the list as I haven't discovered them before this year. There are some odd ones, and they are on the list simply cause they were fun (and very catchy!) like Rybak and David Guetta. Not quite sure what mood you would be in if you listen to the whole list in one go, but they all got my approval! :)

1. Thunderheist "Jerk it"
2. Miss Harmonica "Friday Night"
3. Kid Cudi "Day n Nite"
4. Alexander Rybak "Fairytale"
5. Dizzee Rascal "Bonkers"
6. Peter Fox "Alles neu"
7. Lily Allen "Smile"
8. Maskinen "Alla som inta dansar"
9. Kings of Convenience "Boat Behind"
10. La Roux "In for the kill"
11. Lars Vaular "Solbriller på"
12. Veronica Maggio "Mandågsbarn"
13. Jay-Z "D.O.A."
14. Miike Snow "Animal"
15. Prodigy "Omen"
16. David Guetta "Sexy bitch"
17. The Bloody Beetroots "Awesome"
18. Kråkesølv "Privat regn"
19. Bjørn Hellfuck "Krabbeklo"
20. The Nextmen "Round of Applause"
21. Einar Stray "Arrows"
22. My Little Pony "A song for you on your 40th birthday"
23. Therese Aune "Chamelon"
    

Enjoy my "Best of 2009" music
So what was my favourite?! I think most listened to album were by Lily Allen and Miike Snow. So now you know.

Concerts

• Girl Talk Live in Oslo
  Last years Øya was fun. This concert was even better!
  
• Prodigy were amazing! Didnt see that one coming from my old favourites.
• Donkeyboy's "Ambitions" performed by Marie Alming at Radio Nova Simply cause I didnt expect any performances at the Christmas party and her song took me be surprise. Great surprise!

Free music

• Alex Goose Blueprint 3 Outtakes I must say that the Outtakes are much better than the songs that got on Jay-Z's album
• Kutiman's Youtube tracks This is what the web is all about, free mashups that would exist without the Internet.
• Rockettothesky "Hee-ho and a Bottle of Rum" Have heard the song before on couple of her concerts, but great to get it on track

Video

• By far Peter Fox with "Schwarz zu blau"

Thanks to
YesYesYall and Radio Nova's Bra Trommis for making me discover loads of great new music! Keep up the good work!

ps. Loads of Best of 2009 lists can be found at Platekompaniet's website

Javascript is getting better (than Flash..?)

Well, ok. So I really exaggerated to grab you attention. But codes like Scrollable
really does stuff that Flash did back in the days. (that would be 2001 or so for my part). Time flies. Check it out.

Monitor your brand on social media

13 Ways to Monitor Your Brand on Social Media: Do You Know What Is Being Said About Your Company Online?

Microsofts LookingGlass is promising to help you out too. Read the blogpost on its latest updates

Reveal how a website is built

Wanna find out what servers, meta tags, webanalytics tools, etc a website uses? Use

Builtwith.com It "reveals" the inner secrets of a website. The image shows for example some of the info you get from my site Portada.no

Check your Google Pagerank

Wanna know your Pagerank fast? Use:

Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly:

This free page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service

And to see how your backlinks (sites linking to your site) is doing, use: PageRank Checker For Your Backlinks
Good way of finding out which site helps you getting higher Pagerank.

Get (more) social on your blog easily and free

Wibiya.com have created a brilliant application/plugin to be added on your blog. Works on Blogger, Wordpress, and many more. And Ive just added it to my blog as you can see.

What is it you may ask? Its a toolbar that shows your Twitter feed, Facebook page, translates your blog, gives you search ++ Its completely customizable, free and gives you statistics too. This video explains it fairly well:



ps. Its still in Beta, but only took me one day to get invite.

Great typography sites

Webdesignledger has made as great list of 10 Incredible Sites to Improve Your Typography Skills

Personal favourites include:
Helveticons.ch
Great websitedesign, great icons. All based on Helvetica Yummy.

Typesites.com
Proper reviews of website typography. Good stuff.

Webchat on your website using Gtalk or Yahoo

Olark, previoulsy known as Hab.la (which was a MUCH better name btw), offers easy and free webchat functionality to your website. When you are connected on Gtalk it will show on your website without revealing your username.

Really great if you have a webshop for example and want to chat with your customers.

Great work Olark!

Great sushi place in Berlin

Sushi Bar Ky its situated in Oderberger Straße 40, which is next to the design and fleamarket Mauerpark

View Larger Map

Buy a logo, domain or even business concept!

Why bother think, when someone else can? Buy the lot at
http://incspring.com

Find inspiration from other websites

Need a button for your website? A breadcrumb menu? Out of inspiration? Look at http://patterntap.com/ The site gathers sreenshots from several sites and makes it fast and easy to get inspired (or copy..;) Here is an example for "Audio".

SkypeIn and SkypeOut on my w810i using Midp/Java

As I still live in the darkages of mobiles with my w810i, I envy all iPhone users with their great selection of apps from Apples AppStore. For example having Skype (except for T-mobile users who are banned from using it...) and Windows Live Messenger on your phone. So when I found Skype having a Java programme, I was well happy! It looks great (as opposed to most Java/Midp apps...), but happiness was short lived! I figured out I can ONLY chat to other Skype users with it from my mobile (or cell phone if you like). Pretty much useless then.

Previously I have mentioned EQO mobile, which works quite well for IP ringing. But IM+ for Skype seems much better! Not only can I phone Skype users and use SkypeOut, but I can also receice Skype calls. Fantastic! Would just love if they could upgrade the Java (Midp 2.0) layout, cause thats not really fancy...


7 days trial, or get the whole for 10 US bucks. Its a deal!

Facebook is all open, or maybe you want some privacy?

10 easy tips on how to get some privacy once on Facebook. Could come in handy if you are as paranoid as I am. No, wait! Cant be that bad. After all, I have a blog. Two blogs. Two websites. Twitter, eh... + + Ok. So much for privacy paranoia..

Create your own RSS feed readers easy

Like many other I wanted to have RSS feeds on my website, in this case my Twitter feed on my blog. Not having the normal Blogger template, I wasnt able to use the Blogger feed widget. So I had to look elsewhere. Finally I found an article listing up a bunch of different, easy to use RSS feedcreators that dont need programming skills. Robin Good wrote them. After reviewing most of them I concluded that FeedSweep and SpringWidgets where the easiest to use. Both are free btw. Though the SpringWidget has nice scrolling, it doesnt really integrate well visually (I find) with the rest of my site, so I ended up with FeedSweep. It has a great easy to use editor, with loads of options, such as border colors, font size, etc.

I only have sometimes some trouble saving the feedreaders. I guess you cant get it all..

Anyways, good luck!

Create a Retro Photo and Background

A great Photoshop tutorial I got via Rune Grothaug

http://www.denisdesigns.com/
It shows how to create a old looking photo. Goody

Why are all these icons for free!?

They all look great: http://iconpot.com/ is my honey pot!

Free photos for all to use!

The Morguefile free photo reference archive provides the public and creative community with a repository of FREE raw photo materials. Oh happy days for us creatives!

Free music is good! When from Del The Funky Homosapien its better!

Back in 1991 Del tha Funkee Homosapien got famous with the hit "Mistadobalina". He hasnt really been away, eventhough I almost only heard about him through Gorillaz. Anyways, point is he is giving away his latest album Funk Man (the stimulus package) for free. You only have to sign up for his newsletter (which you can sign off from any time). Loads of other music there too for free. Sweet.

Other Twitter apps on mobile: Jib Jib & uTweetMe

If you dont like the interface of Jitter, check out http://code.google.com/p/jibjib/. uTweetMe is another Java app for mobiles, but I never got it to work on my w810i. Has someone gotten it to work?

Twitter usage increases in Norway and how to get old mobile phones (ie. w810i) on Twitter

I have been on Twitter for a couple of months, but never really got the point. Probably also cause no one else in Norway got it either. I only had ONE friend/follower on Twitter. That was Tim. But over the last months, suddenly everyone seems to be on Twitter. And when the biggest Norwegian newspapers like VG and Dagbladet have journalist like my friend Snorre Bryne (Dagbladet) using it actively communicating with his readers and having Twitter streams in their articles AND Twingly, then you know its become mainstream in Norway too. The widespread popularity of the iPhone has increased the usage too.

Any-ways, having a blog I mixed that up with Twitter with TwitterFeed (its just really a feed from my blog to my twitter account) and then having the Twitter application in Facebook feeding from Twitter to my Facebook status field, suddenly I have created a little mashup and am so proud!

BUT, I dont own an iPhone, but obviously want to spam everyone with meaningless trivia from my daily life. So what to do? Tata!! I found the solution: Jitter. A tiny free Java application created by Abiro. It works on pretty much any phone supporting MIDlets. Such as my old w810i. Technology is wonderful! Hurrah!

Logo design tips by Designer Daily

Designing a logo? In need of some guidelines? Read the "10 tips for a logo design that works" by Designer Daily. Some tips are obvious like 1. use vectors, but either you are a newbie or not, keep these tips in the back of your head. Some rules might be good to follow!

Ah, and then there are a bunch of commentaries suggesting even more tips.

Yahoo Pipes - mix your rss feeds

Havent really figured this one out. But it seems to be cool. Haha. Go Yahoo!
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

Test your site on any browser - Online

Browsershots - http://browsershots.org/
This complimentary service lets you test your Web design in 55 different combinations of Web browsers and operating systems. It's a handy tool to show a client how different systems can mangle sites using nonstandard code.

Type in a Web address, select which browser/OS combinations to test, and click the button. Browsershots uses distributed computing to test your page across a network of users, who send back screenshots showing the results.

Added feedback form on my Portada online shop

I just added an uservoice feedback form on my online shop which sells tshirts and hoodies that I have designed. Lets see if people do leave comments. What do you think? Please leave a comment.

Video call when Skype doesnt work...

Skype is great for calling, but also has a good video call function. However sometimes it doesnt work. Especially between a PC and Mac. So one needs alternatives. Heres an overview over 10 different video conference applications: 10 Skype alternatives I tried SightSpeed, but never got it to work apart from the chat function which was like a poor Messenger.

Apparently in January Microsoft will release a Beta of Windows Live Messenger for Mac that finally supports video too. Lets keep our fingers crossed and hope it works well.

Create your own desginer belt: Apple Mac Pro Mouse Beltbuckle

Finally a thing to do with your all electronic trash.. Instructables has a great site with loads of tutorials and tips how to create fun stuff, just like this really nerdy beltbuckle: http://www.instructables.com/id/Pro-Mouse-Beltbuckle/

Create peeling sticker effect in Photoshop - tutorial

Sometimes you want to create fake stickers on your Photoshop artwork. And here is a great tutorial how to do that:
http://9tutorials.com/2007/07/23/peeling-sticker-effect.html

Loads of free comic fonts! Even Roy Lichtenstein style

You want to use Roy Lichtensteins comic font that he used in his speech bubbles? One was created by Albright-Knox Art Gallery: "P22 Pop Art Comic"

According to Fontshop
"The Pop Art font set was developed for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. The Comic typeface, in regular and bold italic, was inspired by the work of Roy Lichtenstein, whose crisp, clear caps were distinctive but legible."

You can buy it for example here:
Fonts.com

Dont want to pay? Here are loads of free alternatives:
hans.presto
Blambot
manfred-klein

"Laffayette Comic Pro" is fairly similar:
dafont

Read magazines online for free

"Read the world. Publish the world." Thats what http://issuu.com/ claims anyways. See for yourself what you think!

How to create a Roy Lichtenstein style image in Photoshop or Illustrator

Here are some great tutorials if you would like to become a pop-art artist!

http://vectortuts.com/illustration/turning-a-photo-into-lichtenstein-style-pop-art-with-illustrator/




http://www.creativepro.com/article/digital-pop-art-unleash-your-inner-warhol

http://www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-popart.html

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=11762

80's t-shirt and other great stuff to be a cool kid!

Transformers, A-Team, Pacman, etc etc all great stuff found at http://www.80stees.com/

Free shortfilms at Klingenberg kino in Oslo

Every day at 17.40 free shortfilms at Klingenberg. Check out the films shown: http://www.oslokino.no/kortfilm/

Organise cables

What a ingenious little plastic thingy. "Keep-A-Cable" has the overview for a cable organiser (and holder), that I have looked for so long! Just ordered one. Hope it keeps what I hope it promises. http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/002864.php

Save files online (and syncing) them too

There are many ways of saving files online and possibly syncing them thereby. Here are some alternatives I have found:

- Skydrive (5gb free),












- MSN shared folder,
















- Office Live (integrated with the MS Office suite)




- Gdisk (a software that turns your GMail account into a portable hard drive)


-mailbigfiles.com (not really storage as such, only another way of distributing large files rather than sending via email, but I find their free service better than YouSendits)

-YouSendit(not really storage as such, only another way of distributing large files rather than sending via email)

- Amazon S3 ($0.15 per GB-Month of storage used AND monthly trafic cost)

- Apples mobile.me (Individual One-year subscription $99)






And finally my favourite: Dropbox (invitation only, but giving you 2gb free, with cross-platform functionality and web interface too. And its just drag and drop!)

Make your blog talk!

Added a new funny feature to my blog:
Its free, and makes your blog talk. Now one can download my blog posts as podcasts too!

phoneticom.com

http://www.audiofeedcreator.com

http://feeds.readspeaker.com/podcaster/flash/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://feeds.readspeaker.com/audiofeed/4131.xspf

Easy tutorials (handdrawn and simple)

Simple animations with simple explanations of mainly web stuff. Such as "what is twitter?"
http://www.commoncraft.com/

Yes! Free fresh music

Discovered this great site by chance. Its got a (daily) dose of high quality free music. Great way of discovering new bands. Ah, and I really love the music player made in Flash! www.yesyesyall.org

Paint websites gold!

Campaign site done by agency: Colle+McVoy, Minneapolis. Pretty cool tagging other sites, while listening to good music:

http://www.paintthatshitgold.com/

Read more about it here:

http://www.frederiksamuel.com

Blip TV - another Youtube?

Another alternative to YouTube: http://www.blip.tv/
The difference being that the image quality seems to be better and that one here kind of can choose between different tv channels like my friends Hootan Mahallatis Rightpedal

Cool designer font screensavers

A great Helvetica screensaver from: http://scr.sc/products/dropclock/ And its both for Windows and osX! HOWEVER: 136mb for a screensaver is rather heavy.. (And I cant seem to get it downloaded somehow...) Any help?

This wordclock is also pretty cool:
http://www.simonheys.com/wordclock/

Looking for more news on type? Check out this: http://www.typeneu.com/

Gulltaggen 2008 showing Virgin Galactic and The Reactable

Yesterday was Norways web-awardshow, Gulltaggen, celebrating its 10. anniversary in Oslo Spectrum. Unfortunately the project I worked on for Microsoft, Heroes happen here, didnt win. But you can read about it (and all other nominations) here.


Gulltaggen had a couple of good seminars, especially the one by president Will Whitehorn from Virgin Galactic. Great stuff! Sci-fi today:


Another great experience was seeing the Reactable live. The reactable is a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface. They performed live at Gulltaggen 2008 in Oslo

Padre Paranoia sells funky t-shirts!

My Spanish friend Chema has gotten his new website up and running. See (and order!) his great designs at
http://www.padreparanoia.com/

Personally, I like the flying Leika the best :)

Next years color trends

At least this is according to the Swedes at Cap&Design

http://capdesign.idg.se/2.990/1.156101

Design your own font

Easy web application to create your own font for free. They will be under Creative Commons license and hence free for all users

Test it here: http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/

Loads of Typos at ilovetypography.com

John D Boardley is from the UK, but lives in Japan. He has a great blog about fonts:

http://ilovetypography.com/

Broadcast directly from your mobile phone

New Scandinavian website Bambuser.com lets you broadcast directly and live from your mobile phone onto your website or blog.

Read all about it here (in Norwegian):
http://www.hjemmepc.no/tips___triks/article214246.ece

Or visit your website: www.bambuser.com

"Google" city guides

Powered by Google Maps, Swift City is a quite cool online city guide. Browse the web and zoom in to the place of interest. Ah, no. Acctually, as this site is quite new, there hardly are any places to read about. Shame, but maybe you want to write your own reviews for them? http://www.swiftcity.com/


Osaka on your left.

Discount again on tshirts

8. of March is the international Womens day! So being nice I give you a discount code for my webshop: “FRAU2008" That gives you 33% on all womens products. Sweet. http://www.portada.no/butikk

Sony Ericsson w810i applications

The official w810i app
Sony Ericsson PC Suite 2.10.46 (for Windows Vista/XP)

MyPhoneExplorer
http://www.fjsoft.at/en/downloads.php
THE best software to backup your SMS. AND its freeware! (but please, do pay!:)

LaSyk
http://myw810.lasyk.net/
many different applications, wallpapers, etc

Buy your tshirt now, get free shipping!

At a Minimum Order of £
35 or 50€ or 400 Norwegian Kroner. Free Shipping and a red String Thong for free! Code: Valentinus2008+
Visit my webshop now: http://www.portada.no/butikk/

Find images and photos

Sometimes you might wanna find images, photos or god forgive: even clip-arts! Well, search no further:

http://www.deviantart.com/

Just look at the beautiful "dirty paper" I found in REALLY HIGH resolution! Yummy.

Norwegian Heroes Happen here site online!

Pretty proud now! My very first big Microsoft project is finally live! The site is promoting Microsoft Norways biggest launch this year with an event taking place on the 6. of March. Its called Heroes happen hereAh, and did I mention the video idea was mine? :) Enjoy!

Internal joke for nerdy designers: Design Police

Extremly funny templates for designers who think that just because you have the tools (Adbobe CS), means that you know design.

Download template for sticker production and let people know what you think about posters, ads, etc. that you see everywhere around you.

http://www.design-police.org/

Unlock several files at once - osx

This fantastic application, LockMeBaby, does what osx should be doing on its it: namly being able to unlock several files, folders and subfolders in one go! It even works on external harddisks.

http://soramimi-works.net/software.shtml

I sent the company an email with some questions and rapidly got a reply:

Here's how to lock/unlock files on external drives by LockMeBaby:
1) Uncheck "Run in safe mode" in the preference panel.
2) Select "/ (Root)" from the popup as browser's root directory.
3) In the leftmost column, you'll find a directory "Volumes". Your
external drives should be listed under "Volumes" directory.

Hope this helps and please be careful when you turn off "Safe mode" as
many system-related files appear in LockMeBaby's browser.

How to download ebooks from Google

Apparently this is the way to download ebooks from Google Books. Good luck!

allinurl: +(rarchmzippdftgz) java basics
OR
+("java basics") +("/ebooks""/book") +(chmpdfziprar) +apache

Fantastic video website!

This website is like the BBC of Youtube! Only quality videos about art, technology, etc.
ted.com/ As they say: "Inspired talks by the worlds greatest thinkers and doers."

MSN online status blocker

Check if someone has blocked you on MSN. This website checks whether the person is online og not. And if they dont appear on your MSN, but appear as online on this site, you might have been blocked.. :) http://www.msnblockchecker.info/

Running Explorer (IE 6/7) on osX

You design websites on a Mac, but want to test them in IE 6 or 7 but cant be bothered to run Bootcamp? Well, check out:
http://macapper.com/2007/11/29/ies4osx-run-internet-explorer-567-natively-in-os-x/

http://occy.net/node/166

Download
http://darwine.sourceforge.net/


http://www.kronenberg.org/ies4osx/

PowerPoint Tip: AutoFit (automatically resize text)

AutoFit Text in PowerPoint

In PowerPoint AutoFit intentionally shrinks the size of text as large amounts are added to a slide. The top complaint about PowerPoint slide presentations is text that is too small. PowerPoint Design templates were originally created to force good design by setting font size automatically. The AutoFit feature defeats this purpose and actually encourages too much text on slides by shrinking it as you type, allowing people to use fonts too small to be seen.

To turn AutoFit off:

	Choose Tools from the pull-down menu
	AutoCorrect Options
	Click the tab for AutoFormat As You Type
	Uncheck the 2 options under the Apply as you type section: AutoFit title text to placeholder AutoFit body text to placeholder.
	Click OK. The change applies to active and future PowerPoint presentations, old presentations are not affected. from: http://www.createthefuture.com or check out: http://office.microsoft.com

Mail big files for free

Got big files you say? Outlook or Thundbird inbox gets filled up too fast? Well, sending files via websites are a good solution. I usually use mailbigfiles.com for sending big files. However that site has a restriction of 100mb (the free version of the site, that is)

This site is free too, but has a 2gb (!) limit. Though you have to register and tried it once and it just stopped. So I guess its not that good after all...?
http://skickafilen.se/

Free too, 2gb limit. Havent tried it yet. But both are worth a shot.
http://www.filecentral.se

Free shipping in November!

This month I have free shipping at my t-shirt webshop. Just enter this code when you order: XMAS07

Gratis frakt på t-skjortene mine i november! Bare skriv inn kode ved bestillingen: XMAS07

Portada.no/butikk

Martin Slaatto is weird...

...and really loads of fun!

Went to see Martin Slaatto´s new show/installation/act at Maridalen Skytebane in Oslo. It was one 1h of strange experience. A man dressed in a red track suite, jumping around, climbing trees, flying a remote controlled helicoptre and suddenly reciting Hamlet. Everything without irony, but not without humour! 1hour fun with free coffee and rolls for 100kr. Well recommended!

Check out his website: http://www.slaattosloyfa.no

Here is a review of the show: Slaattos lek på alvor (its in Norwegian)

Free fonts and other free things...

Quite dumb name for a site "Hacking Ballz", but they have quite nice free fonts (for testing purposes only of course!...)

http://www.hackingballz.com/fuentes/a

Skjema og blanketter Turistsalg - tilbakebetaling av merverdiavgift

Hvis du bor i utlandet og vil ta få tilbake momsen / mva ved utreise fra Norge å dette gjøres innen 1 måned fra kjøpsdato.

Varen kan (iflg tollmannen jeg pratet med) være utpakket, evt. ring Tollvesenet Gardermoen utland

Dette skjemaet må fylles ut før avreise: "Turistsalg - tilbakebetaling av merverdiavgift, RD 0032" kan lastes ned hos http://www.toll.no

History of branding and companies

Brands, brands, brands! Here's a great site that tells you the history of loads of brands.

http://www.historyofbranding.com/
and while this linkhas more articles, etc. on brands: historyofbranding 2

Changing a XP folder's name text colour

One day I came to work and suddenly all my folder texts were in ugly blue, rather than black. Being intolerant to changes (that I have not done on purpose), I eventually figured out how to fix the problem:

You can then set your folder view to display compressed folders in blue (Tools, Folder Option, View, Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in colour)

It will only slow things down a little as the operating system has to decompress the data when accessing it. Never seen it corrupt data.

Thanks to toms hardware for making me sleep better at night.. :)

Easily download YouTube movies via Safari (osx)

YouTube is great for finding all sorts of video clips, but wouldnt it be nice having them on your computer? And when I say computer, I mean Mac (it might even work on PCs, now that Safari is available on Windows too). So after some googling, I found the following tip at MacOSXhints.com:

If you're using Safari, there's an easy way to download YouTube videos. Open the page with the movie and press Command-Option-A (or Window - Activity), which shows the Activity window. If you're also loading other sites, you'll see a list of them: scroll until you find the YouTube page and click on the arrow to show details about what is being loaded.

You will certainly notice an element whose size is over 0.5MB (most of the time, over 5MB). Double-click on it (even if it is still loading), and Safari will download it. When the download is over, navigate to the file in the Finder (which will probably be called get_video) and add the extension .flv to its name. Now you can play it with VLC or with QuickTime (only if you have Perian installed).

Fantastic!

Read the original post at:
MacOSXhints.com

Vector logos in EPS: Its Brands of the World!

At some point you need a companies logo vectorized, because you have a presentation to do, your client hasnt supplied you with a logo, or if do do have, its a crappy jpg. BUT help is near! Loads of logos can be found on: http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/

Mainly US logo, but hey! Give globalisation some time and all logos are here...

Cap&Design 20yrs present

The brilliant Swedish design magazine Cap&Design is celebrating 20 years anniversary. And they are so nice, so they let us download 23 PDF backissues for free. Go to www.capdesign.se/jubilar20 Username: Läsare Password: jubileumsläsning

Happy birthday Cap (and to all readers: enjoy the PDFs.. :)!

Live maps by Microsoft

For those of you who thought Google Earth was good: Check out: http://maps.live.com/

Here's an example of the townhall in Oslo, Norway.

Secrets. Also, Lei's

A gunshy writer-in-training rants and finds stuff by copywriter Leilah Ambrose

http://leicentious.blogspot.com/

Google games

If your feeling bored, and want to have fun with Google as your tool.
Google games

Nektes iPod-hjelp

Slemme, slemme Apple... http://forbruker.no/digital/nyheter/mp3/article1255874.ece

Lov om beskyttelse av design

You might want to find out about the laws of copyrights regarding your new and beautiful designed logo..?

http://www.patentstyret.no

.htaccess - Custom error pages

Something wrong with your weblinks or server? Then maybe a custom error page is a temporary solution..?
http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/htaccess/

Sweet font: Popgod!

By popular request, here is a quite cool font I found at the Fontshop: Popgod

http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/downloads/device_fonts/popgod/

Is THIS the one you like!?

or is it more this one: Zacron

Simpsons maraton på ZTV!

– For å feire at det er gått to tiår siden den gule familien først kom på skjermen, vil det på ZTV vises Simpsons-episoder hele kvelden 19. april - fra kl. 19.00 til 24.00, skriver TV3 og ZTV i en melding.

Det er episoder fra sesong 16 og 17 vil vises fortløpende.

Også TV3 feirer Simpsons og der blir den vanlige episoden kl. 18.00 byttet ut med en times dokumentar om den gule familien og folkene bak serien.

Les mer her: http://e24.no/medier-og-reklame/article1738702.ece#AF

Free mobile applications: Get Jar

Who doesn't own a mobile phone? You've filled it up with SMS and MMS, but you want more! You want java applications. But you want them for free. That's where http://www.getjar.com/ comes in... Have fun!

Handy startpage: Netvibes

Have just discovered http://www.netvibes.com/ It's a site similar to Google's "Home" site, however being a Mac addicct, I prefer Netvibes layout and easy userinterface. Also I love the idea that one acctually doesn't have to log on to be able to use it. Registering is however useful, as Netvibes saves the settings and they won't get lost in case you delete your cookies. Also if you use multiple computers like me, you can easily get your personlised page on the other computer by logging in.

The RSS feeds are quite good too, being able to see Aftenposten, NYT, Spiegel and El Pais at the same time.

Only, I think they should get a smaller clock. The so called "mini-clock" is really not "mini". More like "major". Oh, well. Can't get'em all at once I suppose.. :)

Happy easter! (and if you happen to see Valentin today: congratulate him from me. It's his birthday! Hurra!)

Spiegel Designclicks & music

The German magazine Spiegel has some good design/photo collection. Check it out here:

http://designklicks.spiegel.de/index.php#dk=002

Also, if you need some suggestion for music: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/musik/0,1518,473950,00.html

Create favicons for webbrowsers

This site is great for creating favicons:
http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/
The best is to create a square image from before, so you place your image correctly.

Design blog

Here's great design blog I discovered the other day.

Check it out: http://veerle.duoh.com/

Make your Podcast Searchable with Casting Words

How cool is that? Making your podcasts searchable!? I seem to have heard about an automated service that does this, but so far the only thing I found was this: http://blogandpingtutorial.blogspot.com

Tollavgifter

Toll og moms

Mytene om toll og særavgifter er mange, og folks frykt for å dra på seg uventede utgifter hindrer mange fra å bestille seg det de ønsker fra utlandet. Tilfellet er at det er svært få varer som pådrar seg mer enn moms (25%) i dag på grunn av EU, EFTA og andre frihandelsavtaler. Dette gjelder så lenge man ikke handler fra et utviklingsland og at man handler som privatperson. Holder man seg unna varer som alkohol/tobakk, motor/drivstoff og mat/drikke er det sjelden man får noen uventede utgifter. Det viktigste unntaket fra denne reglen er klær og tekstiler som i verste fall kan dra på seg en toll fra 5,9 til 10,7 prosent.

* Forsendelser med verdi under 200 kroner blir verken avgiftbelagt med toll eller moms.

* Bøker kan tas inn uten avgifter uavhengig av verdi. Pass på at det kun er bøker i forsendelsen da blanding av varer kan pådra avgifter på hele forsendelsen.

* Gaver for inntil 1000 kr er moms- og avgiftsfritt. Det eneste som er nødvendig er at den blir merket som gave på dokumentasjonen.

* Ofte har du annledning til å påvirke hvilken frakt som blir brukt når du handler fra utlandet. Hvis du skal ha varer fra USA kan du be om Global Express Mail EMS. Med denne tjenesten slipper du å betale Postens fortollningsgebyr (80kr for varer under 1000kr og 175kr for varer over 1000kr).

Vær oppmerksom på at du må betale toll og momsavgift (25%) når du handler fra nettbutikker i utlandet. Tollavgift på varer under 1000 kroner hos posten er 75 kroner. For varer over 1000 kroner er tollavgiften noe høyere. Noen ganger slipper du å betale tollavgift og moms fordi Posten ikke har kapasitet til å sjekke alle pakningene som kommer inn til landet. Etter vår erfaring blir kun 40-50% av varene sjekket. Noen utenlandske nettbutikker deler også opp forsendingene i flere pakker (pakker under 200 kr.) slik at du slipper tollavgiften.

fra: importalen.no

Change default font in InDesign

Like me, I suppose there are may out there that mainly work on one specific project at the time. And usually that means one default font too. Though Adobe, like Microsoft, love Times New Roman. So here's how to change the default font in InDesign:

You can make any active font the default font in the document by first making sure that's nothing's selected in your document (Command-Shift-A/Ctrl-Shift-A), then choosing the font you want from the Type > Font submenu or in the Character palette. All new text frames you create from then on in the document will use your new default font. If you change the default font without any documents open, that will be your new default font for all new InDesign documents you create.

This works for all other formatting defaults too!

More interesting InDesign tips from Informit

How to convert bitmaps - Tracing

http://www.masternewmedia.org

Russian proppaganda posters

Am working on the design profile for Radio Nova's 25 yr anniversary. Thought Russian propaganda style would look good. So I found some inspiration here:
http://www.typogabor.com

Great "russian" style font:
typonauten/dimitri/

http://www.internationalposter.com

Check your Google PageRank online

Easy way of finding out your Google Pagerank when you havent got the Googlebar installed. Google DC PageRank Rapport 1.0

0-1 Low ranking
2 Moderate ranking
3-4 Good ranking
5-6 Very good ranking
7-9 Top ranking
10 Almost impossible!

Or just use this one: http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

The art of conversation

Found a great article in the Economist about conversation. Here are the main rules:

"The rules we learn from Cicero are these: speak clearly; speak easily but not too much, especially when others want their turn; do not interrupt; be courteous; deal seriously with serious matters and gracefully with lighter ones; never criticise people behind their backs; stick to subjects of general interest; do not talk about yourself; and, above all, never lose your temper. Probably only two cardinal rules were lacking from Cicero's list: remember people's names, and be a good listener."

Read the whole article here: Economist: The art of conversation

Create Letterhead Templates in MS Word

Follow www.CreativeTechs.com instructions. However, remember to place the image while in the header/footer view. "View -> Header/Footer"
(Only useful on a one-page document, or in a one-page section, or if it's the first page of a document or section.) If not placed in the Header, the image will not be locked and will easily move around when using the template.

Here are some HP letterhead suggestions

InDesign - rounded corners

Yes, this is possible! And quite easy too

Select a frame, open the Corner Effects dialog box:

Or as Adobe write:

Apply corner effects

- Using a selection tool, select a path.
- Choose Object > Corner Options.
- Choose a corner effect in the Effect menu.
For Size, type a value to specify the radius by which the corner effect extends from each corner point.
- Select Preview if you want to see the results of the effect before applying it. Then click OK.

Check out Adobes site: http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/InDesign/5.0/help.html?content=WSa285fff53dea4f8617383751001ea8cb3f-6bf1.html

Or:

http://www.indesignsecrets.com/make-one-or-more-round-corners-on-an-indesign-frame.php

And these seem to be old (and dead links......)

indesign-cs-rounded-corners/

or try this one:
http://www.uwec.edu/help/InDesignCS/corner-effects.htm