Main Blog

The Darkside

Drew Wilson — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:14:00 PST

I have used Apple computers since birth. None of my family has ever owned a PC.
I bought my first and very own Mac when I was 15 years old. It was a blue & white G3, along with the matching Studio Monitor.

$2,500 of my own hard earned cash wasn't cheap, but meant that I no longer had to use the "family" computer. I was stoked.
I've owned 7 Macs since then.
It is therefore with great disappointment that I announce: I now own a PC.

You what?

Yes, your eyes are functioning properly, I own a PC. That aura of darkness is sitting on my desk next to my Mac as I type this. "Why do I despise it so?" you ask.

"Is it because it runs Windows Vista?" No, if someone wants to work with poos, then to each his own.
"Is it because it is slow and clunky?" No, it runs at a decent speed.
"Is it because it is uglier than sin itself?" No, it looks plain but nothing to get upset about.

"Then why? Why do you despise it so?" Because, it is the bane of my professional existence! It represents that number all of us web developers hate but are reminded of daily. The number I speak of is Internet Explorer's Browser Market share. Curse the IE team and all the torture they bring me daily! Can someone please create a petition not to "Fix IE", but to "FIRE ANYONE AND EVERYONE EVER INVOLVED WITH INTERNET EXPLORER!" (or at least move them to another project :)
Seriously, that browser is beyond hope and so are ALL the devs. They've had years of chances to fix things, and yet they are incapable. Just fire them all and bring in another team. Better yet, support Safari or Firefox, and rid the earth of the great demon commonly referred to as 'Internet Explorer'.
The worst part about owning a PC, I'm adding to that market share number we all hate :( Forgive me.

Improving My Skill Set

Why did I buy a PC? To improve my skills and effectiveness as a web developer of course :)
Aside from all the bad that comes with owning this PC, there is good that comes out of it. I now get to delete Parallels from my Mac. YAY! Parallels does cool stuff, but lets be real here: It's slower than molasses during a 1-million-degrees-below-zero snow storm.
Also I get to test out my apps, sites, projects, and technologies in a 'real' PC environment. Meaning my web code from here on out will be as cross browser as it possibly can be :) YAY!

The PC

So what PC did I get? A Compaq Presario C714NR Laptop. I got a laptop to save on desk space. It has a 15 inch screen, a 1.6GHz core duo processor and a HUGE sticker of some cat on the front lol. Perfect for just pulling up different web browsers and testing them out :)

I got this thing on one of man-kind's greatest inventions: Craigslist. Only $225! Money well spent considering the time it will save me from Parallels molasses-ville.
I seriously recommend this development approach to any Mac web dev out there. Get a 'real' PC. I dunno why it took me so long to do it.

Betrayal?

Never. I will never become a "PC User". I am a Mac user through and through. This PC is simply for testing, not actual use. lol the thought of it, ha!

A Solid Future

From here on out expect projects and code to be throughly tested on the platform that is used by most internet users: IE & PC.
I have been wanting to do this for a while, now that I have I am so glad I did! If any of you know of any super cool Firebug-esque Javascript debuggers for IE, please let me know! IE 8's is poop and Firebug-lite isn't integrated into the browser.
Thanks everyone!

Now Better Equipped,
Drew

Logan, I am Your Father

Drew Wilson — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:34:43 PST

I'm a dad!!
My wife and I were incredibly blessed to bring our little boy Logan into the world on January 22nd. It truly was an awe inspiring moment to watch him being born. I can't thank God enough for giving me such a healthy and beautiful little boy :)

Here are some photos of our little guy in his first 24 hours:

Photos taken with the fantastic Hipstamatic iPhone app.

Wolverine?

Yes, Logan was named after Wolverine :) My wife and I will try and name our kids after super heros from here on out. I grew up on comics (my wife did not), so as long as the name sounds good to my wife, we will be picking from the amazing selection of heroic names that the comic world has provided us.

Growing Up

I can't hardly wait to start doing tons of fun stuff with my little guy: Ninja classes, surfing, art, photography, sports, maybe even web dev :) Hopefully I will be able to expose him to enough fun things that he will find something he is passionate early on. It will be so rad to be able to encourage him in whatever he likes doing. Can't wait.

Sleep?

Ok, so... I haven't really had any sleep in the last 4 days. 2 hours here, 1 hour there... not exactly fun lol. We will now be "sleeping when the baby sleeps" as everyone recommends. But the first few days you just wanna hang out with the little guy :) So I hope to get some work done on my current projects soon, but right now my brain doesn't exactly function at a normal level :) So please be patient with me (especially regarding my jQuery Plugins).

Tips

Any of you veteran dads out there got any tips for a brand new dad? I am lucky enough to work from home, so I am sooo looking forward to getting tons of chill time with him.

Excited,
Drew

An Unexpected Package

Drew Wilson — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:39:23 PST

Wow! I am blown away!

Let me explain.
So a few minutes ago my doorbell rang. FedEx had dropped off a package. It was especially curious because I had already received all my gifts for the year. None the less it was addressed to me. Normally I would open such a package without any hesitation. But not this time. You see, I saw the movie Traitor recently, so for some random reason I was suspicious of the box (thinking… "it could be a bomb"). Mail bomb has never crossed my mind before, but I found myself slowly opening each box flap and carefully pulling out paper stuffing from the package.

What was in it?

Well, it wasn't a bomb :) It was a rad gift box! More presents.. yay!! Attached was a little card, hand-written to me. That's when I found out who sent it… Media Temple! WOW! They sent me a gift box just because they're rad like that.

What were the goods you ask?

Some cookies and crackers (organic, yay!), a water bottle, 3 Field Notes pads, and a rad looking book called "Qompendium". Check out the photos below.

Why am I so stoked on this?

Because I have never gotten any sort of client appreciation gift from any other company… ever. So this definitely stands out, and just adds to the reasons why I like Media Temple. Thanks Media Temple!!

... and no, I was not asked to write this post by anyone. I felt compelled to share this with you all, so you can see how rad those guys are.

Happy Two-Thousand-And-Ten everyone! (yes, I like it that way better :)
Drew

On Creative Design

Drew Wilson — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:02:55 PST

Cre•a•tiv•i•ty
The use of the imagination or original ideas, esp. in the production of an artistic work.

Imaginative: Having an active & creative imagination, meaning the person visualizes things quite differently than the way they appear in the real world.

Creativity is great. Everyone can appreciate it in some way. And we designers are all creative and know what it means to be creative... right? Personally, I don't think so. As close-knit as the design community is today, it is obvious that there is a huge lack in what I am referring to in this article as "Creative Design" specifically in the web design arena. The following are my opinions and observations. I in no way intend to personally offend or attack anyone in this article, but simply want to address the issue of Creative Design in our industry.

What is Creativity?

Smashing Magazine, A List Apart... those types of sites are great inspiration and information resources. However, when you start creating a design based solely on web related "inspiration and information" resources your designs will almost always turn out to be "in the box". Not that the ultimate goal is to be "out of the box", but your goal should be to push the boundaries of your own "box" and your own skill level. If you do not personally evolve artistically and progress, you will find neither does your work.
To grow creatively means to build up your own style if you have not yet come to that point, or it means refining it and exploring new ways to approach design. Do not limit yourself to tackling design projects using the same process every time. Though using the same process might be a good thing if you want to streamline and pump out 15 interfaces a month, it isn't creative.
Coming up with your own style will "just happen" if you explore new processes in design. If you listen to and live by the thoughts and ideas of the "leading creative minds", you will find your work looks like your were influenced by the "leading creative minds". Is that a good thing? Maybe yes, maybe no. But it's not creative. They way I see it:

The more you let someone else's opinion influence your design process, the less creative you are being.

Now I am not talking about solving specific design challenges here, bouncing ideas of team members can be great for that. It is of course possible to produce "creativity" collectively as a team, but I am talking about your own personal creative process.
Creativity in it's truest form would be a product of you alone, and pursuing creativity is the best way to come up with your own style.

In the Beginning

When you're first starting out you'll be looking for advice on how to solve this challenge or that challenge in design projects, and you'll read tutorials on how to achieve different effects. This is all building your "skill set" as a designer. Please recognize that it has nothing to do with creativity. Learning steps on how to do something is training, and takes place in the left-brain. Creativity is a right-brain process and involves you thinking up something original on your own. Whether or not it looks "good" is subjective and can be improved upon in time. Something that looks "good" in no way means it is creative. For example, the Mona Lisa painting has been replicated many times over by various artists from scratch. Had you never know about the original, you might say, referring to the replica painting, "that looks good". You would be correct. However, it is not creative. In fact there was not creative process involved at all. It was a left-brain study of simply copying an existing object to its exact measurements and texture.
Building your skill set in the beginning is a great and much needed thing. Please continue doing it as often as possible. Just don't confuse it with being creative. Relying on other designers to solve your challenges in design is not creativity.

What does this all mean?

For you, I'm not sure. Because we're all at different stages in our life as artists and designers. But I can tell you that if you make a habit of being a "follower" and living by other artist's and designer's philosophical quotes and observations... you will not find yourself breaking down the walls of any design challenges anytime soon. Because honestly, by following someone else's philosophy you are limiting your own creativity. Why? Because you cannot be creative as the defined above when there is no imagination or complete originality.
For me, it means doing my own thing. I recognize that my inspiration for a design or project will be visible in my final product. It's a simple fact. Because I recognize this, I am very purposeful in choosing what will inspire a particular project. Often times you are inspired without intending to be, that is a great thing. But when you do hunt for inspiration, I suggest you have purpose in it. If you know the feeling you want to convey in your design be careful about picking your inspiration, because it just may come back to haunt you. You need to solve things on your own, yes on your own, in order to be truly creative as the definition is stated above.

Creative Rules and Regulations

There are none. No really... there aren't any. When pursuing creative design, you will always end up with a design that is one of the following: bad or good. There is no "best". Saying something is the "best" can be an absolute term, meaning it is indefinitely the "best". In fact, while something may be the "best" right now, 2 years form now it may just be "good". So recognize that when you choose your "best" overall design for a project, the environment in which it's viewed can change the effectiveness of that design (ex. The software that design was created for changes slightly, or screen resolutions change, or someone uses an old web browser, etc.). For instance, back in the day if you thought Mac OS 8 was the "best" looking OS interface ever (like me), you were wrong. It is a "good" interface but clearly not the best. Why? Because we are constrained to the limits of time. With time comes the expanding of boundaries in art and design. So don't strive to grace the Universe with the "Best Design for All Time". It clearly will not happen. Strive to create a design that pushed your personal boundaries and the boundaries that currently constrain art and design. The interface for OS 8 may have been the "best" they could do back then, but imagine if you gave those designers the tools and knowledge we have now. I suspect it may have been better.
As you push the boundaries they will expand, but they can never be broken. Art and design is an infinitely evolving form of expression. Once you push your boundaries, you will have to one-up yourself next time to get the same feeling of accomplishment.
Mostly, don't be too concerned with the logical designers. The ones who limit themselves to "Usage-Patterns", the "User's Perspective", "Usability", "UX research", and all those other "U" words. Some of you may cringe at what I just said, don't. I strongly believe all those principals have their place in design, but I strongly believe if you want achieve a "creative design" they must not interfere with the creative process. Because those are left-brain processes, and don't belong in the right-brain.
Those principals should be applied to your design after you have finished your creative process.

How can you be truly creative when you impose left-brained limits on yourself?

The key to being creative is to do just that; be creative. I suggest you seriously look at your design process and see if there is some room to improve your process. If you are a web designer or interface designer ignore all the web magazines and "web enthusiast" guys for a while. Draw inspiration from other sources. Be creative.

Who am I really?

That's a great question to ask yourself. In order to play to your strengths as a designer you need to understand where you stand as an artist. Are you a left-brained designer or right-brained? It will make a difference in helping to understand the best next step to improve your creative process. If you find yourself excited about usability, research or more technical design principals you are most-likely a left-brained designer. If you could care less about those things it doesn't necessarily mean you are a right-brained designer, you may just be un-informed about those principals. Right-brained designers get excited about the feeling a design gives, they prefer to see their work as an art rather than a product.
We need both left and right-brained designers, so neither is better. However, both types could greatly benefit by changing up their process in attempt to become more creative.

Practically

I could talk all day about the concepts behind creativity without actually doing you any good. So I would like to give you some practical examples of these concepts in practice.
Let's say you have been contracted/hired to build a user interface for a web app. So you start pulling up all the design mags looking for inspiration and cool user interfaces. STOP. Continue no more. What your are actually looking at when browsing these design mags are specific use cases and solutions to very specific problems that designer faced when building that interface. This is not the kind of inspiration you want before trying to come up with an interface that will push your boundaries and the boundaries in user interface design in general. You need to look outside the web arena for your inspiration. Drawn from music, movies, photography, a walk outside, etc. Whatever you think will help you achieve the "feeling" you want your design to convey. Once you have the look and feel to your design that you are satisfied with, it is now time to gather inspiration on how to solve specific problems in an interface (like window "tabs", or complex navigation, etc.). This would also be the time when you should start to think about and incorporate the left-brained principals of design: "Usage-Patterns", the "User's Perspective", "Usability", "UX research". These are very important principals to include when creating an application that will be used by other people. However, in creative design they should not be the starting point. It is better to start creative, then refine.

2 Trains

There are 2 trains of thought when it comes to the design process: "Form before Function", and "Function before Form". A left-brained designer ("Function before Form") will immediately tell you that, "a building that has been painted to look pretty before it has a proper foundation will collapse". They are right. However, we are not making buildings here and we are not limited to gravity. That is not creative design. If you want to start doing some creative design you will be following this train of thought: "Form before Function".
Here are some great examples of creative designers: Folkert Gorter, Andy Gugel, Atila Meireles, Krzysztof Domaradzki, Swear Words, Jason Wilson, Scott Hansen, Invisible Creature, Rus Yusupov.
"Function before Form" would be something that Google makes. Ugly, plain white with no regard for any creative design principals and chalk full of left-brain design principals. Likewise, all of the 37 Signals apps and the like follow the same train of thought (did I just make enemies? :). There is an obvious lack of "creative design" in those interfaces. However, they do "function" quite well for their purpose... but the concept of "functionality" is not what this article is about. I am talking about creative design.
Apple has some great examples of creative design. Take the Mac Mini. Had the designers from Google, 37 Signals or your average web 2.0 app tackled it, I would imagine the power button would be front and center with a tooltip popup when your finger hover over it, and the CD drive would be much more obvious with label atop and a shiny eject button aside. A simple slit in the metal surface with no visible queues or instructions is "not user friendly" they would say.
A slight exaggeration perhaps, but this is the same thing that happens when a left-brained developer/marketing guy/CEO/client/designer tells you to "take these wire-frames and make them pretty". You have just been brought in to the project at the wrong time. It's too late. They have already determined that Function is more important than Form. You will just have to make the best of it.
However the choice is yours on projects of your own or where you are the creative lead. You can choose to put From before Function and push the boundaries of interface design.

I suggest you give Creative Design a chance.

Thanks!
Drew

Be Apart of Build It With Me's Future

Drew Wilson — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:49:03 PST

WOW! I am blown away by the success of Build It With Me after just 2 days!
Thanks so much to all of you who have taken the time to sign up!

As I said in my previous post referring to Build It With Me:

It's for you. Having said that, let me know what you think and where it can be improved upon to be even more useful.

So now I would like to invite you to throw out your ideas on how you would like Build It With Me to evolve. I will be adding in some much needed features, such as:

Making the "Filter" search box work, so you can filter results by Skills, Names, Location, etc.
Creating a User Profile page. Details below.
Create an Ideas Search Page. It would be the same as the current User search page, but it would search Ideas.

The User Profile Page

This would be Your landing page, and you would get your own short URL for easy sharing. On this page would be all the same info that is currently on the "User Info Panel" seen on the site now. However this page would be structured much like the Idea Page (ex: http://bldw.me/XAV5).
I am also adding the ability to display overviews of your App Ideas right on your page. Also I would like to add the ability to display a list of other Build It With Me users you have worked with in the past. So people can get connected easier by discovering common friends/associates.
I am also going to add the ability to assign other Build It With Me users to your Ideas. This way people can see who is working with you on your different projects.

So How Bout' You?

Any of those feature ideas above lame? Any I am missing you would really like to see? Let me know in the comments below, better yet add your ideas on the Build It With Me Feedback page.
I will not be adding every single idea/feature request for lack of time and also one of the goals of Build It With Me is simplicity. So I am not going to implement every idea for that reason as well.
Be sure to vote up ideas you like on the Feedback page so I have a good idea of what everyone wants.

Thanks so much everyone! The future of Build It With Me is getting much brighter already!
Drew

Build It With Me

Drew Wilson — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:27:18 PST

So my brain runs a million miles a minute when it comes to thinking up new and fun ventures or applications. It's horribly distracting since I am in the habit of entertaining these ideas to the point of spending hours upon hours designing and sometimes coding them out into reality. I can't help myself.

Today I am launching one of those ideas: Build It With Me. The idea came to me one day, and just nine days later it was completely finished and ready to launch. I spent quite a bit of time and long nights on it :)

The ancient Build It WIth Me interface found in a cave full of wonders.

What is Build It With Me?

Build It With Me is a tool that connects design & development entrepreneurs. It exists to make creating apps easier by connecting you with like-minded designers & developers with the same goal: create cool & useful apps. Getting funding for your app idea is hard and often unrealistic. Most of the time you may just need to connect with a partner who has a skill set you lack to finish off your app. This is where Build It With Me is comes in, connecting you to those people. Skip the funding. Build It With Me will help you bootstrap your ideas into actual apps.

Examples?

Of course! Check out on of my idea pages here: http://bldw.me/XAV5

So why did I waste my time on this project?

Well first off, I didn't waste may time :) I really hope that Build It With Me becomes a useful tool in the web community, and people build great things as a result from connections they make through it.
Connecting with other talented developers was a challenge for me when I was first starting out. There doesn't currently seem to be a good place to discover other talented people in the industry at the moment who enjoy building things on the side. I hope Build It With Me will make discovery much easier in the web industry.

Please go Sign Up now!

Even if you don't have any App Ideas to share, by putting yourself up there you are making yourself available for others looking for your talent. You could make some great connections through it. Not everyone will have ideas, and if that's you, you should browse through the App Ideas and see if you would like to be apart of any of them.

Behind the Scenes

Build It With Me is an HTML5 & CSS3 app. I have not even opened it in IE to test or hack at all because most all designers & developers are on either Firefox or Safari. The backend is a completely custom JSON API written in PHP. The front end is run by Titan, an Opensource Javascript Web Framework I created. Titan is also the magic & power behind one of my other apps Firerift. Development went fairly quick. Overall I spent about 9 days on the the project, from the first pixel drawn in photoshop to the last line of code written for launch.

It's for You

Having said that, let me know what you think and where it can be improved upon to be even more useful. I do plan to add more functionality sometime in the future. Like being able to have a User page that shows all your projects and your info, as well as being able to have a list of people who you have worked with in the past on that page. Of course this requires a bunch more people to sign up so you can list them out and visitors can click on their names to see their User page with their App Ideas, etc. … so this is somthin' for later.
Thanks a ton to those of you who sign up! You are the foundation of the community!

Peace,
Drew

The Start of Something New

Drew Wilson — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:26:31 PST

Wow. So happy to finally have released my new website! It seriously has been a BIG and awesome undertaking. There is so much more than just a re-design here... so much more. So if you don't mind, I'd like to take you through all the nitty gritty details :)

A brief overview of what follows:

100% HTML 5
New design is not the only re-design.. just the only that made it to my server :)
New blog dedicated to "Code" where I'll be posting plugins, snippets, tips and tricks in a variety of languages
The Drew Wilson Network
Built on Firerift

Having tons-o-fun creating art just for use in my blog posts is one of the rad new "features" built into my new site :)

100% HTML 5

That's right :) Go ahead and view source to check out the HTML 5 awesomeness! I spent tons of hours reading up on the HTML 5 spec and learning how the new elements should be used and the different purposes for them. It's wild cause when developing in HTML 5 you use the newly introduced elements like 100% more than any other elements! It just shows you how useful this new stuff is.

I've always been somewhat against the grain in supporting legacy technology, and nothing has changed there :) So don't even try to pull this site up in IE6... cause I never have.

Personally I believe that by supporting old technology you are slowing down the progression of the web.

And yes, I do understand that most of you have bosses and clients that require it... so you unfortunately don't have a say.

In addition to this site being all HTML 5, my new Code & Stock Art (coming soon) sites are all HTML 5 as well! All the new personal sites I just launched also make heavy use of CSS 3. You will notice CSS 3 transition fades, but you may not notice that my CSS rules are also using the new selection formats. It makes everything so much easier. Don't look for any IE hacks on these sites.. cause there aren't any. Why? Cause I could care less. I don't have many IE visitors and I am a pretty busy guy lol

I figure my lack of effort to support IE offsets their lack of effort to support my efforts as a web developer.

Going forward I will be developing all my sites in HTML 5, because it is just that much better in all aspects, especially the semantics.

The New Design

For me, this design is a huge breath of fresh air. Ever since I was 16 my personal sites have never reflected the current trends that well. Mainly cause I don't drawn my inspiration from web design. I find myself most often drawing inspiration from photography and art.

A couple things I wanted to accomplish with the new design was:

Easy Readability
Shallow Depth (not many pages or internal features)
Leave myself opportunities to design more often. The home page is a great example, as well as my commitment to release new art with each blog post
Change the focus from a "Portfolio" to a personal outlet for thoughts and design
Make all my projects centralized (The Drew Wilson Network)
Turn up the accessibility to 1000% through rock solid HTML
Simplify, simplify, simplify

I seriously love this new design, please check it out in safari to view it as was intended :)

Even though this is the first re-design I have launched in a long while, it is not the first re-design to DrewWilson.com in the last 2 years. In fact I was about to launch a different design a earlier this year, but backed off due to lack of time. I got that design fully coded out and even running on Firerift. It is very similar to this site in feature set, except more it has a few more features.

So what will am I gonna do with this full coded and ready to rock and roll design? Give it away to you for FREE , of course :) Look for it sometime in the near future. I still have to package it all up, and then I will release it for free on my Stock Art site. It will be fully integrated with Firerift. So if you have Firerift, or want to buy it, it will be drop in ready (literally).

My Codes are Good

Well, at least I think so :) So good in fact, that I am dedicating a new blog called Code to sharing tips, tricks, and solutions with you as I come across them. Expect to find a lot of Javascript tips on that site, as well as HTML 5, CSS 3, PHP, and other stuff (like Apache htaccess stuff). That will also be the home of any new jQuery plugins I release (and there are a few I am about to launch).

It was great being able to put a completely different design style to use on one of my new sites. I love the diversity in the designs for my new mini sites :) I hope you enjoy the Code site and subscribe to it to get the updates fed right to you.

Centralization-ify

Say the above with a George W. accent... golden.

So as cheesy as the "Drew Wilson Network" sounds... I didn't wanna spend a lot of time coming up with some random name for my network of sites... cause thats all it is... a network of sites... that I made.

So if you haven't already, click on the "Drew Wilson Network" button at the top of the site. Voilà! All my sites :) You can also click the "Tweet This Page" button to take you to your twitter home page with a permalink to whichever one of my pages you are on pre-filled into your status box. It uses my free web service called CoViews. Check it out. The "Open In CoViews" button does just what it says. With CoViews you can leave a comment about any portion of my site and share it with anyone. That is what CoViews does right now... the future holds something grand for CoViews :) Once I get some ~~time~~ money... it will make it's debut.

Built on Firerift

Naturally :) Firerift makes web development SUPER easy. If you aren't familiar with Firerift, check it out. It is a JSON CMS I created, and has made developing this site a breeze. I am doing a few things using Titan's Javascript interface. But most everything is done through Titan's CSS interface. I just add a couple extra CSS classes here and there, and BAM... I'm done :)

Also this site was somewhat delayed in launching, as I wanted to wait for Firerift's 1.1 update to be finished. Firerift now is SEO compliant, and fully searchable to search engines. Yay!

By the way, if you are wondering how find my "archives" section... head to the home page and scroll down... and keep scrolling.. and keep scrolling.. and.. you get the point. Infinite scrolling for the win! (did I just say FTW... whoa.. nerd alert)

In Closing Opening

This new website is so much more than a re-design for me. It's marks the beginning of a new chapter in my life as an entrepreneur and artist.

Now that I finally have a personal site on a solid back-end system (all pervious versions were on buggy Firebolt alphas), you can expect blog updates more often either here or on my Code site.
I have TONS of cool apps/ventures planned for the future, so stay tuned for those. I hope you enjoy tuning in to my new blog/website as I venture out into the world of the internets making my ideas into cool and (hopefully) useful tools/apps.
A huge thanks to all my long time readers, and big welcome to all the new readers!

Peace,
Drew