Now, as a designer I was immediately in love with the site. I loved the design and I loved the idea. I felt that this could be very useful for both myself personally and anyone I may be collaborating with on a project. So, I built an “Arrivals” page for myself. I called it the “Lab Board.”

Now, I haven’t decided to put a formal link to it on the Phasr home page and I may not. For the time being, it is still very much for personal use. However, I am deciding not to block it in anyway. Now, from this, I hope to be able at all times look at this page and on the fly see whats going on. See what projects I’m working on. See where they are in their cycle. And if need be, share the page with a collaboration partner or client. Being a one-man-show here at Phasr, it’s not to tough for me to know what’s going on with any of my projects but I would like to stress that I did this for the fun of it. Because I thought it was cool. I am however working on plans for the possible future of this board, but maybe I’ll share a little more of that at a later date.

The board is a basic HTML page styled with CSS. Each of the projects are in their own div. Part of my plans for the future are coding this into a type of WordPress child theme or building it’s own CMS so that I can easily update by that means as opposed to adding divs in the HTML. Their are many benefits to that and why not build for expansion right? But that is part of the future that I’m not expanding on at this time. I would like to show around the board though.

Now the first thing you might notice is the potion bottle in the top left corner. That’s just my logo for the lab board. Next are the two headers. “Project” and “Phase.” As simple as it is, these are merely the columns that show what project each project is and what their current status is.

After that are the project rows. In each row from left to right you will see first an icon. Right now, my two icons are the Phasr Gun, from the Phasr logo showing that the project is a personal or in house project for Phasr Design. The other icon is the Client Work icon. Basically showing that the project in that row is for a client. This provides a fast and easy way to distinguish each project as personal or client work. Next in the row is the project title in the “Project” column. Easy enough, thats what I’m calling that project. Usually relates to who the project is for as well. Next is the “Phase” column. You will see something like “Full Steam” or “Progressing.” I haven’t gotten these ironed out, but they will show me where I am in the development cycle.

After that are the “Objective” or what is the purpose of that project. “Personel” shows who is currently working on a particular project (usually just me). And last but not least, “Current,” which shows us what is currently being worked on in that particular project.

The last thing is a relatively simple detail but one that I feel is important. Right at the very top you will see a date stamp that shows when the board was last updated. That way I know if it’s outdated or not.

Now, with this post I am going to be releasing the Project Board as a version 1.0 release, which like I said before is really just HTML and CSS, but I am expecting a lot of work to go into the next full version. For now, the board will be entering a “Planning” stage so that I can figure out my milestones and build my roadmap. I also want to come up with a solid idea of what I want to do with this in the future. I have ideas, but nothing is certain. For now, this is a fun project that I hope to learn from and expand on. Go check it out. phasrdesign.com/lab

Crawling out of that comfort zone is not something I am very accustomed to or really like to do at all. But it is something I am going to really work on as a freelance designer. I want to make new contacts and I want to drum up new business for myself. That next person I talk to could have a need that I can fill. Or at the very least know someone with that need. So it always pays to just be polite, say hi, and Always Be Networking.

Carry some business cards with you at all times. Make sure that when you have made a connection you have something to send them away with so they can reach you later. It is also a good idea to make sure you get a phone number or an email address so that you can follow up with them at a later time as well. It can be hard to do but it just may be the crucial piece that will elevate your business (and hopefully mine) to new levels of work, and in the end all it may take is a simple “Hello!”

In an earlier post I mentioned something about creating a “free stuff” section to phasrdesign.com. Well, it’s in progress. But, to wet your appetite a little I’ve decided to release a new desktop background I designed early. This will be the first thing you will have the chance to take home for the absolutely low low price of free once the section is complete.

This background is sized at 2560 px X 1600 px, so its large enough to fit some high res screens. BUT WAIT, theres more! If you act now, you can also download a version fitted just for your iPhone or iPod Touch at 480 px x 320 px. Once the free section is launched on the site, I will have available a package with some different sizes for different resolution monitors. But for now, as I said, this is just to wet your appetite. I hope you enjoy.

You can also go over and download this at simpledesktops.com.

We will be using some simple html and a little Javascript for his. You can also style with CSS to get something like you see at the top of my page.

So, without further ado. Step 1: Start off by creating a div where you would like your Twitter updates listed and give it an id of something like TwitterUpdates.

<div id="TwitterUpdates">

</div>

Next we need to add an Unordered List where your tweets will populate. It is important to give your Unordered List an id of twitter_update_list. It will look like this:

<ul id="twitter_update_list"></ul>

We won’t be needing to add a List Item to the List.
Now, in the last part we are going to add in some Javascript. This is what makes all of this work. Right under your div add the following Javascript.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/YourTwitterIDHere.json?callback=twitterCallback2&amp;count=1"></script>

And here is how all of this will look together:

<div id="TwitterUpdates">
		<ul id="twitter_update_list"></ul>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/YourTwitterIDHere.json?callback=twitterCallback2&amp;count=1"></script>

Awesome, there you go, thats all you need. Just remember to replace where you see “YourTwitterIDHere” in the second line of Javascript with your actual Twitter ID and your good to go. You can style all this with some simple CSS and make it your own, and maybe I’ll discuss this in a later post. For now, go get your latest tweet on your website.

html 5 is set to improve upon html language that is currently being used like xhtml. It uses the addition of new tag elements such as (but not limited to) <video>, <audio>, <canvas>, <article>, and even comes with its own new document type declaration, <!DOCTYPE html>. One of the biggest points to take note of with html 5 is that it aims to greatly reduce the need for plugin based applications such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. You can already see examples of this at youtube.com and vimeo.com as they have both recently launched html 5 (flash free) versions of their video players. So what does this mean for the future of the web?

Well, this will mean a much more accessible web. Especially with modern mobile phones and their support for real web browsers. This means being able to access more of the web on more kinds of devices without the need for plugin based support. One current major example of this is the lack of the Flash plugin support on the iPhone. html 5 will also help simplify existing html by getting rid of older and out of date elements such as styling elements that are now, for the most part, being handled with cascading style sheets or CSS. You will also see a move to do away with large blocks of code that are commonly used, such as navigation blocks, header blocks, and footer blocks. Instead replacing these with new elements <nav>, <header>, and <footer>.

A lot of this is still years away from really being implemented all across the web, but as a web designer it’s exciting to see where this will take us and how it will all play out in the end. I know I can’t wait to start learning all I can to begin using html 5 in my work.

- I would like to keep my skills as a designer sharp while offering something to the web and design community. So I hope to include a “freebies” section into the site that would host free UI elements such as icons for the web and your desktop and nicely designed background images. All free of charge (but possibly donations accepted) and for your own personal use.

- I want to be an avid blog poster on the site. Something that is a little harder for me. I’m all about the short sweetness of Twitter, but when it comes to a substantial blog post I tend to forget to do it. I would like to use this platform however as an insight into what’s up at Phasr, what’s going on in the media and design world, and really anything that crosses my mind such as maybe a tutorial or two.

- I want to connect with other designers and developers to grow close friendships and maybe partnerships to bring about substantial growth, learning experience, and opportunity within a creative culture.

- I just want to make this an exciting year for Phasr and to not discount any possibility in this ever changing market.

So there you have it. Take this as my outline or even mission statement for the year ahead. I do this because it’s what I love and know that I will do everything I can to make Phasr successful and to bring  you some of the most creative and inspired design imaginable.

-Matthew

I would like to encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feed and even follow me on Twitter as those are the best ways to stay updated on all that Phasr is doing. I can’t wait for what’s in store, and I hope your ready for the ride.

-Matthew