First of all, I’m sorry I haven’t updated anything on my blog, but I’ve been very busy with a lot of stuff.

So what have I done lately?

We launched a big project, a real estate website ( www.euroest.ro ),
We’re working on another interesting one ,
We moved to new headquarters,
I got a new iMac at work that replaced the slow but powerful Mac Mini.
I was busy as hell working on my graduation paper. I still am.

Update: Oh, and best of all, I was promoted as an associate at the agency where I work as a Creative Director

TGDaily reports that the next version of Adobe’s Photoshop application will take advantage of video card graphics processing units (GPUs) to provide a dramatic improvement in performance.

So, what can you do with general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) acceleration in Photoshop? We saw the presenter playing with a 2 GB, 442 megapixel image like it was a 5 megapixel image on an 8-core Skulltrail system. Changes made through image zoom and through a new rotate canvas tool were applied almost instantly. Another impressive feature was the import of a 3D model into Photoshop, adding text and paint on a 3D surface and having that surface directly rendered with the 3D models’ reflection map.

These features are expected to be introduced in Adobe’s next version of Creative Suite (CS4) which is expected in October of this year. GPU acceleration has been used in many aspects of Mac OS X’s Core Animation and Core Image.

Although I’m a huge fan of Apple’s and therefore iPhone, I must admit: Windows Mobile never looked so good.

Do check out the animations. I’m not sure yet about the web browser - I think it won’t be even near to Safari mobile - though it might be a competitor.

Can hardly wait to check it out for myself.

PS: The back is crappy. Looks like a phone built for snobs.

Update: I’ve found video footage. I’m still on for the iPhone :D

For those of you who haven’t discovered this yet, Safari has a built-in, slick developer console. It’s kind of like Firebug for Mozilla Firefox, but it looks cooler.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the activation is simple: Just open up Safari’s Preferences and click the Advanced tab. Once you’ve done that look for a checkbox in the bottom of the pane that sais “Show Develop menu”.

I’m not sure this works on Windows. I haven’t tested yet.

“Times is a new type of newsreader for Mac OS X Leopard. By rethinking the way you read news, we’ve created the best possible news experience straight from the ground up.

Instead of treating news like email (as most RSS readers do), Times presents you with headlines and photos from a variety of sources all in one place, letting you more easily discover the news you want to read. Like your own personal newspaper, you can put feeds into separate areas, create pages for different subjects, and more.”

In my own opinion it looks and behaves awesome, but the page curl is annoying sometimes. I do like the OS X elements inserted in the app. It makes it more integrated into Leopard.
Good job!

“CGTextures strives to be the worlds best texture site. Being a 3D artist myself, I know how hard it is to create textures without good photo materials. Making textures should be about creativity, not about spending hours looking for the right image on the internet. I hope that by supplying good quality textures in an organized manner, your everyday work will be easier and more enjoyable.”

That’s what the owner of CG Textures states. Trust me. They have some great wood textures :D

Bak Magazine released a new issue. Issue no. 12.
Enjoy it

“Logos are the ultimate mark of distinction and everyone loves them. We see logos everyday - on the highways, on consumer goods, on the Web and in the institutions and organizations we support. Read about the different types of logo designs here and learn what principles and techniques are used to create them. Discover what the future holds for logo design!”

Via Logoorange

Saizen Media Studios is an internationally acclaimed and award winning design firm that specializes in highly cinematic and detail oriented imagery with offices in both Milan, Italy and Yekaterinburg, Russia.

I just love their work !
The website is a wonderful experience. Starting with the music and sound effects and ending with the little lepricon that is flying around the website.

Trust me. It’s worth waiting to load the entire website. Launch

Awesome lightpainting pictures.
Via Abduzeedo

Sorry for the yesterday “flip-horizontal-site” prank.
It was April Fools Day so I decided to do something funny with the blog.

Hope you enjoyed it

The car was actually done in sharpie markers on the paint and then finished with a clear coat for protection. It took about 2 weeks total. Prestige (Lamborghini Miami) definitely shocked a lot of people when this car was first seen in California during the Concorso Italiano/Pebble Beach week. It attracted attention good and unfortunately bad everywhere it went.

Feast your eyes !

San Francisco based Art Director Bryan Denman and designer Ryan Teuscher built a special flickr search bar specifically for the creative community. According to Denman, “It pulls in a flickr feed at speed (w/ some other tricks) so that an AD can quickly scour the site as a source for reference material.”

You can try it out yourself at Compfight.com.