Unsalted

Can't find a good domain name?

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:21:46 +0000

PickyDomains will come up with domain name suggestions for your site, based upon your concept. It's $50, but that's refundable if you don't like any of the names they suggest. Apparently they have a team of people around the world whose job it is to come up with good domain names. They've got some example names on their site; I particularly liked "publicana.com" for a PR service.

(via Michael Lehman)

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

Local business web presence for $60

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 18:09:04 +0000

Seth Godin just released a tremendously useful article for small, local businesses (doctors, plumbers, etc.). It explains precisely how to go about setting up an excellent presence on the web, for just $60 and a few hours investment.

Bear in mind that Squidoo is his own product, so it's not totally unbiased, but I would say the advice still stands, and I'd recommend people to go down this route too.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

Client web site on BBC News

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 01:10:32 +0000

Recently one of my clients, Stormhoek, had their web site featured in a BBC News story about the recent Threshers coupon they posted. You can watch the clip below.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

New York City and Montreal

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:02:12 +0000

Matt and I will be in New York City next week, and I'll be working from Montreal after that. If anyone would like to meet with us to discuss projects that we could work on together, or for a general chat and a beer, just drop us a line.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

New office

Sat, 08 Jul 2006 12:51:03 +0000

From next week, Salted HQ will be 55 Fashion Street, London. It's a great location, just off Brick Lane, a half mile from the City, and practically next door to the Old Tuman Brewery - "the creative hub of London's East End". I (Paul) will be working there full time from the start, with Matthew joining me there in the reasonably near future. David will continue to work from his base in Leeds.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

Gapingvoid widget

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 14:16:24 +0000

Hugh MacLeod has just launched the widget I have been developing for him. It's pretty neat, and it just got linked on TechCrunch so hopefully quite a few people will install it on their blogs. We're working on TypePad and Wordpress versions to make it even easier to install, too.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

@media conference

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 15:46:49 +0000

I had the opportunity to attend the @media conference in London this year, but unfortunately I've got too much work on to afford two days off at the moment. However, if you're at all interested in the proceedings then Ann McMeekin is doing a fantastic job of covering the action over on the new RNIB blog.

Although I'm not attending @media, I am in London for a few days so I'm going to the dinner this evening, to meet Ann and some other web designer friends, which will be nice.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

Blog Design Solutions book

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 16:58:20 +0000

A month or so ago I received a copy of Blog Design Solutions. It's a very useful book indeed, but having spoken to a few other designers about it, it doesn't seem to be very widely known about. It takes you through the steps of setting up, and customising, Movable Type, Expression Engine, Wordpress and TextPattern. Although the MT and Wordpress chapters covered very familiar ground (for me), I found the Expression Engine chapter in particular to be very useful, as that's a product I've wanted to get started with for some time now. Throughout the book the writing is clear and concise, and accompanied by helpful screenshots.

To summarise, if you have any interest in learning about one or more of the systems listed above, I'd highly recommend picking up a copy of this book. However, if you're already familiar with all these pieces of software (or have no desire to learn a new one), it's probably not for you. The book provides an excellent grounding in each, but it's not aimed at people who are already experts.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

We're at Reboot

Sun, 28 May 2006 11:49:15 +0000

David, Matt and I will all be in Copenhagen for the Reboot conference next week. If any readers are going, feel free to get in touch and we'll go for a beer.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

Bite Size Standards

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 13:12:56 +0000

A handful of other web designers who I know have just launched Bite Size Standards. It looks to be a great source of brief, "bite size", articles for people in the industry. It even has a Dashboard widget to alert you to new posts (courtesy of Stuart Frisby), which is pretty neat. I'll hopefully be contributing a couple of articles to the site myself in the near future.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

Essential feeds

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 20:26:08 +0000

I've just slimmed down my RSS subscriptions in NetNewsWire to a total of 62. I thought it might be somewhat interesting to share the 12 feeds which are in my "essential" folder - meaning I'll read them before anything else, and refresh them a few times a day.

43 Folders
Bash.org
Business Logs
Daring Fireball
Daring Fireball Linked List (only available to members)
David's Brain Blog (my colleague David's blog)
Gapingvoid
Jan Chipchase
Phark
Plasticbag.org
Shark (a private forum site my friends and I use)
Signal Vs. Noise

I'd be facinated to see the feeds other people would class as "essential" - feel free to leave links in the comments of this post.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

Manchester meetup

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 21:33:52 +0000

There's another Manchester meetup scheduled for tomorrow night (Tuesday 21st February). Pop your name on the wiki if you're coming along. Details also on Upcoming.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

Lift: Matt Jones

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 11:58:08 +0000

One of the most interesting talks this morning was from Matt Jones. He works for Nokia, and has been doing some research into gaming, but not in the nerdy, boys-tucked-away-in-their-rooms sense of the word. The most profound point he made, in my opinion, was that anything where there's any kind of score is a game. Case in point: Kellogs giving away pedometers inside cereal packets. Because you have a score (the number of steps you've taken that day), it becomes a game. Mothers walking their kids to school might take a slightly longer route home in order to better their high score, and so on.

He gave us a sample of what this research has produced - Twitchr - a software application from Nokia which involves taking photos of cartoon birds. I was lucky enough to actually try out this game on a friend's phone a few weeks ago, and it's not, unfortunately, very inspiring. From all this fascinating research that they're doing, I'd have expected to see something better. But as he explained, they're not really in the business of creating the games themselves, more developing the technologies on which these games can sit - mobile phones.

I haven't read it yet, but Matt's blog may well be worth subscribing to.

Lift06

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

Lift: Regine Debatty

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 11:18:06 +0000

I was about to sum up Regine Debatty's (the owner of one of my favourite sites on the web: We Make Money Not Art) fantastic talk about the power of fake, but Bruno Giussani has already summed it up better than I could have done. Go read it!

Technorati tag: Lift06

]]>

(Posted by Paul)

Lift: Bruno Guissani

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 09:23:36 +0000

I'm at the Lift conference in Geneva at present (see my Flickr photos to get a feel for it). Just wanted to do a quick write up of Bruno Guissani's keynote regarding the ubiquity of network access - for example, in Japan, more emails are sent from mobile phones than from PCs.

A few things interested me particularly. First, the discussion of how we now have multiple personas online (our del.icio.us profile, Flickr page, blog, Linked In profile, etc.) and some of those personas we have more control of than others.

A great example of using blogging in a novel way was given too - L'Hebdo, a French weekly magazine, decided to cover the recent French riots by having a continuous journalistic presence in one of the towns affected, with the journalists posting their stories on a blog. Now that the events are over, the reigns are being handed to the residents themselves, and a small group is being trained to use TypePad ready to blog their own ongoing experiences.

I'll post more later in the day. All Lift 06 blog posts can be found on Technorati tagged as Lift06.

]]>

(Posted by Paul)