The link to this article whizzed by in my feed reader and as it turns out the article is very, very good: true, clear, concise and very to the point:
Design Multilingual Websites: A Beginner’s Guide on Hongkiat.
Archive for the ‘design’ Category
Design Multilingual Websites: A Beginner’s Guide
Sunday, February 28th, 2010On the danger of downloading themes
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010This is something I had not bumped into before, but today I downloaded a free WordPress theme to adapt to my own wishes (which usually involves a whole lot of hacking and slashing), but this one took some extra time because it was riddled with invisible links to several commercial sites, apparently to boost them via the bots that usually visit blogs. The crappy part was that the code that published the links was actually encrypted to prevent removing the links. This particular creator even went so far as to change the default WordPress ‘Meta’ links to his own site.
Translation: if I hadn’t been hacking my way through the code I wouldn’t easily have found the semi-hidden links, so anyone just downloading and using this theme or one like it will inadvertently aid these somewhat immoral practices and end up with a slightly crippled blog.
Update: After finding that all of their themes have these links etc. I’ve decided to name and shame: the free templates came from wpthemescreator.
Update 2: Some more investigation even found some hidden encrypted code in the theme that inserted links to the creator’s site quasi-randomly in the blog’s links and probably the footer as well. Yechh. I’ve decided to still use the cleaned up theme but remove any link to the creators, even though that is normally against my principles.
I quite like Nike iD
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009I recently ordered two pairs of Nike shoes from their on-line iD store, where you can customise the colours and materials to your liking. Basically you pick the model you like, customise it, add your own ‘iD’ (some of your own text or a Nike logo) and order. It’s quick, easy and quite good fun, plus you get the shoes delivered in a couple of weeks.
For my first foray I decided on some more conservative designs:
…maybe next time I’ll go a bit crazy… 
Drawing a Song or “Pintando una Canción”
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009This. is. just. beautiful.
Pintando una Canción (translated: “Drawing a Song”) is a mind blowing, gracious, fluid en well-executed semi-interactive Flash animation. Just amazing. Wow.
That’s one cool virus
Monday, August 11th, 2008Absolutely brilliant:
Country logos – vewwy sweet
Monday, August 11th, 2008I bumped into this nice overview of official country logos, mainly used for international promotion along the lines of “we’re nice, come visit us and spend money”.
Well-designed mostly, but it does strike me that they’re often very, even extremely colorful and full of flowers, hearts and sunshine. Apparently the flower is one of the most powerful symbols for a country. I can understand that for Holland (national flower: the Tulip, and well known for it), but some of the others? No idea.
You be the judge: Cidade dos Logos
Armarac – a mini 19-inch rack that rocks
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008Thureon have released Armarac, a wall-mounted zero footprint mini rack that can hold several 19″ 1U or 2U servers or a wiring closet. The small size is made possible by using VertiBlade, which basically means mounting the equipment vertically. And to top it off it looks really, really great. So great in fact that it’s won a Silver Award at this year’s IDEA awards (International Design Excellence Awards). Designed by Australian firm 4design for Thureon and available in four colours (so far), this is a stunning piece of equipment:
I can actually see this thing taking off, completely replacing the boring old 10U or 21U mini-racks, especially for branch offices or distributed locations. In fact, I would happily use this anywhere, even at home.
Excellent piece of kit, I’m looking forward to getting one
Koloroo for iPod (or Windows, or Windows Mobile)
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008As a muddling designer I always have one or two color ideas when working on a new design, but you need more than just two. I’ve tried various pieces of color matching software in the past, but now my need for matched color ideas is combined with my love for my iPod (I am the proud owner of the most excellent iPod Classic 160Gb) in Koloroo for iPod, a free (well, careware) little tool that turns my iPod into a very spiffy color picker.
I can wax poetic about it all day, but this is one you just have to get and use to see what a great little tool it really is.
And remember, it is Careware, so you do actually have to do a nice thing for someone else as ‘payment’. I myself helped a friend dig out the foundations of his house (which gave me muscles sore enough to hinder my mouse use at the moment).
I’m not old, I’m Retro
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008I keep having to tell people this, so I thought I’d might as well bung it on a T-shirt. Available in dark and light colors, long and short sleeves, get some right here!
T-shirt: “No Bullshit”
Sunday, April 6th, 2008We all face bullshit every hour of the day, and now it’s time to put a stop to bullshit alltogether. Wear a “No Bullshit” shirt proudly:
Available in different shirt models and colors right here.
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