noisylime

[via del.icio.us/popular]

Mark Frauenfelder: O'Reilly is selling a 58-page PDF that shows you how to create high dynamic range (HDR) photographs. It's written by Jack Howard (who took the photo shown here) and costs $7.99. The HDR process involves taking several pictures of the same scene with different camera settings to capture as much detail as possible in shadows, midtones, and highlights, and then combining the images in Photoshop or other application. Check out Flickr's HDR group for lots of eye-popping examples. Link

[via Boing Boing]

This morning, AIGA (the professional association for design) relaunched with a shiny new design by Happy Cog. I had the pleasure of taking Jason Santa Maria’s brilliant designs and turning them into semantic XHTML and CSS templates that could be plugged into a custom CMS built by Thirdwave (AIGA’s technical partner). Magic and fun ensued.

Every project is a learning experience. But working with Jeffrey and Jason for a client like AIGA, well that’s a whole new level of awesomeness. One could (and should) study Jason’s molecule-level of detail in typography (using just two web fonts and a splash of Interstate via the venerable sIFR). It was a fun challenge getting things right using CSS. I hope I’ve come close.

Congrats to AIGA for renewing their digs with a smart, readable, beautiful design — and a big thank you to Jeffrey, Jason and Happy Cog for allowing me to pitch in and help with this.

Read more about the redesign:

• Jeffrey Zeldman: Happy Cog redesigns AIGA
• Jason Santa Maria: AIGA Redesign
• Happy Cog: AIGA Website Redesign

And a special geek note: events listed on AIGA’s homepage are marked up with hCalendar. Microformats

[via SimpleBits]

It must be tough for true Apple fanboys to weather the hours and sometimes days between the latest Mac / iPod / fake Apple product rumor; without a regular dose of wild 12-inch MacBook speculation or promises of a 32GB flash iPhone, what's the point of getting of out bed? Well luckily the good folks at Apple Gazette empathize with your need for Apple "news" on the regular, and have helpfully created a tool that will fill the gossip vacuum with info just as reliable as the usual sketchiness which infects the 'nets. Their Apple Rumor Generator picks a random clause from each of nine different phrase banks, and combines them for a fresh, exciting new bit of speculation with each press of the radio button — feeding your Apple jones has never been easier. Ultra portable Mac Pro? It's in there. "Video Apple TV"? Sure, what the hey. And your favorite "anonymous tipsters, inside sources, and unnamed operatives"? Yup, they're all in on it too. So go ahead, get your rumor on, and learn shocking plans like this from deep inside Cupertino HQ: "A confirmed source has confirmed earlier reports that we will see a Black Macbook Pro and Flash-based iPod Shuffle in the Fourth Quarter 2007." Wild!

[Thanks, Michael]
[via Engadget]

One of the risks of trying to find a niche to build a startup is that the big guys can land on your face at any time. That’s why all of these startups are going to be in serious trouble when Adobe releases a free, ad supported online version of Photoshop in six months.

This announcement comes at a time when developers are lavishing attention on Adobe’s Flex platform, particularly in the video editing and sharing space. I think it’s reasonable for startups to question if Adobe will plan on competing with them in areas beyond photo editing. If that’s the case, these startups may not want to spend their time and venture dollars testing out various products, only to have Adobe jump in the middle after all the dirty work is done.

Adobe is both a platform company and an application company. Conflicts are not avoidable. 

[via TechCrunch]

ColorJack allows you to visualize color theory with the sphere.

This reminds us of Kuler, the user generated color app from Adobe Labs. It is pretty amazing that so many people are sharing color groups.

[via Ajaxian]

http://minishowcase.frwrd.net/
http://www.zenphoto.org/
http://www.maxkiesler.com/apop/
http://vikjavev.no/highslide/
http://smoothgallery.jondesign.net/showcase/gallery/

Please let me know through email or a comment if you know of any other great AJAX tutorials and I'll be glad to post them. Also special thanks to all of the folks who produced all of these wonderful free tutorials.

Also See: Round-up of 30 AJAX Tutorials

Read the rest of this entry »

I welcome additions to this list. Please use the comment section to add any AJAX toolkits or frameworks you find useful. As always feedback on this post is most welcome. Thanks to all of the toolkit and framework developers!

Read the rest of this entry »