There has been a "small" delay with the deployment of the mobile version of the site. I wanted to have it done by the time I finished this web site, but then some clients gave me work to do, and then some other clients gave me even more work, and all my personal stuff got delayed. Summer is a busy time.
Don't worry though, it will happen eventually, the same thing happened with the creation of this web site, it spent 1 whole year in the making due to all the delays.
Also, I have a redesign planned for this web site, it will probably take a while until it gets done. I might actually wait for the redesign to finish the mobile version of the site.
A few years ago Myspace was where I kickstarted my designer career, it's a shame to see what it has come to.
When I first joined Myspace, I didn't do it to keep in touch or interact with friends, they weren't even registered there, I did it to stay up to date on what the bands I liked were doing, what shows would be happening near me, listening to their new songs. Credit must be given where it's due, and back then Myspace was responsible for the success of many underground artists.
Myspace was my door to the world of web design. I first started sending to bands the photos I shot at their shows, met a few friends thanks to it, then one day I decided I also wanted a cool hip customized layout. So be it. I got a brand new profile layout and messages started coming from bands all over the globe asking if I did layouts, and I thought "Why not?". This made me get more and more into design and got me where I am today.
So how did it get so bad? The very same people that allowed Myspace to get so big, the bands, are also guilty for it's downfall. Band's started abusing the Myspace messaging options, they began to constantly send event invitations, blog updates, new songs and all you can think of. Every single day my inbox would be filled with over 20 messages and I don't know how many more friend requests from bands I never heard of. Also, with the increase in Myspace layout customization web sites which had pre-built layouts and layout generators, people started creating layouts full of animated gifs of cats and rap stars, and bands started creating horrid layouts with a bunch of event flyers, and so many YouTube videos my browser sometimes would just crash.
Then came Myspace V3 to the rescue, or did it? At first I really liked the new layouts, they were a lot cleaner, and because no CSS was allowed people couldn't create those butt-ugly flashy layouts. Sure the new front page of Myspace was a bit overwhelming with all those news articles in a grid, and the layouts were really heavy on javascript, causing the browser to sometimes hang, but people were creating good looking layouts with the built-in layout builder, finally! I thought the Myspace team still had some time to optimize all the code, and all the nasty bugs that plagued it would be ironed out, but it seems that over time more bugs were introduced and profiles got heavier on javascript. Not good! And to add injury to insult, bands started to use FanReach, that is, SPAM made easy for bands. Now I get even more SPAM from bands, to the point I don't even want to log-in to Myspace again.
A note to bands: You don't need to send me a message inviting me to every event on the other side of the Atlantic, or every time you add a new song to your profile, that's what the friend feed if for!
I also had some bands complaining there are not enough customization options available, and I'm glad there aren't more. Myspace was never intended to be a replacement for your web sites. Yet I'm not surprised more and more bands are moving over to Facebook even if customization options are very limited.
On a final note, due to everything I said above, I probably will shut down my Myspace page in the next week or so.
That's right folks, now even YouTube has 3D video.
It's quite simple to create 3D videos and even watch them, no need for expensive material. Just grab 2 video cameras (preferably the same brand and model using the same settings) and place them side by side, then get them pointing at the exact same spot. After shooting your video, edit them so they will be both on the same file, the image of both cameras should be side by side, merged into one single video, the resulting image should be either in 4:3 or 16:9 ratio, then select your 3D options when uploading, and go get your 3D glasses to watch the result.
Many options are available to watch the video in 3D, there are even options to watch without glasses, although those are pretty hard to get right and won't work for the average person.
When I started building this web site I wanted it to make use of the new technologies available on HTML5, so any videos should be played by the browser's own video player and not by Flash. Even if there wasn't a standard video codec available at the time, I decided to go ahead and use the WebM format as it seemed to be accepted by the majority of web browsers.
The web site was created, I tested everything on Firefox and Chrome, and some stuff too on Internet Explorer and also Safari, and everythig went great, with the expected cosmetic differences and lack of video support on Internet Explorer as I still used version 8. WebM video didn't work on Safari either, so I started getting a little worried.
Today I installed Internet Explorer 9 and immediatly tested WebM video on it, with no luck. The video didn't play, Internet Explorer 9 still doesn't support WebM video, and despite the fact that I hate Internet Explorer ever since I first tryed Firefox, as a web designer I must take into account that many people still use Internet Explorer, and some never upgraded to a newer version.
Because of that I decided to drop the WebM video for now and use instead YouTube to play videos on my web site. Expect the update to be rolled out soon.
Although it is still slowly being implemented and you probably won't notice it yet, Google now has its own version of Facebook's "Like" button, and it's called the "+1" button.
Whenever you or one of your friends click the +1 button of a link, it will build up reputation on that link, pushing it up on Google's search results page. To be able to use it a Google account is required and your clicks will be made public on your Google profile.
If you want to know more about it check Google's presentation video.
Lately here in Portugal there has been an outbreak of teenage violence videos on the news, videos that were filmed by the teenagers themselves and then posted on social media like Facebook or YouTube and later picked up by news media.
It's not that teenage violence didn't exist before and suddenly teenager went crazy, it was always there.
So what's the difference of today and 10 years ago? The answer is the social media.
Many people have a profile on some social network, be it Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, YouTube, or any other of the hundreds that exist around the world. When something is posted on the internet, if it has public relevance, if it's shocking, or if it's incredibly funny, there is a good chance it will become viral. This is the scenario, some random person sees something happening, films it with a cellphone, then posts it on a social network for all the friends to watch, then the friends show it to their friends, and their friends' friends show it to their friends, and so on until it is found by some news reporter or sent to a TV network by some angry parent, then it becomes a nation wide phenomenom, maybe even world wide.
Some people might find it shocking that people watch these violent videos, but it's the human nature, people like watching other people's disgrace, from a safe distance, everyone slows down when driving by a car accident to see what happened. But some good comes out of this, the people responsible for violent acts get easily identified and people become aware that something is wrong.
That is how powerful social media can be, and their power should not be ignored.
Today a RSS feed was created with the latest articles posted on my blog.
By subscribing the RSS feed you'll be able to read the latest articles without the need to visit the web site and in a very simple way on a variety of devices that support the format.
