1. Elysium Burns

2. Mike Precious

3. Chicago L-Shirts

4. Grip Limited

5. Oliver James Gosling

Celebrating the Milestone today as we reached 100 Likes on our Facebook page. I would like to take this opportunity to give a big thank you to my friends and family (and the odd random user) for helping us reach this milestone. Also an Big, Big, thanks to Simon Wright a friend of mine since primary school who jumped on board late in the game to become the 100th Like.

Simon is one of the most amazingly talented musicians I have ever had the pleasure of having in my life as a friend, you should check out is talent on his Facebook page and get down to the Evelen on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, Melbourne as he starts yet another residency from June 5th this year.

1. Bastian Allgeier

2. Earth Hour

4. Jeremy Madrid

5. St Paul’s School

This is the current design for the Ram City home page

After analyzing the structure and functionality of the current site here is what I came up with

View larger image

1. Ryan Lottering

2. Sage

3. Riser

4. Mike Precious

5. Amped

But first here are some examples of great landing pages I have come across in my travels.

Nestle Drumstick

Mercedes-Benz

Ok so lets get down to business. The first thing you need to do is to visit the application’s site and click “Add to My Page”

Next, select the page you want to install the application  from the list which pops up and select “add to page.”

The next step is to design your landing, luckily if you aren’t too handy with Photoshop you can hire me to design your landing page (I can also design a cool looking profile pic as well to match the site theme)

Once you have your design ready simple click on the new tab in the side bar called “Welcome” the one with the little star icon next to it.

On this page you will need to add your image, two things will need to be done here, you will need you image hosted on either your server, your drop box account or a file storage service like Photo Bucket the tricky part is that you will need to write a small line of code, but never fear I have included an example for you below.

<img src=”http://www.theaddress.com/theimage.jpg” alt=”My Facebook Baner” />

Once you have added the link to your image you can click on “Save and View Tab” the final step to make your new banner as the first page your visitors see when they come to your facebook page, simply click on “Edit Page” and go to “Manage Permissions” and change the default landing page and change it to “Welcome” hit save and you are done.

If you need any help just drop a comment and I will get back to you asap.

Here are a few I have one recently for some clients.

Project Fun

Mannys

If you are like me and you use a grid systems when design your websites for example the 960gs then you can assure your sites will fit nicely on these great devices, however sometimes the viewport doesn’t allow for some nice padding around the website and can often take away from your design, I noticed this on my own site and decided to increase the viewpoint to 1024px to allow for a small amount of padding around the sides.

Here is the code, just add it between the head of your website and that should do the trick as long as your website is 980px wide or under.

<code><meta name=”viewport” content=”width=1024px” /></code>

Don’t forget you can always play around with the sizing to get your site right the way you want it.

Here is and before and after shot of how my site looks on the iPad.

Take a look at the code for IE will you! When are they going to learn?

Example of transparency on a DIV

div {
opacity: 0.5;
-moz-opacity: 0.5;
-khtml-opacity: 0.5;
-ms-filter: “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=50)”;
filter: alpha(opacity=50);
}

1. Veer

2. Corbis

3. Pixmac

+ Home Page design

+ Single Column Page Design

+Two Column Page Design

+ Contact Page Deisgn

Simply copy this code on your functions.php

add_action( 'init', create_function( '$a', "remove_action( 'init', 'wp_version_check' );" ), 2 );
add_filter( 'pre_option_update_core', create_function( '$a', "return null;" ) );

# 2.8 to 3.0:
remove_action( ‘wp_version_check’, ‘wp_version_check’ );
remove_action( ‘admin_init’, ‘_maybe_update_core’ );
add_filter( ‘pre_transient_update_core’, create_function( ‘$a’, “return null;” ) );

# 3.0:
add_filter( ‘pre_site_transient_update_core’, create_function( ‘$a’, “return null;” ) );

Don’t worry to much about it though, all you need to do is to modify your design to fix on a resolution of 1280 x 1024 if you are not to concerned about a screen resolution that small then don’t worry about it too much because at monitor resolutions of 1440 or wider, your current background should still look sweet, you may need to adjust the left side graphic if you have one a little bit.

Another cool thing I noticed was the semi-transparent effect on the right side column, I had the thought of putting some info here so it slightly comes through, just remember that transparency will only work in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and IE9, all previous versions of IE lack support for CSS3 and will not be transparent.

Have a play around with your new layout and see what you can come up with. This is the new one I made this morning after switching to the new layout.

“Life’s a journey; River is music for the journey.”

RiverSally is a singer-songwriter, recording artist, composer and creative producer/director. Her unique musical style is both inspirational and transformational. Above and beyond being an artist, RiverSally is warm-hearted and generous and her music desires to communicate that each of us are valued and much-loved. ”River”, RiverSally’s first release, is like a lush film score, taking you on an enchanting journey to the special place where rest and restoration are found. It’s the kind of music that makes you feel as though you’re in a comfy chair by the fireplace with a bottomless pot of tea, or sitting in the still of the evening as you gaze beyond the horizon. Life’s a journey; River is music for the journey…

Purchase this album from iTunes now

Visit RiverSally’s Myspace

Stream the music from Amazon

Check it out www.mzwood.com

Visit the store and pick up your merch www.nawlz.com/hq/shop/

The site was built using WordPress and will incorporate Wp-Ecommerce as the shopping cart later on.

Last month, iPhone users in New Zealand woke up to to the early alarm . The new iOS 4.1 had a bug that caused their alarm clocks to set off an hour early than scheduled. This bug spread as I found out personally to Australia earlier this month when our Daylight Savings kicked in. Apple is clearly on tight deadlines to fix this issue.

I heard from the MacTalk Australia podcast the iOS 4.2 release that is expected early next month. Apple seem not to be concerned by this issue as after releasing this statement.

“We’re aware of this issue and already developed a fix which will be available to customers in an upcoming software update.”

But again, no ETA is revealed. So it should not really surprise us if the update happens alongside the iOS 4.2 release.

If you download, well who am I kidding? We all download,  and seeing that nearly half of everyone that uses the web is using Firefox, then this Mozilla add-on is for you. If you want to handle your downloads in your browser then “DownThemAll!” is for you.

Explore the customizable features to optimize why, how much, and what you download. DownThemAll! can increase download speed up to 400%.

Visit the official Add-on site today!

More than just a plugin, WPtouch^TM Pro is now an elegant,
flexible and powerful mobile theming framework for your WordPress website.

Setup a detailed, feature-rich version of your website for touch-mobile devices with just a few clicks— or customize and tweak to get things a little more personal. Or go one step further, and build your own custom theme with WPtouch’s Skeleton theme template. WPtouch Pro is as simple or complex as you need it to be for your mobile website needs.

Visit the website for more info

1. RJDJ
Join the RjDj music revolution! RjDj is an amazing new way of experiencing music – YOU are inside the music! Its the soundtrack to your life ! Read more

2. Rectools08
Rectools 08pro Multi Track Recorder with it’s easy-to-use interface is the perfect tool for music creation . It is also the first 8 channel multi track recorder for the iPhone / iPod Touch! Perfect for band or chorus recordings. It is comptabile with all external iPhone / iPod Touch microphones and records in 44.1kHz / 16bit top quality. Read more

3. USB disk
USB Disk lets you store and view documents on your iPhone and iPod. It has an amazing built in document viewer and is very easy to use, with a simple and intuitive interface, yet it contains many powerful features. Drag and drop files in iTunes to transfer them to your iPhone / iPod, then view them anywhere! Read more

4. Jobs
Jobs has just the right features to make it a powerful time tracker, but none of the fluff, so it is intuitive and lightning fast to use. Creating time sheets has never been simpler—add a job, then press play to start tracking. Each job features an hourly rate, initial fee, associated client and total time spent on the job, broken into sessions. Read more

5. Amplitube iRig
With AmpliTube iRig, you can plug your guitar into your iPhone/iPod touch/iPad and jam anywhere with world class guitar and bass tone right in the palm of your hand – from the leader in studio-class guitar and bass software. Read more

Here is a collection of great looking websites that are combining the beauty of dense graphics in their website production.

1. http://www.artscode.com/

2. http://www.karaburke.net/

3. http://www.forrst.com/

4. http://www.pictorymag.com/

5. http://www.darasgarden.com/

6. http://www.kulturbanause.de/

Plugins Used:

GigPress – GigPress is a live performance listing and management plugin built for musicians and performers.
NextGEN Gallery – A NextGENeration Photo gallery for the Web 2.0.
Newsletter – A cool plugin to create your own subscriber list, to send newsletters, to build your business.

Custom Development:

Custom templates were used to utilize the maximum ease of the wordpress “posts” system.

You can view the site here www.mzwood.com

Plugins Used:

WP e-Commerce Plugin – A plugin that provides a WordPress Shopping Cart.
NextGEN Gallery – A NextGENeration Photo gallery for the Web 2.0.
Page Lists Plus – Adds customisation options to the wp_list_pages function which is used to create Page menus.
Quick Page/Post Redirect – Redirect Pages or Posts to another location quickly.
SexyBookmarks – adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts.

Custom Development:

I created custom templates for different post categories, this allowed us to create multiple ares like Events, Blog, News, Media all from the Post function within WordPress.

You can visit the new Max Walker site here www.maxwalker.com.au

Go Apple! here is a couple of screen shots from me clicking show in finder to get ready to move the files.

I also spoke to Optus today about my phone, and just in time for the iPhone 4 I am out of contract. However I am am traveling so I will have to get it unlocked and go on some super low plan while I’m away.

So lets run through new features of Safari 5.

Speed, Apple are claiming that Safari 5 runs 50% faster than Firefox. True, I ran some tests and it was upward of 50%, especially Java Script heavy sites as Safari 5 got a 30% increase in the time it takes the browser to read it. I alway thought that Safari was faster, just limited as it didn’t have the add-on capabilities I require for the work I do.

This brings me to my next point. add-ons, developer tool, Apple has incorporated some new features into the Develop menu item which still needs to activated form the preferences. It also has some new features in the Web Inspector. After playing around with it for a while it is still nothing compared toFirefox’s Add-On Fire Bug.

Some new features have been added to accessibility, one that I would like to mention is the Full-Page Zoom were images and graphics scale up while the text remains razor sharp, keeping the web page layout consistent as you zoom.

The incorporation of new advanced web technologies has been a great addition, CSS Animation, CSS Effects, CSS3 Web Fonts, CSS Canvas, HTML5 Media Support, HTML5 Offline Support witch allows us to create applications that can be used even when your not connected to the net.

That’s about all that caught my attention testing it earlier today. For more information see the Apple official release document.

Supposedly, the Webby Awards are like the Oscars of the internet, and Nawlz has been nominated in the ‘net art’ category. While the Academy selects the category winners, the online public selects The People’s Voice Award winners, where Nawlz is up against all category nominees, including mainstram heavyweights like Twitter, Hulu and Steven Colbert. So please go to http://webby.aol.com/entertainment/netart and show your indie love. Voting starts April 13th and ends April 29th.

Go check out the comic right now | www.nawlz.com | I promise you won’t be dissapointed, then go vote for this amazing creation and help support local Australian Online Media Designers.

PS the comic is absolutly FREE. Why, I don’t know…

I am not one to fill my wordpress folder with plug-ins, I much prefer to set up a standard list of codes in my functions.php file.

Today I spent about 2 hours looking for some code for functions.php that would remove the link from a parent menu dropdown. I needed this cause when setting up pages and assigning them to a parent there is no functionality to tell the parent folder when there is no content, to not display the menu item as a link. I think WordPress should have this as an included function, maybe they will at a later stage.

So I spent ages looking for this code and came across http://bavotasan.com/tutorials/how-to-remove-the-links-to-parent-pages-in-the-wordpress-page-list/ however this code when applied to your functions.php does just the job except it removes the whole link, leave just the word. This caused issues with my menu as the dropdown I was using relied on the menu item having a link to work. I tried editing the code but without luck I couldn’t get it to replace the link with a #.

So I decided to resort to a plug-in and found this incredible one called Page Lists Plus it allows you to select any page and give it a link or not give it a link. Also has the option to make the link blank keeping the <a href> styling in the menu I was using.

I would recommend this plug-in for anyone who uses a drop down that relies on the <a> tag being in the dropdown menu list.

Here is a run down of the features:

• View files and Office documents on iPhone
• View images and play audio and video files
• Transfer documents to iPhone via Wi-Fi
• Browse files by folder, date, name or type
• Open ZIP files in folders
• Send single Email attachments
• Delete files or folders
• Create new text documents on iPhone
• Edit existing text documents
• Create ZIP file with multiple files and folders
• Send multiple Email attachment
• Create, copy, move, delete or rename multiple files and folders

This product is great, I give it a 8.5/10

Here is a link to download http://www.digidna.net/products/fileapp

“Apple has begun removing risque iPhone and iPod Touch applications from its online App Store, including some which had previously been approved for sale, according to reports. Technology blog TechCrunch and The Wall Street Journal said the new policy towards adult-themed contents had resulted, for example, in the deletion of applications featuring bikini models TechCrunch said Apple had begun notifying application developers earlier this week that apps with “overtly sexual content” were being removed. ”If we find these apps contain inappropriate material, we remove them and request the developer make any necessary changes in order to be distributed by Apple,” the Journal quoted an Apple statement as saying. The Journal said the move appeared to be part of an effort by Apple to clean up the App Store ahead of the shipping late next month of its new iPad tablet computer.

The newspaper said the App Store, which offers more than 140,000 programs, will be an important part of the marketing of the iPad, which Apple intends to promote as a device for families and schools.”

wp-ecommerce – A plugin that provides a WordPress Shopping Cart.
wp-contact form – WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post.
All in one SEO pack – Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.

The project took 6 weeks (including the x-mas break) and was launched in sequence with a meeting the company owners had in America.

Visit the website www.amadika.com.au

What are the current trends in mobile websites?

Less is more: Due to the fact that users on mobile devices usually don’t have the time to sit and surf a mobile website in it’s entirety it is imperative that you get your message across as quickly as possible. It also applies to the way the site is built, the 3g network may be the fastest mobile internet available but it is still considerably slower than the basic ADSL or CABLE connection you have at home or your office, therefore you need to keep the amount of information being pulled from the server to a minimum.

Simple Options: In an ever increasing world of bloated websites the idea of “cutting down” your sites content to be “mobile friendly” seems to be a breath of fresh air, as usually only the latest updates or the most relevant information is displayed on mobile sites.

Testing 1,2,3: There are 100’s of phones and mobile devices in the world today that are capable of accessing the internet. This becomes a major problem as you probably won’t be able to get your hands on every device to test your site on. There are a number of web tools out there to help you test your sites on mobile devices, Apple have an iPhone simulator and Opera have a mobile or “Small Screen” option.

Up-to-date: Mobile websites should be kept as up-to-date as regular websites, the trend at the moment seems to be that mobile website should be updated every 3 to 6 months.

What do we think the trends will be?
I believe that services like, stock market, banking, online shopping, online directory assistance styled mobile site will become more widely used in the future. Social media sites have turned your mobile device into an instant updater, you can update your Twitter status, send your friend a message on Facebook, or listen to you Friends latest song on myspace wherever you are.

What types of companies should be considering mobile more than others?

Well definitely any company that has information that needs to be seen on a regular basis should invest in mobile web.

What are the key things to consider when building a mobile website?

Automatically send mobile users to a dedicated “mobile” version of your website: Using simple PHP commands you can automatically redirect mobile users that arrive at your desktop site to the mobile-friendly version of your website you are designing.

Use valid mobile markup: XHTML Basic and XHTML Mobile Profile are two commonly-used mobile- specific markup languages for mobile web sites. These are good choices by default. Like any markup standard, they require particular syntax and allow a certain vocabulary of tags which is different from what HTML allows. For example, markup tags must be closed, <font> tags are not allowed unlike in HTML, and frames can’t be used. Following these standards will ensure that a wide array of mobile devices can parse and render your page as you intended.

Validate your markup: Validate that your page conforms to the markup standard you have chosen using an XML validator, or online tools like http://validator.w3.org.
Further, try using mobile-specific validators like http://ready.mobi/, which goes beyond simple validation identifies areas where your page design departs from generally accepted practices, estimates download times and cost, and more.

Use a linear layout: Minimize left/right navigation, which is difficult on a phone, and
instead arrange your content in a single column layout.

Minimize use of tables: If you do need to incorporate them, use no more than 2 columns, and avoid row and column merging.

Keep page sizes small; less than 10KB if possible: Mobile pages typically take longer to load due to slower network speeds, and mobile devices typically do not have much memory. Minimize use of images where possible.

Make sure that all pages are linked to other pages: It’s difficult to get around on a mobile phone, try not to make it harder by forcing users to hit the back button to escape dead ends.

Use Google Sitemaps to post information about the structure of your website: It is harder for search engines to discover sites on the mobile web. You can speed up the process by proactively informing Google of the pages on your site that need to be indexed.