So, this past couple of days (or weeks ago – depending on when I get aroundf to writing this), I’ve been at the Future of Web Design (FOWD) 2010 conference in London. It was my first time going to FOWD, and I enjoyed myself immensly. Thankfully, Kean Richmond attended, so I had someone to spend my down time with and point out all the famous people I was supposed to know in the web sphere (like Tom Hicks, Remy Sharp and Mr Carson himself!)

I really enjoy my job, but since actually “working” in the industry for the last 5 years or so, I’ve come to think of it as much more of a “job” than a lifestyle. Going to events like this, and thinkvisibilty in March really bring something out in me that makes me remember the feeling of how being actually “involved” in the industry can make you feel.

Being a bit out of the loop, the conference really brought some focus back to how the web industy is progressing and how its going to change in the next few years. HTML 5 and CSS 3 were both hot topics across the event and it will be interesting to see how their usage develops, and how browser support is extended.

Sites like : http://apirocks.com/html5/html5.html which show off many features of the progressing HTML 5 standard show signs of patchy support. It was very interesting listening to Molly Holzschlag comment on the structures and implications of what these new technologies will have on the web, and what old legacy systems they support which may have an impact on how we will perhaps regress with our techniques. She’s really on the cutting edge; working at Opera and being part of the W3C team working on the HTML 5 spec.

I won’t go in to a lot of detail regarding the sessions I attended, as I’m sure a lot of other blogs will be covering more in detail what each speaker spoke about. As a developer who works at an agency (and freelances from time to time), I really enjoyed the whole encompassing aspects of the talks. They weren’t ALL about design for starters!

So, thanks very much to those that gave their time to put it all together.

Play. Destroy. Create – Branden Dawes
Advance HTML 5 Class – Peter Lubbers
JQuery for Designers – Remy Sharp
Accessibility in Web Design – Robin Christopherson
Learning to Love Humans – Aarron Walter
10 Tips for iPhone Interface Design
Web Design Redefined – Allen Haley
Smart Tips for Wireframing – Brad Haynes

Google Analytics Masterclass – Niamh Phelan
Web Accessibility for Happy Designers – Sandi Wassmer
The art of emotional design – Aral Balkan
How to build in HTML5 – Bruce Lawson
Rethink your job – Brett Welch
Icon Design – Jon Hicks
Blending usability testing – Dan Rubin

I’d also like to thank branded3 for sending me, and Kean for looking after me! Hopefully FOWA will be on the cards in October.

It seems from time to time, I like to refresh the design of this blog and try to re-enter the “blogsphere”. Really, I should just name my blog something obvious, like Graeme, but I don’t suffer from a lack of trying (in almost everything I do!).

It’s with great honour, that Kean Richmond has decided to help me out. As a dedicated friend and designer over at Bronco he’s got years of experience in making dreams come true for lonely web developers like me. I’ve wondered between free and bought themes over the past few years and never really landed on a site that was “mine”, but hopefully that’ll all change soon.

I’ve been doing a lot of Wordpress templating at work of late, so I’m really getting the hang of what can be achieved. Hopefully there will be plenty of room to add features as and when I get chance. As well as templating the new site from a frontend perspective, I’m also going to have a bash at building an Object Oriented framework for Wordpress templating too. Similar to how Thesis operates, but something more bespoke to the site and hopefully something I can use in the future on other projects and at work.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with his designs which can be seen in 3 blog posts on his site, here:
http://www.keanrichmond.com/a-new-design-part-1.html
http://www.keanrichmond.com/a-new-design-part-2.html
http://www.keanrichmond.com/a-new-design-part-3.html

Interesting article over at El Reg regarding Elspa taking over gaming classification from BBFC.

Elspa’s PEGI system has been in place for a while, with recent updates to the rating system and colouring introduced to the range of ratings.

One thing though, PEGI isn’t (as far as I am aware) a LEGAL certification system? BBFC ratings are / were, depending on when you’re reading this. So, will it become more than a “suggestion” in the near future? How will games resellers cope? Is it right to refuse a sale based on someone’s age based soley on a “suggestion” rather than law?

What’s more, any old USB stick will do. Though Microsoft will be selling their own branded eight and 16GB USB sticks for around £25 to £45.

This is the biggest single USB device that the Xbox will take, but because you can use two simultaneously, it means total extra storage weighs in at 32GB.
The Xbox Live update that went live today added flash-drive support.

Once it’s been downloaded you don’t need to lug hard-drives round or buy expensive xbox memory cards to friend’s houses to play stored games.

It’s also a blow to Sony from Microsoft.

What’s more, any USB stick will do! – or so they say ;)

Facebook has released a new version of Facebook aimed specifically at mobile phones in what can only be an effort to save bandwidth for mobile networks. The new version is being dubbed “Facebook Zero” and can be found at zero.facebook.com. As with other facebook sites, you can attempt to get to this one in a normal browser, but you’ll most likely get redirected to m.facebook.com (their normal mobile site) if your network doesn’t support it.

The new site works by omitting data like photos that would be deemed “data intensive” by phone networks.

Techcrunch was able to get hold of the image to the right which shows the potential for a premium version of the service. There are suggestions that networks could introduce the free version as a base app on mobile devices (even though many newer handsets already support the likes of touch.facebook.com straight out the box or as a quick download from their respective application stores. This would then allow carriers to potentially monetise the premium version themselves – restricting access to only those who pay.

Techcrunch also go on to post a PR piece from Facebook:

“Zero” is a light-weight version of m.facebook.com that omits data intensive applications like Photos. It will launch in coming weeks and we are discussing it at MWC as an option to make Facebook on the mobile web available to everyone, anywhere and allow operators to encourage more mobile Internet usage.

It’s been interesting to see the rise of Unicode (now version 5.2). Its’ usage is a boon to programming types, but also to the everyday public as Google have just announced their support for the latest standard, adding somewhere near 6,600 new characters to their search algorithm.

Google have been tracking Unicode usage through its index for quite some time now and I’m sure other major search engines will be refreshing their search algorithms to the new standard if they haven’t already.

Swankymaison.com

Full XHTML & CSS Build from supplied Photoshop files and then built on a custom PHP framework. Integration of a WordPress blog into the “thoughts” section of the site.

Google announced this week on its blog that you will now be able to upload up to 250mb files onto 1gb of storage on it’s cloud system.

Many news outlets have noted that Microsoft’s Sky Drive – which Google is going into direct competition with – offers 25gb straight off the bat. Also, many other services, such as DropBox already offer large scale data redundancy and synchronised backup.

However, this is Google. It’s not like they’re pushed for space. GMail started off at this kind of mark and increased to 2.5gb fairly quickly (although we’re talking emails… not “large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and much more” that Google themselves are pushing).

Of course, this begs the obvious question… why? My best bet would be on ChromeOS. The whole idea being based around Google Gears, Google Docs and Google’s Cloud. And there you have it. Google aren’t going to tell it’s customers to go and use Dropbox or Sky Drive, are they?

What everyone fails to notice is Google Mail & Picasa online storage pricing options that scale all the way up to 16TB. Who needs that much space?