Oxite – Open source blogging platform by Microsoft

9^th December, Microsoft released their open-source blogging platform/CMS  with a name OXITE. 

After going through their weblog and screenshots, it seems like Microsoft has finally provided something with simplicity. The source code for the software is available under the Microsoft Public License.

FileRide – Share interests with a social desktop.

FileRide is a social networking tool with a completely different approach.  Its a kind of social desktop where you can globally expose your multimedia files, documents, links  with the people of same interests.

Who says you should not use comic sans ?

 

 

We always have a mind-set of not using comic-sans and it seems to be worst when it comes to web. Go have a look at the thebackofthenapkin webpage designed by OHmedia, it will definitely make you think for a while.

FontStruct – create and download fonts

FonStruct is a free online tool to create, download and share free fonts. Its been developed by FontShop, one of the leading font retailers.  FontStruct gives you a grid and basic geometrical shapes to start on, quickly use them as tiles and construct your fonts.

Chrome – the Google Browser

Every time Google does something, it becomes best of the web, they did search, maps, ads and now Google has introduced their free browser called “Chrome”. It’s being promoted as a sleeker, faster, safer and reliable alternative, but for now its little hard to decide what effect it will do on Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla and others.

Let’s take a look at chrome features which you will notice at first glance.

Web Advertising wont work !

Yesterday, I was trying to peek into my Inbox before signing off for the day, suddenly some strange sounds of vrooming cars started coming out of my desktop speakers, I checked my media player…nothing wrong, I checked my system sounds…totally OK, then what was it ?

Later on, I figured out that it was from an automobile’s WEB AD playing in one of the popup browser windows. I felt like being cheated and fooled, but what all I can do is nothing but to close the popup and the related website immediately.

This sort of web ad experiences really frustrates and creates a negative image for the websites showcasing them. But still web advertising has a huge market with consistent growth.

Newsmap – type as interface

Newmap is a great example of using typography as interface. It visually represents Goggle News aggregator in a flash based application with beautiful typography & color codings. Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. Its objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media.

The TUTS family

There is a thousands of tutorial sites popping up regulary on web, but there are only few which actually makes a mark and provide some meaningful tutorials and resources. 

The Tuts family is one of them.  

 

Main topic of site is PSD (photoshop), but you will also find some great articles about design trends & inspirations.

Web 2.0 design trends

 

Apart from usability, functionality & technology upgrade there is one more thing which differentiates Web 2.0 from its previous era – the Visual Trends.

On every new web page with a web 2.0 label you will discover more & more glossy, shiny, colorful, trendy visual styles. One reason behind these visual styles being so famous might be the thousands of design tutorials saying “Web 2.0 buttons, badges, glossy text etc.etc. Well, the reason would be anything; these visual styles are a real visual treat for the user, but only if used with limitations.In this post, i will try to cover up some of the web 2.0 elements we see around us.

Designers, clients & Web 2.0

I see a lot of confusion around me when we are talking about web 2.0, its more of kinda buzzword for industry, clients & sometime even designers. As a web designer, i tried to explore a little more in WEB 2.0 as my first post.

This term was first originally coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004. Stephen Fry (actor, author, and broadcaster) defines Web 2.0 as

“an idea in people’s heads rather than a reality. It’s actually an idea that the reciprocity between the user and the provider is what’s emphasized. In other words, genuine interactivity, if you like, simply because people can upload as well as download”.