It’s rare enough to want to mention a portfolio that kicks ass.
Lee Felarca’s portfolio uses the most recent Flash experiments in an oldskool design to show off his work.
Storing PSD files on small devices (USB stick, CD-Rom, floppy disks, whoops, sorry!) or transmitting them by email has always been a problem: it’s sometimes huge, and you wonder why.
Here’s the tip of the day:
If you want to save some space (my tests showed a loss of 20%, but I didn’t try it on bigger files, which could lead to an even better result), put a white filled layer on the top of your PSD file, save it, and see the slim-fast effect.
Of course you lose the preview, but you don’t always need it, do you?
Here’s the result:
3.4M 2006-05-04 22:11 idle.psd
2.7M 2007-07-23 00:36 idle_white_layer.psd
The weight loss is already about 20%.
How is this possible ?
The preview is gone, so the composite information is empty, and the “cache” used by photoshop to know which pixel belongs to which layer as well.
Want more space? Zip’em all!
Why couldn’t we zip these PSD files? You’ll see they have plenty of holes!
3.4M 2006-05-04 22:11 idle.psd
834K 2007-07-23 00:41 idle.zip
2.7M 2007-07-23 00:36 idle_white_layer.psd
553K 2007-07-23 00:41 idle_white_layer.zip
I zipped the “normal” and “white layer” versions to show you the zipped file is even smaller after this treatment.
Conclusion
Before : 3.4M
After : 553Kb!
Combining the white layer tip and zipping leads us to a whooping 85% size loss!
Happy shrinking!
Mooglets is a cute engine that runs widgets for yet-another web homepage.
I think this app could have beaten Netvibes if it had the proper founding.
Unfortunately, the amount of modules is fairly low and the customization minimal.
Still, a cute alternative to Netvibes if you get sick of it.
Pros
Cons
RSS Mixer allows you to create a RSS feed out of multiple feeds.
It was created by Ideum.
The concept has already been seen with other products such as FeedJumbler, Feedshake and FeedBite.
I found that RSS Mixer is much better in many ways:
Pros
Cons
(Via Webware)
M studio are based in New York producing a range of interesting Flash based web projects. It’s their own site is what caught my eye.
Normally I am turned off by the interface–is–king approach to web design, but in this case the result is sufficiently elegant to cause me concede that perhaps, if executed with flair and appropriate content, it can be made to work.
You want to reduce cost and staff? You want to fire those lazy developers? You want to do it all on your own and turn your idea into millions? Iceberg on demand is for you!
It’s this time of the year when we get, yet another amazing application, to build other applications (made for dummies). Is this a framework? No silly, you don’t even have to code!
It is quite unclear what they are selling, and it is quite unclear what you can make out of it. They surely make it sound like everything is possible though.
The link to the “KillerStartups” review of their product is a missing page… that’s never a good sign.
Also don’t look at their website source, you might get a heart attack.
In the Applications tabs, the first in the list is a Human Resources application: Manage all aspects of your hiring and firing using this application.
Wow, so cool. Does it include an email confirmation “YOU ARE FIRED” too?
Pros
Cons
The last con might actually be a pro. My bad.
One thing is sure: like every iceberg, they will be melting soon, revealing clear water.
Ok so for whoever is interested, shout an email to nicolas, (at) noben, (dot) org.
Update: yes, there is plenty more to go!
