Here are some videos of beautiful calligraphy, it’s really amazing the great craft behind this pieces, and that they’re all hand-drawn is really mesmerizing. A little tribute to the incredible talent of these artists.

Calligraffiti

From their website:

The fairly new art of Graffiti and its somewhat rigid rules prompt us to look further back into the history of writing. This is exactly what Niels Shoe Meulman has been doing since his teens, and at the beginning of this century he started combining the two. Thus resulting in Calligraffiti: traditional handwriting with a metropolitan attitude.

Luca Barcellona is a graphic designer and calligrapher from Milan, Italy. He has some amazing work up in his flickr website, and here’s an example of the amazing work he does.

Carhartt Live Performance n.1 – London from Luca Barcellona on Vimeo.

Featured image credit: Luca Barcellona

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Impresion digital 4

Original Pixellogo template

Today’s featured logo template from Pixellogo is Logo 3D-670: a 3D sphere that encloses the shape of a star.

This particular logo template is a high-end 3D design in the shape of a sphere that is composed by overlapping pieces. The combination of this plaques form a star in the middle of the sphere, that is coloured in a contrasting bright orange shade. The 3D logo design is completed with a composition of light and shadows, giving it a more realistic feel to it.

This style of 3D logo templates is perfect for any kind of business related with technology, gaming or software development. This logo design has a strong modern feel to it, but still combined with a delicate shape as the star. The choice of colours for this logo template is also an interesting choice, as it draws immediate attention to the orange-black contrast.

Here’s how it looks like in one of our business card templates:

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Impresion digital 4

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Impresion digital 4

Here is the MoMA’s personal design studio where they showcase their ongoing projects and others past. It’s really impressive how they deliver great design every time.  Here are a few samples of their great work, they give the museum its fresh and modern identity, mixed with fun and playful campaigns for every exposition. Considering the extents of the campaigns, it is really impressive the quality of work put in every campaign, great design worth for an international renowned museum.

Their summer campaign, frisbees included!

German expressionism exhibition campaign

Talk to Me exhibition display

Credit for all images

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Impresion digital 4

Best compact digital camera: £50-£100

The Samsung PL121 compact digital camera is one of the best cameras you can buy in this price range. It has 14.2 megapixels that enable crisp, clear images and plenty of digital zooming. It has 5x optical zoom, meaning the lens itself zooms to the equivalent of 135mm and boasts a focal length of 4.9 to 24.5mm. This camera also boasts a small screen on the front, which is perfect for self-portraits and it can even take VGA video which is easily uploaded to the internet. At £79.99, this camera is a real bargain.

Best compact digital camera £100-£200

The FujiFilm FinPix S4000 compact digital camera is a cross-between a standard compact and a single lens reflex (SLR) model. It boasts a zoom lens and 14 megapixels but unlike other compacts you have far greater control over the settings allowing you to produce more creative images. The 30x optical zoom is a 35mm equivalent of a 24-720mm zoom lens, which means you can capture wide-angle landscape shots as well as zoom images. The 14 megapixels mean images are incredibly clear and blur and pixilation is minimised. It has nine ‘film’ speed settings including auto and low-light settings such as ISO 3200 and ISO6400 as well as a bright light setting of ISO64. It has a wide variety of exposure settings, similar to those on a DSLR camera, including shutter priority and full manual. Plus, if you aren’t sure about setting the camera up yourself, there are 16 effects to choose from including portrait, snow, sunset, beach, party and sport. This camera is the perfect bridge between compact and more technical SLRs.

My pick: FujiFilm FinPix S4000

Best compact digital camera: £200-£300

Nikon is one of the best camera makers in the world and the Nikon Coolpix P500 is one of their best compact-SLR cameras on the market. This camera boasts a massive 36x optical zoom, which is equivalent to up to 810mm on a 35mm camera. Along with 12.1 megapixels this camera really delivers on image quality. It has loads of ISO and white balance settings allowing you to have full control over the lighting and it has several exposure modes so you can create truly inspired and ‘cool’ images, hence the camera’s name Coolpix.

If you want more in depth reviews, check out the What Digital Camera website.

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Public protests erupt as Poland signs ACTA

Yesterday Poland went ahead and signed onto the ACTA agreement joining the nations already signed on and enraging it’s public in the process. The internet is cheering on activists who took to the street in mass protests of the signing.

“Over 9000 protesters meet in the streets of Kraków to have their voices heard!”

Hopefully this strong public reaction will be a very clear message to other political powers debating on how bad the public backlash will be over signing such ‘internet endangering’ agreements.

As if ACTA wasn’t bad enough?

Over in Ireland they are showing respect for the people by slipping in a bit of legislation called the “S.I. No. of 2011 European Communities (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2011″, which will pass via ministerial order which does not involve a public vote.

Is it the sort of addendum that doesn’t merit input from the public?

Well Irish legal expert Tim McIntyre had the following comment on the new regulations:

“At a minimum this will probably allow courts to require ISPs to block access to alleged infringing sites (such as the Pirate Bay). Over and above that it becomes impossible to say — the language is so vague it might, for example, allow a court to require an ISP to introduce a three strikes system or to block certain ports. However, once copyright plaintiffs get hold of this power you can expect it to be pushed to its absolute limit.”

There’s still time!?

While the USA, Canada, and Mexico are already signed onto ACTA, there’s no reason why the public can’t organize an opposition to the decision and work to either get the agreement amended or have support withdrawn one country at a time. The only roadblock is getting folks to agree on a meaningful reaction that everyone can rally behind. So far the most centralized effort I’ve come across is the SOPA subreddit which has plenty of discussions on ACTA and PIPA as well.

Google’s director of privacy, product, and engineering, Alma Whitten blogged to clarify the changes that will become effective March 1:

What does this mean in practice? The main change is for users with Google Accounts. Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.

This is also part of an ongoing struggle between various search engines and social media sites that are directly competing with Google to collect user data. This information is like gold for advertising companies that target advertisements based upon consumer internet habits, trends and searches. Free speech advocates and analysts see this as a step towards users losing their anonymity.

‘cooking‘ isn’t very relevant to the latest info from ‘Jamie Oliver‘

Don’t believe me that they did this? Go watch it again, they actually want us to feel outrage that ‘cooking’ doesn’t link us to the most relevant info for ‘Jamie Oliver’.

The authors of the plugin fully admit that they are getting the results info from Google itself, and just don’t want to say the words “Google is simple showcasing it’s services” instead they want to make it out to be a matter of ‘evil’ and ‘holding back’. If they didn’t at multiple times in the video slip up and show how you can still get the top results without using their plugin I’d say they had a case.

As much as there is to roll my eyes at, from an SEO standpoint, everything about focusontehuser.org is brilliant. The back-links must be pouring in, and I saw a very clever ‘click here to get your results to show’ link in the video that could be a real profit mill for them (their marklet’s broken right now or I’d investigate).

Don’t get me wrong, I know this scripting project was backed by Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace (it’s still going), so it already had some deep pockets, but in my opinion, it looks like the devs had some deeper ‘evil’ ideas?

While we are still on the ‘Google+ Social is Evil’ topic, the changes to support nicknames, pseudonyms, and maiden names is apparently done and now you can socialize however you wish on Google+. A more ‘evil’ company would have stuck to the original, and far more profitable design which requires valid names and serious privacy commitment.

To read more about the new Google+ naming policy put out on Monday just hop on over to Bradley Horowitz’s Google+ page.

I know this is the part where I slap up a picture of Chia Bart’s amazing growth and progress.. but someone decided to help him out and drain his water tray so he’s really wilted right now and I’m trying to get some life back into him. Perhaps I’ll do an update after lunch if he perks up?

Bart sprang back a fair bit, had to zoom to see the wilt!

• Which Social Sites Should I Use? Part 1: An Introduction to Social Media
• Which Social Sites Should I Use? Part 2: Breakdown of the "Big 5"

Now that you know how to setup your social accounts and who the main social players are, it is time to tie all of your accounts together.

TwitterFeed

TwitterFeed is a program that allows you to syndicate several RSS or Atom feeds and sends them directly to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook (and a few others) This allows you to produce a steady stream of content to your social sites that will help to increase your level of activity. You will also want to check each social platform you use to see if you can like other social sites you are using.

• Use only high PageRank news feeds from reputable sites. Ensure that the feeds are not coming from your competition as they will invariably contain promotions which may lure your readers away. Stay focused on relevant news topics to keep your readers engaged.
• Include your company’s blog feed into TwitterFeed. This is the best way to not only keep your followers tuned in to current news about your industry, but enables you to send out specific, content designed to convert your followers into customers.

Most social platforms allow you to spread your updates across other networks which can lead to syndication loops. An example would be syndicate your TwitterFeeds to Facebook and Twitter and then inadvertently telling Facebook (or LinkedIn, etc.) to send status updates into Twitter.

Because the RSS feed comes into Facebook as a status update, you get the same RSS going to back to Twitter. This can have the unwanted effect of you being penalized for distributing duplicate content which can severally affect your site’s search engine rankings.

The real secret to success with social media is to stay actively engaged with your audience on a consistent basis. The more you participate, the greater the reward will be. You should consider spending at least a few days per week engaging, responding and generally participating in all of the networks you are connected with. The real "trick" to social media is to be consistently involved with your community by sharing content, Tweeting (and retweeting), commenting on other posts and producing high quality, relevant content for your followers to share.

Klout.com

It is one thing to stay actively engaged across your social networks, but how do you measure success? Indicators for measuring your success may include the number of contacts and followers you have, the increase in conversions, or the number of likes or retweets your posts are getting.

If you are wondering about your progress once you step in to the social world, you can use a web utility like Klout.com to follow your progress. The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from a variety of social networks in order to measure:

• True Reach: How many people you influence.
• Amplification: How much you influence them.
• Network Impact: The influence of your network.

TIPS

• It is important to keep your public and private networks separate and distinct. Do not use your personal Facebook page to promote your business. Create a separate, personal space where you can chat with grandma and put up those pictures from your "crazy weekend."
• Choose a marketing representative or individual from your company that does not mind having a public profile linked to your business account and that you feel will portray your company in the best light.
• Build up your marketing representative’s online persona by following only legitimate, valuable businesses and people. It is of vital importance to aim for quality or quantity.
• Avoid promotional networks on Twitter such as #TeamFollowBack and similar groups that attempt to lure you in to following them in return for gaining followers from them. These may have a short time gain, but if you cannot vouch for the validity of each and every member of this network you may find yourself associated with those that do not share your ethics or personal values. It is also an attempt to game the system which will inevitably lead to several penalties.
• Once you have a solid, well-developed persona, complete social profiles and have gained a some followers, you can create a business page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php ) and Google+ (http://www.google.com/+/business/ ) and consider getting involved in a few secondary social networks.
• Ensure that your website keeps your viewers socially engaged with social media button that readily allow them to share, like and otherwise spread your content.

Yesterday’s on-line unity was a clear message to the political parties backing these bills. Last I checked the opposition to PIPA was only 6 senators away from the required 41 “no” votes needed to keep PIPA stuck in the Senate for good. While I haven’t seen a public list of senator opposition to SOPA, it too needs 41 “no” votes to end the future of the bill.

While this sounds great, it really just means that the entertainment industry, and fans of public censorship, now have to try even harder to keep their efforts out of the public eye. Make no mistake, there are people, wealthy and misguided, that will keep trying to find a way to sneak this sort of law through. Don’t think that’s a fair/optimistic assessment of the situation, well here’s the flip side (Very strong language/opinion warning) from Mr.Maddox.

Just last night I was trying to get some programming done while watching a bunch of movies I’ve been backlogged on. One of the movies in the stack was ‘Kick-Ass‘ and I won’t spoil a decent film for you with too much info, but there’s a scene where they are streaming a web broadcast live on the news. As the live stream becomes ‘too violent’ for television the audience quickly switches to the web to watch the rest of the live stream on-line.

While most folks watching the film were probably totally distracted by the context of the scene, I was immediately thinking about all the conservative types watching this unfold and thinking to themselves:

‘This should never be possible, we should have the ability to censor a live stream that is so disturbing! If it can’t be shown on TV it shouldn’t be viewable on the Internet! Just think of all the things the internet could broadcast un-censored! We need something like this SOPA/PIPA thing we can abuse!’

I’m not sure if the big players in Hollywood actually intended that sort of reaction to the scene, I’m not saying the film is a brain-wash attempt by the industry, but the thought did cross my very ‘open’ mind, so it stands to reason I wouldn’t be the only one.

In fact if you haven’t looked at ACTA, you might want to check it out. This is a more international version of PIPA/SOPA with the same issues surrounding loose definitions and loopholes that could be exploited while doing little to actually stop piracy. ACTA has been bouncing around since 2006 with a bunch of countries already signed on to the current version.

The closure date for signing onto ACTA isn’t until 2013 but it looks like there may be some difficulties getting all signing countries to agree on a final version (yay for diversity!). A notably large issue of ACTA, especially in the eyes of the EFF, is that it has been drafted in secret, hidden from public eyes by participating governments around the world. So if you haven’t poked your nose into it, you really should.

Speaking of closure, I think Chia Bart’s pretty much grown all that he will and I’m cheating now to try and get the top of his head to sprout.

Leaf me alone! The kid is not my sun!