So, if anyone is interested. I've moved this blog to a more permanent home:

http://www.concretebrain.com

Basecamp Themes

Some themes for Basecamp.



303 Preview


303 Colors



Desert Theme Preview


Desert Theme Colors



Flavor Theme Preview


Flavor Theme Colors



Foo X Preview


Foo X Colors



FOUR Theme Preview


FOUR Theme Colors



Fruity Theme Preview


Fruity Theme Colors



Lime Theme Preview


Lime Theme Colors



Martha Theme Preview


Martha Theme Colors



November Theme Preview


November Theme Colors



Vineyard Theme Preview


Vineyard Theme Colors



Xmas Theme Preview


Xmas Theme Colors

Writely.

Writely is definitely one of the coolest Web 2.0 apps out right now. Browser-based word processing, collaboration with other users and publishing capabilities make this app stand out as more than just a word processor.

They recently re-opened the beta program and I snuck in and I am really digging the experience. Writing "online" may take some getting used to, and it does have some drawbacks – what happens away from a network connection?

You can also upload Word docs and even save your Writely files for Word. Really useful for collaboration or quick, away-from-my-own-computer sort of work.

Works with most of the major browsers, except Safari and Camino for Mac. But Firefox is not a bad thing to have to use, so give it a shot.
Writely

Camino.

Camino is almost 1.0

This new alpha release is extremely stable (hasn't crashed on me once). It's a gorgeous Mac OS X-style broswer, based on the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine.

It's very, very fast.

It's not yet at the level of sophistication and adoption of Firefox. It's missing the cool-kids add-ons and some sites have issues with it (Blogger's post edit form, for example). But for the most part, it rocks. It's nice to see the Camino team still at it in the face of overwhelming success of Firefox.

If you use OS X and are looking for a faster broswer than Safari, check out Camino. Once it goes 1.0, it may become my browser of choice.

You Tube.

You Tube is a new service that allows you to host video clips, tag and share them with the world. It's like Flickr, I suppose, for video.

From the horse's mouth:

What is YouTube?

YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. With YouTube you can:

* Show off your favorite videos to the world
* Blog the videos you take with your digital camera or cell phone
* Securely and privately show videos to your friends and family around the world
* ... and much, much more!

The compression isn't QuickTime-esque, but for quick little clips, it's great for sharing. It's Flash 7 video based so the the interface is easy to use. I didn't notice as much frame stuttering or even buffering as I expected. For a free service, this is definitely one to check out.

This is a pretty dramatic video of two guys who actually drove into Katrina to shoot video.

Google Blog Search.

Google announced a new Blog Search Engine, entitled....wait for it....Google Blog Search (beta, of course).

Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you’re looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice.

I think it's great that Google continues to support blogs in the mass-scale that they do. Owning Blogger gives them a perfect reason to do so, but I like how a search engine encourages content rather than just trolling the web looking for keywords. Taking a proactive approach to content creation will hopefully lead to better content.



More >>

Backyard Dancing.

Probably the coolest music video I have ever seen. All in one take and pretty flawless.

From NPR:
A video by the band OK Go for its song "A Million Ways" has become a sensation on the Internet, with over 500,000 downloads. The video, of the band performing a complicated dance routine in Kulash's backyard, was never intended to be released publicly, but it has found a strong following. Robert Siegel talks with Damian Kulash, the band's singer/guitarist, and his sister Trish Sie, a former professional ballroom dancer and choreographed the dance.


Watch 'A Million Ways' (QT)

Google Talk.

Google Talk is here. This nifty new feature from the Google Labs allows instant messaging and voice calls to other Google Talk members. A Gmail account is required for Google Talk. The good news is that Google Talk is compatible with Gaim and Trillian. However, the voice calling feature only works if you're using the actual Google Talk software. Google Talk is beta, like Google and Gmail, (isn't anything Google does ever out of beta?) but works fine for me.
A very enterprising individual I know has figured out how to hack the Jabber/Google Talk relationship to skirt corporate AIM blocking. Google to the rescue once again.

User Experience Week 2005 Photos.

I'll get into more detail later, but here are all the photos taken at UX Week 2005 in Washington, D.C.

Flickr: Photos tagged with uxweek

SXSW is taking names, numbers.

SXSW has begun registration.

A chance to meet Jason Fried is never one to pass up. As always, drinking the koolaid...

Using Backpack for Taking Notes.

Pagini has some interesting ideas about how to use Backpack for note-taking in the classroom. I've used a similar technique for taking meeting notes. You can instantly publish them as a Public page in Backpack, or simply cut-and-paste into Basecamp.

A few of us at User Experience Week 2005 were rapidly inputting notes into Backpack. The only issue we all found is that if you don't save your notes before clicking to another site, you lose everything.

Lessons learned, I suppose.

However, the benefits far outweigh this little behavior change.