David Chartier
Denver, CO - http://dcharti.com/blog/
As a multimedia student in Denver, CO, Dave Chartier has his hands and nose in the design and Apple industries. After his first IBM PC in high-school got him hooked, Dave hit the ground running - tinkering with just about everything you can do with and to a computer. After getting into design school and catching the Apple bug in 2001, Dave�s obsessions focused on what�s coming next in the worlds of graphic, video and web design. On the rare occasion Dave is without his powerbook, you�ll probably find him either on his snowboard in Breckenridge or a local bike trail.
Filed under: Internet, Office, Productivity, Google, web 2.0
by David Chartier (RSS feed) Aug 30th 2007
Working with your documents and spreadsheets at
Google Docs just got a whole lot easier, thanks to the introduction of contextual menus. Now, right clicking a doc provides most of the popular options that you typically need to use the
navigation toolbar for.
Google Operating System has some good ideas for where this feature can go next, such as searching the web for selected text and even exporting documents as MP3s using a text-to-speech engine.
This feature works of course in Firefox and we assume Internet Explorer as well, and while Google Docs doesn't work in the current v2.0 of Safari on Mac OS X, Safari 3 beta handles Google Docs and this new contextual menu like a champ.
Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, Productivity, Apple
by David Chartier (RSS feed) Aug 28th 2007
Fire up Software Update, Mac OS X users, for
iPhoto 7.0.2 has just been released. This update addresses "
issues associated with publishing to .Mac Web Gallery, rebuilding thumbnails, and editing books. It also addresses a number of other minor issues." Thanks for clearing up those 'other minor issues', Apple.
All we know is: this better fix the renegade Spotlight "mds" process that peaks our CPUs for a few minutes every time we start iPhoto '08. There's nothin' like shiny new software draining our batteries dry to get us out of bed in the morning.
Filed under: Design, Developer, Internet
by David Chartier (RSS feed) Aug 28th 2007
Someone apparently thought there was plenty of room for innovation in the "Flash-driven creepy talking head ad" space, and Motion Portrait has certainly picked up the reigns. Since our screencap really can't do the video justice, check out the real deal at
Motion Portrait's site, and be sure to move your mouse over her and ring the bell.
The obvious advantage here is a stunning aesthetic boost; this digital secretary moves in a way no other talking head presentation has, even while talking. Still, we hope to see this far more advanced tool used with restraint when it comes to advertising on the web (and let's face it: it
will come to that). No matter how real or natural presentations like this may seem, they can still be a thorn in a site's experience and drive visitors away if they start blabbing immediately or simply won't shut up.
Motion Portrait, we tip our hat to the impressive work you've done in the creepy talking head space. Let's just hope you can recommend some equally impressive advice on restraining the use of these to the marketers who come a'knockin'.
Filed under: Design, Internet, Blogging, Social Software, web 2.0
by David Chartier (RSS feed) Aug 27th 2007
Twitter and Gmail - some would say they're two great tastes that could taste great together. While these two services haven't quite melded into a cutting-edge new way to communicate and micro-blog at the same time, Twitter has just made it a little easier to find your Gmail friends who also have Twitter accounts. Like so many other services (Plaxo, Facebook, etc.), Twitter now has a
twitter.com/invitations/gmail page that allows you to securely enter your Gmail credentials to see if any of your friends' and coworkers cross paths between the two services. After a brief waiting period (depending on how large your Gmail address book is; ours is around 500 or so), you'll be presented with a grid layout of boxes containing the names and images of Gmail friends who are also on Twitter. You can click each box to immediately begin following these friends, and you can specify whether you receive their updates via SMS as well. Links to each member's Twitter profile are also provided in case you need to double check just to be sure who you're following. All in all, we're pretty impressed with this integrated lookup between the two services, especially since Twitter can't seem to stop blazin' up the social popularity charts. This was a great idea, and it'll be nice to see Twitter hook into more email, contact and social services to help users tweet with even more of their friends and coworkers.
Filed under: Business, Internet, Productivity, Social Software, web 2.0
by David Chartier (RSS feed) Aug 22nd 2007
Highrise, the popular web-based contact and correspondence app from
37signals, has a new dedicated Tags tab in the dashboard. This will help users filter and sift through their contacts and notes much more quickly, especially since the company built in the slick ability to select multiple tags with which to filter. Clicking one tag in the cloud begins the process, while clicking another will switch to filtering by just that tag. After clicking a tag, however, the upper right of the tag cloud (pictured) will offer a 'Multiple tags' option. Once clicked, each subsequent tag you select will add to the filter, not replace it. This is a very smart way to offer the best of both worlds for everyone, no matter how they work and use tags to sort their correspondence.
by David Chartier (RSS feed) Aug 21st 2007 {0 comments}
Love WordPress? Know how to set up, hack or write plug-ins for it? Then perhaps you might be interested in finding a WordPress Job. Hosted at jobs.wordpress.net (but apparently run by Automattic, developers of the now default WordPress widgets plug-in), WordPress Jobs is a pretty straightforward site hosting job offers for those who need WordPress ninjas of every order. Heck, there are even a few ...
by David Chartier (RSS feed) Aug 21st 2007 {1 comments}
Shaun Inman's Mint quickly rose to the top of our list of web stats tracking tools as it offers a powerful, customizable interface and a rich plug-in architecture that has quite a following. After launching Mint v2 back in January of this year, Inman has been releasing minor .x version updates to address the usual bugs and other quirks, but a new Mint v2.12 release brings some minor new ...
by David Chartier (RSS feed)
Aug 19th 2007 {0 comments}
Most blogging tools and web-based dashboards don't offer much in the way of graphically viewing your post schedule. You typically get a list of your posts that you can search and order by date, but that's about it. If you're blogging on WordPress and would like a more graphical view of your posts that should play well with just about any calendar app you're using, this iCal-Posts plug-in by Gary ...
by David Chartier (RSS feed) Aug 19th 2007 {5 comments}
Webmail is a hot industry these days, with Gmail, Yahoo! and nearly every provider in between vying for users by adding as many features as they can dream up. Fortunately, a small provider named Litepost is taking a different approach, offering a streamlined webmail interface with just a dash of web 2.0 to help bring your email into the 21st century web. We found Litepost back in June when they ...
by David Chartier (RSS feed) Aug 17th 2007 {2 comments}
For bloggers both old and new, a choice of blogging tool (or a switch) is a crucial step to make while building the empire. There are of course a boatload of choices, from Drupal, to Blogger and even the lightweight Textpattern, but for the serious blogger that needs every ounce of power and customizability from their platform of choice, WordPress and Movable Type are the reigning kings across the ...
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
