Think Vitamin Radio: Episode #2

Recorded: Thursday 4th January 2010 – Broadcast: Wednesday 10th February 2010

Mike:Very big yawn!

Keir:This is Episode 2 of “Think Vitamin Radio”, with your host Keir Whitaker. I’m the Editor of Think Vitamin, the blog, and we’re here to talk about all things: web design, web development, and web entrepreneurship.

Ryan:Oh yeah.

Keir:I managed to get that out this week. So you’ve heard Ryan, there. Hello Ryan.

Ryan:Howdy, how’s everybody doing today?

Keir:Good, and we’ve also got Mr. Kus, Michael Kus with us.

Mike:Hi mate, how’s it going?

Keir:Good, so we got through Episode 1 relatively unscathed. We got a lot of good feedback; about five thousand people listened to our first attempts, thank you to everyone. We learned an awful lot from it. We’ve had some – I’ve personally had some great emails and good advice. We know it was a little bit quiet in parts.

Mike:I got a death threat.

Keir:No, you said you weren’t going to mention that.

Ryan:Yeah, we won’t talk about that.

Keir:We’re going to be working on making the audio quality better. Mr. Dan Benjamin is helping us out a little bit with that, and I’ve had a few emails as well. Hopefully, this one will be better. We got our first sponsor, Buzzsprout.com, which is a podcast hosting company came forth and have offered to host all of our shows for us, which is very kind of them. So check them out, buzzsprout.com. We also announced our ten winners of the Crush It! book, so they were sent off yesterday, so hopefully you’ve received those. What are we going to be talking about this week, Ryan?

Ryan:This week, we’re going to be going over a couple of sites and apps that I think are interesting, and I’ll give my opinion on those, so that’s me.

Keir:And I’ll be talking about offline media, things like tech magazines, magazines for inspiration and design, and that kind of thing. Mike’s going to be chipping in on that, so we’ll also be closing the show with some details about a couple of our events that are going to be launching in the next week or so, I think, and our affiliate program, which is a new thing we’re running at Carsonified. Let’s start by chatting about magazines. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a magazine junkie. I probably subscribe to far too many and buy many more, but particularly tech ones. Let’s go around the table quickly – or, design ones in your case, Mike. What kind of magazines do you enjoy reading, Ryan, and why?

Ryan:I really love the new Wired UK. I’ve been a big Wired fan my whole life, but it’s super cool that they came out with the UK version. I have to be honest, when I first heard about it I thought, “What?” The content of Wired, why would it be specific to the UK? It’s sort of saying a UK specific website; it doesn’t make any sense, but it came out and it’s actually full of amazing, good, sort of niche content for the UK, so if you’re here in the UK, I definitely recommend picking that up.

Keir:Absolutely, I thought there would be a lot of syndicated content from the American one, but that really hasn’t happened. Maybe in the first issue or the sample issue, but beyond that, it’s very relevant to the UK and Europe. Have you seen that, Mike?

Mike:Yeah, I’ve been basically been sort of checking out the Wired magazine, and I’ve got to be honest, I haven’t read it. I’m not really into tech magazines.

Keir:Just look at the pictures.

Mike:Yeah, but what I did love about it is the attention to detail with the design and I just love the fact that basically every article, every page there is almost no standard structure throughout the magazine. Everything’s designed bespokely for that.

Keir:Is that a word?

Mike:It’s a new word I made up – “b e s p o k e l y”. I just love the fact – it’s something I think in the “web” we can really draw from, especially when you’re doing standard-based websites that would generally take the form of two or three columns. Wired magazine, the layouts they have in there can really give you some great ideas for new ways to layout sort of standards-based web design.

Keir:Yeah absolutely, they’re quite heavy recently on the kind of “infographics” which we kind of touched on in the first episode. It’s quite funny though, reading. I don’t know about you Ryan, but I keep seeing pictures and interviews with people that I’ve met. There is the whole article on the “Twitterrati” and there is Dan W, our friend, and I think our friend Sam Machin is getting an article in there.

Ryan:Yeah, and Matt Biddulph was in there. There is actually a big article on him and Dopplr. Yes, that’s what is nice about it. We’re starting to see people who know what they’re talking about in the UK get covered. I love it.

Keir:It will be interesting to see when we go to America whether you can buy it over there, as well.

Ryan:Probably not.

Keir:What about entrepreneur business ones? I’m a big fan of Inc. and Fast Company. Do you read either of those, Ryan?

Ryan:I love Inc. Magazine a lot. It’s my favorite magazine. I think it’s always full of great ideas and content, for small businesses, I think. If you run some sort of Fortune 500 company it’s not really going to be for you, and maybe Forbes or Fortune might be more up your alley, but Inc. is great. It’s kind of full of small business stories, marketing ideas, a lot of good photography, and great writing. There is a guy named Max Chafkin, that’s one of their writers and I really like his stuff a lot, so it’s a good mag.

Keir:Do any magazines that you read, do you go back to their websites? Do you find they’re a good accompaniment, or not?

Ryan:Never – it’s weird. Every single article in Inc. Magazine is on the website, but for some reason I just never go to the website. I don’t know why that is. There’s something really special about printed materials in there. I don’t know.

Keir:Can you think of any magazines that sort of bridge the divide in the tech world, that one feeds the other and vice versa?

Ryan:I can’t, not really.

Keir:What about Creative Review?

Mike:No, yeah, Creative Review is a really cool graphics magazine. It has sort of – and I like it because it concentrates on – it’s way more graphic design than web obviously, but -

Keir:There’s quite a bit of web in there –

Mike:There is, yes, it’s all kinds of design. They do everything, obviously cover everything from advertising to web to general print design and all sorts, and they’ve got a good blog in there regularly. There are lots of regular posts going up on their blog on creativereview.co.uk. It’s a lot more casual a blog. They sort of pump out articles pretty regularly and it has a slightly more human tone to it, which is nice. It’s a different side to a magazine which is quite – I guess it’s got quite a highbrow feel to it.

Keir:You never actually buy the magazine. You just read it in W H Smiths, don’t you?

Mike:Yeah, I go in there. It doesn’t take very long to read. [laughter] I just go in there, take my iPhone in, and basically flip through it. Any cool graphics I see, I just take a photograph of it. [laughter]

Ryan:I think this reveals something that’s crazy, that there is a big opportunity here for somebody to do a proper magazine that is just about the web industry, period. Dotnet Magazine does a great job, but they’re primarily UK. You want kind of just a juggernaut to come in, make a beautiful magazine, nice thick stock, beautiful photography focusing on web people, pure and simple. .net does a good job and we’re buddies with them and we like what they do.

Keir:.net’s got a different title, is it a web designer magazine?

Ryan:It’s focused mainly on web designers.

Keir:In the States it’s got a different name, though, doesn’t it?

Ryan:It does. I can’t remember what it’s called, but I just think why hasn’t someone launched a really, really good magazine that’s specifically for web professionals, web designer, web developers, and web entrepreneurs? We’ve always talked about doing it, Think Vitamin magazine, but it’s never going to happen until we have 10,000 people working for us or something.

Mike:I think you’re right about that. There is some sort of gap there because for me, as a sort of a graphic design-based web designer, whereas it’s cool to flip through .net, it’s not really – the subject matters it covers aren’t really up my street of interest, really, because I’m really into designing. Whether that be on paper, on film, or on a screen for the web, it’s all about – the core skills involved are all about design still. They’re all the same and something that would talk more about that would be great.

Ryan:Totally great.

Keir:Cool, so any other magazines you read Mike? There’s a couple of graphic ones, Grafik.

Mike:Yeah, I flip through that. I basically, as you say, go into Smiths and flip through the graphic Creative Review, Computer Arts and stuff like that. I don’t actually – I’ve never ever been a fan of magazines, really, just other than to go in and have a quick look at.

Keir:Cool, I’m sure if anyone out there’s got any magazines we should be checking out –

Mike:Elliot’s got his magazine coming out soon.

Keir:Oh yeah, Mr. Stocks.

Ryan:Are we supposed to talk about that?

Mike:I don’t know.

Keir:Yeah

Ryan:Okay cool, what’s the URL for that?

Mike:I’m not really sure, I think it’s 8 Faces.

Keir:Yeah, 8faces.com

Ryan:Sorry Elliot, hopefully that’s right. [laughter]

Keir:Basically it’s a magazine devoted to typography.

Mike:And it’s got a lot of exciting stuff happening in that. Looking forward to seeing that.

Keir:Cool, we’ll put a link to Elliot’s holding page in the show notes. Cool, that was offline media; let’s go back to the web and Ryan, you’re going to run through some apps that have been catching your eye, some sites?

Ryan:Yes, alright I absolutely love Analytics App. It’s an iPhone app specifically that plugs into Google Analytics. You can find that at analyticsapp.com. When we release this podcast on Think Vitamin, I will reveal that we have two free codes for somebody to get that for free. As soon as this podcast comes out, you guys can grab those (N3XRYPJ7MLKM – 9A6NMA4HTWTE). It’s a great app. I love it. The second site I’d like to mention today is called “my web my way”, which is -

Keir:Not easy to say.

Ryan:I know; mywebmyway. Try to say that ten times fast. It’s basically a collaboration between AbilityNet Net and the BBC. It’s simply a site to help people with disabilities to use the web better, but I think it’s good for web professionals because it kind of reminds you; what are the issues here and people with disabilities, what can they do to make the web a better experience.

Keir:What kind of disabilities does the site help out with, specifically?

Ryan:It starts with “I can’t see very well” so low sighted, “I am blind”, “I can’t hear very well”, “I find words difficult”, “I find a keyboard or mouse hard to use”, and those are all the various areas that it covers but the cool thing is it has – they’re basically a bunch of guides, so you can go there and there is a guide on “I can’t see very well. How can I use the web better?”

Keir:Who is it aimed at, people reading online or -

Ryan:People with disabilities. It’s aimed at people with disabilities but I would recommend all of you guys who are listening to check it out.

Keir:So maybe it looks at things, how you can increase the font size and the browser and that kind of stuff?

Ryan:Exactly, so that’s great. We will put the URL in the show notes, but it’s bbc.co.uk/accessibility_beta because it’s in beta right now.

Keir:Who is that in association with?

Ryan:It’s in association with AbilityNet.

Keir:AbilityNet, cool, so the next one we’re going to be talking about is something to do with Mind mapping. For those of you who may not have heard of mind mapping, can you explain what it is?

Ryan:Yeah sure, so mind mapping is kind of a simple process where you get out a piece of paper and you start with one idea and you start drawing ideas off that. It’s a way to kind of brainstorm things. There is a really good app if you want to do that called MindMeister.com. You can sign up for free. You get three mind maps for free and I’m currently using it for something special that we’re going to give all of you attendees to Future Web Design. We’re going to give you a free gift and we’re sort of coming up exactly with how it’s going to work. I’ve just been using the MindMeister to kind of help me do that, so I definitely recommend that. It’s a great little app.

Keir:Cool, and I think the next one we’re going to talk about is CoTweet, which is a web app for business and Twitter, Twitter and business, which we’ve had an account for a while but we’ve really only started using it anger in the last couple of weeks. As our number of Twitter accounts for different projects have increased, it’s a great way of keeping track on which tweets you’ve responded to and who’s responded, and that kind of stuff. But why don’t you explain a bit more about some of the features there?

Ryan:It’s just a great way to help coordinate who’s answered what tweets. Probably most of you now are using Twitter for business and if you have someone @reply you, you want to know who answered that tweet and what did they say. Keir and I have been answering tweets, mainly Keir but me once in a while, just anytime someone mentions Carsonified, or any of our various projects. It’s just really cool. You log in; you can see all the tweets. You can reply right in the interface and then you can mark it as “archive” just like email so you can tell if things have been responded to. It’s great.

Keir:Yeah, it’s an interesting one because one of the features they’ve got is called the carat which allows you to, for each user that’s in the system, to have their own kind of little unique signature. So if we reply from @carsonified, you can have – I think they use it themselves. Do they call it the carat?

Ryan:I think so.

Keir:Then there are initials so if you go to the CoTweet Twitter page, you can see all the different unique signatures for individual users. I mean, how do we – how should we be using group accounts to make it more personal? What do you think about that, Ryan?

Ryan:I think it’s hard. Twitter really isn’t designed for companies responding. It feels weird if you say “I can’t use my phone,” and then @bt, which is the British Telecom replies and says, “We’ll get back to you.” It’s a little weird. I think the best that you can do right now is kind of use -rc for Ryan Carson, or -kw for Keir Whitaker, but it’s still kind of imperfect.

Keir:I think I remember reading on the Twitter blog, there is something that they might be looking at implementing so you could actually almost say who the tweet is from, but not eat into your 140 characters, which would really be quite good because those who know us could probably work out which tweet is me, which tweet’s you, just by the way we talk.

Ryan:Yeah, I use exclamation points too often.

Keir:So, you want to maybe lend a personal voice but it’s hard to do without eating into the amount of characters that you’ve got. Cool, so why don’t we talk about an article on A List Apart, “Using SVG for Flexible, Scalable, and Fun Background Part One”, by Shelly Powers.

Ryan:Yeah, I came across this article today and I’m really excited about SVG. In case you don’t know what SVG is, it’s scalable vector graphics, and all modern browsers are capable of displaying SVG. And this is a great article on A List Apart. If you want to check it out, you can go to j.mp/svg-ala. Basically, what Shelly talks about is how you can use SVG to essentially displace scalable images right in the browser, and essentially it’s just like vector graphics. It is vector graphics and the way the browser deals with it is it’s actually XML and you actually, in the XML you tell the browser what’s going on and how to scale, and what to do. The only problem is that 1) it doesn’t work on IE. There is workarounds for that and 2) there’s definitely problems with accessibility on it. The alt text does not read out on screen readers. You can use JavaScript to change that and to inject HTML into the page to create an alt tag, but it’s kind of an imperfect solution. So, please don’t use SVG if you’re not prepared to use some JavaScript to fix the alt tag, but then of course some people might way, “Using JavaScript…” So, SVG definitely accessibility problems, but pretty exciting idea.

Keir:So, does the article go into kind of a – are there any big sites out there using it now that people can look at?

Ryan:No, there wasn’t any big examples, just a couple of fun ones. There’s probably some out there and if anybody in the chat room wants to tell us of some, that would be great, but it’s pretty exciting. That’s just part one, there’s part two as well.

Keir:Cool, and the final one we were going to look at, TheyMakeApps, which is kind of a directory of iPhone apps, is that right?

Ryan:It’s actually a directory of people who make iPhone apps. So it’s like for all of you 37signals fans, like Haystack –

Keir:Now Sortfolio

Ryan:That’s right, Sortfolio, copyright problems. It’s basically a really great directory of developers and designers who make iPhone apps, which is exciting because everyone wants an iPhone app these days. The site is actually really nice.

Keir:It’s very nice, yeah.

Ryan:theymakeapps.com, it’s beautifully designed. It’s actually quite fun just to browse it. It’s obviously got a great business function which is helping you find developers for iPhone apps, and it’s kind of how much they charge typically, and it shows some examples of their work. It’s really great.

Keir:What’s the going rate for iPhone development? Is it comparable to normal web development?

Ryan:People seem to be quoting anything from $5 grand to $20 grand US, but I’m sure you could get one made cheaper, but it’s a great little site.

Keir:Cool, so you’ll be reviewing some more apps and sites on the next episode?

Ryan:Yes sir

Keir:Which brings us – as we know we overran last time by our allotted time, to the final section where we’re just going to be talking about a couple of launches that Carsonified, the company behind Think Vitamin will be doing in the next couple of weeks. We actually put a soft launch or previous attendee launch of our upcoming Future Web Design London event. Was that yesterday?

Ryan:Yeah, we thought it would be nice just to let all of you guys who’d attended Future Web Design before to sign up early and take advantage of the super-duper early bird prices, which are indeed now sold out. Hopefully, that was nice for all of you guys how attended.

Keir:Absolutely, and the site which Mike’s working on at the moment, we’re actually going back to futureofwebdesign.com, for a whole bunch of reasons, and we’ve got a brand new site that we’ve been working on. I say “we”, mainly Mike, which is going live at 9:00 a.m. GMT next Tuesday, which will reveal the full lineup of speakers and workshops, and all the other new stuff that will be happening at that event.

Ryan:And if it’s okay, I just want to talk a little bit about the web designer’s tool kit that I’ve been working on. I just thought it’d be really nice to create something special for everyone who attends. We’re also going to sell it on Think Vitamin. It’s called the “Web Designer’s Tool Kit”. It will be on sale for $95 and essentially it’s 7 survival kits, on topics from HML5, CSS3, jQuery, UX, Logo and Branding Design; just on everything you need to know as a web designer. It’s going to be over 28 hours of screencast tutorials. There’s going to be free WordPress themes. There’s going to be a free audio book on how to run a successful web design business. It should be absolutely super valuable for all you guys, and we’re going to give that to everyone who registers to Future Web Design – free.

Keir:Great, and all the details will be revealed next Tuesday for that as well?

Ryan:That’s right.

Keir:Excellent, another thing that we’re doing this year is launching an affiliate program for all of our events, giving attendees the opportunity to help spread the word and put a little change in their back pockets as well. So how is that going to work?

Ryan:We decided to be cool to give you a chance to benefit when our events do well, so if you want to tell people about Future Web Design, or Future Web Apps, or any of our other events, you just sign up. We’ll explain how to do that on Carsonified and basically every time you sell a seat you get paid money. It will usually be 20 bucks per ticket or 20 pounds per ticket, so definitely worth doing. Hopefully, that will benefit you guys.

Keir:And we’ll be providing – we’re going to do a little couple of page site that allows you to grab banners that will fit into the – sort of look and feel of the different sites and create the relevant links and that kind of stuff. Cool, so 21 minutes. That’s about what we were aiming for last week but we overran. Has anyone got anything else to add, anything coming up this week that people are excited about in the world of the web?

Ryan:I guess I want to say to all of you guys listening, please contact us. We want to cover your sites and your apps, and we want to talk about issues you’re interested in, so please shoot us an email at –

Keir:thinkvitamin@carsonified.com. If you’ve got any beta code invites or any kind of giveaways that you’d like us to do, we did the Crush It! book last week. We’ve got a couple of analytics apps codes this week. We’re happy to do that so just ping us a mail and we’ll do that for you. Okay, that’s us. Thanks a lot.

Ryan:One other thing I just want to mention real quick is that we are headed to Miami; Future Web Apps Miami is taking place on February 22-24. There are still a couple of seats left, if you guys want to come along, so please check out events.carsonified.com/foa and check it out. Some amazing speakers, Gary Vunerchuck, Fred Wilson, Tara Hunt, John Resig, the guys from Palm Pre; it’s just going to be a fantastic couple of days, and it’s going to be on the beach so what more could you want.

Keir:Pack your flip-flops.

Ryan:Alright, thanks.