Weekly Web Roundup - #1
The web’s really, really big - but there’s only 24 hours in a day, and we all have to sleep occasionally! So welcome to the first article in my new series of weekly web roundups. If I think it’s worth a bookmark then it will probably end up in one of these posts!
wpSnap
Has anyone else apart from me noticed a general decline in the quality of WordPress themes recently? I personally think that it’s been caused by all the rubbish Sponsored themes that are being released - resulting in a dilution of the theme pool? But maybe I’m wrong?
With this in mind, I was quite surprised to find that somebody has launched a new theme showcase. Surely it’s already well-covered ground? Well, this one’s a little different - with the selection being hand-picked according to quality, and importance being given to things like the ability to run the theme straight out of the box.
Sketch Swap
The idea for this is simple - you’ve got a virtual blank canvas, a virtual pencil, and virtually no control. Draw cartoons, art, brainstorms, or anything else you can think of - and then submit your drawing. Your sketch gets sent to somebody else, and you get a new one back in return - which you see drawn in real-time onto your screen!
Top 77 Blogging Mistakes
This has been knocking around for a while now, but I’ve only just had a chance to look at it properly - and it was certainly worth the read! I’m pleased to say that I seem to be doing almost everything the ‘right’ way, and I have serious plans to address the areas in which I’m apparently lacking too!
TypeNow.net Font Collection
The drop-down navigation on this site sucks a bit, but if you can live with it then this is one of the best collections of free fonts that I’ve ever seen on the Web!
Connected Ventures Lip Dub
I’ve noticed this popping up on a few sites this week, but if you haven’t seen it yet then it’s worth a watch! Not only is this one of the funniest lip-dub videos ever, but it’s also one of the greatest pieces of guerrilla marketing I’ve seen online - even I’d move to New York if it meant a job with them! 
Space Lane
An incredibly clever piece of art. I’m not going to say anything more - simply scroll down slowly when you get there!
Programmer or Killer?
Test your skills of people perception with this little test… Is each of the men shown a creator of a programming language, or a serial killer? Sounds easy, doesn’t it?
A Woman From The Inside Out
I was quite please with my sketching efforts a few weeks ago, but this is just something else entirely! The title may sound a bit iffy - but I promise that it’s not!
Interview for Britster
The new social networking site that I’m working on should be ready for the Private Beta phase at the end of the month - which means that there’s just over a month to go before we finally go live! While requests from various press agencies have been trickling in, this is the first proper interview to be published online. It’s been written by Lodovic Donzé, a French blogger living in England - with a fascination for social media and Web 2.0 in general.
That’s it for this week then - I hope you’ve enjoyed my little web snapshot! If you know of a site that you think should be included in my next issue, then let me know. 
Digg/astetix
Flickr/astetix
Facebook/Paul Enderson
Linkedin/paulenderson
Del.icio.us/jazzpak
Technorati/astetix
MyBlogLog/astetix
The Space Lane is just amazing ! Also, thanks for the link
My pleasure Ludovic - thanks for the interview!
TypeNow is a really nice font collection indeed, too bad only few of them were available for Mac.
That “woman from inside out” is spooky at first and amazing later. Many years ago, I think in 1997-1998, I was a big fan of screensavers, I was scouring the Web for the most creative screensavers, and impressing my colleagues with them
Well, there was one screensaver where you could see how the artist was drawing from the very first stroke to the final picture. If I’m not mistaken the drawings were done in pastel. There were various drawings of a woman, car, child, etc. Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of that screensaver anymore and I can’t find it on the Web either. I wonder if you came across that screensaver in past?
thanks for the links - I’ll check the others later
Do you realise that there’s loads of tools you can use to convert from PC TrueType to Mac TrueType or PostScript?
The screensaver you found sounds cool - so I went off searching… I found two:
Drawing Hand Screen Saver
Artist Screensaver
Either of those the one?
No I didn’t know about the type conversion tools for Mac. I’ve searched Google, I can see - there are a few options. Thanks. Which one do you usually use?
Thanks for looking for screensavers. I don’t think it was one of them. Drawing Hand sounds and looks the closest. But I couldn’t test the Demo’s .exe file on my Mac (are there tools converting .exe for Mac as well?)
There are quick converters around, but I find that they lack a little in quality… I’ve personally been happy with Fontographer and Fontlab in the past - both of which would do the conversion well.
I could be wrong, as I don’t own a Mac myself - but I though the latest couple of MacOS releases (i.e. 10.4 and up) had native support for the PC TTF format?
The only way I can think of converting a PC screensaver to a Mac one would be to capture the output to a video file - and then to build it into a Screensaver using something Mac-based for the job…
I have to look into it more, but so far I’ve seen it working with some PC TTF fonts - had no problems installing them on my Mac (simple double-click and they’re in my Mac’s Font Book), but I did have problems with installing some other PC fonts. Will pay more attention to it next time.
I’ll probably try that screensaver on my husband’s PC - too much trouble to get it working on my Mac.
But thanks for all the info - learned quite a few new things today
My pleasure! Glad you found it useful…
Hey Paul, thanks for leaving a comment, I have neglected a few blogs lately [sorry about that] due to circumstances, good ones though
Just couldn’t find time to read for a while. Anyway you’ve collected some cool links and I love the look of your Britster website! I still owe you a reply to an email [totally forgot about it], will respond as soon as I am back from my visit to NL! Don’t post too much I will have a problem catching up when I’m back 
Tried Sketch Swap and got Godzilla in return: awesome!
No problem Tess… Just glad to hear that things are going a bit better for you!
Have a good journey!
Cheers Paul, and thanks; things ‘are’ going better
Now I’m really off to bed! How come internet can be so addictive?
Because unlike the real world we can shape it and change it to what we want it to be…
Good night!
Hi Paul,
Hope all is well! Thanks a lot for sharing the links and your input on type conversion (I’m also on a Mac).
Everything’s cool - thanks mate!
Glad you found the links useful! I’ve been seriously considering getting myself a Mac recently, so I may be practising what I preach soon!
No thanks necessary.
I’m glad Lisa tagged you. That means I’ve found another good blog to read and eventually remember to add to my blogroll.
Think you may have meant to comment on the ‘8 Things’ post - but thanks anyway!
[…] [thanks to Ludovic, Vivien, Tess, Dirk and Chelle for commenting on my previous post] […]
Paul, if you’re seriously considering buying Mac, make sure to visit http://mactactic.com/, so you don’t end up like me, buying a Mac just before it’s been discontinued and replaced with a new more powerful model. That site tells you when is it the best time to get a Mac.
I think the weekly round-up is a great idea, Paul.
Your link here on my site is broken. It took me to your 404 page. Will you be changing your 404 page design anytime soon?
I think it’s a good idea (and reckon it’s on your list of to-dos anyway).
You’re right actually - a custom 404 is on my list! I plan to utilise the Related Posts plugin to generate a list of potential matches to the mistype…
What link is broken? Both the ones in the comment I just made on your site seem to work fine for me..?
Ah, it’s cool. I clicked through from the email notification, and it doesn’t format the link too well. The comment link is a good’un.
Nice idea using related posts on the 404. I wouldn’t know how to figure out what people were looking for in the first place.
Glad it wasn’t my typing!
I’m planning on writing a Perl script to parse the text in the address bar, strip out the URI, and then extract date information (if it exists) and raw text.
The date info will be handed back to the 404 page as part of a standard WP search, which will result in a ‘posts that were made around the date you entered’ list.
The raw text will be passed via PHP to a custom hook in the Related Posts plugin, which will generate a shortlist of articles that are closest to the last part of the address.
Does that make sense?
Sort of!
Good luck with it.
Perhaps I’ll make it into a WP plugin once it’s done?
Do that, Paul. I’ll certainly download it.
oh, I can predict that WP Related 404 Posts Plugin will make you, Paul, vvvery famous, and will propel your blog to Top 1000 (at least!)
Not sure it’d be quite that popular!
I’ve got it working on my own blog now anyway, by adding the hook I mentioned into the ‘Related Posts’ plug-in that I already use! Try it and see:
http://paulenderson.com/design
It works really well when I try meaningful keywords in the URL. I get pretty closely matched articles. However, when I tried e.g.
http://paulenderson.com/designissues or some misspelled URLs (that’s a quite common error that leads to 404), then it doesn’t return any related posts, and it’s a bit confusing to see:
“Based on what you typed though, here are some articles that are a close match:
* Fuzzy …”
I’d suggest you to rework the response for “fuzzy” 404s
Ah well… It should cover those mis-typed full URLs at least - where people miss a letter or two off the end!
I’ll stick it on my list of things to work on once Britster is live!