i am a camera

Fresh off the attention I received for my Vine Type website, Microsoft now spotlights ... me.

Community Spotlight Interview

Expression Design provides several great graphics effects, but one that is sorely missed by me is inner shadow, or inner glow. They're basically the same except inner shadow would be a black glow, I suppose.

I've been using a simple solution to simulate inner shadow by using two rectangle objects and a blur effect and I demonstrate this effect in the following video tutorial. Click on the photo below to view the tutorial.

It's been said that nothing breeds success like success. That appears to be the case for me right now. The folks at the Microsoft Expression Studio website have taken a liking to my Vine Type redesign and are currently featuring it in their Expression Studio Gallery.

Prompted by a blog post by Khoi Vinh, I was introduced to a little site called CommandShift3 that pits website designs against each other. Having recently rebooted the Vine Type site, I thought I'd play along. Fast forward one month.

As someone who expressed recent interest in jumping into Flash development, the announcements and demos at Mix07 have significantly altered my software purchasing outlook.

I'm back to the daily grind after that whirlwind weekend known as South by Southwest Interactive.

I'm a little stunned to read Robert Nyman suggesting that perhaps conferences like SXSW have lost their usefulness. I, for one, don't have to look past my own nose for an example of someone who has directly benefited from the two most recent SXSW conferences. Here's proof:

Visiting Robert's Talk is always an experience. While I'm more than likely going to find discussion on internet technologies, I never know what might pop out of the keyboard of Robert Nyman. He's talented. He's thoughtful. He's friendly. He's Swedish. What's not to like?

Rather than just list people on my blog watch without explanation, I thought I should perhaps "introduce" them or at least explain why my blog watch contains the links that it does. So my lead-off batter for blog watch has to go to Eric Meyer, someone whom I've never met but seems so very familiar...

He grew up near Cleveland in the 60s and 70s; I grew up near Cleveland in the 60s and 70s. He's a web designer and developer; I'm a web designer and developer. He and his wife are teaching their child sign language; my wife and I taught our children sign language. He attends SXSW in Austin, Texas; I live in Austin, Texas. He's an internationally renknowned author and speaker and all-around friendly guy whose writings are followed daily by thousands around the globe; I ...uhmm... okay there are some differences. I don't shovel snow off my driveway being another.