Looking forward to seeing you in 2006, the 7th calendar year of xBlog’s link-filled life (whoa). Be safe. The link goes to a Flash game called “Someone keeps stealing my letters,” just for fun.

“Step-by-step Adobe Illustrator tutorials with original source file download… Now N.Design is not just a place where I showcase my portfolio, it also allows me to offer FREE Illustrator Tutorials and design resources to those who are interested in learning more about Illustrator and web design.”

“Billboardom is my online collection of imaginative outdoor and in-store signage.”

“There’s a very nice trick you can use to force-reload images that are delivered by a script (such as the Hiveware Image Rotator) but get stored in a browser’s cache. To understand the Trick and why you might need to use it, you first need to understand the problem with web browsers. “

“…architectural conjecture :: urban speculation :: landscape futures…”

“GraphicDefine focuses on the business of graphic design by covering topics such as client relations, project management, new business, self-promotion, studio management and the creative process. These writings are the documented findings and thoughts of Daniel Schutzsmith, Business Manager of The Chopping Block in New York City.”

“As mentioned in our Blog Interface Design article, blog posts often align with a specific format: ‘Some posts are full-fledged articles with substantial content, some are simply pointers (links) to content found elsewhere, some are announcements, some are reviews (of books, movies, events, etc.), and some are compilations of content published in various locations.’ Amy Gahran described seven such formats and even outlined the characteristics of each type: link-only, link-blurb, brief remark, list, short article, long article, and series postings. On Functioning Form, however, I’ve been labeling each post as one of these six formats…”

Talks about marketing, selling, teaching, making, web sites, finding a niche, etc…

“pastebin is here to help you collaborate on debugging code snippets. If you’re not familiar with the idea, most people use it like this: * submit a code fragment to pastebin, getting a url like http://pastebin.com/1234; * paste the url into an IRC or IM conversation; * someone responds by reading and perhaps submitting a modification of your code; * you then view the modification, maybe using the built in diff tool to help locate the change.”

“Though definitely not as sexy to talk about as tagging, and mashups, and whom Yahoo acquired today, I think that the trends we’re witnessing in enterprise software will have a far greater impact than much of what’s being discussed. And the most obvious trend is that the enterprise software market is being eaten away from below. My favorite case in point is Movable Type, the software which enables me to publish this blog. With a few modifications, it enabled Adaptive Path to publish it’s site. And then, as this post makes clear, with a fair bit of modification, it powers the site for SEED Magazine. What this demonstrates is what we’ve known all along — Movable Type isn’t a blog publishing tool — it’s a lightweight content management system. Blog publishing was essentially a trojan horse toward rethinking how to enable publishing on the Web. In my world, content management systems (CMSes) have long been the enterprise software that has been the biggest pain in the ass to deal with.”

“Today, early readers are faced with the daunting task of memorizing an abundance of characters — 26 uppercase letters, 26 lowercase letters, 10 numbers and over a dozen basic punctuation marks and monetary symbols. This task is daunting on its own, but becomes even more challenging for early readers who are dyslexic. A big problem for early readers is the identification of letters.”

We’re taking a short break here at xBlog to spend time with family and friends. Happy holidays, everyone! See you in a few days.

“Since we are moving towards 2006 I thought of compiling a list with the best tutorials (imho) of 2005. Of course I haven’t read all of the tutorials written this year, but believe me I have read a large percentage of them. So here we go in no particular order.”

“This site is a collection of different visual signs what I found on the Internet. I’m working with visual symbols, researching their different approaches and historical backgrounds. Signs and symbols and their use in human communication referring to typical cultural and social elements.” (Thanks Communication Nation!)

“If there’s one question I’m asked by designers more than any other, it’s how to figure out what to charge for a project. We have several ways. We can look it up in the Graphic Artist Guild’s Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines (PEG). We can charge the ‘going rate’. Or we can make a good guess at what the client is willing to pay and charge that. There are others, but these are the typical methods.”