PhilWeavers opens it’s doors to everyone

Philweavers, the long-standing organization for Filipino webdesigners, is now open to everyone for membership.

Starting in the web 1.0-era with a humble membership of less than 50, Philweavers today has grown to be the de-facto standard organization for Filipino webdesigners worldwide. Membership has always been closed; today, however, the group formally opens it’s registration to all Filipino enthusiasts, practitioners, amateurs and professionals in the web design industry.

It’s a shame they’ve closed their content site and replaced it with the forums. However, there are lots of interesting discussions happening that would be relevant to web professionals.

External link: Philweavers.net

Behance-whoring.

I’ve updated Behance with some of my lesser-promoted web design work. More to follow soon!

Creative Commons in the Philippines.

Most creative warriors ought to know about Creative Commons by now: a set of licenses to let you release your creative outputs with open free-culture principles.

Still, a lot of Filipinos using CC licenses don’t realize that they’re using general-use unported licenses. There are now versions of CC licenses adapted to Philippine laws. You can see the ported licenses at the Creative Commons International - Philippines site.

On a related note, do check out Philippine Commons–a local movement advocating open content and free culture.

Design basics tutorial.

*Jozzua has recently posted the slides to my design basics presentation I recently made for the Internet Marketing Bootcamp.

While the presentation isn’t exactly as verbose as I’d want it to be (it was a short 15-minute talk), and the slides posted don’t have explanations or annotations, I hope it offers a modest insight into the basic web design process. Also, I obviously advocate grids a lot!

Check it out here:
8 basic steps to web design →
(jozzua.com)

Macromedia Director, back from the ashes

Adobe Director (formerly Macromedia Director) is now back in full, CS3 glory.

But WHY? Why? Why revive something that has been dead for nearly half a decade? Director enjoyed it’s utility back when interactive CD’s were all the rage (circa 2000). In our current decade, however: it’s just a tired, decrepit piece of archaic technology that’s better off forgotten.

The new CS3 version includes DX9 3D support (well, Director’s always been able to handle 3D anyway), a physics engine (promising) and better support for Flash (so that, er.. you could do what you could’ve done in Flash, anyway). I’m not too excited about this feature set.

As for web, Shockwave has long been deprecated by Flash. As for desktop applications, Flash and AIR are miles ahead. So where’s Director’s niche?

Verdict: I don’t think Adobe is aiming for getting new people excited about Director here. The update is, in my opinion, just a simple move to keep old users afloat and to delay it’s complete demise.

(Source: Adobe; Ars technica)

Yahoo’s design innovation team laid off

It’s a sad day at Yahoo. As part of their 1000-employee layoff plan, the entire design innovation team has been layed off. I’m pretty sure this is related to Microsoft’s bid on Yahoo.

From what I know, Yahoo’s design innovation team has been responsible for the product development of some unique ideas at Yahoo. They had some really interesting data visualization projects, see them here:

• Traffic map (shown)
• FlickrLens
• Delicious DNA
• Trip map

[Links nabbed off Solsie.com]

Internet Marketing Bootcamp

We’re putting together an Internet marketing seminar and you’re invited.

First off all, I apologize for the blogging silence; I’ve had my hands full for the past few months. But that’s not to say I’m out of touch with the design community, actually one of the ventures I’m responsible for now is a small seminar, with one of the topics being web design.

We’ve put together the Internet Marketing Bootcamp: a series of half-day Saturday seminars as an open-to-all crash course on Internet marketing. I’m speaking on the web design segment, so if you’re interested please head on over to the site and request for a free invite (you can say you got there from my blog ;)).

More info and press release after the break.

(more…)

Lomolocal.

Salut to everyone I ran into at the Lomo Manila event (Oct 26 @ Team Manila offices, Makati). Aaron (AR/DP) has some pics posted on his multiply site. (though unfortunately none of me!)

(Image unrelated)

Be right back.

Getting ready for bigger things. By the way, got twitter? Random updates over at twitter.com/aescnt

Recto.

(A little incomplete image to test out a concept we’re developing, so be gentle on it’s obvious flaws and the pitiful quality.)

Help. Anybody got some panoramic shots of the streets of Manila/Makati? I’d love a small collab of sorts. I’m not a photographer (I’m terrible behind the lens), so I’m trying to solicit some hires shots to mess around with. Yes, this image partly tells what I have in mind with your photo.

Credit for this photo goes to Jasper Espejo. Be sure to check out his photography work too, because he does some pretty wicked travel shots.

Bayanihan SEO

The new Bayanihan SEO contest is on. Have a look at the site I designed at BayanihanSEO.com

Ambiescentjunk

My site, Ambiescent, is due for a redesign soon. Hold on.

Here’s the version I’m not going to use, which has some work that’ll go on the new version. The new version looks much much better, but for now, this’ll do

—R

Hello.

Don’t worry, this won’t be as stagnant compared to my other half-baked efforts in blogging, I promise.