The Smashing Book review – final installment
Part 5 Branding and Selling 
The last instalment in my series of reviews of the Smashing Book! Whew – for me a lot of blogging. I intend to make the whole thing available as a pdf shortly so that if any lost soul out there actually reads this blog, they can read it all in one horrendous slab if they want to.
The Smashing Book review continued
Part 4 Usability Principles and Optimization
Another work week, another commute, another instalment.
Two chapters, some good tips but one was useful but puzzling and needed a certain amount of nitpicking and the other was just plain puzzling; so on with the tips, the nits and the puzzles…
The Smashing Book review continued
Part 3 RIA interfaces and the Ask the Expert chapter
A bit more commuting and a bit more of the review.
The Smashing Book review continued
Part 2 Typography and CSS layouts
As I am back to commuting, I have read two more chapters of the Smashing book ( I thought I would read it over the break, but there were just too many trashy novels to get through!). Both chapters are excellent overviews of their chosen topics and I learned a lot from them.
So on to the review………
EfficientPIM review
The world of personal information management software can be a strange one. 
Wandering through the various solutions that developers have come up with, you meet some pretty bizarre applications – contorted logic and peculiar terminology, colour schemes from hell and interfaces that predate Windows 3.1. Some try to lock you into the author’s world view and others so unstructured, they barely seem to offer any management.
Then, in a breathe of fresh air, you come across a PIM like EfficientPIM.
I am looking for a candidate to replace my old PIM which is no longer actively supported and Efficient PIM is the current frontrunner because…
The Smashing Book review series
Part 1 Form factor, organisation and colour chapter
I have just recently received my copy of the Smashing Book. For details of the book, see its page at Smashing Magazine (SM)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/03/smashing-book-its-out-now/
Overall, based on a quick skim, I am happy with the book for the price they sold it at. I believe it is a worthwhile endeavour, but not without its problems.
I am going to try to review it in sections as there is too much in it for a single post. I sat on the commuter train today and looked it over carefully then read one chapter. So here goes. First up, the physical product, book organisation and some actual content review.
Click to continue…
CMSes rock but not everywhere all the time
First IT related post in a while. It is not that I haven’t been immersed as usual. If anything, too immersed. However my main day job has quietened down a bit and I will attempt to post on the technology I have been using lately.
I have often raved about templating in the blog and it still remains an issue for me. Recently, I have been revamping my own site. Iit has been broken for a few months now, but like the cobbler’s children’s shoes, it has taken a very long time to do any thing about it. For a few weeks there I was playing with using WordPress for the whole site, of which this blog is a just part, but in the end I decided to go with a static site with some php to do the otherwise repetitive bits and some javascript to do the fancy bits. Here’s why.
Power for your computer and mine
Not going to add more words when the truth is obvious. Just link through to a the group behind this campaign.
The great jigsaw puzzle continues to evolve
Twice in the same month! Crazy blogging machine. 
I have been thinking about the software I use and how it all can fit together to make a given website.
CMS commitments
Another post this year. Anyone would think I was actually blogging
Lately I have been trying to explain what it means to start relies on cms scripts as a modern web manager. It is hard at the beginning to image the level of commitment you are making when you say choosing Drupal over Joomla or viceversa.
