Tag archive for ‘relaunch’
LogoMaid: Simplebits Logo Ripoff
Last year in December, Dan Cederholm launched a new website design for his business and weblog, Simplebits, along with a brand new (and great looking) logo.
Now, LogoMaid is selling a logo bearing a striking similarity to Dan’s on their website for US$ 199,-. They even have the audacity to call the logo "restyling". Read the discussion on Flickr or John Gruber's post on the topic. Paul Viluda, the owner of LogoMaid, even accused Dan Cederholm of in turn ripping his own logo off from LogoMaid and threatened a lawsuit against SimpleBits.
Dan's logo is not the first they ripped off. Panic's Unison logo is among the stolen designs, as well as Apple's logo (now removed). Hopefully this post helps spreading the word that LogoMaid consists only of dirty thieves!
Good luck, Dan!
Tagged as 2006, dancederholm, logomaid, relaunch, ripoff, simplebits+ Categorized as Uncategorized
Freshly Minted
Shaun Inman has once again outdone himself by launching two new websites and an updated version of Mint on one day, and a Monday at that! I'm quite fond of the new shauninman.com design with a duotone palette and a date-based background color.
Screenshot of the shauninman.com pre-launch intro page
More important however is the new version of Shaun's website analytics tool Mint. For those who don't know Mint, its simple yet powerful interface features an overview of visits, referrers, popular pages and searches which can all be taken in at a glance on Mint's flexible dashboard. And with the help of third party Pepper — little extensions for the dashboard — Mint is even more powerful.
Speaking of Pepper (yes, that's both the singular and plural form), the second website launched by Shaun today is the Peppermill, the new place to download the Mint software, official Pepper, widgets and third party Pepper. This ensures, that Pepper developed by others can all be found in one single place, somewhat reminiscent of the Mozilla Extension room. As Shaun puts it:
Until today tracking down third-party Pepper involved checking the Pepper Development forum religiously or subscribing to Sam Brown’s Peppermint Tea. And there was always the chance that a developer’s site and Pepper would disappear.
In case you aren't convinced yet, there are some nice screencasts, screenshots and even a live demo on Shauns website. And what's best, Shaun somehow tricked inflation. The price for Mint 2 is still at the same US $30 (€ 23,-) it was before. And existing Mint licenses can be upgraded for only US $19 (€ 15,-). That's less than the price for two drinks around here, and believe me, it's worth those two drinks.
If you don't have your site Minted yet, you should definitely do so now — just take a look at the feature highlights. And if you already use Mint, did I tell you that Mint 2 is out? Because Mint 2 is out, you dinosaurs, you!
Tagged as addon, ajax, analytics, extension, mint, pepper, relaunch, shauninman, software, statistics, tools, travel+ Categorized as Uncategorized
Redefining and Redesigning
Welcome, gentle reader, to the next iteration of the aetherworld. I've gone slack with my personal websites once contract based work started to eat away at my time and side projects fought over the remaining scraps. Well, here I go again. I've found out that for me there's nothing better than drastic changes to get me back in line. This time, however, I'm not only relauncing but also redefining, redesigning and rebooting the aetherworld.
Redefine. Or: how things should be
First registered somewhere around 2000 (if my memory serves me right), the aetherworld has almost never had a consistant purpose. At one point it was a personal link collection, then a place to try out various CSS layouts, a listing for my music collection, a place where I blogged about design and tech stuff and for the past year, it was dead. Literally.
The first logical step for me is redefining, what the aetherworld should become. I decided to turn it into a blog again, forcing me to concentrate more on content than on presentation. I want it to be a place to share my web design and web development work as well as personal thoughts on various topics.
Old aetherworld layouts
Redesign. Or: how things should look
Whenever I have a blank paper in front of me, something inside of me wants to draw, to design, to make the paper become something beautiful, something with a purpose and something pleasant to look at. A blank paper and a pencil is my greatest incentive for starting to work on a project.
The same goes for a blank website. I could have chosen to design the site in private, work on the layout till it's perfect, and only then make the finished version go live. I chose not to. A blank and unstyled website is as much incentive to get me working as a blank paper. Every time i see the naked aetherworld, I'll want to style it, make it better, make it look beautiful. That will be my way to give myself a kick in the ass.
Bandwagon
I thought my live design was a unique idea. That's why I was really shocked when I saw other people doing the same. Well, so there goes novelty.
Anyway, the design process will be completely live and will take place over a longish period of time. I'm planning to be finished before January 1st though. So bear with me as I'm adding content and layout and expect things to break from time to time.
Tagged as aetherworld, design, reboot, relaunch+ Categorized as aetherworld