◎ Unfinished Business episode 19: Would you like a little more Star Trek with your lens flare?

While Anna’s away in Amsterdam, I talk with designer Laura Kalbag about Star Trek Into Darkness, how we name our wifi networks and whether location really affects our businesses. We discuss about how to find good sub-contractors and the differences between working for clients direct or via third-parties.

This episode is sponsored by Slide + Stage — become a better presenter with this full-day, intensive masterclass with Aral Balkan. If you’re one of the first twenty people to use our special URL, you’ll get £20 off your ticket price. And by Ghostlab — ‘Synchronized cross-browser and mobile testing taken to the next level.’ If you use the offer code UNFINISHEDBUSINESS, you’ll get 30% off Ghostlab until June 15th.

◎ Unfinished Business episode 18: It would’ve been better if they’d heckled

In this week’s episode of the nation’s favourite creative business podcast, I tell bad Dad jokes and Anna doesn’t laugh. We answer listeners’ questions about charging expenses and project assets to clients and when it’s appropriate to charge for ‘learning’ time. We talk about making the transition from a steady job to running a new business and why it’s important never to burn bridges, and how to compete with bargain basement website designers.

◎ The CSS Zen Garden at 10

I’m struggling to believe it quite frankly, but The CSS Zen Garden was planted ten years ago today. I don’t think we should underestimate the importance of The CSS Zen Garden in the history of the web. Its influence still resonates today. Now it’s back accepting submissions and making some of us feel very old.

🔗 Ghostlab

Last month I moved off Adobe’s Creative Cloud and back to a ‘boxed’ version of Creative Suite – laughably just in time for Creative Cloud to be the only way to use Adobe applications in the future. One of the casualties of the move was Adobe Edge Inspect, a tool that I have used and liked for testing designs across multiple devices. So today I downloaded Ghostlab and so far it looks promising.

◎ Tip: Renaming or moving a shared Dropbox folder

On this week’s Unfinished Business, I mentioned how I ask our clients to name our projects’ shared Dropbox folder so that we don’t end up with dozens of folders called ‘redesign’ or ‘stuff-and-nonsense.’ It turns out I needn’t worry as Dropbox lets you move or rename any folder without breaking sharing.

You can rename or move your shared folders just like you would any other folder on your hard drive or via the website. Even if you rename it, the folder will still remain shared. However, changing the name of the shared folder or its location will not change its name or location in the Dropbox of other members.

I did not know that. Thanks to listener Steven for writing to let me know.

◎ Unfinished Business episode 17: Beautiful and talented and makes you sick

This week on Unfinished Business, Anna and I talk about biscuits and business software. Anna explains how she uses FreeAgent to keep track of her finances and berates me for not trying it. We talk about back-up software and how Stuff and Nonsense use Dropbox to collaborate with clients during projects. I run through my favourite design tools including Gridset and Typecast and no discussion about software would be complete without bemoaning how Adobe are abandoning Fireworks.

🔗 Manchester McrFRED event

I didn’t know about this FRont End Developers’ meet-up in Manchester until I heard on Twitter someone there was discussing the pros and cons of my new beard. Beard talk aside, I’m planning on attending the next McrFRED, whenever it’s happening. (Maybe my beard will go with me.) In the meantime, organiser Simon Owen’s videos from the first event are online now.

🔗 Hadouken!

Fighting gifs: 125 fighting game backgrounds.

🔗 Dan Davies: It’s A Matter Of Workflow

My good friend Dan Davies has begun a series of interviews with designers and developers about their experiences with responsive design in their workflows and the challenges they face. The first two — with James Greenwood and Katherine Cory — are fascinating. What’s particularly interesting is that Dan’s keen to talk with designers and developers who either work in established teams with often hard-set workflows or those who work with smaller budgets.