◎ Unfinished Business episode 22: I don’t need it bloody moussed

If you’re an ‘everyday’ web designer or developer — instead of one who’s perhaps made of plastic or maybe carved out of soap — we think you’ll love this week’s episode of Unfinished Business.

Anna and I talk about being nominated for awards and being made into action figures and how that’s made us feel. We discuss whether it’s acceptable to make you or your company look bigger than you really are and whether sites such as Agencies Rated can really help freelancers.

🔗 Our man in Japan

I noticed a strange spike in traffic from Japan today. Turns out to be a report on the workshop I help there in April. Google Translate’s version is a hit-and-miss in some places and hilarious in others:

I feel each time you attend a workshop of Andy Clarke’s, but expect a “great technique” and “amazing tool” from work and his track record, but the expectation is betrayed every time in a good way.

But the gist of my message — of responsive vs adaptive design (very common in Japan) is there, along with some photographs of the day.

🔗 Andrew Jones: Adobe Edge Inspect vs Ghostlab

Andrew compares his experiences with both Adobe Edge Inspect and Ghostlab. It’s a good read and well worth your time.

What Andrew doesn’t mention, and something I’ve been using Ghostlab for this week here at WIPO is demonstrating designs to clients on a range of devices all at the same time. Instead of handing someone a phone or tablet and directing them — “now, press the menu link” — I’ve been driving the demonstration from my own phone. Honestly, watching a client’s face when their phone updates remotely is a delight. Big smiles. They think it’s magic.

◎ Unfinished Business episode 20: Like Brighton, she’s peerless. What? Oh.

In this week’s episode, Anna and I talk about secrecy, about what we can say about the business we do and what we can’t. We talk about non-disclosure agreements and why it’s important for everyone to sign one, plus why I wrote and published my plain speaking Three Wise Monkeys NDA. I gets all emotional about Alex’s twenty-first birthday and can’t quite believe that Anna’s never heard of Blackpool illuminations.

🔗 Marco Arment: The One-Person Product

More importantly, it gives David, and the rest of Tumblr’s team, the freedom to continue making the best product they can while offloading a lot of the grunt work to Yahoo’s leadership, staff, and infrastructure.

As for me, while I wasn’t a “founder” financially, David was generous with my employee stock options back in the day. I won’t make yacht-and-helicopter money from the acquisition, and I won’t be switching to dedicated day and night iPhones. But as long as I manage investments properly and don’t spend recklessly, Tumblr has given my family a strong safety net and given me the freedom to work on whatever I want. And that’s exactly what I plan to do.

Lovely, genuine and inspiring writing.

◎ 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.

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