Creative Community Bulletin 24 April 2009 Through 26 April 2009

These are the arti­cles, blogs, and resources I found inter­est­ing and wor­thy of shar­ing for 24 April 2009 through 26 April 2009:

  • Web Design Color Trends for Spring 2009! – Spring 2009 is in full swing and it’s time to see what col­ors are IN and HOT!!!! Be care­ful you might just get burned!
  • Newspapers In a Sharp Downturn – WSJ: Pressure on the Presses – The Wall Street Journal Online
  • A Sign Of Things To Come: Naked Pizza Erects Twitter Billboard – It was only a mat­ter of time. Naked Pizza, a unique­ly healthy piz­za joint in New Orleans, has replaced its “call for deliv­ery” bill­board in favor of some­thing a bit more unortho­dox: its Twitter han­dle. The restau­rant now fea­tures a large Twitter bird above its store­front, invit­ing passers­by to fol­low ‘NAKEDpizza‘ for spe­cial deals.
  • Twitter: The Real-Time Answer Engine – The great thing about Twitter is that it has the poten­tial to solve real time prob­lems extreme­ly quick­ly. With a host of peo­ple avail­able online at a par­tic­u­lar moment, you can use it to get help on a mul­ti­tude of levels.
  • 6 Reasons To Get Rid Of That Generic Twitter Background Once and for All – by Fredrickus Williford of Doctor Twitter. Follow him @BlackMediaProp Many peo­ple think cus­tom twit­ter back­grounds or themes with any­thing oth­er than their
  • FBI Arrests Oklahoma Teabagger For Twitter Threats – An Oklahoma City man who announced on Twitter that he would turn an April 15 tax protest into a blood­bath was hit with a fed­er­al charge of mak­ing inter­state threats
  • Windows 7 Release Candidate Screens [Yawn!] – [Yawn!] So far, Windows 7 looks just like Vista. I know the goal is to make Win 7 actu­al­ly usuable and desir­able, as opposed to the much derid­ed and oft dis­card­ed Vista, but will Microsoft read that goal? Or, did Microsoft peak, such as it was, with XP? Will any­one but fan­boys care about Windows 7? I’m gen­uine­ly curi­ous: Is Win 7 sim­ply a renamed Vista / Mojave, or does it actu­al­ly improve upon XP?
  • ART BACKWASH: Writing a Copyright Infringement Letter. – Over the years I’ve had my art­work stolen via the inter­net more than a few times. I’ll admit it gets old and when I now see an email show up in my inbox and the sub­ject line read “Is this your art­work?” I still get a sink­ing feel­ing in my stom­ach because I know it’ll waste hours of my time hav­ing to deal with it.

    Because this has hap­pened to me a lot (16 times so far in 2009 alone) I’ve edu­cat­ed myself in regards to the copy­right laws as they per­tain to my pro­fes­sion as an Illustrative Designer. Specifically the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

  • Freelance Life: How to start a busi­ness in your spare time — Workflow: Freelance – More than five mil­lion peo­ple are work­ing from home after fin­ish­ing their day job, accord­ing to new research pub­lished this week.The sur­vey, com­mis­sioned by the world’s biggest office prod­ucts com­pa­ny Staples, and car­ried out by Enterprise Nation, the UK’s largest web­site for home based busi­ness, con­firms that the ‘5 to 9’ trend is spread­ing across the country.
  • The Freelancer’s Battle: Fighting Distractions and Staying Productive — Workflow: Freelance – Whether you’ve been free­lanc­ing for two months or two years, it’s like­ly that you fight an ongo­ing bat­tle with dis­trac­tions. To suc­ceed as a free­lancer, it’s vital that you gain con­trol over those distractions.I think that free­lancers face a par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult bat­tle against dis­trac­tions because we often work independently.