Playing For Change | Song Around The World “Stand By Me” from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.
this is well worth 5 minutes of your time. trust me. read more about the video and be sure to check out playing for change. such a brilliant idea.
as i mentioned yesterday we weren’t entirely happy with the colour scheme of It’s On. although the aim was to be warm and inviting, we didn’t feel it really worked. so, late last night we redid a few things to make it brighter, bolder and hopefully just more appealing. a great example of evolving a design through various iterations as well. i’m already seeing minor tweaks i’d like to make down the road. too often people feel that once a design is done in photoshop, that’s it, it’s set in stone. not so. a design can really improve if you are just a little flexible and willing to evolve it as the site evolves. small changes can make a big difference. at least that is what i’ve found.
we’ve made a few other improvements as well introducing country codes and a time stamp for when the event was posted. also, now a tweet doesn’t have to start with @eventin, just as long as you follow the syntax of @eventin city: somewhere in the tweet.
so, if you know of any events in your city, spread the word.
this past saturday we were a tad bored and in search of something different to do around town. oxford has plenty to offer, but more often than not I hear about some cool event only after it has come and gone. not very useful. this sparked an idea, followed by a few days of work, and now, 3 days later, Its On! is launched.
the idea is simple: anyone on twitter can post about an upcoming event. no account signup needed, no necessary following, simply send a message to @eventin like so:
@eventin City Name: Info about the event.
use a few hashtags to allow folks to filter events more easily as well, such as:
@eventin London: Future of Web Design: 30 April - May 1. http://tinyurl.com/6n4aft #conf
we’ve got some more information on hashtags to use on the site.
if you are looking for something to do, visit the site and search your city. filter by topic if you prefer, such as theatre, music, comedy and so forth. since we just launched, there’s not a lot of posts, but we hope as folks start adding their events the site will grow and become more useful. at least that’s the point: giving people an avenue to spread the word about their events, and giving others a resource for finding something to do when they are bored.
we would love to hear your thoughts and any ideas for improvement. (oh, and be sure to expand and contract your browser for a little parallax fun). if you like it, please do spread the word. the more event posts to the site, the more useful it becomes.
(update: after some more thought and playing with the site today, we’ve decided to redo the colour scheme, so expect some changes tomorrow. this is what happens when you launch a site in 3 days – you realise where you can improve, and then you do just that).
adding a custom favicon for the iPhone or iTouch is easy (plus it’s extra nice to see your custom icon when you bookmark the site). going forward it’s a good idea to create a standard favicon for your site (or a client’s site), along with the favicon for the iPhone. here’s how:
step 1: create your favicon at 57 x 57 pixels. save it as a .png and name it favicon.png (yes, .png, not .ico. the .ico format is for the browser favicon).
step 2: upload it to the root directory for your site. (the same spot you would upload your favicon.ico file)
step 3: add this line within the <head>
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/favicon.png" />
that’s it! nice and easy.
