Inspirations

People and things that currently inspire me or include ideas and techniques I plan on borrowing. An occasional series…

• Smashing Magazine: They do an awesome job of doing information surveys on specific topics, and creating a lot of tutorial material. I love how they help identify and promote good content around the net and aren’t “grabby” about trying to force visitors onto their site along the way (unlike sites like Endgadget, Gizmodo and TUAW, which far too often use third party content as a hook to generate their own page views)
• Craft and Vision: David duChemin’s e-books are really giving me ideas on how I can create information that has a distinctive style and a value to readers.
• Vlad Studio: this is a russian artist who does amazing work creating computer wallpapers. He was really the first person I saw with a financial model around wallpapers as both a marketing tool and a product — and he’s really good.
• Jeffrey Friedl: I discovered him because he’s written a number of Lightroom plugins I’m starting to depend on (especially his flickr uploader and his plug-in for geo-encoding using Google Earth. His financial model is really intriguing to me — pay what it’s worth. I’ve sent him some donations for his tools because they’re worth it, and I think there’s an interesting value proposition to be had here. Some folks are going to always pay zero, because they can, but if the suggested donation is $10 but someone thinks that’s too high, isn’t getting $5 instead of zero found money? It’s something I plan on experimenting with.
• Mark Williamson: Nature Light Photography. I love the design of the site, especially how the photos are used for the topics at the top of the page and the ajaxy animations. Very well-done and attractive.
• Serious Amateur Photography: love the design of the posters, and yes, that’s On The List because I like the price point and options it gives.

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