Top 3 Reasons Why I Hate Outlook

I'm not sure, but I hope that all of these issues have some sort of fix. Or maybe I'm giving Microsoft too much credit. Either way, here are the top 3 things I hate about Microsoft Outlook:

1. The Crossed Out Email Titles:


Alright, I get the purpose of it. You move an email into another folder, or you delete it - and instead of just disappearing, the email is crossed out and so you know that it has been moved. This is helpful if you want to undo the move/delete - or if 2 days later you are looking for that one email that you swear was in the inbox...

But I mean COME ON! I moved it into another folder for a reason! or I deleted this crap, so why is its ghost still haunting me.

Note: This may be because my email service is setup on an IMAP server, but it still doesn't make sense. Why Bill Gates - WHY!? He must be using Thunderbird or something ;)

2. Outlook won't import a Thunderbird address book!


So it exports Outlook Express address books and Eudura address books, but why not ones from Mozilla Thunderbird? LAME! I had to switch to Outlook for business reasons and also so that it syncs better with everything, but this change has been a major PITA, especially considering the move to Thunderbird from Outlook was so easy.

3. Lame Internet Security Warnings every time I open Outlook


Attention Microsoft, this is Captain User Experience calling! Mayday, Mayday! We're going down!

I mean, how hard is it to put a little rule setting check box that says something like "Remember this option for next time"? I realize that common sense isn't a program language, but you'd think it would be a job requirement.

Okay, there is my rant. Feel free to add your own gripes with Outlook.

I took a SICK photo

.. but I could never post it on my wedding photography blog! hahah! (maybe a little too sick)

A Blog Magazine with no blog or website?

I thought this was retarded interesting...



What is it?
A Blogging Magazine. That is: a magazine that writes articles about blogging.

Uhh....
A Magazine for bloggers? Okay, I guess that's pretty cool. So, what's the URL?

There is no URL - it's just a magazine.

Okay, so where is the online version of it? I'd like to read it.

No. It's for bloggers who actually read pieces of paper, you idiot.

Wait, you're telling me that someone is publishing an actual Blogging magazine with no accompanying site or blog?

Precisely.

That is so awesome that it is retarded. And yet, so retarded that it is awesome. How can I get featured in it?

Submit your blog to their website.

Oh, so they dooooooooooo have a website.

Well, not really ... uh... kind of, here you go: Artful Blogging

$15 for a magazine?! Well, no blogger would pay that to learn what they're already doing.

Oh, but they do.

Awesome.

Grandpa puts me to work in the Photoshop

The all too common request:
"If we took a picture of __________ could you ______________?"

I get this question a lot. Usually, I say something like "yeah - that's a cool idea!" Then I change the subject. If the subject gets brought up again, it used to be that I was screwed and gave in to the request. Now days I say "pay me!" Haha...

But, when it's Grandpa who asks if I could help him pull a quick one over his dice playing friends, I couldn't resist. Actually, it was my Grandma's idea. They came to visit from Canada and here's what we came up with:

If only I had found this site earlier... I could have made this...

...and I could have made it a lot quicker.

Oh well! PEACE

I almost forgot to mention

I started another blog about a month ago!




What!? Another blog? Yeah, but really - this one is fun. Well, it probably won't be funny to you unless your a photographer, but you should check it out anyway.

Photographer's Math

A couple of examples in case you're too lazy to click:


Royalty Free, as in Stock Photography. If you've ever submitted something to one of these sites, you'll know what I'm talking about! You make pennies every time someone buys one of your photos, and the only way to make money is if a LOT of people buy it.


This one is pretty self explanatory. What's funny is that I say "We shoot exclusively on location" on our wedding photography site! It's not hypocrisy I tell you - it's irony.

I should mention that none of the posts have any explanation. I figure if you have to explain it, it's probably dumb.

And that my friends makes for a total of 6 blogs. I have a conspiracy one, a music one, this one, one for our business, our family one (which Dara takes care of), and now the PM blog. Wow.

Good times!

Cheese Fail: Okay, so I didn't win

Its all good. I had fun. Of course I'm referring to the Cheesiest photo contest I entered for a prize from the famed Mammoth Men.

I thought it was pretty cheesy:



sniff sniff... No, really, I'm okay. Can you hand me a tissue? Thanks.

I also entered the PEE YOUR PANTS tournament, and wet myself pretty good. Then I figured out that you're not supposed to actually piss yourself. The point was to make them laugh with a photoshop creation or what not - so I dried myself up and created this:



I met these Mammoth Men at WPPI - just about all of them. Very cool guys. Although, it took me a second to get past the celebrity status thing... I need to write a blog post on that actually. Until Then, I say Adieu.

I will be the WIN of Cheese!

So, there is a photoshop competition being held by the Mammoth Men to see who can design the CHEESIEST photo ever. I am a master of cheese and shall win this $1450 worth of Quikeys goodness.



I'll keep you updated. Hopefully I can fit it in to this crazy weekend!

Skittles.com - Taste the Social

At first I thought, "How dare the corporate world utilize social media in such a blatant blasphemous way!" It was something different, and undeniably interesting - but could it work?

First of all, you need to see this "site" for yourself. Skittles.com

The easy navigation is as follows:

Home - Goes to Twitter, displaying all talk about Skittles
Chatter - Goes *again* to the Twitter search page
Products - Lists a drop down of products. Each link goes to a Wikipedia page.
Friends - Goes to a Skittles Facebook page.
Media - Videos goes to Youtube. Pics goes to Flickr.
Contact - Goes to a simple contact form


What is social about Skittles?

Nothing.

Wikipedia articles about Skittle flavors - are you kidding me? People tweeting about Skittles? Photos of Skittles? Videos? I mean, is there really that much to talk about when it comes to Skittles?

No. Oh, but wait...

Apparently, there is some buzz around Skittles in all of these networks - but why? Ahem, because people want to see their name come up on the Skittles site. GENIUS! Skittles is using peoples desire to get friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter, subscribers on YouTube and contacts/favorites on Flickr by highlighting user content.

Stay Humble:

Since this post will end up on my Twitter page, a link to this post will inevitably end up on Skittles' homepage. Wait! You mean that I too want to share my content with everyone who goes to Skittles.com? Haha, yes.


A Final Tip:

Although you can't move the Nav bar out of the way (user experience FAIL!), you can minimize it - that is if you really want to read about the new Chocolate Skittles on Wikipedia :)

Top 10 Reasons to Comment on Blogs

1. If there is a "Comment" section, the author is always checking it
2. Analytics and page view statistics are boring to read
3. Comments (0) just looks depressing
4. Blog posts always take more time than they seem to have taken
5. How could you pass up a chance to be anonymous and brutally honest
6. Your few words may be the ones to inspire the next 10 posts.
7. Reward a blog for not containing Ads and Banners by commenting
8. Commenting builds community and encourages the spread of good content
9. Commenting is a public business card if you include your url
10. Comment onto others as you would have them comment onto you.

Lets spread the love and comment on everything.



While we're on the subject... There is a site that actually tracks all of your comments. Check it out: BackType.com

They don't catch them all, but you can submit blogs to their crawler.
Here is my page: http://backtype.com/austincurtis

Goodbye Friendster

Alright, so I've had a Friendster account for like 6 years. I haven't used it in 5, but every once in a while I'd log in and see what was up. You know you don't got to a site often when every time you log in, you find a completely redesigned site! hehe.

So, I logged in yesterday. I checked my friends avatars - none of them have changed since 2003, then I logged out. Soon after, I mysteriously began getting a ton of messages from spammy porn bots. You can tell right from the message title "hey check out my site" that its a bogus profile and message. The fact that there is 6 replicas of the message from 6 different 'users' doesn't help it blend it in either.

My conclusion: Friendster has got to be notifying these spammers somehow when users log in. As soon as they see that your account is somewhat active they start bombing you! Is this what Friendster is resulting to now for funds? Probably. The poor guy should have sold the site when he had a chance. Wahn Wahn Wahn.

End of this story is: I canceled my account. It was a hard decision easier than switching to Gmail.

More experimenting with timelapse and image sequencing

Adventurous Picnic in the Woods + Photo Sequence from austin curtis on Vimeo.

This is another experiment with photo sequencing set to a great song called Crosses by Jose Gonzales. What did I learn with this one? It's okay to take your time when sequencing non action - blurry camera pans get old. Good times! My main inspiration for this style is Garret Curtis' sequence work from a music video called "Friends" by The Franks - check it out!



Going Home + Sequenced Photos from austin curtis on Vimeo.

My typical bike ride home.

Music: Ain't Right by Diverse (f. RJD2 & Lyrics BorN)

Coincidence or Rip?

About a year ago I designed this through Facebook's Graffiti app:


I recently saw this online:


I mean , grant it - it's not the exact same - but come on! that's pretty close.

Graphic Design Fail

I couldn't resist - this is classic


see more pwn and owned pictures

Time Lapse: Nerding Out

Timelapse Game Playing from austin curtis on Vimeo.

We went to the Game store and picked up a bunch of new games. Much more fun than watching a movie with friends, that's for sure!

How Many 90 yr Olds could you take on in a fight?

Blatant Apple.com Ripoff !

Booooo! That's all I have to say. Have some originality!

Apple.com screenshot:



KissWeddingBooks.com screenshot:



Not seeing it? look at the navigation bar, font, site width, and overall look and feel. Design originality FAIL.

quick, everybody: G00GLE Bomb www.kissweddingbooks.com with the anchor text "Blatant Apple.com Ripoff"!

Why are Slideshows Always Out of Order?

The Problem: You export a bunch of pictures for a slideshow, only to see them display out of order. On closer inspection, you notice that they are in alphabetical/ascii order - just not in a numerical order.

We'd all love to see our images in this order:
picture1.jpg
picture2.jpg
picture3.jpg

But, to our frustration they might show up like this:
picture1.jpg
picture10.jpg
picture11.jpg

Then, you end up doing this:


Countless sites, programs, and services are GUILTY when it comes to this. They either have lazy programmers, or limited processing power - but either way, they are blowing it.

The Solution: When you export your images as a sequence, start the suffix number at 100 instead of 1.

If you do not have that option in the program you use, there are ways around it on a PC:
1. You can get a renaming program (search Google or downloads.com for that).
2. You can select all files and rename the first one like this: picture (100).jpg and it will rename the rest 101,102...

If you're on a Mac, I'm sure there's a way to do it - figure it out - hehe.

ROL Wheel Banner Designs

I recently designed some banners for ROL Wheels. This is a solid company specializing in road bike wheels and their customer service is second to none!

They've got carbon fiber wheels and all kinds of high tech wheelsets if you're into road biking.

Okay, this wasn't meant to be a plug, but I guess now it is :P


I should note that ROL was voted "Best Of Roadbike Review" three years in a row - in a different category each time! And since I bike to work everyday, this was an especially cool project.

I like designing banners. Especially animated ones!

Wedding Photographer Confession

Alright, some photographers may find this unethical, but in this case I don't. What do you think?

Basically, the shot didn't capture the moment, so i helped it out a little bit using other pics from the same sequence. The bride was eating the cake off her husbands face, and he was enjoying it, but as you'll see, he doesn't look too thrilled, and it isn't a very flattering pic of the bride.

Here is the original 2 photos:



As you can see, when I put these together, I got a nicer image:

with a little boost for pop:


unethical photoshop? What do you guys think?

new photography site coming soon!

Oh.... this is exciting. Dara and I are relaunching our photography business in 2009, with a new logo, look and feel. Which means a lot of fun for me: new site, new blog, new business cards - EVERYTHING MUST GO!

But "Why?" you might ask....

Well, Curtishots has been great for us, but the name.... the name! What can I say, it sounded catchy and it was an available URL. But, it didn't really say "yo yo yo! We're a married couple that shoots weddings together!"

Here is our old logo:



It was fine at first, but after 2 years I was asking myself "does this branding do our work justice?" The answer was no. Our style has evolved, and so has our target market. We are shifting from a "hey everybody, hire us" to a "hey you, cool couple - WAZZZUP!" haha. well, maybe not quite. Here are a few of the logo variations we'll be using:




I'm not sure if this new logo/branding gets our style across, but that's our hope. What do you people say? (yeah, i'm talking to my 2 blog followers)

these variations are being used in different ways depending on the median. Why? we're done with consistency, thats why! haha. a new logo for every purpose. functionally designed logos. why put a square logo in a horizontal space? why do the opposite? see what I mean?

Here is some of our promo material so far:

A&D promo materials

but wait, there's more:

for every comment left on this post, I will give $1 to this homeless woman I just met today. if you leave more than one comment i may consider it as a worthy additional dollar on your behalf! So comment away, let's see how many people really follow this blog.

don't know what to talk about? how about the idea of multiple logos to fit the many forms they'll be applied to. critique my logos, or brainstorm another one! its up to you.

PEACE