Beats! Design Blog

#158 Lomography & Photoshop Fakery

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 1 Mar 2010 07:47:27 GMT

I've recently purchased a Lomography camera (a modern re-make of classic Russian Lomo camera), which takes very stylised photos due to it being an all-plastic camera and therefore a bit crap, but crap in an interesting way. You never quite know what you're going to get with a Lomo, but the best shots really capture something a normal camera...

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#157 A Christmas CSS Present!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:46:23 GMT

I'm pretty sure a CSS project is what most of you wanted for Christmas, right? Well, maybe not, but that's what you're getting from me. I've been meaning to give CSS a real workout so I finally got round to making a website that fully uses CSS for layout as well as easy re-styles. I'd been asked a few times recently for some recipes I'd cooked...

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#156 Hema + Flash + Boredom = Suprisingly Awesome!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:04:19 GMT

Flash can be a useful tool to jazz up a website, but is often used pretty inappropriately. One rule I always abide by is: 'Never make a large flash intro sequence, especially if it involves a fair amount of loading time, silly animations and ridiculous sound effects'. The flash developer at Hema...

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#155 Please don't arrest me, Switzerland.

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:04:10 GMT

I know, I know. It's been a while.. Work has been pretty hectic and I've just not had time to finish off a number of posts that I've written 80% of. Somehow they've become an annoying job, so for now I'm moving on to something new.. and pretty old. So, we've got a Christmas photo competition going on at work and for the 'funny' category I've...

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#154 HTC Hero - The phone with a chin

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:39:08 GMT

I've just ordered myself an HTC Hero phone, the latest Android offering from HTC (and the 3rd Android phone released to date). It's got everything I wanted in my new phone: 5MP camera, WiFi, GPS, Social Networking integration and stylish looks. And yes, it has a chin. I think it looks great - futuristic and 80s retro all in one, but others may...

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#153 Completed Project - 10 Clarendon Crescent

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:47:05 GMT

I don't always get asked to build completed sites: in the case of 10 Clarendon Crescent - residential apartments for visitors - I was asked to build a site-shell that can be added to easily over time. Part of the reason for this was the ongoing development of the apartments themselves (being converted from an old hotel) but also the marketing...

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#152 Tall Towers, Bird's Eye & A Hemisphere

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 07:51:05 GMT

After my recent post exploring different embedded maps, I took a bit of a liking to the Bird's Eye imagery featured in Bing Maps and decided to explore it a bit further. Embedded maps are commonplace and StreetView use is on the rise, but you don't often see this Bird's Eye imagery used very often. So I set myself the task of making a few...

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#151 Pint Glasses, Plastic & Enforced Profit

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:49:02 GMT

A story was released today suggesting that the UK Home Office is thinking about enforcing a law that would prevent pint glasses form being used in pubs, to try and prevent the 5,500 annual attacks using glasses and bottles in England and Wales (presumably they have no stats for Scotland and NI). Although the new "glass" is still in its design...

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#150 Online Embedded Maps - Comparison and Review

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:00:46 GMT

Well, it's the 150th post, so thought I'd do a big one...Online mapping services have been around for a number of years now, moving on from the static services of the 1990s to the real breakthrough of Ajax-based services such as Google Maps. As Google was the first to offer embedding and an API, many people (including myself) now develop maps...

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#149 Amazing Projection Show

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:16:16 GMT

Impressive! :) [vid]...

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#148 Old Horizon, New Horizon: Feynman & God!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:30:02 GMT

I'm never sure what to make of Horizon - it's often over-dramatic, gives unnecessary weight to disrespected theories and sometimes seems to play on fear as it's main dramatic weapon (how many episodes end something like: "scientists believe this disaster happens every 100,000 years - and the last recorded occurrence was...

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#147 The Ian Parry Photography Award 2009

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:03:03 GMT

Last week, the results of the annual Ian Parry Scholarship were announced, with an outright winner, a 'highly commended' award and 3 'commended' awards. There's a bit about the award below, but this award has become one of the most prestigious in photojournalism and as you will see later, the quality...

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#146 In-line Twitterage - Quick & Interesting Links

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 8 Aug 2009 07:45:28 GMT

Yes yes, we all know about Twitter. The media seem to like it even more than Facebook at the moment, I suppose it's because it allows journalists to be EVEN LAZIER than before. The fact that you can now open up an application, sit back with a coffee and watch numerous celebrities send YOU messages means that the old 'I'll go outside and see...

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#145 The Colorado River Bridge / Hoover Dam Bypass

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 5 Aug 2009 22:33:37 GMT

There has been a bit of press of late about the Colorado River Bridge, whose arch is about to become connected, high above the Black Canyon. It is being built to take pressure off the Hoover Dam road and once completed will make the canyon even more picturesque (if you like modern architecture, that...

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#144 UPDATE: Random Number Choice and The Lottery

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 4 Aug 2009 21:09:41 GMT

A few months back, I posted about random lottery number generation. It won't surprise you to find out that I didn't win. Not a dime! [img] "This is what I didn't win!" It seems that when it comes to winning the lottery, "having a system" is not the way forward - being on the right side of a 1/14,000,000 probability is the only system that works!...

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#143 UPDATE: Let's Go To.....The Shed!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:56:49 GMT

A few weeks back, I posted a story about "The Shed", a Yorkshire music venue with an unusual leaflet. A short time after, I received an email from someone who'd stumbled on the post and could offer a bit more info: "Whilst searching the internet for a drawing of a set of bagpipes I stumbled upon your blog entry about The Shed, May 19th...

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#142 9 Blogs I'd Recommend - Hot Tips!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:41:20 GMT

I'm currently in the mood for sharing - It's so easy to do the same old things on the internet and never really explore for anything new. But the best way to find new content is to ask others for their recommendations, so I thought it was time I reversed the process and gave some tips of my own. My last post centred on computer and web browser...

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#141 Pimp My Komputer / Internetz

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:22:41 GMT

Whenever I install a new OS (thanks to XP, it's been a while), I always install a few applications / modifications to make everything run more smoothly and look a bit better. So this post is really just a list of 6 simple changes you can make to your (XP) computer / Firefox browser to bring it up-to-date and add some useful features...

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#140 A Selection of BBC Image Galleries

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:25:11 GMT

To start of my new committal to posting regularly, here are a few pictures from BBC photo galleries that I've stumbled upon in the past few months. I know photos often do the rounds on the internet, with lots of blogs linking to the same (often recently released) galleries at the same time. However, I've not seen these on any blogs...

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#139 Apology & Return to Posts

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:19:52 GMT

Six weeks ago, I posted on here to apologise for the lack of recent posts and to suggest I'll be being a bit snappier in the future: "I have a number of larger articles in the pipeline but I've had a lot of work on of late and finishing them off is proving more tricky than I'd hoped. So for now, I'm going to reduce my article size and try and...

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#138 UK Webcams Discussion & A Ring Road Map!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:15:10 GMT

I was recently looking at a few links to one of my services - The UK Webcam Map - and found a blog that had discussed the service a year or so ago. The post was on the Mapperz Blog and discussed the map and possible future directions: Webcams show you the weather live - Coloured Polygons show you an accuracy ratio: - Nice clean map...

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#137 Fringe Map 2009 & The Fringe 'Thing'

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:47:36 GMT

It's nearly that time of year again, where the Edinburgh Festival takes over the city and people flock to visit the huge variety of performances on offer. And as always, the website / booking service is getting a bit of abuse across the web. They say the online booking system is greatly improved this year, but the website still remains the same...

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#136 Normal Service Resumes...But Snappier

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:51:26 GMT

Hi all, Sorry for the long delay in posting - have been on half of my annual holiday and (unsurprisingly) the blog got deserted. It's not always easy to escape the virtual world so I'm quite pleased I managed - sorry for lack of posts though! :) I have a number of larger articles in the pipeline but I've had a lot of work on of late and...

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#135 Google Analytics & Low Budget Games

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:58:46 GMT

After installing adsense onto the site, the next logical step was to set up a Google Analytics account, to help analyse my web traffic (visitor numbers, bounce rate, popular pages etc). It's only been up a few days, but it has already hinted at some useful results: - One or two stories are much more popular than others. - Visitor bounce rates...

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#134 Let's Go To.....The Shed!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:44:18 GMT

I was in Northallerton a few months ago and found a brilliant leaflet in the pub, offering an exciting venue for tourists and locals alike...I'm not sure if it's the state of the woman on the front (her period costume ends up making her look like a tramp...the bagpipes are a nice touch too!) or just the brilliantly simple name, but I had to...

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#133 Random Number Choice & The Lottery

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:22:09 GMT

Every time I post to this blog, a time stamp is recorded showing exactly when the database was populated. When I display this time on the blog, I shorten it to just show hours and minutes. But the RSS feed I edit requires hours, minutes and seconds and although this info is in the database, to save time I just make up the seconds using a random...

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#132 A Bit of Fame: The Geographer Magazine

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 17 May 2009 07:53:20 GMT

As you may have seen, I recently announced the launch of the new RSGS (Royal Scottish Geographical Society) website and all has gone smoothly since then, with a lot of positive feedback. So it was an extra bonus to have got an official mention in The Geographer magazine, the official magazine of the society. I'm even on the back of Michael Palin...

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#131 More Similar-Image Search Engines

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:42:13 GMT

When I was writing my post on Google Labs - Similar Images, I didn't spend a lot of time checking out the competition, idly presuming Google would be ahead of their competitors. Well, I've since discovered a number of services doing exactly what Google is offering, as well as a bit more - so here's a wee low-down...

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#130 Webpage Redirect for IE Users Only

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 13 May 2009 07:51:01 GMT

The code below shows how you can redirect users of Internet Explorer to a different page when they enter your site. Two key points (and pros and cons) to bear in mind: 1. This is a JavaScript solution - 2. It works irrespective of your page content (meta-refresh is more buggy in this respect). If you research this problem, you'll find a lot of...

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#129 Adverts on the Beats! Design Blog

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:41:42 GMT

I'm proud that this blog (and the entire website, in fact) has remained advertising-free ever since its creation (~October 2006). However, the site's been getting a steady increase of visitors and as the blog is pretty media-rich (and most images are hosted locally), bandwidth has been stretched to the max. I've already increased my bandwidth on...

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#128 Earth Stories - Issue 4

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 10 May 2009 17:37:50 GMT

Alexander von Humboldt was born on the 14th of December, 1769 and died on the 6th May, 1859. Charles Darwin called him 'the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived', and Alexander von Humboldt's work is still commemorated in the names of seven towns, six geographical features, 12 plant and animal species and the field of Humboldtian science...

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#127 Random Photos, Sicily & Sourcing Fun

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 06 May 2009 07:56:30 GMT

We all get random emails with 'great' photos in, don't we? And they are very rarely 'great', hey? Well sometimes they are, or at least over time a few of them might be classed in this category. But the one problem with this way of sharing photos is that the source information tends to get lost. Unless it's watermarked, you generally get no...

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#126 Paper Pope, The Hoff & Avoiding Change

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:01:14 GMT

I'll start this post by saying I used to be an avid reader of the SciencePunk blog and this post was inspired by a post I saw there. However, it's recently been given a facelift (and is now part of Science Blogs) and even though on paper it's now much better, I don't visit as much now - it's a bit less personal somehow. Maybe I just don't like...

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#125 Mondegreens, Soramimi & Hatten Ar Din

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:29:51 GMT

This post is the result of one of those bizarre internet journeys, made easier by Wikipedia. I was listening to Guy Garvey's Finest Hour on BBC 6Music and he played Golden Brown by The Stranglers. It's a classic song, but it made me look it up to find out more about the unusual song structure. I then read that one of the lines is a classic...

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#124 Google Labs - Similar Images (At Last!)

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:29:51 GMT

It's always worth keeping an eye on the Google Labs website, as that's where you get to find out about any potential new Google services. They might not all be particularly useful, but the latest edition is a service I've been waiting for for ages. It's called Similar Images and simply allows you to search for images as normal, but when you get...

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#123 StreetView Panorama Client - South Edinburgh

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:15:21 GMT

I decided to tinker around with StreetView and make my own client, with a number of tools not available on the official site. I've developed a system that chooses a random location in the south of Edinburgh and allows you to explore it. Although I made this a few weeks ago, it's taken me a while to write it up. I've testing out a new system for...

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#122 Google Maps Panda - April Fool Fun

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:54:43 GMT

OK, so I was expecting something 'April-foolish' from Google but didn't expect it to be quite this subtle - I was thinking maybe a re-designed logo or an unusual search result, but it seems they've plumped for a Street View panda icon (that old chestnut!). Maybe this is just in the UK (we've only just got Street View after all) but if you go to...

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#121 Show / Hide Table Rows - The Classy Way

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:33:33 GMT

Showing and hiding table rows onClick can be a really useful feature for a webpage - it allows a small amount of data to be displayed on the page by default whilst the page can instantly be expanded by the user. This process can be repeated allowing each section of a webpage to be expanded with the user's discretion - see my About Page for...

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#120 Strange Maps, Unusual Maps, Old Maps, New Maps

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:21:14 GMT

I've posted a couple of times about things I've seen on the Strange Maps Blog (see: Old School GPS & Hoaxe Island and Pop vs Soda (USA)) and another post recently caught my eye. It's a decent blog, but occasionally things stand out - I'll try to add some context here too. This time, it's a map of the world using typography to fill in the land...

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#119 Ten Thousand Cents, Processing 1.0 and Turks

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:47:50 GMT

So, the title of this post may not be the most enlightening - but it's hard to sum up in 6 or 7 words! I was recently told about a web project called Ten Thousand Cents, that split an image of a $100 bill into 10,000 segments and got people to draw a copy of each segment before putting them back together to recreate a $100 bill. The concept was...

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#118 SoCo - Another Generic Development

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:32:40 GMT

When the famous old street Cowgate caught fire on 7 December 2000, it looked as though Edinburgh good lose a good chunk of its old town. Although the fire was controlled, there is now a sizable hole to the west of South Bridge and it hasn't seen much change since the fire. Big boards advertise the redevelopment, but this project seems to be...

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#117 Kylemore Abbey Church - Norwich Link

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:30:30 GMT

Having grown up in Norwich, I was interested to hear that there's a scaled-down replica of the Catholic Cathedral near Lettefrack, Ireland. It looks a bit different as obviously not everything could be scaled down, but it's a pretty good effort - made in the local green Connemara stone...

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#116 Spotify - Free, Legal Streaming Music

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:42:42 GMT

OK, so there's been a fair amount of buzz about spotify in the last few weeks - for those who don't know, it's a new (free) service allowing you to stream music from a downloadable player. There's a huge range available and it includes very recent releases. The catch is that you occasionally have to listen to an advert before a song starts...

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#115 Firefox Tips & Tricks

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 10:38:17 GMT

Loads of people now use the Firefox browser and since Firefox 3 was launched, a number of useful features have emerged and are already a key part of how we browse (the "awesome bar" being particularly useful). But there are also a number of things that make browsing that much easier that are hidden in the documentation or secretly hidden for fun...

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#114 RSGS Site Launched - New Website

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:45:10 GMT

It's a while since I've posted about some of my more recent work. I tend to post about internal projects more than external work, but it's always good to create a fanfare when a new site is launched! Well...this fanfare is a bit late, but it's better than never. In December 2008, the new RSGS...

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#113 Phone + Twitter = Website Maintenance

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:04:48 GMT

I've been a user of Twitter for a while now, but never quite got into it like some. As far as I can tell, it is essentially the same as a Facebook status (yep, I use Facebook too). It can be a more powerful tool if used frequently and with a large 'fanbase' or social network behind it, but that takes a bit more effort and commitment...

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#112 UK Snow Photos - The UK Webcam Map

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:37:35 GMT

I woke up to a considerable dusting of snow this morning and at around 8am, the heaven's opened with a sizeable blizzard. 2 inches fell in 5 minutes and now there's a carpet of snow for miles around. It's not just up here in Scotland either - 15 inches of snow were predicted for parts of south England. I thought I'd browse the UK Webcam Map for...

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#111 Unusual Bridges & Bridge-Building Games

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:37:25 GMT

I'd seen a few blog posts on 'crazy bridges' but they often seemed to focus on the same structures and were of the big-money, hugely publicised type. I was hoping to do a little post on some interesting bridges that were much less known but I could a big distracted on the way and it morphed into this post. Now, I'll start the post with a few of...

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#110 Three Oncologists @ The Portrait Gallery

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:39:20 GMT

Although I've lived in Edinburgh for over 6 years, I'd never yet made it to the National Portrait Gallery - the only one of the National Galleries that I hadn't graced with my presence! So I put that right this weekend, by spending a few hours there. I'm not a massive portrait fan (hence the delay in visiting) but some of the more obscure...

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#109 I'd Forgotten About iSketch!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:03:04 GMT

On the way home yesterday, I suddenly remembered about a game I used to play years ago. It's called iSketch and it's effectively an online version of pictionary - with chat, MS Paint-style drawing tools and lots of stupidity thrown in. Loads of people can play at once and there are a number of different 'rooms' you can join - varying in...

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#108 The British Isles, Isles Forever?

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 22:03:37 GMT

I was mildy amused when watching the video below, to see that the British Isles seem to stay isolated from the continents all the way through to 250 million years in the future...

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#107 Exciting Stats? Ha. (Funky Graph, Though)

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:50:17 GMT

Ok, so website statistics aren't exciting. Everyone knows that. But, pretty much every client I've worked for requires them and the requests are getting more specific ("How many people downloaded this video?", "How many people opened this docuement AND saved it to the computer?"). So I give them what they want, but try to do it in a midly...

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#106 Enter Key Doorbell - Brilliant

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:02:54 GMT

This is a simple concept but brilliant as well - It just takes someone to think of it. I'm pretty sure the image is a mockup but I'm duely tempted to stick an old enter key to my doorbell and give it a go...

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#105 How To Fully Utilise A Sony Ericsson Phone

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:02:54 GMT

I recently purchased a cheap second-hand Sony Ericsson phone to act as my backup (W800 if you're interested) but I've found some software that makes the phone incredibly useful. Most phones these days come with a USB cable or similar and they normally allow limited access to the phone's files. The official software doesn't do a great deal and...

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#104 BBC Horizon (History of Logos)

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 12:40:15 GMT

I'm a bit of a fan of the BBC Horizon programme. For the uninitiated, its a long running BBC Science series, highlighting current scientific research and making it accessible to the public. It systematically gets criticised from some quarters for being 'un-scientific' and it's true that over time it has perhaps lost its way a bit with this...

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#103 Earth Stories - Issue 3

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:08:48 GMT

I first developed the Gaia hypothesis in 1965, when I was designing instruments at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) in California. Nasa asked me to be an experimenter on their lunar and planetary missions because they needed the kind of instruments I made to analyse the surface and atmosphere of the planets.I started talking with...

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#102 Using Flash Animations for Research

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:33:05 GMT

I always enjoy looking at a small animation within an article to help explain the point being made. Scientific articles are particularly good at this (see Wikipedia: Parallax GIF) but you also see similar work across a wide variety of news and sport reporting. Sometimes, the use of animation can make an article come alive and add much more...

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#101 Unusual Things in Space - Research?

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:00:37 GMT

This article started life whilst looking at the Wikipedia page for the International Space Station (ISS). The 'thought train' (i.e. following various wiki links!) went something like this: ISS > Golf Ball Launched from Space > Origami Airplane Launch > Kessler Syndrome > Graveyard Orbit. It therefore makes sense (in some warped way) to tackle...

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#100 100th Post - Summing It All Up With A Cartoon

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:39:27 GMT

Well it's been a while getting here, but here is the 100th post on the Beats! Design Blog. I was tempted to do a review or 'best of' the last 99 posts, but in the end I decided just to be nice and simple. Somehow, I feel this image sums things up pretty well [click to enlarge]:...

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#99 Atmospheric Effects - Interesting Photos

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:39:17 GMT

I was looking up a few things on Wikipedia and came across a huge selection of photos showing atmospheric effects. I'd started looking up parallax as it had been in the pub quiz the night before, but ended up collecting a nice selection of pictures showing phenomena you might not see every day. To save you from me explaining them all...

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#98 Let There Be Light! Illuminated Buildings

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:45:06 GMT

I was inspired by the illumination of York Minster to trawl the internet for some other examples of buildings being illuminated for art's sake. Unsuprisingly, there are quite a few examples - I've assembled a small collection here. I'll stick a few references at the end, but otherwise just enjoy the show...

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#97 Google Flu Trends - Search-based Mapping

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:26:47 GMT

I saw a story on the BBC website yesterday about Google.org creating a map of influenza activity in America based on recent Google search terms alone. The concept is relatively simple - keep track of the prevalance of certain search terms (for example "buy flu rememdies") and track the locations they are coming from to produce a map of...

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#96 The 'Door to Hell', Turkmenistan

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:14:14 GMT

I'm pretty confident this place will blow you away. The "Door to Hell" is a burning entrance to a chasm in the desert in Turkenistan, near Derweze (commonly referred to as 'Darvaza'). Due to its remoteness, there isn't a lot of information on it online, but I've done my best to collate what I can! I'll kick it off with some amazing pictures...

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#95 The Starfire Optical Range (Laserific!)

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:02:50 GMT

The Starfire Optical Range (SOR) is a US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Its main duty is to develop and demonstrate optical wavefront control technologies. Due to the fact it is classified a secure lab facility, there isn't a great deal of information about its operation, although it is commonly reported to...

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#94 Earth Stories - Issue 2

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:21:30 GMT

Every day I get up at 5am and walk up from the fringes of town to the market. There I buy dynamite and coca leaves and head to the entrance of the mine to meet the other members of my cooperacion. We don boiler suits and helmets with torches fixed on - the helmets are pretty flimsy, from the Nineties - and we then walk and crawl deep into...

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#93 Quiz Prototype - Rolling Text in JavaScript

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:20:49 GMT

I thought it was about time for a new mini-project so I got to work on an easy-to-use quiz applet. The idea was to set a quiz out on one page, but use JavaScript to bring each question in one at-a-time, rolling in and replacing the previous. The JavaScript / Ajax would carry and process the form data, bringing the result back at the end of the...

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#92 Geodisic PolyLines Using Google Maps

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:48:59 GMT

Google Maps recently released the functionality to make PolyLines follow the shortest path across the globe, rather than a straight line across the map projection. This will follow a curve showing the shortest distance between any points and will equate to roughly the route a plane would take to get between two points...

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#91 Strange Maps - Old School GPS & Hoaxe Island

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:15:40 GMT

I think I've posted about the Strange Maps blog before, so I just revisited it and thought I'd link to a couple of recent stories. Firstly, there's the great story of a made-up island, used as an April Fool's hoax by The Guardian newspaper. The headline is worthy of an award, but I'm not sure if that's of the blog's creation or...

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#90 Photoshop Text Effects via Tutorial9

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 08:03:23 GMT

I like learning new things to do on Photoshop and there are loads of great tutorials out there. My favourite site is Tutorial9 and I've posted the results of one of their tutorials before (Article #48: Apple Artwork & Dust). This time, I thought I'd try a text effect...and I'm pretty pleased with the result...

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#89 Michael Blastland - Great BBC Articles

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:11:17 GMT

The BBC recently concluded a 6-part series of articles by Michael Blastland, author of The Tiger That Isn't, and an advocate of logical data analysis, not media-hyped misinformation. Obviously, we should all be an advocate of this, but it can be easy to under-analyse what the media tells us, so these articles are well worth...

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#88 Coded, Animated Messages Using JCrop

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:49:12 GMT

I was recently checking out an article of new AJAX services as I've not done much work in that area before. The list was interesting but most things offered relatively small increases in functionality for the work I do, not giving me as much incentive to change my ways as I'd hoped. There were, however, a number of great photographic design...

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#87 Reflections & Perspective - Webpage Screenshots

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:39:10 GMT

The way webpages are shown on company sites has varied over time, from simple screenshots and drop-shadow thumbnails to iTunes-style reflections and increasingly, perspective shots. The principal is simple - take a screenshot of your webpage and add a reflection, but instead of a face-on view, take a side view in perspective. Some of you may be...

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#86 Credit Crunch Cereal - Mmmm!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:10:37 GMT

Nothing like a bit of satire, eh? Here's the launch of Credit Crunch Cereal - for those hard economic times :) ..

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#85 F1 Singapore - First Night Race (Photos)

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:32:18 GMT

Well the first F1 night race kicked off in style yesterday in Singapore with large crouds and plenty of excitement. Now I'm not a big F1 fan (it's my dad's favourite cure for insomnia though!) but there was something pretty spectacular about seeing the F1 cars under floodlights in the middle of Singapore..

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#84 Obama vs McCain - The Wordle Speech Battle!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:33:48 GMT

After previously posting a World comparison of the last 3 Queen's Speeches (conclusion: they're all the same), I thought it was time to tackle the US Election Race. Barack Obama and John McCain both recently gave speeches at their party's Election Conferences, so I thought I'd use Wordle to create tag clouds of the 10 most frequently used..

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#83 Where have Islanded? Rum to Sealand

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:06:35 GMT

I've recently developed a bit of a vested interested in the various islands off the UK (it's vested as I want to visit them!) and have trawled the internet to find some interesting places, stories and photos from our watery rocks. Firstly, I was interested to note that the most populated island in the UK (bar the mainland, of course!) is in..

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#82 Earth Stories - Issue 1

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:38:12 GMT

We need more eruptions. If we have more eruptions, people will be more regularly reminded that volcanoes are incredibly hazardous. Five hundred million people around the world are living within reach of an eruption. In the city of Quito, Ecuador, 2 million people are living on the slopes of Pichincha volcano. If Vesuvius were to blow today..

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#81 Alan Anderson Trio - Piano Jazz

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:38:54 GMT

Went to see a jazz trio last night at the The Jazz Bar and found a great photo of them online. Now, they didn't quite look like this in the flesh (they were in colour afterall!) but I love the old-fashioned americana theme of this shot..

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#80 Photo + Story = Blog Post

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:31:07 GMT

I thought I'd round up a few things I've seen online recently, all with a nice photo. Just click on the photo to go to the relevant story, it's as simple as that..

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#79 Klein Bottle Fun!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:50:00 GMT

It's a mathematical bottle, what more do you need? I'm sure many of you have seen a Mobius strip - a band with one turn - and a Klein Bottle is basically the same thing in 3 dimensions. It's a surface with no boundaries! Here's a nice picture of a Klein Bottle, followed by a diagram of its surface..

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#78 Liverpool - City of Culture & La Machine

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:44:45 GMT

The BBC have put together a nice looking site for Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture. It's a nice design and fits well with the multimedia nature of the site. In fact, it also follows closely with the modern end of my evolution of web colours post..

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#77 Strange Maps - Pop vs Soda (USA)

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:25:52 GMT

Strange Maps is an interesting blog that showcases the world's weirder maps, from modern GIS works to unusual historical paper maps. When I visited, the latest post was about the differing names for fizzy drinks across the USA. I've noticed a big difference with this in the UK too and although the research..

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#76 Launching PhotoWords

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:14:53 GMT

I've been pretty busy of late and decided it was time for a nice, (relatively) simple and good-looking app. My plan was to make a service using little thumbnail pictures and mouseover effects but i wasn't quite sure where it would end up. Well, it ended up with PhotoWords and I'm pretty pleased with it :) You type in a phrase..

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#75 10 Stunning Close-ups of Fruit

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:22:37 GMT

Kew Gardens have just released a series of photographs to promote a new book detailing the inner working of plants, fruit and seeds. The following photographs are all from the same series as part of a project by the Millennium Seed Bank - copyright belongs to the holder, listed below..

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#74 TrackPlaying : BBC Now Playing Service

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:43:50 GMT

I spotted this service a year or so ago on BBC Backstage but it has recently been revamped and seems to work a bit better now too. All it does is use the BBC Radio Now Playing data feed and displays song information pulled from a variety of other sources. I'm not sure how useful all these resources are but I find the service is great for finding..

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#73 Facebook RSS through a Yahoo Pipe

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:42:15 GMT

I was recently undertaking a project for a homepage that would draw in data from a Facebook status RSS feed and display each update as a story on the page. In theory, this job isn't too hard - but it involves using a GET request (in this case using LWP:Simple in Perl) and not all sites / feeds allow a computer access to the..

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#72 My First Mouse

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:41:44 GMT

I was reading an article on Wikipedia the other day when I stumbled across this photo of an "early mouse". This was, in fact, the first mouse I used (age 5?) - I hadn't seen one in 15 years or so (we dumped our old Macs ages ago), good to see the old guys again :P..

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#71 Image Switcher: Glastonbury 2008

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:28:33 GMT

I've looked at making a nice, Flash-free image switcher before and have had some success but thought I'd adapt it a bit for a new set of pictures. My previous image switcher efforts used a menu system, but this time I'd like to use 'forward' and 'back buttons, meaning creating an image map for each photo..

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#70 XKCD - Geeky But Funny

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:51:22 GMT

The founder of XKCD doesn't hide his geekiness and some of the sketches are only really funny if you know your maths and physics, but a lot of the sketches span general themes. It's worth taking a look anyway - might be to your fancy :) The following is totally true...just one example, check out the full site below or click the image - I've also..

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#69 Bob Dylan - Great Music Site

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:04:12 GMT

Now I'm not a huge Bob Dylan fan, but if I were I'm sure his website would make me very happy! Not only does it have a 'random page button', but it also has a very impressive music player. Click at the top of the page and you get a full menu of all his records, which an be selected and any tracks previewed. They even spin on a nice..

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#68 Beatmarks - Interesting Links

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:11:11 GMT

Just thought I'd wrap up a few useful websites I've stumbled upon in the last few weeks - maybe they'll be of use to you too! Most are web design related, but some are a bit more general..

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#67 Mammatus Cloud in St. Albans

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:24:49 GMT

I'm a fully paid up member of the Cloud Appreciation Society (oh yes) and as such, have an interest in cloud formations - especially ones that look awesome :) One of my favourite clouds (it's maybe a bit popularist) is the Mammatus cloud, which effectively occurs when a low sun lights up the bottom of a curved cumilonimbus. They look great but..

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#66 Interesting Photos - Wall Arch & New Mexico

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:24:49 GMT

Another photo update, this time just a couple of interesting shots I found from the internet. First up, a couple of photos from National Geographic showing the collapse of Wall Arch in Utah. When you visit these natural features, you're aware they could collapse at any time, but let's hope no one was under this as it..

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#65 Passing Form Data Using Only Javascript

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:29:23 GMT

A client recently came to me with a project to make a set of offline-only webpages that could be taken around the country on a memory stick, taking a service to people with no internet connection. This wouldn't have been too difficult except that they wanted a form-based service that would run offline without the need to install any software..

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#64 Garfield Minus Garfield - Genius!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:41:24 GMT

You may have already heard about Garfield Minus Garfield as I saw it described earlier today as an "internet phenomenon" - However, it was new to me so I thought it was worth a post! The premise is simple - remove Garfield from the original Garfield comic strips and create a new comic about one man's insanity....it really works rather well..

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#63 Photo Update - Valencia & A Cloud!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 07:39:22 GMT

I recently stumbled upon a few of photos I'd been meaning to post a while ago. The first three are different shots of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ci?ncies - a stunning building in Valencia. The last photo is a brilliant photo of an altostratus cloud, not that I've seen one like that before..

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#62 BBC Switch Error - Sense of Humour?

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:45:20 GMT

It seems the BBC engineers thought they'd liven up their error messages with the BBC Sound Index by referencing Catherine Tate...the geekiness levels you'd expect I guess..

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#61 Olympics - C4 Alternative Medals Table

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:48:45 GMT

Channel 4 has made its own Olympic Medals Table, with varying options on ordering the results based on population, GDP, Human Rights and a combination of all 3. Each year similar tables are created and they can be slightly spurious, but always fun to look at. I suppose population and GDP are relatively sound systems (good quality data) but..

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#60 The Great Britain From Above Swindle!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:17:30 GMT

There has been a fair amount of buzz about the new BBC series, 'Britain from Above', in which satellite imagery and geo-tagged data are combined to help tell the story of Britain. Well, that's what they'd like you to think - of course, none of the promotional imagery is anything other than computer-generated, albeit from geniune..

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#59 British Summer - Storm Photos

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:15:12 GMT

Well last week we weren't exactly bathing in sunshine. Instead, Britain had rain for about a week non-stop and some exciting thunderstorms too. This may not be hugely uncommon, but I liked the photos I saw from readers of the BBC website, so thought..

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#58 Tutankhamun vs Bayeaux Tapestry

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:07:59 GMT

I was reading an article on Wikipedia about Tutankhamun (Tutankhamun Entry), when I stumbled across an image of Egyptian iconogrpahy depicting Tutankhamun at war. It just seemed to have a striking resemblance to the Bayeaux Tapestry (1000s of years seperate their creation!) - The top and bottom borders, the fight scenes..

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#57 Draggable Zoom Boxes in Google Maps

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:11:28 GMT

I think a draggable box to resize a map is a really useful feature and is common in GIS software. I've seen this functionality on a couple of online maps before, so thought I'd have a go at implementing it myself. I've adapted some JavaScript code I found online and designed a couple of button to control the zoom. So this feature doesn't..

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#56 Site / Blog Changes

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:28:30 GMT

I've made a few changes to the blog, hopefully making it much easier to use and explore. Now the number of posts is at a healthy number, I thought it best to add some navigational tools etc, so things don't get hidden in the depths! The main changes are as follows..

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#55 Invisible PNGs For All Browsers - Solution!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:17:50 GMT

The lack of support for invisibility in PNG files across web browsers is a constant irritation for web designers. It's amazing that a proper solution still hasn't been sorted, with browsers hopping in and out of support for this function. It seems simple enough...you want to create high quality graphics for a website that can be any shape yet..

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#54 Shopping Bag Designs - Genius!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:03:29 GMT

I've seen these photos posted on the internet before and thought they were a great example of creative advertising. Since then, of course, I've not stumbled across them so haven't been able to post. But, the other day - whilst on..

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#53 Rotary Word Clock - Flash

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:10:14 GMT

This is pretty funky - nice idea! This comes from Simon Heys Website, so take a look at his other stuff too! I've seen a fair few designs for funky clocks recently (animated and real), seems to be a bit of a trend - everyone likes to know what time it is I guess..

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#52 Great Place for Ajax Loading GIFs

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:37:41 GMT

I needed a new loading GIF for the image loader on this blog and searched the net for a good resource. Then I stumbled upon a very useful site - Ajaxload.info - which allows you to customise a loading GIF for you site, with loads of designs to choose from..

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#51 Facebook / Flickr Images Tags: Tag Boxes

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:10:37 GMT

Tagging images is a practice seen more and more across the internet as social networking sites have allowed vast networks of people to share media content. Tagging via social networking usually centres around ideentifying individuals, but other uses are cropping up all the time. On Flickr, for example, landscape features and..

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#50 50th Post - Launching 2 Degrees Search!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:29:34 GMT

Well, it's been over 8 months since the company blog was set up and since then I've made it to 50 posts, hopefully providing some useful stuff along the way! I thought I'd celebrate this benchmark my launching a new Beats! Design service: 2 Degrees. It's called 2 Degrees as it's a search tool that..

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#49 Facebook Profile Pictures - The Collection

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:04:34 GMT

A lot of the posts on this blog centre around design techniques for business and commercial use, but sometimes it's good to just have a bit of fun. When I'm not working on a commercial project, it's nice to put a little bit of effort into making a fun profile picture for a website or social networking site. I realised I've created a number of..

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#48 Photoshop Tutorials - Apple Artwork & Dust

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:15:12 GMT

Photoshop can often be a confusing piece of software and sometimes seems to excel in making the easy seem complex. I still use Photoshop in combination with MS Paint at times to save a bit of time when doing simple jobs (curved lines for example!). But when you need to do something new or more complex..

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#47 Lightning vs Volcano - Photos

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:14:50 GMT

These images really speak for themselves, so just take a look at the majesty of a volcano meeting a lightning storm. Click either photo to be taken to a news story relating to the event..

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#46 Going Old School on the Video Front

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:49:04 GMT

I haven't posted any video clips for a long while, so thought it was probably about time for some easily digestible blogness! It's always good to look at retro ideas when designing, but it's equally good to get in the mood listening to some (vaguely) retro tunes, harking back to the early/mid-nineties..

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#45 I Worlded the Queen's Speech - Thrice!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:57:35 GMT

Wordle has seen a lot of press recently, with organisations increasingly using its services to generate word clouds of press releases, documentation, blogs and reports. It's not what it was directly intended for (more for tag clouds on blogs), but it can be..

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#44 The Evolution of Web Colours

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:34:24 GMT

When designing a new site, I like to keep an eye on the latest designs to make sure the colour scheme I use is fresh and looks good. I have nothing against using whatever colour scheme you fancy and great sites can be made this way - but I do notice myself favouring sites that look good. Only if I find a site with an incomparable service will..

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#43 Fringe 2008 Map - Mashed!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:56:00 GMT

I was recently inspired to make my own 24 hour app, to see what could be achieved with a bit of concentrated effort. Before I start describing the resulting app, it's best to point out that in total this probably took closer to 48 hours to complete and test, but I was working alone so the principal holds I think! I wanted to create a map that..

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#42 Simple Flash Advertising - Banners

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:10:26 GMT

Adverts appear all over the web and often take a similar form, constrained by the size and shape advertising space is given on websties. The most common of these is the banner, normally with a width-length ratio of between 1:6 and 1:8. I've been asked to make these for various companies before..

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#41 Unusual Payment Method

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:44:49 GMT

I had cash, but unfortunately I was all out of cabbage! [img] - Seen at Arrochar Chip Shop, Highland..

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#40 Wordle Tag Clouds - Automise!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:32:32 GMT

Tag Clouds are often bypassed by users and really only function as a brief glimpse into the content of a blog. After posting about stylised tag clouds recently, I searched for a service on the web that might aid their creation...I stumbled upon Wordle - An automated tag cloud creator..

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#39 Flashing Hyperlinks Using CSS (Blinks!)

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:59:03 GMT

In order to highlight hyperlinks within blog posts and to distinguish them from other links on the blog (tags, topics, blog title etc), I've made inline links blink with an animated dotted line below them. There are two parts to this method. You need to set up..

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#38 Tag Clouds - Image Map Stylee

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:54:27 GMT

Most of us will have come across a Tag Cloud before, but I'm interested as to how many people use them for anything useful? I normally look at a tag cloud to grasp a general of idea of the data / users I'm looking at..

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#37 Folding Webpages - BBC Competition

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:22:37 GMT

I'm a regular reader of the BBC Magazine Monitor Blog and recently they suggested a competition to show how a webpage could be folded. Inspired by this - and equally by new techniques I'd learned in photoshop - I decided to try and turn a webpage into a paper aeroplane..

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#36 Wake up or Scotland

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:44:01 GMT

I'm not sure why this seemed humourous to me, but there you go - when newspaper headline boards slip up..

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#35 Mobile Internet - Triangulation vs GPS

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:00:46 GMT

I've just got myself a new SmartPhone and have downloaded the Google Maps program (CAB File) for Windows Mobile. It's a great little program and an easy to use - and useful - addition to my phone. When you load it up, it will centre the map on your current location based on Triangulation or..

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#34 Microsoft Photosynth (Labs)

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:33:16 GMT

Photosynth is a Microsoft acquisition which first surfaced in 2006. It brings in photos from a variety of sources on a specific subject and aligns them in a 3D space, bringing together these various shots into an explorable whole. Rather than giving an extended description..

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#33 New BBC (Flash) Services

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:33:34 GMT

The BBC seems to be rather busy at the moment, launching various beta releases of new concepts, often with little talk of their development pervious to launch. First up - and most revolutionary - is the BBC Sound Index, which trawls through a number of online music services and stores various data to help see "what's hot" right now, giving a list of top 1000 songs..

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#32 BBC Award & Sparks Flashsite

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 22 May 2008 08:31:22 GMT

Just a small round up of nice things I've seen recently. First up, a BBC radio programme that won the Sony Award for Multiplatform Radio at the 2008 bash. Now, I didn't catch any of this programme but i can see that the 'multi platform' nature of the show is stiched together using an interactive google map on the main page - the show was called Bangladesh..

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#31 I Love...?

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 22 May 2008 08:23:57 GMT

I was reading up on a few design agencies, following on from an article about the London 2012 Olympic Logo. This took me to the (highly-praised) website of the designers, Wolff Olins. I browsed through some of their work and found..

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#30 Photographic Advertising

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:58:13 GMT

I was recently traveling on a train and saw an advert for free wireless on all National Express train services. The advert conveyed the point simply whilst using the photographic background to get across the slogan. A low-res version of this image is below - the advert used this with the National Express Logo and the slogan "Free Wireless..

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#29 Amazing Photo - Night Fog

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:11:40 GMT

I was recently browsing through the results of a photography competition for night shots (found via Digg) and as you would imagine, there were a number of good photos in there. However, one stuck out for me for the way it had an 'atmosphere' - sounds a bit cliched, I admit, but it really..

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#28 BBC Migration Map - New Integration

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 11:09:10 GMT

I recently stumbled across a new BBC project: World On The Move which uses a Google Map to track animal migrations across the globe, showing predicted and actual routes as well as user comments - all on a nicely integrated map that can be changed along..

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#27 Urban Regeneration & Google SketchUp

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:55:37 GMT

Recently, I was looking at a site in Edinburgh that was being regenerated (in fact, at the moment a lot of our open spaces are being 'redeveloped') and it made me think about how the public can get involved in such schemes. Let's be honest, generally these things..

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#26 Flock, Smash and Ane Brun

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:23:17 GMT

Apologies for the server errors in the last couple of days, unfortunately my web hosts (provider-one) decided to be completely unreasonable and take my cgi-bin down for a number of days for no reason. Anyway, a few things to catch up on. Firstly, I've been using a new web browser recently called Flock. It's a web browser designed to incorporate social networking / web 2.0 (whatever you call it!) and is based on firefox, so it works pretty well. I'm not..

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#25 Other World Photography

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:40:27 GMT

It's all well and good talking about photographic design and image manipulation, but a great photo still requires one thing, an inspiring subject. Photography from space has wowed people over the years (and rightly so), but until recently, these photos have mainly been limited to distant shots of planets and stars, or grainy shots of planetry..

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#24 Launching RSS Feeds for both Blogs

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:08:32 GMT

Although the Beats! Design Blog has had an RSS feed for a few weeks now, I've now added one for the UK Webcams Blog so thought it easier to launch them both together! The UK Webcams Blog contains stories from this blog that relate specifically to the UK Webcams project to help give users an idea of changes and progress: UK Webcams - Blog. Please click on the relative RSS feed in the image below to access it..

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#23 Using Code Boxes in HTML

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:27:11 GMT

As shown in previous posts for this blog, code can be displayed in a seperate box (using a different font, such as a mono-spaced font) to allow users to easily recognise and understand it when published in HTML. This is a very simple example showing a small piece of code and how this technique can work. As the technique uses code itself, the following examples will show how it can be done as well as the result - a 2 in 1 bonus! First, set up the CSS for the "PRE" style class to ..

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#22 Google Street Views

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:48:40 GMT

Google Maps Street View is a potentially great mapping service, showing street-level imagery via Google mapping, but this brings in issues with privacy etc, with trucks driving around streets taking imagery without prior consent of those individuals on the street at the time. For Google's perspective click this link. Obviously, a lot of (bored?) individuals have spent their time looking for interesting things caught by these 'camera trucks'. For a top 15 sightings from..

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#21 Banksy, Pollard Street & Yellow Lines

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:40:13 GMT

There's been a lot of press coverage of the work of Banksy recently and to be honest, I don't like jumping on bandwagons, especially as there must be some reason all media sources are suddenly talking about him. But, ignoring who he is, what he does, why he does it etc, I just rather liked this work that's recently sprung up on..

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#20 The UK Webcam Map - Weather Polygons

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:47:28 GMT

Since the beginning of the UK Webcam Map (beatsdesign.co.uk/ukwebcams/), users have been adding data on a number of things. Each day, weather data is imported from the Met Office (changes 3 times daily) and each info box shows the predicted weather at that location. Users can then look at the webcam image and say if the weather is as predicted or not. This can then be used..

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#19 Stained Glass Image Fun!

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:46:30 GMT

It's nice to use Photoshop and similar programmes to fine tune your photography or to make nice designs for websites etc, but combining the two can also be fun! Here, I've taken a photo from my collection and applied a simple Photoshop filter - the stained glass effect. Then, applying it at different levels, I have saved 4 images that vary from difficult to comprehend to the original..

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#18 Simple Sepia Photos

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:28:19 GMT

There are a variety of ways to create sepia effects on photos using a simple photo editing programme. Some seem more complicated than others, but they don't need to be - here's a very simple technique for creating a nice sepia effect using photo shop - starting with a standard colour..

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#17 Merry Christmas from Beats! Design

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 12:23:57 GMT

Due to the christmas break, the blog may well have a week or two off so I thought I'd leave on a Christmassy note! So here's a wee christmas message from Beats! Design. The following example is quite self-explanatory, just click the labels to get a zoomed in image at full resolution..

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#16 New Look for the UK Webcam Map

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 12:11:03 GMT

The UK Webcam Map (http://www.beatsdesign.co.uk/ukwebcams/) has remained the same design since its inception, with a nice marroon theme - but it felt like it was time for a change, so a new, more professional was created using a grey background and a nice new logo! Click the screenshot below or the link ..

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#15 Zooming Into Photos Using Image Layers

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:58:30 GMT

After exploring techniques for showing multiple-layer images on the web, it occurred to me that this technique could be applied to add content to an image by zooming into higher detail areas. The following example is quite self-explanatory..

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#14 Google Maps - Draggable Route Mapping

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:36:33 GMT

Google added a draggable routing system to the travel directions applet a few months ago, but it was a relatively low-key update. I've tried using this service and it's quite useful, although you need a bit of practise to get the most out of it. But the JavaScript / AJAX behind it is pretty intuitive and really opens doors for intelligent web services..

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#13 Perfected Image Switcher

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:34:21 GMT

Well after discussing the possibilities of multi-layer photographs using JavaScript and HTML, I felt the system could be quite effective with a bit of fine-tuning. The following an image taken from Nelson's Monument in Edinburgh and 5 layers are included and are toggled using the little key in the top right hand corner. The same applies for the image below, which is of the coastal view from Culross, Fife but this..

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#12 Mixing Photographic Layers for Web Display

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 20:10:44 GMT

After many, many hours of fine-tuning, I've created a nice little system for displaying multiple photographic layers withing one image. This is great when you have multiple versions of one image (say a colour and b&w copy) and want to be able to easily flick between layers. This uses a relatively simple piece of JavaScript as well as HTML image maps, but the reason it took so long to perfect was..

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#11 New Terrain Layer in Google Maps

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 22:56:12 GMT

As you may have noticed, Google have recently added a terrain map layer to their mapping applications. In order to add this layer to embedded mapping and also to have it as a layer option (like on maps.google.co.uk), a few changes need to be implemented. To start with, you need to make sure your javascript link has the most recent version set. This is the same string that contains your google map key. Just before..

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#10 BBC Berkshire Flood Map

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:43:37 GMT

There was an interesting shift of the BBC's use of Google Mapping when they documented the floods in Berkshire using live or recent imagery. This allowed BBC Berkshire and users of the website to post photos, video and audio reports to locations on the map, which were then displayed using a variety of symbols. These data were supplemented by use of the Environment Agency official flood warnings as well as council..

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#9 Using Perl for PHP Jobs

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:31:22 GMT

Although PHP is gradually taking over where database-driven websites are concerned [link: PHP Overtaking Perl], there are still may reasons to use perl. It is faster for one thing and has simpler complex functions than php [link: PHP in contrast to Perl]. I'm not advocating either language, especially as what language one uses is often down to experience and tradition, more than..

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#8 Drawing Circles in Google Maps

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 14:44:52 GMT

One of the greatest omissions from the Google Maps API / Documentation is the ability to draw circles onto maps. Despite talk of a GPolyCircle, so far nothing has appeared. So in the meantime, use the following script example to get a nice circle drawn onto your google map, simply by selecting the location of its center and it's..

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#7 Two Simple Photoshop Design Techniques

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:05:07 GMT

Adobe Photoshop is a great design tool, but - like any program - can be put to both good and bad uses. Sometimes, the desired effects take a lot of time, so I thought I'd introduce a couple of very quick and easy techniques that can create great design looks! First up, creating custom brushes: All you need to do here is grab a picture of a..

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#6 Using CSS to Eliminate Webpage Margins

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 10:53:24 GMT

If you create a basic HTML page, then you will find the automatic margins are places around the contents of the document body. If you start a table or image from the first line of HTML code, there will be a small gap displayed between this image and the top of the page as margins are automatically added by most..

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#5 Time-Lapse Video - Edinburgh

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 18:53:49 GMT

Another photo / video technique is that of a time-lapse photo, where multiples photos are taken with a time interval and then played back one after the other as a slideshow. Although this is an increasingly popular techniqe, the results aren't always very impressive. In the following video however, all things..

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#4 Fading Between Images on MouseOver

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 13:37:27 GMT

This is a little JavaScript tutorial exmplaining a simple technique to allow image rollovers with a fade effect. This works by creating two images, the main image (see 'IMAGE' in script) and a rollover image (see 'IMAGE_OVER in script). The script then fades between these images using a dark..

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#3 Dynamic Abstraction - Joshua Davis

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:13:55 GMT

I recently stumbled across a guy who makes images via scripting languages - creating random computer-generated images from organic input forms and symbols. These techniques have only recently been easily implemented via graphics programs. As he states: "I was already pretty comfortable with languages like Perl and Python and JavaScript and DHTML, so suddenly I had this..

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#2 What is a Photo For?

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:06:31 GMT

I've been considering new photography techniques recently and it made me wonder whether a photo should be a representation of a view or a monent...I was looking at image of Calton Hill (Edinburgh) on Flickr and some of the photos look amazing - but sometimes seem to suggest a landscape you wouldn't witness..

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#1 Welcome Post

info@beatsdesign.co.uk (Phil Taylor) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 21:38:58 GMT

Welcome to the Beats! Design Blog. To get things off to a nice, gentle start, here's a video of 'Time Trumpet' by Armando Iannucci. There's a fantastic parody of those who take design too seriously using the TOTP2 intro sequence - see 05:29 on the video. More info on Armando..

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