Paul Burgess

In issue 144 (May 2008) of Web Designer Magazine, 20 texture photos from my website Urban Dirty are included on the free CD and included in the issue’s Photoshop tutorial.

Big thanks to the Web Designer Magazine posse, it’s more great exposure for Urban Dirty.

» Visit urbandirty.com & Issue 144 of Web Designer Magazine

8 Facts is another small just-for-fun personal project that builds on the techniques used in creating Bandnamr. The idea behind 8facts is simple, you submit 8 random facts about yourself, one of which should be made up. I had the idea about a year ago but never did anything with it, the a recent phase of ‘tagging’ people in blogs to publish facts about themseleves spurred me to create the site. Again, this is open to anybody, no sign up required and the submission system uses the ‘honeypot’ method to avoid spam (as mentioned in the Bandnamr summary).

This site was another experiment is a form open to the public, user experience and avoiding spam. I also wanted to try out ‘widgets’ with the facts. This means that after you make a submission, you are able to copy and paste some code into your own blog of website that will display your 8 facts. Adding to the ability to share the information. So far the submissions give a unique and very interesting insight into people’s lives, which was the ultimate intention.

» Visit 8facts.com

Bandnamr is a small fun personal project that acts as an open pool of band names and suggestions. You simply enter your name and the band name idea into the form and submit it. The result is a collection of funny, decent and sometimes downright rude band names.

Behind this simple idea was an oppurtunity to practice a technique called ‘ajax’ and to experiment with a website and form left open to the public. After reading the book ‘Bulletproof Ajax‘ I was keen to try out the techniques involved, so when you submit a band name you will see a smooth seemingly instant procedure, rather than the typical scenario of the whole web page refreshing.

I also tried out something known as the ‘honeypot technique’ to protect the site from spam submissions. This involves including a hidden field named ’subject’ which attracts spamming systems, just as bees would be attracted to a honeypot. When the form is submiited it checks to see if ’subject’ has been filled in, if it has, it ignores the submission… so far so good.

» Visit bandnamr.com

Since discovering weheartit.com a week or so ago, I have become mildly addicted to it as a means of getting a quick fix of visual inspiration and stimulation. We Heart It is a collection of images that have been ‘hearted’, in other words bookmarked, by people. You can browse the huge collection of images in one big list, or by user (for example here’s me) or by keyword (for example ‘black and white‘).

Further to my previous Urban Dirty and Songza search plugins, I have created one for We Heart It.

What does it do?

It allows you to search for images on weheartit.com directly from your browser. Type in the keyword/s you are looking for and it will take you directly to the search results on weheartit.com.

You can install it by using the link below. After installation you will see the We Heart It search as an option in your search bar:

» Install ‘We Heart It’ search bar now

This tool is featured on the We Heart It blog. It works for Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox (or any browser that supports OpenSearch).

You can view this and my other search bar submissions on the official MyCroft search engine plugin page

Model Rhéa Nielsen asked me to create a portfolio website for her. It was intended to be as simple as possible, so first thing you see is a slideshow gallery of her photos along with her measurements, the info an agency or photographer would need straight away.

The gallery slideshow is controlled from Rhéa’s private Flickr account so she can add, delete and rearrange photos very easily. She also asked for an online journal as a diary for her travels, so I customised a Wordpress blog for her to fit seamlessly into the site.

» Visit rheanielsen.com