Aaaand, once again I wish I were going to South by Southwest. If you’re luckier than I, check out Adobe Creative Camp Sunday, March 10th. Sessions include:

• Introduction to Adobe Edge Tools and Services
• Concept to reality: Creating Adobe Edge Reflow
• What’s new in Adobe Creative Cloud?
• Responsive Design, from every angle
• The content-shaped elephant in the room

As I customer I always found it so much more interesting to hear from fellow designers than from toolmakers. On Friday at noon Pacific, Aaron Macdonald, the principal of A3 Creative Solutions, will talk about how his shop used Adobe Muse to broaden their skills:

A year ago A3 was specializing in print and brand design and turning web design work over to other agencies. When he became a Creative Cloud member, Aaron began experimenting with Adobe Muse to leverage his print design skills to design his first website. Aaron will discuss how this has changed his business, discussing his evolution from a traditional print designer into cross-media design agency utilizing Creative Cloud, Adobe Muse and Business Catalyst to design for the web and provide an enhanced service to his customers.

You can register here.

“The Adobe Creative Cloud, Zombies and Beer – It doesn’t get better than that,” says Russell Brown. He points out that his ADIM13 show (April 7-10 in Boulder, CO), features some great speakers, including

• Julieanne Kost
• Chris Converse
• Mordy Golding
• Sandee Cohen
• Katrin Eismann
• James White

According to the show site,

You’ll begin with still images to create monster-themed beer packaging, then you’ll create an online beer advertisement utilizing advanced Photoshop video features. In the process you’ll master many of the wonders of Adobe Creative Cloud… You’ll follow your very own monster-themed project from inception to completion, including: printing, laser engraving a glass bottle, and hand assembly. Your finished packaging will be displayed in class for all to see.

Did you ever wonder? Well, me neither, but it still makes for a kinda entertaining little film:

[Via]

I’m going to try holding myself to this:

My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, “So? Did you learn anything today?” But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “did you ask a good question today?”

That difference – asking good questions – made me become a scientist.

— Isidor Isaac Rabi, Nobel laureate

[Via]

Heh—cute.

[Via Andrew Kavanagh]

“It is a curious thing that the more the world shrinks because of electronic communications, the more limitless becomes the province of the storytelling entertainer.” — Walt Disney

[Via Ron Green]

This joins PXLPFCT, TYPENRD, & LIGHTRM on my growing list of faves. [Update: Other winners include 24P (After Effects), RTFM (support), and ADOBE PS.]

[Photo courtesy of Dan McSweeny]

“WOW!!!” writes Russell Brown. “This is a fantastic set of Photoshop CS6 tips and techniques for FREE! Really fantastic stuff.” 

In the free 77-page CS6 Superguide eZine, “The new features of most of the CS6 Products are covered in depth, with articles from industry leaders such as Jack Davis, Colin Smith, David Blatner, Janine Warner, Stephen Burns, Chana Messer, Weston Maggio and more.”

Friday at noon Pacific:

If you’re currently using Photoshop or Lightroom and want to go the next step to create video, join this session to learn the basics of video capture, editing and delivery with Adobe Creative Cloud. Adobe Evangelist Jason Levine will show how creative pros can get started with Adobe Prelude, Premiere Pro, and Adobe Media Encoder, all included in Creative Cloud membership. You’ll be amazed at what you can create with a little coaching!

…check out this post from XKCD.

I’ve compared working on mature apps to so many things—changing the wings of a plane while it’s in flight, building Johnny Cash’s Frankenstein car, and more. People always say, “Stop adding anything new… except this handful of things for me, personally.” And they always push us to “simplify” and “just reduce” the apps, yet they flip out if you take away their cherished anachronism. I always think of the Onion article, “98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others.”
Ah well—still good fun. [Via Foster Brereton]

• The Create Now World Tour is underway, likely coming to a city near you (check the site for details). If you’re a Creative Cloud subscriber, there’s likely so much more you could be taking advantage of; if you’re not, come see what you’re missing.
• Russell Brown’s ADIM conference is set to take place in Boulder, CO, April 7-10. I’ve always had a blast at ADIM. “You’ll begin with still images to create monster-themed beer packaging, then you’ll create an online beer advertisement utilizing advanced Photoshop video features. In the process you’ll master many of the wonders of Adobe Creative Cloud… You’ll follow your very own monster-themed project from inception to completion, including: printing, laser engraving a glass bottle, and hand assembly. Your finished packaging will be displayed in class for all to see.”
• Adobe MAX goes down May 4-8 in Los Angeles & features more than 300 sessions and labs taught by industry leaders and Adobe experts, covering everything from Web & design to digital publishing, gaming, and video. Note that attending also gets you full year membership to the Creative Cloud, so admission is actually a lot cheaper than it seems. (Oh, and if you attend the Create Now tour, they knock another $200 off MAX attendance.)

I don’t share this because it’s beautiful. It is, but I share it because of the obsessive insanity that Polish duo Kijek/Adamski must have put into creating the animation.

The Fox Is Black writes,

Made with approximately 2000 silhouettes extracted from PVC plates using a computer-controlled cutter, the video is a rush of color and a parade of movement. For Kijek/Adamski, the video is “an everlasting chain of convulsive memories”.

Okay, enterprising coders, here’s your free million-dollar (or at least multi-dozen-dollar) idea o’ the day: I need a way for my wife to assign me a task/reminder & geofence it.

For example, yesterday she sent me to the kids’ preschool with a tuition check in hand—which I promptly forgot to deposit. I wished she could have sent me a reminder that was associated with the school’s location. 30 seconds after arriving I could have gotten a notification. Then this morning she forgot her phone & asked me to bring it to work. I wanted to turn her text message into a reminder pegged to my current location: if I try to leave here, ask me about that phone.

I did a little poking & I see that the iOS Reminders app lets me geofence items (i.e. remind me either when I arrive somewhere or when I leave), but I can do this only if I have my phone handy. Via iCloud.com you can add people to reminders—but then you can’t (as far as I can see) make those location-specific.

So, who’s gonna code up not “Find My Friends,” but “Remind My Friends”? (This seems like a great addition to the fun couples’ app Avocado.) C’mon, it’ll be fun to get Sherlocked at WWDC, won’t it? ;->

“I asked a six year old what my movie should be about,” says Bianca Giaever, “and this is what he told me.” Just watch: 

(Now I really want to step up my bedtime storytelling game.) [Via]

Photoshop 3D features, CSS transitions, InDesign alternate layouts, and much more are featured in this month’s Inspire Magazine, both online and in the App Store.

Cool:

Brand Satisfaction compiled millions of responses from Facebook Fans of over 15,000 Facebook pages to determine the Top 20 brands with the most loyal Fans.

Photoshop is #10 out of 15,000+. Take that, In-N-Out Burger—and Starbucks Frappuccino, watch your back! 😉 Thanks to Photoshop’s awesome fans!

[Via Tom Hogarty]