Thought & Theory

I love how simple this site is. There’s a total of three screens and then not much of a signup process. You’re using the site within seconds and sending your URL to everyone seconds after that. I don’t know how legal something like this is but we can enjoy it while its still here.

Check out our muxtape

The Game - Wouldn’t Get Far feat. Kanye West
The Cool Kids - Action Figures
The Pharcyde - Somethin’ That Means Somethin’
Consequence - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (Feat. Kanye West))
Freeway - Still Got Love
Yeasayer - Sunrise
Black Kids - The Twelves Remix of Boyfriend
Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes
MGMT - Electric Feel
Sheek Louch - Good Love
The Epochs - Opposite Sides
Outasight - Think I’m Fallin in Love

With new social networks launching everyday most start with the same basic features. Bloggers have wordpress, mephisto, typo and other open source solutions. Yet there isn’t an open source social network platform, until now.

Built with Ruby on Rails this open source project has all the basic features you will need to setup a basic social network.

Created by the guys at Less Everything, Lovd By Less allows people to rapidly develop social networking tools without crazy feature bloat. I love how simple everything is and how things aren’t assumed on the developer/designer end. It provides the basics and fundamentals. No more, no less.

Check Out Lovd By Less

Now I’ll be the first one to admit. I didn’t get Twitter at first and in some ways I still don’t get it. I made fun of it constantly with Jeff and thought videos that made fun of it were hilarious. It just seemed ridiculously trivial to me.

So a brief history, I first started using Twitter wayyy back when only a few people were on it. It was like talking into an echo chamber and got really boring fast. No real friends used it, so the 5 people I followed didn’t matter that much. After about a week of giving it an honest go, I went back to using Facebook statuses like a normal human being. But, after about two nights of prodding by Jason a couple weeks ago, I decided to give it another go around.

One week later, I noticed that a good amount of my tech savvy friends were actually using it this time. Instantly, it became 10x the experience I had before. I cared about what people were posting because I had more of a connection with the group of friends. Finally, it had a meaning for me.

It especially became useful during this year’s SXSW. Instead of texting and trying to figure out what parties friends were going to, I ended up checking the feed to see what was going on. You could instantly observe things as a group instead of trying to piece together individual conversations.

So now I tweet (is that a word?) about 3 times a day and add my friend feed to my personal rss reader to know what’s going on. What has the world come to.

Add Us on Twitter
Common Craft Explanation of Twitter

Now with Safari Support!

Great collaborative tool for designers from our good buddy Scott Jehl.

WriteMaps is a free web-based tool that allows you to create, edit, and share sitemaps online. As a WriteMaps user, you and your team will be able to build and access your sitemaps from anywhere, without having to rely on proprietary desktop apps and static files. To get started, take the tour or sign-up for an account!

Check Out the Site

I’m always on the lookout for a new design community to join and interact with and one of my favorite sites has released a new forum for designers. Its still in the building stages but I’m hoping that it gains enough traction and spurs some intelligent dialogue in the community.

I’m really tired of going to sites and getting bombarded with stupidity.

Check out the Forum