Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

I always like the word “welcome to the future”

This is Part 1 of Aurora, a concept video created by Adaptive Path in partnership with Mozilla Labs. With Aurora, we set out to define a plausible vision of how technology, the browser, and the Web might evolve in the future by depicting that experience in a variety of real-world contexts.

Read in detail at Adaptive Path.

In the past few months, some of India’s leading brands goes for a brand makeover. Major retail store Lifestyle and Shoppers Stop changed. Shoppers Stop now boldly says ‘Start something new’. The ‘Born tough’ tyre brand CEAT goes for a more streamlined logo and the poor rhino is nowhere around. Godrej group of companies, now has a dash of color in their font logo.

Indian bank Canara bank rebranded to a more upmarket color. Joining in, UTI Bank morphed from its old school logo to a more jazzy AXIS bank. I guess they felt the need to stand up to the competition of the multinational banks with an image makeover and a better brand positioning.

Has anyone thought about the AA in Anil Ambani’s Reliance logo. Think about it. Sometimes it could be that dying need to make the presence felt.

Image: Hasselblad Website

When was the last time you felt you’d seen something and it blows you away. And you felt the urge, specially if you’re blogging or those office water cooler chats, to shout-out-loud that what this stuff is packed with. Offered in 22 and 39 megapixels, Hasselblad are the cameras you stop talking about megapixel and any of those silly little jargons. With it’s history spanning a century & half, that includes the portraits of our planet from space and a moon trip with NASA.

Hasselblad H3D is rumored to have a price tag around $25,000. Its not for everyone or the average consumers, we can call it Rolls Royce of cameras. If you’re those few people to own this camera, you better be making masterpieces not simply take pictures.

UPDATE 18 July 2008: If the link below doesn’t work, please try from my server. DOWNLOAD NOW (Zipped PDF 28.5 MB).

Great to help you.

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SitePoint is giving away a complete book on Photoshop “The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques”. This book is aimed at web designers and not really for print people.

The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques is the ultimate Photoshop compendium for web designers.

It’s brimming with tried and tested real-world Photoshop solutions that will add impact to your next web design project. If you’ve ever been stuck for inspiration, have puzzled over just how to create a shiny aqua-style button, or wanted to create that seamlessly tiling background image you saw on a site recently, you need download this book.

Download here from SitePoint

UPDATE 28 May 2008: After more than 24hrs since my request I got my download link from SitePoint :)

Screenshot: Adobe Photoshop Express Site

I’ve been hearing this for quite sometime, that Adobe is coming out with an online photo editing tool. The day finally came, and if you haven’t seen, you can check out the beta release of Adobe Photoshop Express. It would be unfair to compare this with the full version of Photoshop, its a great utility for people who wish to store & brush up photos online.

Photoshop Express v/s Picnik

Now, the battle heat up. While PS Express lets you import & edit your Picasa, Facebook and Photobucket photos. It’s not surprising to note that the ever popular Flickr is missing. I guess, Picnik smelled whats Adobe’s cooking and teamed up with Flickr. Now you’ve Picnik in Flickr or Flickr in Picnik, beside Picasa, Photobucket etc. Beside that all premium features are now FREE.

I won’t deny that I’m a Photoshop worshiper and it’s my daily bread & butter. PS Express, still in beta looks promising and my test drive was cool. But at the same time, I’ve been a self confessed Picnik addict for the past few months, almost a year.

Here’s my little note and couple of comparison screen shots below.

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About a week back, I came across this post at Gizmodo, 1960s Braun Products Hold the Secrets to Apple’s Future. Now, if you search the net, the comparison goes beyond Braun & Apple and it boils down to two designers.

• Dieter Rams, wiki calls him - one of the most influential industrial designers in the 20th century &
• Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple Inc. BBC calls him Armani of Apple.

While INSPIRATION is a complex word, it would be wrong to draw parallel. Myself a self confessed dreamer, would like to believe that these two geniuses separated by time & technology are in some way communicating. Don’t blame for drawing parallel to the movie “The Lake House“. But I won’t blame Jon Ive for chrome lining in the latest iPhone/iPOD touch and giving that retro touch in today’s technology.

Talk about Dieter Rams and his 10 Commandments on Design, which equals to usability in all aspect; now that the world web world is waking up to.

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A day late, better late then never. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year. And thank you Mr. Anonymous in my guestbook, I got the hint. I’m redoing my site. Hope in the new year, I’ll greet everyone with a revamp. Until than Happy Holidays, Stay Safe, Party Hard :)

If you like the graphics above, you can download the PSD here. [DOWNLOAD]