PSD Tuts have gathered this list Photoshop techniques.  Once again Danny Outlaw let’s us in on some of his secret moves.

David McCandless gives an inspiring talk about visualizing data sets. Worldwide military spending and Facebook status updates are just two of the jaw dropping examples shown here as David emphasizes how – with the combination of both words and images – these data sets enable vast amounts of complex data to be fast-tracked to our brain.

I particularly like the part where he mentions how – as a species – we’re becoming both hungrier and better at seeking and digesting statistical information and how good design plays a crucial role in ordering this ocean of knowledge.

Watch ‘The beauty of data visualization’ now

So, after years of dabbling with POP3 iMap, exchange, Samba shares, Webdav calendars, hardware backups and endless disappointment, have we found the perfect business setup? Well we think so and we’d like to share it with other smaller business owners that want all the bells and whistles of what was formerly the domain of large business – the company intranet, file sharing and remote working… it’s now oh so easy.

With the advent of cloud computing comes a new era of accessibility – and here are the tools to do this (or the ones that worked for us at least):

Google Apps

By far the most effective and cost efficient (the Standard Edition is free) route to getting things kicked off is Business Edition of Google Apps. This suite of tools from Google provides just about everything you need in terms of business communication. The suite includes:

• 7GB of email – which is easily used with any email application, although I love the web based interface and ‘offline’ feature which uses Google Gears to cache your emails locally.
• Public, Private and Shared Calendars – This is so powerful. Create as many calendars as you like, and let whoever you like see them. The system has a great, easy to use interface and also supports the event invite process used by most of us to confirm meetings nowadays.
• Shared documents – well not file sharing s you know it but an online collaborative tool – fully compatible with the office suite. Collaborate live on documents and have them for easy access online. I can’t remember the last time I needed to open Excel.
• Contacts – Each user stores their contacts using Google Contacts. This easily syncs with smartphones and other address books so you never have to worry about losing anything.

I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I said that every small business should start off using this – it’s an essential tool, it’s absolutely free and takes an hour to set up on your domain.

File sharing with Jungle Disk

After initially using the usual suspects (Samba and VPN) to share files we’ve now moved everything to the cloud (Rackspace and Amazon S3). This means that we have a repository of live files as well as several backups securely stored and available whenever we need them. Moreover we automatically sync with this repository on every machine we have – be it a laptop, desktop, Mac, Windows or Linux based machine. We use Jungle Disk to do this which is a background program which essentially watches a cloud repository (bucket) which you’ve set up and linked to a directory on your local machine. If I make a change on Machine A then I see the new files on Machine B if it’s using the same repository in the cloud.

There’s an iPhone application which allows me to access files if I need to and a web based interface should I require it. It also allows the setup of individual disks in the cloud for users so they can backup and sync their data or even entire machine backups.

So far we’ve had few issues and it just works.

Skype

What would we do without it. It runs our phone system, it keeps us in touch via chat all day and gives us the ability to conference call with clients and each other.

As I mentioned we use Skype for our phone system. This is a fairly new thing but it works exceptionally well. We have decent internet connections so why not?

The way this works is that calls come into our central Skype account on a Skype-In number which then forwards the call to each of the Hutchhouse offices (using their Skype accounts thus also making them mobile). It also forwards to a landline just in case. If the call is picked up then great – if not then it goes back to our central Skype answer machine. This means we can pick up calls wherever we are. It’s been a real time saver.

Customer relationship management, Capsule CRM

A CRM keeps everyone who needs to be in the loop regards client contact – well – in the loop. It’s a real time saving application and, because we would only consider a web based solution, it’s amazingly flexible.

Because we use Google Apps – it made sense to use a CRM which was integrated with our contacts and Google logins. Capsule CRM fitted the bill from this point of view. We also liked the simplicity of the interface and generally considered the sales journey to be most suited to our needs. Notwithstanding there are several amazing CRM systems out there like Salesforce.com, SugarCRM and Highrise form 37Signals so go and try them out.

That’s it for now – I just felt compelled to write this as it feels good to have this stuff at your fingertips… and it’ll just get better.

If you’re at the Carswell Senior Golf Tournament in Oxfordshire on Thursday the 15th of July then you’ll see us at one of the holes (tbc). We really wanted to get involved with some local events and saw this as a good opportunity to dip our toe in. We’ve made a vinyl banner for the occasion (which for us digital designers is really quite exciting!).

Big thanks go to Nick Ruck at Falcon Signs for getting our sign finished in double quick time. Good luck to everyone playing in the tournament!

TED is a great source of inspiration on all things known to man. From how geckos stick to glass to global *yawn* warming you can spend hours watching these short talks. Even when the subject matter is something you’d usually walk right past, the speakers knowledge on the subject is usually so good you just have to give it a gander.

In order to save your little finger getting sore, we’ve done the hard work for you and highlighted some of the best ‘web related’ talks we could find:

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Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet enables intimacy
We worry that IM, texting, Facebook are spoiling human intimacy, but Stefana Broadbent’s research shows how communication tech is capable of cultivating deeper relationships, bringing love across barriers like distance and workplace rules.

Kevin Kelly: The next 5,000 days of the web
At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?

Jonathan Harris: Collecting stories
At the EG conference in December 2007, artist Jonathan Harris discusses his latest projects, which involve collecting stories: his own, strangers’, and stories collected from the Internet, including his amazing “We Feel Fine.”

Tim Berners-Lee: The next Web
20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he’s building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.

Gary Flake: Is Pivot a turning point for web exploration?
Gary Flake demos Pivot, a new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data online. Built on breakthrough Seadragon technology, it enables spectacular zooms in and out of web databases, and the discovery of patterns and links invisible in standard web browsing.

Steven Johnson: The Web as a city
Outside.in’s Steven Johnson says the Web is like a city: built by many people, completely controlled by no one, intricately interconnected and yet functioning as many independent parts. While disaster strikes in one place, elsewhere, life goes on.

Peter Hirshberg: TV and the web
In this absorbing look at emerging media and tech history, Peter Hirshberg shares some crucial lessons from Silicon Valley and explains why the web is so much more than “better TV.”

Jeff Bezos: The next web innovation
The dot-com boom and bust is often compared to the Gold Rush. But Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos says it’s more like the early days of the electric industry.

Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good
We’re at a unique moment in history, says UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: we can use today’s interconnectedness to develop our shared global ethic — and work together to confront the challenges of poverty, security, climate change and the economy.

Tim Berners-Lee: The year open data went worldwide
At TED2009, Tim Berners-Lee called for “raw data now” — for governments, scientists and institutions to make their data openly available on the web. At TED University in 2010, he shows a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up.

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For more TED Talk goodness visit the main site:www.ted.com

Ed Cooper is a talented artist. Originally from Suffolk, Ed was studying Painting & Drawing at University when we first became friends. It was pretty clear from the outset that this guy had talent and he soon became a source of both inspiration and good practice.

Ed would always carry a notepad and pencil wherever he went, often stopping off to ‘bust out a sketch’. The sheer amount of output impressed me and his imagination often made it’s way onto the back of a Sunday supplement. Much to our amusement.

Visit Eds website here. Although I’d suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg…

This morning we were incredibly flattered to learn we’d been mentioned in an article over at designinformer.com. Jad Limcaco- himself a web designer – wrote the piece entitledThe “Wow” Factor in Web Design in which he highlights some unique design details on a handful of websites.

But the story gets better. By 11am we had an enquiry from a restaurant in Shoreditch, London, who we are due to meet on Monday. They mentioned that they’d seen us in this article and it had persuaded them to get in touch. Looking at the email enquiry it’s clear to see how this customer found us. Midway through the email is written:

“…and I would like to redesign our website and branding to have a ‘wow’ factor”…

I’d hazard a guess that this sentence contains the choice keywords that might be responsible for leading the customer to us. Maybe I’ll ask on Monday.

Still, we look forward to the meeting and we give a big thank you to Jad for the lead!

Merry Christmas!

Glug last night must have been one of the most successful yet. The Munny Doll Auction was a stroke of genius and raised a cool £5,000 for worthy charity Barnardos.

The Book Club proved to be the perfect venue for a cold December evening and the atmosphere was dimly lit and cosy. The crowded room cheered as the auctioneer (appointed from Sotheby’s) sold off the Dolls one-by-one.

There was the usual interesting talk, and sponsors Digital Gurus supplied drinks. As always, the (free!) nibbles were good and came as a welcomed companion to the flowing drinks.

I hear there’s a break in January so hopefully we’ll all be back in the Book Club again come February. Look forward to it.

It’s 9 hours into the new start up business and things are flying along. We are close to a brand execution and the developers are steaming along (lots of odd sounds coming from that quarter). Looking at the developer plan it all seems to be finished by 1pm – which is a little ambitious – although as we all know developers always underestimate things….