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What happens when the world’s most famous typeface meets one of the world’s most cherished pastimes? Swiss-style awesome design is what. This graphic deck featuring the beloved font will win the hearts (and diamonds and clubs) of design aficionados.

Designed with both the typophile and card player in mind, Helveticards are the beautiful, usable alternative to the traditional deck of cards that both Vignelli and Brunson would be happy to deal.

For just $10 US you can buy a pack here.

Printed on premium quality, high gloss, white core playing card stock. Packaged in hard plastic case.

Designed by Ryan Myers

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” ~ Steve Jobs

After using the Alfred App for sometime I found it not indexing and searching properly. Alfred is a productivity application for Mac OS X, which aims to save you time in searching your local computer and the web.

Solution: rebuild the spotlight index. Downside: I turned it off. What’s going on behind the scenes is actually fairly trivial, and it’s possible to simply do everything via the command line in terminal.

The metadata utilities needs to run as root (sudo). To see what your drive is up to, enter:
sudo mdutil -s /

This will show the status on the root volume.

To turn indexing on for a volume, you enter:
sudo mdutil -i on /

Now you have to force Spotlight to rebuild its index by simply erasing the master copy of the metadata stores on the volume like this:
sudo mdutil -E /

However, while I did all this, Spotlight was still not building the indexed for me. Here’s how I solved it.

I wanted to check the date/timestamp on the Spotlight directory using:
sudo ls -la /.Spotlight*

While most of the files had the timestamp of when I tried to delete the index, not all the files had the current date and time. Additionally, the file sizes were not growing, a good sign the index was not being rebuilt.

Then, I did the following commands to make sure indexing was on, the spotlight metastore was really gone, and that I wanted it rebuilt. Enter each command seperatly:
sudo mdutil -i on /
rm -rf /.Spotlight*
sudo mdutil -E /

The moment I did the last command, this time the system came to life. The directory /.Spotlight-V100 was created, and the files inside it were growing quickly. Spotlight on the toolbar showed a progress bar, indicating the system would be done indexing in an estimated time.

Please follow these instructions at your own risk. The following step where enough to correct my problems and  I am using mac os x, 10.6.8

Reference Post: Walt-O-Matic

Twitpic founder Noah Everett announces the launch of Heello today. His second web app project has been in the wings for exactly one year. Twitter has launched its own photo-sharing tool, offering a native version of a feature that until now was mostly the domain of third-party apps like Twitpic and yfrog. This move puts pressure on those third-party apps as a logical choice for photo-sharing that uses Twitter’s API.

I have mashed up an exclusive by Jolie O’Dell and a few of my first experiences with Heello after its unofficial launch day.

Everett is hitting the streets with his own microblogging competitor that includes embed photo-sharing capabilities right out of the gate. Rumors of video-sharing and check-ins are in the works. I spoke with Ryan LeFevre, Software/Systems Engineer, on Heello today to see if he would share some future project details. He said, “we have a lot of new features to build on top of these core features.”

In addition to updates, which are called pings, the service also allows for following (“listening” to) other people and sending and receiving replies. You can also “echo,” or repost, a ping from fellow users. I found the usability to be a direct correlation to twitter but it has a number of tweaks and bugs that need to be worked out.

“If Twitter can compete with its developers without fair notice, then why can’t we?” he quipped.

To see the service in action, check out the live stream of public activity.

On a more serious note, Everett said that the timing of his launch was more an event of ironic serendipity than a planned stab at Twitter. “Twitter rolling out their photo option to everyone yesterday was a complete coincidence,” said Everett, “but I’m glad the timing happened that way.”

The founder also noted that Twitpic itself won’t be fading into obscurity any time soon. “Twitpic will continue to still live on; we’ve got a huge base of loyal users and we still want to continue to provide them with the best service possible,” he said.

Originally, Heello began as a completely different product that revolved around “email and making it suck less,” said Everett. “But not too long ago, we decided… social is fun, and we have experience at it.”

So does the young founder think Heello has the makings of a real Twitter competitor?

“I think anyone has a fair shot at competing with anyone,” Everett said.

I believe Everett has learned the good and bad from Twitpic and has put those ideas into Heello’s DNA. Steve Corona, CTO of @heello and @twitpic, noted, “we’ve taken all of our knowledge from building twitpic to make heello extremely scalable and fault tolerant.”

In the near future, Everett and team are planning to launch video support, checkins, SMS integration, mobile applications, and something new that doesn’t relate to any of Twitter’s features: Channels. This is only the beginning.

“Channels will let users be grouped together, and users can then ‘listen’ to a channel to see all their pings,” said Everett. For example, you could set up a channel for dog lovers, people in a particular neighborhood, etc.

“We’re just trying to evolve on what microblogging is now and fill in the gaps for the users. People love to share what they are doing with photos, videos and where they are, we want to make that experience seamless and easy.”

If your an early adopter, find me on here. I was lucky enough to lock down my first name as my account name. Company names, fake accounts and those few short names are disappearing fast. Good to be in on the ground floor.

Original, un-edited post: http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/10/heello/

I have recently noticed a slowing factor when it comes to using Safari 5. I decided to look for some hack solutions to see if I could improve the usability of Safari from the point of view, page load speed. After searching the web,  I have found an article from sayzlim.net.  Hopefully it will help you as much as it has helped me. Let begin…

Set new windows and tabs open in empty page. I’ve never set a homepage for my browser. It doesn’t only speed up Safari launch time, it also speed up the new windows and tabs launch time.

• Access it under preferences: general.

Set database storage to none. By disabling storage, you increase your browser security and know which website requires database. It doesn’t do much to the performance, but I think it’s better to know which website use your storage.

• Access it under preferences: security: show databases.

Disable the webpage preview caches. If you use Top Site feature, you should know that Safari will create a screenshot of the site you’ve visited and store it in a folder. Over time, it’ll take a large space of your hard disk. Safari will search for the existing cache whenever it wants to display top site preview. The most important issue is the time it requires to search for the each screenshot – imagine your folders has over 300 screenshots.

• Quit Safari if it’s running.
• Run terminal and enter touch desktop/Webpage\ Previews
• Navigate to ~user/library/caches/com.apple.safari
• Delete the Webpage Previews folder and move the new Webpage Previews (check your desktop) into com.apple.safari folder.

The reason why I choose this approach is to let you understand how the whole blocking works. We create a new empty file in order to block Safari from writing a new image into the folder. To restore the feature, delete the empty file and Safari should create new folder the next time it launches.

Disable web icons storage. When you visit a website, Safari will store the tiny icon in the url into its own storage. If it’s getting larger, it’ll slow down Safari performance because it need to search the database every time it visits a website. There is an easier way if you don’t mind installing app.1

• Quit Safari if it’s running.
• Navigate to ~/user/library/safari and delete the WebPageIcons.db Don’t worry, it’s totally safe. This is the storage I mentioned, deleting it won’t cause any issues to Safari.
• Run terminal and enter this defaults write com.apple.Safari WebIconDatabaseEnabled -bool NO

Speed up the initial layout by decreasing the initial time layout delay to 0.25. Safari by default has a delay of 1 second before loading page (The time it takes to load and render the webpage before presenting it in your browser). By decreasing the delay, you make sure it displays faster but not loads faster. Because it depends on your internet connection and website to ensure the page loads under 1 second to see different.

• Enter this to terminal defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 0.25

Bask in your new found speed and improved load times.

Original Post: http://sayzlim.net/

Matt Hunsberger is a designer from Connecticut. Matt studied Visual Communication Design at the Hartford Art School and graduated in 2007. He works for Humongo, a digital creative agency based in Danbury, CT. Matt also works on a variety of self-initiated projects and makes electronic music as Teleflux. Want to see more?

Humongo Nation Vehicle Graphics - Humongo Nation is a rolling celebration of creativity and a demonstration of social media in action.

2011 Calendar of Famous People I Like - A 2011 (or any year, really) calendar featuring portraits of famous people. It’s one large poster that you can hang on your wall year round.

Draw On! is a community program started by The Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, CT, in 2006 with the help of the Museum’s high school groups, Art Lab.

I’m drawing every synthesizer I’ve ever owned. Some I’ve since sold and some I still have. My goal is to draw each synth as accurately and with as much detail as possible.

Matt was commissioned to do these guitar-related drawings in a similar style to the above synth drawings.

The artist formerly known as Pop Heroes. Teleflux is an electro pop producer.

Wanna be friends with Matt?
Pick your favorite online community and let the stalking begin: Twitter - Flickr - Dribbble - Svpply

Do not forget to visit Society6 for Matt’s collection of gallery quality Giclée, or fine art prints.

Apple is taking the best thinking from iPad and bringing it all to the Mac with Mac OS X Lion, available in summer 2011. Apple will make the switch to a new kind of digital distribution for its operating system upgrades by releasing the software first through its new Mac App Store, AppleInsider has learned. Apple plans to release the next major update to its operating system, Mac OS X Lion, through its desktop application store, AppleInsider reports citing people familiar with the matter.

The Mac App Store, launched in January 2011, is Apple’s attempt to apply the app store concept it had popularized through the iOS ecosystem to desktop applications.

If Apple indeed starts offering the Mac OS X Lion through the Mac App store, it’ll make strides in popularizing the store among users. The store holds Apple’s software but also third-party apps, with Apple receiving a 30% cut from each purchase.

Apple will likely reveal its distribution plans for Lion at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Calif., set to take place June 6 through 10. Apple has promised that this year’s conference will showcase the “future” of the Mac operating system, and will be an event developers will not want to miss.

Evidence that Lion will be available in the Mac App Store can already be found in the pre-release builds Apple has issued to developers. Betas are downloaded from the Mac App Store by entering a redemption code provided by Apple.

This move by Apple is one of many in the right direction for Apple users and stockholders. The app store  is all about convenience when downloading your favorite software. It is much easier than buying boxed software online or in a store.

via Mashable & Apple Insider

The following infographic was created for graphic designers who wanted to get  better at what they do. Smartpress surveyed over 30 of the leading designers in the online community and asked the most commonly asked questions related to design. The following information will help guide you through the process of taking your design skills to the next level.

Please share this with your friends, co-workers and fellow designers. To view the infographic in its original size, click on the image below.

To read the full interviews of all the featured graphic designers, please visit their website at blog.smartpress.com.

For the 77 million users of the Playstation Network, Sony said their names, addresses, birthdates, and username and password data were likely stolen.

Company officials said they are still trying to determine whether users’ credit card numbers were taken. Sony said it learned of the breach on April 19 and immediately shut down the network.

Many customers are angry and concerned about their information being stolen, but one user said he is just taking this as another example of why we all need to be cautious with our personal information.

Erik Shultz is not a compulsive gamer, but he enjoys the social aspect of Sony’s Playstation Network and interacting with millions of others.

But he said he is not as upset as some people that the network is down after a huge security breach.

“It’s like how do you get upset about something that you’re not paying a premium price to use, and then there was a lot of negative comments about well I’ll go buy an Xbox. Well that seems counter-intuitive,” he said.

Shultz believes this is another reason people need to get more savvy about releasing personal information, and maybe gamers need to start using new methods to play.

“You can also play devil’s advocate and go ok well if I don’t want to give them my credit card then I can’t use that service. That’s not true either. You can go to any store and pick up an iTunes gift card, and you can do the same thing with a Playstation Network card,” said Shultz.

For Sony, which has built its brand around online gaming, this is a blow to its reputation and bottom line if people start to second guess the safety of online payment channels.

But Shultz said having hackers put the current systems to the test can result in even better service for us all.

“It’s one more way for them to find out that the system is as good as they thought it was… or vice versa.”

It took six days before Sony notified customers of the breach, but officials said their company wasn’t aware of the full impact until this week.

If you’re a Sony Playstation Network customer, monitor your credit card activity closely and contact your credit card provider immediately if you see anything suspicious.