Spoono Grapevine

Power 'Music' Hour iPhone App

Peter

Hey all, long time no post, just wanted to give a little shout-out to the guys (including yours truly) from Proxima Labs (who you may remember from the Proxima Project a few years back). They recently released a pretty spiffy looking iPhone app just in time for the weekend - Power Music Hour.

More info, or get it now! Enjoy and be safe!

Better Photoshop Performance!

Dakota

I stumbled upon a great article today on Smashing Magazine by a one Marco Sousa. He lists 10 simple steps we as designers can take to better the performance of our most commonly used to, Adobe Photoshop!

One of his tips is to turn your font preview off! Make's plenty of sense to me. Check out the rest of that tip and the other 9 out of 10 Simple Steps to Better Photoshop Performance via Smashing Magazine.

GameSync Links Up Gamers

Spooky

Many of us web geeks are gamers at heart, and for those of us who are, Miles Johnson has dished out GameSync, a new gaming community with outstanding features.

Spoono Could Be Thriving

Spooky

...but in order for that to happen, you've got to get involved! Keep Spoono alive by submitting your stuff and pushing activity to the forums! Spoono has been through some hard times, as all of us have, and wants to get on its feet again. Keep visiting and maybe we can get some new stuff online for you!

Hellooooo?

Dakota

Great to see you still visiting Spoono! Although it is a bit of a ghost town now-a-days. Well, that is all from me for now, just wanted to check in and say hello!

Happy Halloween!

Dakota

To all you spooky spoonoids out there, happy halloween from us here at Spoono to you!

It's been a while......!

Robouk

Hey All!!!! Its been a loooong time (years i think!!) since I posted here but it looks as though not much has changed! Spoono still kickin some ass! Just thought I'd drop by with my new (up & coming) link www.cloud9design.info I shall be providing freelance graphics design services here under the new name of cloud 9 (formerly robouk) Drop by and keep an eye on the full site releasing soon! Rob

Audio Blog Reader and Player

workday

Check out The Big Human Player designed by yours truly. It let's you load up feeds from your favorite music blogs. Just press play and the music never stops. If you find some strange bugs or have suggestions for features you can use the feedback email link to get in touch.

Summer's Arrived

Dakota

Well summer is finally here, beautiful days are upon us. With all that inspiration, you're bound to crave the desire to create something new! So, I decided to throw out a couple resources for you to help that process along.

Outlaw Design Blog has come up with an extremely impressive list of digital art resources!

Design River has over four hundred high quality Photoshop patterns for you to spice up any design.

New Year. Fresh Start.

Dakota

Well the new year of 2008 is finally upon us, and new adventures await us! I know for me, I have the option of attending an Art Institute of Pittsburgh, of heading to EMT/Firefighter training. Who knows where this year will take me!

But this post isn't about me, it's about you! We here at Spoono want to know your plans for the year, your goals, and your resolutions. Life truly is what you make it, with everyday we live we learn, and with every bit we learn, we grow.

So head over to the forums and tell us what you think of 2008; what do you see yourself doing this year!

Merry Christmas!

Dakota

From all of us here at Spoono to you at home or wherever you may be tonight. We wish you a peaceful day full of joy and love, and all that mushy gushy stuff! Oh yeah! We hope you got all the cool toys and gadgets you asked Santa for too!

Happy Holidays!

With Love,
The Spoono Team

Twas The Night Before Christmas

Dakota

Even so, some of us still find ways to get online and surf around a bit before tending to our holiday duties. To help you in pass the time before Santa arrives, why not check out some amazing fine artists I recently stumbled upon?

Firstly be sure to check out the precision detail of these art pieces created from nothing more than paper thin, well, paper! The artist is Petter Callesen, and he is definitely worth a look.

When you're finished there prepare for the most detailed sculptures you may ever see in your life! Ron Mueck is a hyper-realist sculptor, and that's no exaggeration. Creepy, grotesque and beautiful. There is no doubt that you will be impressed.

If you're interested in seeing how Ron actually makes his work come to life, check out this video clip documenting each part of the journey.

Go MediaZine Updates!

Dakota

It's been quite a while since we posted up some good tutorial related links on here, so I decided to show you some of my favorites. Luckily for me they are all from the same site so I won't have to type much!

The Go MediaZine has quite a few fresh tutorials ranging from sports branding, ornate lettering, animating spray paint and even creating comic book style designs. Be sure to bookmark their site for future tips and tutorials from the experts at GoMedia.

Forums Return

Brian

After an extended vacation, the Spoono Forums have returned to their former glory. Hopefully this time around, we will be able to protect against the problems the forums were riddled with in the past.

Another bright note for everything Spoono is that we have gotten some much needed help to run our web hosting operation. Going forward, Akash and I will be completely removed from everthing related to hosting. This should finally allow us to spend some of our free time on Spoono rather than managing hosting customers. It's a big relief, and we are looking forward to sprucing things up around here.

Music and TV on the Interwebs

pixelbud

For those American readers out there, "Happy Thanksgiving" - I hope you have a great time of family and turkey eating followed by wonderful turkey induced sleep.

If you are like me, you enjoy some great tunes while working. Unfortunately, I can't have my entire iTunes library with me at work. Slacker is a great online radio service. To make it even better they have produced a portable player that will let you listen to the service anywhere, even without Internet access.

Another interesting prospect is the Sansa TakeTV Video Player. This device allows you to drop video files onto it and then plug it up to your TV. Then using its built in remote browse your files on the big screen.

The Apple Store for Mexico just recently launched. I believe they are giving away a free MacBook and iPod Nano a day. Its also cool to compare prices there vs. the states.

And speaking of Apple and the music industry, check out this great article from Mashable, Jermaine Dupri is a Corporate Tool. He is convinced that iTunes is the enemy, "All it’ll take is for Warner Music to say, 'You know what, I’m with you,' for us to shut ‘em down. No more iPods! They won’t have nothin’ to play on their players!" Right...

Tidbits & Lifehacks:
• Mac or PC? - Awesome music video.
• $85 in DC - Why didn't I think of this?
• Recover saved passwords - Firefox addon.
• foamee - owe someone a beer?

Tutorial & Article Resources:
• Sticky Tape Photoshop Brushes - Spoon Graphics
• Creating seamless patterns in Illustrator - Veerle's blog
• Illustrator pen tool exercises - Veerle's blog
• Creating a Leopard folder in Illustrator - Veerle's blog

Mac Apps & Addons:
• iChat Matte 2.2 - Tone down those ichat bubbles.
• Chax - Best ichat enhancer, now Leopard ready.