New projects up in the web spot. New print and motion pieces coming soon.

p.s. Have you told your friends about difted? Have you added us on MySpace? Have you become a fan of us on Facebook? Are we friends on Twitter? Just askin'.

It sounds glamorous, doesn't it? I'm traveling the world, going to some crazy-awesome places and meeting some really cool people. The whole time I'm doing some web development work to pay for some of my expenses like hiking up a volcano, or getting my groove on at a European disco.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. But not very glamorous.

In order to work on the internet - you need an internet connection. Sounds easy, right? Just go to a coffee shop and get you some free access. If only it were that easy.

I have absolutely no problems finding open WiFi access points around the world. Even the tiny little remote towns of Guatemala are bathed in a plethora of WiFi networks. The problem has been getting internet that works. I guess not all countries put a focus a fast and reliable internet access.

I realized that my mood is often determined by how good the internet access is. If it's slow and keeps disconnecting, I'm a little irritable. If it's fast and stable, I'm as happy as a fat kid at McDonalds.

But fast and stable has only happened to me a few times since I started traveling about 2 months ago. It's particularly frustrating when I have to upload several 70MB video files for our video podcast and it uploads at 5 KB/s and then restarts half-way through. Yeah, that's when I really start getting irritable.

So when you find internet that works, you use it. No mater where it is. The photo of me above was taken last night when I was making some changes to HeartSupport. I was sitting in front of a shop in a little town called Coyhaique in Chile. It was late at night, it was freezing, and as people walked by they looked at me like I was a bum... who was using a brand-new MacBook Pro for some reason.

It takes many hours of development time to make a website, but I only get a small window of internet access everyday. So how do I develop around the world?

Thanks to my new MacBook ProAwesomeness, it's easy. I just set up my computer like a server with all the stuff I need like Apache, MySQL, PHP and ModRewrite. Then I edit my /etc/hosts file to make it so that when I type in "http://somedevsite/" it pulls up the site right on my computer without any internet access. How cool is that?

I've been using wireframes for about 6 months now. I used to sketch a layout on paper, then go directly to designing it. I still do sketch, but just to get the ball rolling, then I move into designing it. There's an interesting article on wireframing over at Rise Creative about wireframing and whether or not to show wireframes to clients. I feel that showing the client a wireframe is crucial in the development of the final web design and I wish I had been doing it all along. It's a great extra step to get out all the kinks, questions and concerns you or the client may have and can kill any potential headaches that can occur once the cutting/coding process begins.

Do you wireframe and if so, what is your preferred method?

We're in the process of launching a new site for NURU Interntational. Here's a drunken preview. 

In looking to renew my subscription to GOOD magazine this fine Monday morning, I was redirected to the new GOOD website. Check it out, it's... OK? No It's GOOD! Real GOOD! And if you don't subscribe to GOOD, get on it!