The’re are plenty of arguments against keeping all your files on someone else’s servers. What if the company goes out of business? What if their servers crash? What if a dinosaur attacks the building and destroys all my files? These concernes don’t bother me too much. If the company goes down, you will more than likely have plenty of notice to grab your stuff. Crashing servers, same as crashing hard drives. I’m sure Google has a much better redundant back-up system in place than I do. And dinosaurs don’t exist. I’m all for it. Having my files somewhere else keeps my harddrives free, and gives me easy access.

I’m getting off topic. (Go cloud!)

Rdio is a cloud based, on demand, music streaming jukebox in the sky. You simply launch the app, search for a band or song, add it to your collection, and listen to that music whenever you want.  Rdio has somewhere around 10 million tracks in their collection which makes for stumping it pretty difficult. 9 times out of 10 they have the music I’m looking for. It has some great social networking features to connect to your friends on Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm.

For $5 bucks a month, you can listen through your desktop browser or with Rdio’s new full featured desktop app. And for just $10 a month, you can listen unlimited on your iPhone, Blackberry, Android or Windows 7 phone. This is includes a syncing feature, which will download tracks of your choosing to your device, incase you find yourself without a connection to the toobs. God forbid.

I’ve tried the other guys. Pandora, Last.fm, MOG. No other service compares right now. (Haven’t tried Spotify). I like to listen to my music all the way through. I pick an album, and enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed, like a story. As opposed to having an algorithm create a playlist for me, that I have limited control over.

The iPhone app has a great UI, easy to navigate and is simply fun to use. From the home dashboard I can search for jams, access my Collection, take a look at my recommend music, playlists, see what my fiends are listening to and check out the Top Charts. Even though the Rdio community has the same terrible taste in music as the rest of the planet.

I love this freaking service! I have 10 million + songs at my fingertips whenever I want. My collection grows larger everyday. As soon as I log in, I’ll check out what my friends are listening to, add a couple albums to my collection and start jamming out. I’m logging somewhere around 8-10 hours of music streaming a day. And for just $10 a month, it’s a no-brainer.

When you sign up for an account, be sure to add me as a pal. Let’s spread the music!

http://www.rdio.com/#/people/smashbit/

While looking around for inspiration on monsters and such, I came across some really creative and fun monster logos and decided to showcase them here and hopefully spark your creativity. Enjoy.

Beast Media

Dot Monster

El Mostro

Freaky Media

Hookah Monster

iPhone Monster

Monster Farm

]]> http://smashbit.com/07/logo-inspiration-monsters/feed/ 1 http://smashbit.com/07/os-x-lion-first-impressions/ http://smashbit.com/07/os-x-lion-first-impressions/#comments Fri, 22 Jul 2011 06:26:12 +0000 Chris Welch http://www.smashbit.com/?p=197

I, along with about 1 million+ other people Wednesday morning, gave Apple thirty of my hard earned dollars and downloaded Steve’s new big cat, OS X Lion.

I must say, that the download / installation process is an absolute breeze with the App Store (which is the only place you can get Lion). With just a couple clicks I had purchased and was downloading the 2.7 gig file. Installation was as simple and straightforward as the download, and in under an hour I was rebooting my MacBook Pro and starting up OS X Lion for the first time.

OS X Lion's Login Screen

I am immediately presented with a beautiful new login screen, which includes a circular user icon and a new background showcasing the dark linen texture that seems to be everywhere in iOS and OS X these days.

After logging in, the first thing I notice when I open a finder window is the lack of color. The entire UI is more saturated and toned down compared to previous versions. You actually have to concentrate for a split second to spot what you need to click. It looks good, but it’s missing functionality.

There really isn’t any part of the interface that hasn’t been touched. From the slightly smaller red-yellow-green window buttons, to the minimalistic scroll bars that disappear unless your scrolling (I love the scroll bars), everything has been tinkered with and refined. Mostly for the good.

OS X Lion's Gesture Preferences

Of course, being the nerd I am, read up on a few of the features that Lion had to offer. And the new “Gestures” was on top of my “must try list”. I went directly to System Preferences and clicked the options for Trackpad. (Side note: I do love the little mini videos Apple has been doing to demo the gestures in the options panel.) Pinch and zooms, rotates, scrolls, spreads, swipes! I can’t stop playing with all of them. I love swiping through my desktops with ease. Multitasking FTW. The folks in Cupertino are really changing the way we interact with out computers.

Lion also for some stupid reason, decided to implement something called “Natural Scrolling” which defaults the direction of scrolling opposite of what we have become used to. Down is up and up is down now. Ridiculous. Okay, maybe technically it is more natural, but what’s natural now is what we’ve been doing for years now. Down is down, up is up. Duh. There’s an option to change this.

I was a huge “Spaces” user in Leopard. I love having all my apps nice and tidy and in their designated positions. I would always tell people that didn’t use Spaces and Expose’ to just give it a few days. “At first it’s frustrating with the accidental Hot Corners touches, but you’ll get used to it and love it.”

OS X Lion's Mission Control

I think it may be more difficult to get people to use Mission Control. Mission Control basically combines Spaces and Expose’ to form one crazy multi-window, multi-desktop, task slaying beast. It’s daunting, but I’m getting used to it. When in Mission Control, your “desktops” are lined up in a row at the top of the screen, and open windows are fanned out and grouped with their respective applications. It makes sense.

Apple is bringing a lot of elements from its mobile IOS into this upgrade. A new feature touted as “Launch Pad” is basically a full screen app launcher in leu of the spring board on Apple’s mobile devices. It’s worthless. I already have a dock with all of my commonly used applications, and a great search function that I can launch a lesser used app from within seconds. Don’t ever see myself using that.

Overall, I think this is a solid update so far, and well worth the $30 for the download. I like most of the subtle UI design choices, Mission Control is going to take some getting used to but I’m sure I’ll learn to love it, and the entire OS just seems more refined and polished.

Also, I just leaned that you are allowed by Apple to install the update on several different machines that you own for the same $30. Just login to the app store on another machine, and download again for free!

]]> http://smashbit.com/07/os-x-lion-first-impressions/feed/ 4 http://smashbit.com/06/my-15-favorite-photoshop-moves/ http://smashbit.com/06/my-15-favorite-photoshop-moves/#comments Sat, 04 Jun 2011 22:15:49 +0000 Chris Welch http://smashbit.com/?p=76 I use Photoshop on a daily basis, and my workload is usually pretty heavy. With plenty on my plate and only 24 hours in day, keyboard shortcuts are a must. They are much faster than going through menus and digging around looking for the needed tool. With just a few strikes of the keys I can have the tool I need, and be on to the next item on my list. Below you’ll find 15 of my favorite and most commonly used shortcuts inside of Photoshop.

1. Toggle screen modes – [F]
In Photoshop, you may notice that you can always see your desktop background behind the current document that you’re working on. This has always bugged me, since I like to rock some pretty crazy wallpapers from time to time, it was distracting. A quick press or two on the [F] key will toggle full screen modes on and off, and keep your eyes from wandering to that killer wallpaper.

2. Hide pallets and tools – [TAB]
Having a 13″ Macbook as my day to day machine has it’s advantages, but screen real estate isn’t one of them. Hiding all my tools and pallets with a quick strike of the TAB key is crucial. Another press of the [TAB] key brings them right back. Also, while your tools are hidden, you can move your cursor to the right or left side of the screen and they’ll pop right back in. Nice!

3. Cycle through blend modes – [SHIFT] [+]or[-]
Blending modes are a great tool in Photoshop, I use them on a constant basis. But I can never remember what blend modes have what effect on what colors. Just hold down [SHIFT] and cycle through all the blend modes with the [+] and [-] keys to quickly see what effect those blends are having.

4. Adjust softness / hardness of brush – [SHIFT + [LEFT BRACKET] or [RIGHT BRACKET]
Most of us know the ol’ [LEFT BRACKET] and [RIGHT BRACKET] keys to adjust your brush size on the fly, but did you know you can hold [SHIFT] and it will adjust the softness / hardness of your brush as well.

5. Nudge items 10px at a time – [SHIFT] + [ARROW]
Cut down the time you’re nudging element of your design into place by using Super Nudge. Hold the SHIFT key while you tap the arrow keys and watch your nudged item jump an 10 extra pixels.

6. Quickly adjust layer opacity – [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0]
This one’s pretty easy, select your layer and type the number [1] to set the layer’s opacity to 10%. [2] = 20%. [3] = 30% etc. etc. [0] = 100%. Simple.

7. Snap to entire layer’s bounds with a [CMD] + [0] (zero)
I use this one a bunch. Say you have a document open, and you place and image from another document into that one, but the new image is really huge and you can’t see the transform controls to re-size it. Instead of manually zooming out until you can see the edges of the layer, try [COMMAND] + [0] (zero). It will snap your zoom out to see the entire layer, even if it’s not within your work area.

8. Load layer’s selection – [CMD] + “Click”
To load a layers selection, [CMD] + “Click” on that layer in the Layers Pallet and watch those marching ants march.

9. Duplicate layer- [CMD] + [J]
Instead of dragging a layer from the Pallet Menu down to the new layer icon to make a duplicate, try typing [CMD] + [J]. Twins!

10. Finish your current type box – [ENTER]
No more moving the mouse up and clicking on the Arrow tool to tell Photoshop you’re finished typing, just hit [ENTER]. That will stop you from typing in the text block, and allow you to use your shortcut keys to choose another tool. A quick [ENTER] followed by a press of the [V] is a sweet combo move.

11. Auto Select
Auto select is my friend. I’m terrible at naming my layers like I should, so I use this pretty regularly. It’s turned on more often than not. With your “Move” [V] tool selected and “Auto Select” turned on, you can visually select the layer you want from your work area, without having to try and figure out which layer you want in your layers pallet. I’m always surprised how many people don’t use this.

12. Feather selection with [SHIFT+F7]
Got a selection that needs some Feathering, [SHIFT] + [F7] will get the job done quickly.

13. The [D] and [X] combo.
[D] to set colors to default, black and white. [X] to swap foreground and background colors. Especially useful when working with “Masks”.

14. Type anywhere – [SHIFT] + “Click” (with Type tool selected)
Often times you may find yourself going in to make a new text layer, only to accidentally click on an existing text layer. Everything gets all mucked up, you type over what was already there and general chaos ensues. Start [SHIFT] + “Clicking” instead. This will allow you to generate a new text layer, even if you are on top of an existing text layer.

15. Zoom in and out of document. [OPT] + [SHIFT] + “Scroll”
Everyone uses the classic [CMD] [+] or [-] to zoom in and out of a document, but a prefer the scrolling method. [OPT] + [SHIFT] + “Scroll” gets me in, out and on with my life.