Nur Ahmad Furlong

Category: Web

Podcamp Cape Town – 20 October

Part of getting to know what’s new and who’s who in the new media industry and web 2.0 scene is attending events. The upcoming Podcamp event is one I’m very sad to be missing since I’ll be out of Cape Town on the day. I hope to be able to link up the the event remotely somehow so I can get a scope of the happenings and meet a few of the attendees.
Started in Boston, MA, USA in September 2006, PodCamp was born.
In the same style as BarCamp, PodCamp is a community driven UnConference for anybody and everybody in New Media. Whether you create and/or consume content by podcasting, listening, blogging, reading, producing video, watching and anything else that is New Media
Check out the PodCamp wiki for more info on other PodCamps around the world.
Also, go download Issue #18 of Podcast User Magazine, see page 17 on a review on PodCamp Europe. It is an awesome write-up and describes the feel of PodCamp to the tee.
If you’re attending this cool event be sure to let me know and fill me in on your experiences so i can do a bit of a writeup on the days happenings. If anyone attending will be linking up with a web-cam I’d like to project myself virtual to the event and chat with a few attendees. go visit www.podcampcapetown.com
October 8, 2007
Chris Garret – on blogging and internet marketing
On the lookout for new tricks and techniques to get my blog and those of my clients more airtime I came across Chris Garret (a professional blogger and online media consultant).
You might ask, what is a professional blogger, isn’t blogging just some kind of hobby or something someone does in their spare time. If that’s what you thought you’re about to learn what you’ve been missing all this time.
(more…)
October 5, 2007
Startup Business School
Like many, I’ve been agonising for years about going out on my own and starting some kind of business. So many ideas have come and gone, some even making it to the planning stage, but I’m very much used to being permanently employed within companies and sooner or later whether due to lack of time, energy or motivation the business ideas end up on a dusty shelf in the back of my mind. Recently my entrepreneurial mind has started bugging me again and due to many circumstances in my life it seems I am being forced into the position of taking a step out there into the great big unknown of self-employment.
A while ago I came across the Startup Business School while searching for some online productivity tools. Back then I was still very much comfortable in my day job and things seemed stable but the internet industry is in a constant state of flux and things change so quickly. Today I hunted around for this tool and checked into my free account that I had set up back then. Why didn’t we learn a bit of this type of thing back in school I ask myself, so many people are in need of the simple skills required to get started with some kind of business or entrepreneurial venture.
(more…)
August 24, 2007
Speak to the world with WordPress

WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it. http://wordpress.org/
The fact that you are reading this post right now is enough of a testament to the power of the blogging revolution. Even though I am a web designer and and have the ability to design and code my own websites with the assistance of fancy tools to make the job easier for me I have still chosen to use WordPress for my personal and professional publishing purposes.
(more…)
August 21, 2007
Smashing Magazine fast becoming my favourite
One of the daily habits of any creative worker is research and trend tracking. Seeing what others are doing, what trends are currently being followed, what the latest developments are and new & interesting ways of doing things is what keeps us thinking further and working toward developing our own innovative solutions. A few months ago I found Smashing Magazine.
It’s one of my daily sources of inspiration and education in the field of web design and development. The beauty of smashing magazine is that they find great content out there and bring it to us in a well collected and neatly packaged manner. I’ve noticed they seem to be taking it a step further each time they post and their fame within the web community is steadily increasing.
Their most recent edition proved once again to be informative with it’s broad coverage of opinions and thoughts from some of the most well-known and active web people out there. 5 Questions, 35 Designers is a post I know I will have to refer back to as it’s filled with insights and useful reference. In their own words –
“35 designers. 5 questions. 5 precise answers. Result: 175 professional suggestions, tips and ideas from some of the best web-developers all around the world. In March weÃ¢ï¿½ï¿½ve selected over 35 prominent designers and design companies, contacted them and asked to answer five design-related questions, sharing their knowledge and experience with fellows developers. Here on Smashing Magazine.”
April 22, 2007