According to University of Oklahoma professor Michael Mumford, half of the commonly used techniques intended to spur creativity don’t work, or even have a negative impact. As for most commercially available creativity training, Mumford doesn’t mince words: it’s “garbage.”
A good read from Fast Company.
An excerpt::
I also think the article beautifully plots out the path of creative thought:
“When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions.
A good article from Infoworld, on how you can start to incorporate HTML5 into your website development today.
What can I do with HTML5, and when can I start using it? The good news is that there’s a lot you can do with HTML5. The better news is that there’s a lot that you can do with HTML5 today.
But first, one major caveat: You need to know your audience, though, of course, this is true whether or not you want to start using HTML5. If the majority of your site’s visitors still use Internet Explorer 6, then you have no reason to rush. On the other hand, if your site is primarily for mobile browsers on iPhones and iPads, what are you waiting for? But if your site falls somewhere in the middle — as most do — here are some handy guidelines to ramping up to HTML5.
http://designm.ag/resources/chrome-extensions/
Check out this post written by Steven Snell. Great list of Chrome Plug-Ins.
Firefox is the browser of choice for most designers and developers in part because of the vast selection of add ons that are available. While Chrome does not offer anywhere close to as many extensions (yet), there are still a number that can be very handy for designers and developers. In some cases they are not as robust as the Firefox versions (example, Firebug and Firebug Lite), but if you are using Chrome you may be interested to know about the extensions that are available. Additionally, Chrome comes with some developer tools built in.
As you may know, this agency does some political consulting. However, we also have several divisions of our company and people in our company that do NOT do politics, political consulting, etc. Occasionally, others in Ozean’s office have become uncomfortable with my political opinions and have asked me to take them down the hall.
That is exactly what I am going to do.
In the next few months, each one of Ozean’s divisions will launch their own website. The first to launch is the political consulting division. You may find the Ozean Political Consulting website here.
This means that all Alex Patton’s political comments will be made on the blog on that site: the Ozean Consulting blog.
This blog will remain, but will be for you to keep updated on all things digital media - like website design, video on the web, SEO, SEM, and social media.
So, if you are interested in politics - read this blog.
If you are interested in media - continue to read this blog.
Happy Reading.
Ozean Media is an award-winning web design firm.