The end of the Blabber!

April 6th, 2009 | 1 Comment | Posted in BackSpace Blabber, PHUG

WE WILL BE SHUTTING DOWN THE BLABBER AT END OF APRIL 2009! THIS BLOG WILL MOVING TO http://www.dropthedigibomb.com, FIND OUT WHY BELOW.

Back in 2007 BackSpaceStudios launched the Blabber!, the official BackSpaceStudios blog. Over the past few years the Blabber! has successfully launched many new projects, promoted open source collaboration’s, showcased student and professional work, posted tutorials, promoted festivals and contests, and much more. The Blabber! community has steadily grown and we would like to thank all those individuals who have contributed over the years.

We have been busy over the past few months re-branding, re-building, and developing new partners in order to launch drop the digi bomb, a complete re-invention of the Blabber! We are also very happy to announce that the launch of drop the digibomb will coincide with the launch of  a new partnership and collaboration with a Seattle based digital marketing firm, New Marketing Direct, and the re-birth of BackSpaceStudios as new social marketing and open source design agency digibomb inc.

We will officially lauch this new partnership and digibomb inc. after April 15th 2009!

A bit of history:
The Blabber! was originally designed by Brendan Sera-Shriar BackSpaceStudios. Originally the Blabber! was the personal and professional blog of Brendan Sera-Shriar it served as a public blog where staff members of BackSpaceStudios posted their design ideas, tutorials, and talked about modern web design trends. The Blabber! also functioned as space for Brendan’s students, Seneca College design stundents, to get more involved outside the class room and contribute to various open source projects and communities.

The original Blabber!

blabber_screen

The new and imporived drop the digibomb!

dob_screen

Our new mission is to develop a community where we can explore all things Open Source and Social in an effort to create an interactive, engaging, accessible, and intuitive experience for every community.

Love this video…

March 13th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in BackSpace Blabber

New look, new logo, new direction…

March 7th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in AS3, BackSpace Blabber

bss_logo_new

We’re making some changes! As you may already know, we’re currently re-modeling the main BackSpaceStudios website. As part of our new look we have decided to take BackSpace in a new direction. We are focusing our efforts on “Building Better Communities”.

What this this all mean? Our philosophy is simple. We believe in Open Source Design and technology and practice this philosophy in all our work. It’s about using Open Source Tools to create an interactive, engaging, accessible, and intuitive experience for every community.

It is our goal to bring Open Source to the commercial workspace, deliver alternatives, and change the face of design as we know it! it is our responsibillity to build a better web and help foster Social Media and Networking.

This new philosophy comes with new services, new staff, and re-branding. Our goal is to promote the use of open source technologies such as WordPress, Drupal, and Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Ning, etc.

We have also re-organized our staff. Please welcome Nicole Kelly - Project Manager, Darryl Cheung - Technical Director, Justan Accaputo - Creative Director, and Jeff Knights - Client Manager.

And, finally, a new logo and name. This is just the first step of what is to come for BackSpace.

WordCamp Toronto Updates

March 6th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in BackSpace Blabber, social, wordpress

WCT Logo

This year is looking to be the biggest year ever for WordCamp’s around the world. So many new cities jumping on board and many new changes being made by veteran WordCamp organizers.

I’m very excited about WCT 2009, it’s a lot more work than I had anticipated, but then again, go big or go home! This is Toronto’s second year hosting WordCamp and this year will be bigger, better, and AWESOME…

We’ve undergone a huge transformation in comparison to last years event. So, what changes have we made you ask…well…for starters we have a added a third day to the festival, 3 tracks of presentations instead of 1, and our favorite addition the WCT Awards! You can submit any work you have done with WordPress from plug-ins, themes, blog and site development, etc.

This year we want to explore WordPress to a higher degree. We have expanded the festival to include all walks of WordPress life, from commercial to non-profit, from amateur to professional bloggers, designers and developers, and we are exploring other ways in which WordPress is being used outside the blogging community.

We are also covering a range of topics including, social, community, business, and education.

We are also very excited about of key note speaker Nick La, the man behind the popular blog Web Designer Wall, Best Web Gallery, and founder of N.Design Studio.

We have an all-star lineup of speakers, Peter Flaschner, Erin Blaskie, James Walker, Jeremy Clarke, and Matt Brett, just to name a few…

So, make sure you don’s miss out on this event! You can register here >>> http://wct2009.eventbrite.com/ , find out more about the event at http://www.wordacmaptoronto.com.

Smashing Calendars

March 1st, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in BackSpace Blabber, Open Source Design

Back in January I came across a great post at Smashing Magazine which featured free desktop wallpapers, and as an added bonus they had embedded calendars. Every month they will be posting free desktop wallpaper calendars from artists around he globe.

Make sure you check out this months batch of cool wallpapers.

Here are a few of my favorites.

valentine_hangover
space-invaders
colorful-march

Past months:
January
February