The Year 2005
Malaysians are encountering the worst case phenomenon of a natural disaster. On 26th December 2004, a day after Christmas where everyone is jolly and merry turned to tears and bitter sadness. News broke in of Penang being hit by a tidal wave. News by mouth or handphone break out from friends residing there. Malaysia suffers a natural disaster that hasn’t occured to us. As quoted in CNN, its one of the worst quakes to hit in 40 years.
Death numbers are still coming in as massive heights of sea water wipes our shores that were once safe. Today, as the hour strikes 12, we enter a new year. Not really to be happy about but to be mourning and having a moment of silence for all family’s victims. Other than Malaysia, much worst countries enduring this disaster are Indonesia, India and Thailand.
Therefore, friends and foes, I post before you as a neutral ally to join hands and pause at the keyboard a moment. Let us take time and think of ways to contribute back to society other than combining our silent prayers. *pauses*
My resolution or dreams for 2005, to achieve that degree that is equal to a PHD, to make clients understand what is web design about and to handle my life as it comes in this coming year. Let’s welcome this year of 2005 now with open arms and hearts.
Cheers!
p/s: If you can provide any help in Penang, please go over to http://tsunamipenang.blogspot.com Drowning people need you.
Websites To Share
I subscribe to the DesignersDepot website for latest updates. Normally I don’t get many excellent ranking websites in the list from my books. However, today was a real treat as the new year approaches. I’m telling you, these websites are awesome. I’ll list the best from the 10 and you count how many are great. 
Now, I’m not really sure what this website is about because I was too lazy to read and my P3 500 couldn’t really handle the Flash. However, their usage of the vector arts is superb with a nice touch of 3D I think.
This website looks like the ordinary Jane. However, I give merit to them in the Flash version for their transitions. It’s quite old school but it’s what that make most people not confused. I just opened the Flash version in IE and minus all the points I give them because it launches a ‘full screen’ window. It’s annoying! Oh yeah, I use Firefox. Thank you.
Oh-My-God! This website really takes the cake for me if I wanted beautiful women in lingerie. No, it isn’t a website like Victoria Secret. It’s the website of a photographer, Sacha Dean Biyan. *drool*
From acclaimed Flash company of the century (judged based on the mumbo-jumbo reference by clients), 2Advanced pulls out another winner of a design here. Elegant fruity design that maintains it’s concept. I think they could’ve done so much better with the loading screen but I guess because the client didn’t pay enough, 2A gave them a small dose. Pity..
We head down under with this piece from Australia. This website looks really nice. The color combination is something I couldn’t have thought of better. Easy reading but 1 fatal flaw, not Firefox friendly. Open it in the browser and thee shall heed its wrath.
Reason of these two being together is because their genre is roughly the same. Both were going for the futuristic feel to their website and both had some unique stuff that I liked.
So what are you waiting for? A whole bunch of links on top there for you. 
MOTOBLOG
The project that I promised to tell you all about can finally be revealed. This is my biggest freelance project that not only involved the creative but also the development. I admit that the website isn’t perfect in every way but if I were to say I could do better, every designer is a perfectionist.
A project of this size with not just involving a website but also banners and others did come with a sacrifice. Designers or those working in creative agencies should already have guessed it..sleep. As deadline nears and there’s much to squeeze into during that time, we end up not having enough sleep. As for me, I only slept at 6am today. My mum was shocked to see me awake thinking if I was really alright cause my sore throat is killing me.
Before I give you the website link, I’ll enlighten you about the purpose of this project. It’s about promoting the new phone from Motorola that’s coming soon. It’s the Motorola MPx and it’s going to be first released in SE Asia then worldwide. This is different from the other MPx models that you might have read about. What’s so unique about the website? Well, it’s really a blog that has 4 bloggers. Each of them have been given the phone exclusively to be used during this process. How cool is that? Free phone that’s not even out yet! And if my memory serves me right, they’re bills are covered by Motorola now I think. *shrug*
Okie okie, I know most of you must have opened up Google or Yahoo! and search for MOTOBLOG. Sorry if you were just too lazy to read through my post. 
Anyway, you can visit the website at: www.motoblog.com.my Enjoy!
Interesting Stuff
As you know, I scour the Internet daily in search of websites and gadgets be would interest me. I have found 3 informative things today that I’d like to share with all of you. First up is a conference that’s going to run in Genting Highlands. The conference is aimed at all followers of Feng Shui. As you might have guessed, this conference will be headed by Lilian Too. Find out more details, HERE.
Next up, we’ve got a product for the iPod. Yeah, everyone has heard of all the cool accessories for the iPod ranging from the armor cases to the BOSE speakers. However, have you seen the Concertino setup. It comes with an amplifier and speakers. And it’s in white! The product looks cool with the website bearing a close resemblance to the Apple website. The Concertino product is targeting audiophiliacs armed with an iPod. Gaze at it’s simplistic beauty, HERE.
Last, but not least, how many of you have heard of George Masters? If you’ve read Wired lately or probably any motion graphics forum, you might’ve come across this human. The big talk about him right now came about after he released his home made iPod Mini ad. If you haven’t seen it, SEE IT! It’s cool, radical, psychedelic and makes you be one with the iPod. You can watch the video from Wired, HERE or visit the man at, GeorgeMasters.com.
Lori Ann Music
Official website is the bomb. I haven’t seen something as good as this for an artiste in a while. I bet they definetely spent quite a lump sum on this job. The information should be XML driven if I’m not mistaken. The graphics are simply excellent. Though it has the whole city look going for it, there’s still a weakness navigation wise.
Though the website uses most of the elements for decorating, they also use it as link representations. The boards that you can clearly read and understand is no problem. However, having too many elements just creates a sense of confusion and an experience of exploration. Oh well, guess you’d just feel lost in a city. ;P
If you’d like to have a city experience while listening and viewing her videos, go HERE.
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About This Blog
Hello and welcome to Websites Made Simple. I'm Danny Foo and this is my Malaysia web design blog. I manage and co-founded a small Malaysia web design and development team; Simpleet Solutions. -
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