Podcast Time! Make Your Own Website, Mobile Photos & More: The LessDesirables

Behind the Mic with The Less Desirables in Studio 2A
Busy days at rsmithing.com! I’m a featured “guru” of graphic and web design on this week’s podcast of Winston-Salem, NC-based The Less Desirables.

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The Less Desirables Site
I’ve had the great pleasure of working with these fellas to design their logo and website (among other projects), and they invited me over to Studio 2A for a chat about graphic design, websites, social media, and what goes into developing all of this (and more) for a business, for a blog, or just for personal enjoyment.
I manage to ramble on about WordPress, apps,Instagram, photography, blogging, and how to use PowerPoint with MS Paint to give your website a professional look (seriously, not kidding). We also review some coffee, Paraguayan heavy metal …and even beer. What’s not to like? This show has everything!

The Less Desirables, In Their Own Words:

The Less Desirables is a weekly podcast by Tim Beeman and Brian Attridge recorded every Wednesday. We cover an expansive array of topics, ranging from current and non-current movies to new music to the latest sports news to doses of pop culture, complete with a “Beer of the Week.” The idea is to give our audience a recap of the previous week’s news, while simultaneously previewing the upcoming week. We have a local, North Carolina flavor geared towards a national audience, but we never lose sight of our community.

You can download the podcast directly from the TLD site, from iTunes, and from a few other places, too. My sincere thanks to Brian and Tim, and to Mr. Eugene Sims, for having me over. It was a great discussion and I recommend the show to anyone seeking a dose of pop-culture, sports, tech, movies, music and a plethora of other fine distractions.

What do you think? Do you listen to any podcasts regularly? Have you ever been on a podcast, and what was that like? If not, what topics would you consider if you were to be invited? What’s your take on the topics covered in this broadcast? Let us hear from you in the comments!

Related articles

• The Less Desirables (official website)
• Useless Things Need Love Too (Blog of TLD Host Tim Beeman)
• B’s Bistro (Blog of TLD Host Brian Attridge)
• Wheeler’s Dog (Blog of TLD 3rd Wheel, Eugene Sims)
• City Beverage (TLD Beer Sponsor)
• 50 Excellent Graphic Design Blogs (rajbgm.wordpress.com)
• Artist Michael Phipps on website design (writingsnippets.wordpress.com)

Getting Social, and a Bit About Instagram

So I've been making the effort lately to get more active in the social media space (hence this blog) for my own education and entertainment. Way back when (you know, like 2003), I was one of the first to rock a MySpace account with customized HTML. Remember having to plop some code in your "About me" field? Ha, you hacker.

The most-tapped area of my phone.

Anyway, most of my social activity lately has been via the amazing Instagram photo-sharing app for the iPhone (and maybe one day other platforms). Plenty has already been written about this, so I won't go into detail for now, but just let me say that it takes smart phones to an entirely new level and is one of the most fun things to do with a phone camera. Having had a career as a graphic artist, and having always been driven to be creative — and now with the bit of social media Instagram integrates, I am continually satisfied and excited about this app. It's like Twitter for visual thinkers, and social media for visual-creative types.

Back in the day I tried the still-excellent DeviantArt (DA) briefly, but after early photo manipulation experiments, lost interest. Instagram takes care of that almost completely with its built-in filters — and now apps like Photoforge2, Juxtaposer, and especially Noir (think dodge/burn/B&W made super-easy) let me do with my thumb in five minutes what would have otherwise taken hours in PhotoShop — and to the same net effect. This part is key. The most fun element of DA for me was the community interaction/comments, and it's still there in Instagram, super-fast, and in the same spirit... while my creation tools are always in my pocket, ready wherever I'm at. There are a couple of DA browsing apps I might explore for inspiration, and I still recommend the site for all the same reasons (they have a solid mobile version), but I'm not going to be losing interest in Instagram anytime soon. Come say hi sometime; I'll be over there as rsmithing.

Cats, flowers, architecture all figure prominently in my Instagram feed. Viewable here at Statigram.

What do you think is the most interesting aspect of Instagram? Where do you think it will be a year from now? Have you found yourself recently inspired or newly fascinated by/addicted to mobile photography? Tell us your experiences in the comments!