code clicks ‘n’ caffeine

If you happen to be a photog and want to publish or showcase your photographs, there are “comparatively” very few options available when it comes to wordpress themes. Most of the wordpress themes put emphasis on text with the ability to add photographs but they are not optimized to showcase them. 

A photoblog is optimized for photographs or digital creation with very little attention to the text. Like a photographer who keeps the background out of focus and avoids clutter while composing a portrait, photoblog needs a very clean and clutter free theme to provide more attention to the images. Also, there are many ways people would want to showcase their images, some would like their images framed, or sharing an entire gallery with a slideshow, some might like to showcase them big (atleast 800×600), or on a black background.

Here’s a list of such wordpress themes (free) which are actually good for publishing photographs or images in some form of a photoblog.

Photo-Blog wordpress theme

• Specially made for photo blogs
• Single column design
• Unique design
• xhtml valid
• Widget ready
• Collapsible navigation
• Minimalistic design

PhotoBlog

• simple
• single column
• fixed width
• minimalistic design
• supports changing the background color to enhance the Photo

Nishita

A very simple and elegant PhotoBlog theme.

Nautilus

Grain

PhotoWP

Click – Polaroid – Simplet – Spotless - MonoTone

• These are more or less same and provide a neat experience for showcasing photos.
• Single Column
• Very simplistic
• Clean designs
• Dark backgrounds and borders
• supports image size of 640×480, could be increased by editing the css.

Apart from these themes there are some wordpress plugins which will be of great help

1. YAPB (Yet another Photoblog plugin), There is a list of some free themes here which support this plugin.  

2. PhotoQ

On the last note, if you use wordpress for your blog and interested in maintaining a photoblog the Photoblogs and Galleries page is pretty good to start.

Boondh – A drop of Jal

A failed attempt to repeat the success of their first album which lacks lyrics and melody. Looks mostly a collection of left overs songs from their first album except the track “Sajni” and all the other tracks lack something or the other.

Anyway there was a huge controversy over their first album too which most of us knew were (copied from Atif’s) composed when Atif was part of the band. I somehow expect a lot and would have a bought the original CD just going by their reputation from their first album but they fail miserably and no brownie points to guess that i will saving my 100 bucks for something good.

Rating – 2 stars

 

Taare Zameen Par – A must watch movie. Perfectly crafted and a wonderful message to the society with beautiful background score and amazing performances. Definitely the finest movie of 2007 and an Oscar nominee from India.

Aamir Khan does it again, despite being his first stint at production and direction he does it all beautifully, Prasoon Joshi proves again that he can do magic with simple words and I personally loved the touching lyrics of the track ‘Maa’. Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy as always presented a perfect music which gels with the movie.

But the best part was the child artist Darsheel Safary, he was simply amazing and does a wonderful job.   

Rating – 4.5 stars

If you haven’t seen it, go watch it today. If you have already, go watch it again

Its been long time since I have been hooked on to a window mobile device and been trying a lot of mobile software and some are worth a mention. Always wanted to post a review of software which I tried/liked or loved but somehow didn’t manage to find enuf time. Will try to make smaller and smarter posts of only the ones which are good or worth a mention.

This time its just home screens (utility software which can change the look and customize your first screen) which can work wonders if you customize them properly. One can get a lot of info just on the top screen, like unread sms’s (recent 3 or any number), unread mails (recent 2-3 mails or so), next meeting time and location, upcoming birthdays, stock quotes, weather in the city, rss feeds etc. etc

Lets get on to the list and not waste time

SPB Pocket Plus (The best available software for WM in this category)

SPB Pocket Plus 4.0 has just been released and it is truly a time saver if you use your mobile a lot.

Check the video demo for the possibilities and new features. The best features in my opinion will be the customizable today screen (icons and shortcuts), tabbed browsing in IE, smart scrolling, Close button extension and Better file handling which includes zip support. I would suggest going through this review on unwired once to realize the full capabilities and to the extent you can customize with tons of icons and settings.

SBSH iLauncher (a similar looking one but not that great other than the home screen)

Goodwin Pocket PC home screen

iPhone home screen for PPC

This post wont be complete without the mention of this home screen which is like God for all the pocket pc junkies who just care for looks. Yo baby, check out this cool video and see for yourself.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much to pretty up the exterior of the device, but it does manage to successfully emulate some of the iPhone’s more notable *bells ‘n’ whistles*, including its trademark finger-touch scrolling, its slide-to-lock feature, and its now-familiar menu system, all of which was apparently written in PPL (Pocket Programming Language).

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