Voting for next year’s SXSW panels opened this week. I submitted an idea called Collaboration Nation: How Side-Projects Can Keep You Relevant that will discuss topics such as ways to collaborate, how to balance a side project amidst your work and home life, and how the process of working on something for yourself can be personally and professionally rewarding. If that sounds interesting to you then I’d greatly appreciate you taking a few minutes to vote for it.

There have been more submissions this year than ever before and browsing through all of the options is daunting. Noah recently posted a few that caught his eye and I’d recommend checking them out as I think they sound solid as well. In addition several of my coworkers at Springbox submitted proposals that cover a variety of topics.

Next year will be my 4th SXSW and I’m already looking forward to it. It’s 5 full days of content and conversations. Go if you haven’t before!

A splash page for Method & Craft, a site I’m currently building, went live yesterday. Doesn’t show too much, but it does provide a small glimpse into what it’s focus will be. I’m excited about the progress I’m making and have to thank Noah Stokes, Trent Walton, and Gerren Lamson for their insight along the way (as well as Noah’s coding mastery). There’s more to come on this. Follow @methodandcraft for the latest developments.

SlideShowPro has a long-standing presence in the image and video gallery industry and I would say is one of the premiere options available. I’ve used it a few times and have watched it mature into a highly capable gallery viewer powered by a robust CMS. Up until this point SlideShowPro has run solely on the Flash platform. When news came out a few months back from Apple that the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch wouldn’t support the Flash plug-in, SlideShowPro issued a statement saying they promised to “…continue to develop products that solved real problems for our customers, regardless of technology or how people accessed the internet.” In making good on that promise, they recently demoed their mobile version of SlideShowPro built entirely in HTML5.

SlideShowPro has always exuded an elegance in it’s presentation and this new mobile version continues that tradition. Since the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch are all multi-touch devices, the team behind SlideShowPro built this new mobile version for that type of user interaction. In the demo video you hear how they took into consideration the interactions users have grown accustomed to in regards to these devices, particularly with navigating through their media. You can tell they wanted the experience to be familiar for iDevice users, yet still remaining consistent with the navigation structure native to SlideShowPro. The result in my opinion is the best of both worlds. Swiping through photos feels very “Photos App-esque” and the ability to pull up the photo drawer and select different galleries like you would in SlideShowPro looks natural on these devices.

I’m also impressed with how fluid everything looks. Swiping through images, the progressive loading, and navigation controls look amazing. I think the benefit of living in the Flash world for so long is definitely paying off with how they’ve built this player in HTML5. All of the movements look natural and organic.

Kudos to the team behind SlideShowPro for not only building what looks to be a beautiful evolution of an already stellar product, but for dedicating their energy into meeting the needs of their clients rather than wasting it in the great Flash vs HTML5 debate.

I haven’t visited the Concept Ships blog in awhile and wow, a re-visit there never fails to inspire me. Studying images like these teaches me a lot about composition, mood, and color. Lovely, lovely stuff!

I created iPad versions of my World Cup iPhone Wallpapers. These are designed for the lock screen while the Football Pitch wallpaper I created last week is made for the home screen. I don’t have all 12 as I did last time as some of the logos I had for the iPhone versions weren’t large enough for the iPad. However just like with the iPhone wallpapers I’ve posted the PSD so you can create one for your country. If you do, please post a link to it in the comments for others to enjoy.

Argentina
Brazil
England
Germany
Italy
Mexico
Netherlands
Portugal
Spain
USA

I made an iPad version of the football pitch iPhone wallpaper I posted yesterday:

Football Pitch – iPad

If you’re already running iOS4 and therefore have the ability to add a wallpaper to your home screen, then grab this wallpaper of a football pitch as a companion to my World Cup wallpapers:

Football Pitch

I created this one at the new size of 960 x 640 since iPhone 4 is coming before the World Cup ends. Not sure I’ll have time to recreate the country wallpapers at that size, but if by chance I do I’ll be sure to post an update.