audeemirza: Hello Thomas, thank you very much for taking the time to start this interview with us. Could you please introduce yourself for anyone who may not know you?
share.brain: Hi Audee, my name is Thomas and I run ShareBrain.info. I am 34 years old/young spend most of my time on my computer, have no dogs or cats and love to eat. My main work can be seen here Lockruf.com
Read More
audeemirza: ShareBrain is a resource website for web workers created by you. Can you tell us a little about how it started and when?
share.brain: It started in November 2007 after some of my friends asked me questions like "hey, where can I find ...." or "Hey Thomas, I know that you know where to find...". So I just had to stop this asking and so that was how ShareBrain was born. But don’t get me wrong, because I still love talking with them
audeemirza: What makes ShareBrain different than any other resource websites?
share.brain: I really don’t know .... Our readers must decide that. Maybe its the combination of daily updated resources along with tutorials, a css-showcase, interviews and community news. I think it has a lot of content that is interesting for a lot of web workers out there. Knowledge & Inspiration.
share.brain: what do you think is the difference?
audeemirza: I think, it should be because you've been publishing daily review with quality
share.brain: there you have it!
audeemirza: ShareBrain has a different look today, which we think is so cool and refreshing. Please share with us the story behind the make over, from classic red theme and then suddenly going grey and clean!
share.brain: working on ShareBrain is a daily process ... so if you look at a project over and over again you notice things that are good and things that are bad. ShareBrain has one main focus: "the content". With the old red layout I thought the "red" color theme could be "too strong" and it didn’t make it easy to focus on the content. So I wanted to create a layout that makes it easy for our readers to focus on the content with descent colors scheme.
Another problem is how to structure so much content like we have on ShareBrain ... in the beginning we had over 120 categories, and in time I realized "OMG ... that is way to much" ... so we worked on that too ....
Now there are only 5 "main categories" left with 60 "sub-categories" included
audeemirza: “Off time” work…what do you do when you are away from your computer?
share.brain: I am a musician too.... I play the drums for about 20 years and i was a "drum instructor" some years ago and played with a lot of bands from "50s & 60s big band rock n roll" to "punk". But sometimes in life you have to decide what you want to do ... it was all getting to much "practise & play", "giving concerts", "regular work", "side-projects like ShareBrain" ... so I decided to give up drumming for some time. Sad but true, so sometimes I feel like an "old man" and in my free time I enjoy being around with my girl friend and friends. Beside that, I am also addicted to "TV-series" .... and music of course !!!!
audeemirza: WOW
share.brain: wow ?
audeemirza: I didn't know that you are actually a drummer... I mean: cool!
share.brain: yeah it is.... Another reason why I stopped, was also because the guitar player always get the girls LOL
audeemirza: :))
audeemirza: Everyday you are working seriously to update the ShareBrain journal and having new resourceful websites to be submitted. I wonder if you have sort of favorite and inspirational (regular) blog rolls to visit, would you care to share if there is any?
share.brain: I really love reading my feeds list. I have about 600 feeds which I follow. Most of the resources I follow can be found on ShareBrain
audeemirza: Is Graphic Identity Blog belong to your feed reader list too? LOL
share.brain: yes, definitely!
audeemirza:
audeemirza: Is there any particular recent design jobs that drive yourself into challenging situation?
share.brain: in normal work: every design job does. The challenge is not just to create something to please our client, but to create something that will please your client's customer as well
audeemirza: Why you don't have any dog or cat?
share.brain: I think if you have a pet you must be able to take care of it, and I have no time to do so.
hmmm...maybe I should get myself a "rat" or an "earthworm" ... I guess I don’t need that much time taking care of them
audeemirza: but if it is possible for you to keep one, which one you love the most? cat or dog?
)share.brain: dog
audeemirza: nice....
audeemirza: You said you are a "TV-series" addict! Is this why you end up with a brilliant round up article titled: 50 Movie Posters for Your Graphical Inspiration? share.brain: yeah of course ...for example I love to watch movie trailers. I think "movie trailers" are some of the underrated creative things around. This is the same as with movie posters. You only have a few seconds to get the attention of the viewer and sometimes I look at a "trailer" or a "poster" and think to myself "WOW... this is so good". They can say so much with no words. Or just few words
audeemirza: true! Graphic tells more than words can say
share.brain: yeah right
audeemirza: We were discussing the idea of ShareBrain’s regular interview before the first launch…, I had some arguments when you mentioned that it would be published with the same questions of interview over respectable designers on internet. But finally, it is truly amazing to know that this kind interview reveal how many designers response differently to each of the question. What is your opinion about this?
share.brain: I always know that it would be interesting to read different answers to the same questions.
And I agree with you (it is truly amazing): it works! share.brain: oh.. One thing that makes ShareBrain different from other sites is our RSS feed. We hacked our feed so the readers of the feed always can see in which category a post was made. So we hope it can be a time saver for our readers when they surf down ShareBrain
audeemirza: That is smart thing! Ever!
Well thank you for the nice chat Thomas!
We are planning to post another chat with Thomas! As some of you have probably knew that he is launching a new social media bookmark website called Devmarks.com ~ This web spot is dedicated for web designers and web developers to share articles related to their specialities. Hopefully we can bring this topic for the upcoming chat with Thomas!
hi audee,
ReplyDeleteoh you published it yet :-) well i have to say thank you for this nice talk :) and of course we can do a second part if your readers want to read more ... :)