Chris K Jennings Web Development

I took a moment earlier today to talk about some of the thought behind Disqus’ new theme, Houdini.

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time in Cinema 4d. Since I haven’t had a lot of time to write articles for this blog, I’ve decided I can upload smaller, less wordy updates in the form of screen shots of things I’m working on.

Thanks to tutorials from blogs like Greyscale Gorilla and Pariah Studios, this render comes to you only two weeks into my time with C4D.

This past Friday was my last day at Scrapblog.

After spending some time with the team, I have decided to take the next step in my career by joining Daniel Ha, Jason Yan and the rest of the team at Disqus. As you can imagine, I am absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to work on such a renowned product as the only designer on the now 8-person team.

As Director of User Experience, it will be my job to address an evolving set of design challenges head on, as well as curate the Disqus brand and experience across several products and implementations, both new and old. I will also be actively collecting feedback and ideas for features, UI, etc to make sure your goals as users are met with every decision.

It is important to note that without the experiences gained from the fantastic team at Scrapblog, this opportunity would have never happened — thank you for your support and guidance.

Challenges await me Monday that excite me enough to know without a doubt that this was a fit too good to pass up.

See you in the comments.

After following a career to the Miami / Fort Lauderdale area, the time has come once again to pack up my things and continue this journey. Scrapblog, the leading destination site for online scrapbooking, and where I call home, is uprooting it’s Miami-based office and relocating entirely to Downtown San Francisco.

During my stay here I have gained an incredible amount of experience from two great companies. Furthermore, I have had the pleasure of meeting and learning from many outstanding people in South Florida — several who will certainly be life-long friends.

Although bittersweet, I’ve always known that one day I would have to make the move to the land of burritos, and I can’t think of a better way than with a company like Scrapblog.

Thanks for everything South Florida. Come visit.

My user experience director and closet role model, Mike Gowen, is pulling up the anchor and heading out west to follow new opportunities. I have learned an ungodly amount from Mike over the last 8 months and it’s safe to say that we’ll all miss him dearly at Scrapblog.

Although bittersweet, Mike’s move has opened up the Director of User Experience position, leaving yours truly to officially take the reigns upon return of my vacation on September 1st. This is a very exciting time for me and I am honored to be regarded so highly by my colleagues and the Scrapblog board to even be considered.

Mike has left some very big shoes to fill, but it’s an incredible opportunity to be given the chance to grow into them.

This blog design has recently received a ton of unexpected coverage throughout the internet. One of my favorite pieces comes from the nice guys at Unmatched Style who have (possibly unknowingly) awarded me with my very first video review. Make sure you check it out, and more importantly vote it up , right here.

After several failed attempts over the years, I have finally secured ChrisJennings.com and have retired the ChrisKJennings.com domain. Visiting the old domain should properly redirect you here, but let me know if you experience any issues while browsing the site.

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt. Licensed under Creative Commons.

This is a follow-up to the post entitled The anatomy of a thief.

First of all, I want to thank everyone from Twitter, Reddit and even Blog Wolkanca for your advice and support with this matter.  For the record, I have nothing but love for the Turkish people and I apologize wholeheartedly if anything was lost in translation to suggest that I thought you were all thieves.  I don’t!

As promised, here is an update as well as some advice to you creatives out there regarding yesterday’s events.

At 9:30PM EST last night, only moments after I submitted my formal DMCA complaint, Dreamhost completely shut down blog.wolkanca.com and wolkanca.com. This complete and immediate denial of service was a welcome site, although it made it clear to me how the DMCA could be abused rather easily in other, more shady situations.  Wolkanca was allowed to come back online today, but now sports a much different look with Kubrick, the default theme shipped with WordPress. Score!

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned from this:

• You have the right to stand up for yourself when your work is stolen.  Plain and simple.  It doesn’t matter if the offender is in another country or if they are not directly competing with you.  Stealing is stealing.  This goes for unauthorized derivative works, too.  Stealing the Mona Lisa and drawing a mustache on her does not make it yours.
• The DMCA is real and very effective, especially for US based web hosts.  They know they could be held liable for damages if the matter isn’t addressed promptly.
• You can play nice, but you don’t have to.  If you find an unauthorized copy of your work, there is nothing that says you have to give them a warning.  I attempted to be considerate, but you can see how that was received.
• Make things public and transparent.  Smart people make smart judgements and give great advice.  The bigger the conversation gets, the clearer the resolution becomes.
• Make sure you can back it up.  You make these claims under penalty of perjury, so it’s best that you have your ducks in a row.
• You don’t have to stop at the web host.  You can contact multiple departments at Google to remove the offending site from their index, as well as Adsense, Adwords, etc.

And finally, If you are ever unfortunate enough to go through this, here’s a DMCA template that will help you formalize your complaint. As you can see, it worked for me.  Good luck!

Yesterday I awoke to over 20 emails sent from my contact form pointing to Volkan Yilmaz’s site http://blog.wolkanca.com (i will not link to him here), pointing out his blatant and horrific rendition of this blog design.

Although I don’t speak Turkish, it was explained to me that he was called out on FriendFeed and his response was that I stole the design from him.

Thanks @spacyT for the screenshot.

With things like this, it’s always best to keep a cool head.  It wasn’t too long ago as a young designer that I was accused of being a bit too liberal with a technique being used by one of my favorite designers.  Stuff like that happens… you correct your mistake, ask for forgiveness and move on. I sent a polite request for him to remove the design in a timely manner.  He responded via Twitter (also acknowledging my friends who called him out):

volkanyilmaz

Being liberal with one’s influence is one thing, but visiting a site copying the entire layout / images / html / and css is just plain obnoxious.

Fortunately for copyright owners in the United States we have what we call the Digital Millenium Copyright Act that protects our works from such attrocities.  Mr. Yilmaz’s sites are all hosted at Dreamhost.com, a California based company that will be held liable for the copyright violations if the site remains active.

Thanks for everyone who has helped me make this public and supported my case, I will continue to keep everyone informed of the progress if I can be so lucky that there is any.

UPDATE: This issue has been resolved with the offending site’s web host.  Please read this post, Someone stole my design, now what?, for updates and details of the resolution.

Follow me and the developments of this story on Twitter

Ben Hopkins (aka kode80), a former co-worker of mine and all around great guy, has completely outdone himself with a new iPhone app called EatWillGrow.  EatWillGrow is an addictive, play-me-whenever type game with a super low barrier to entry.  I pick it up on lunch breaks, commutes or whenever else I have nothing to keep my hands moving.  The app has received great reviews all around the web and has caught the attention of internet celebrities such as Louis Gray and Bwana.TV due to it’s unique ability to “Tweet” your high-score.  This feature will ‘@ reply’ the player you beat and will likely give them a reason to try to reclaim their spot.  I also like that when I’m not playing, I can still see my current high-score rank as a badge on the EatWillGrow icon.

My #EatWillGrow high-score featured on LouisGray.com

A little known fact with huge implications is that the high-scores table is generated and kept up to date from the last 100 high scores on Twitter, making Twitter the backbone of this unique social experience.

My high-score tweet was chosen by Louis Gray for the screenshot he used in his article making me instantly #EatWillGrow famous.  Mr. Hopkins I appreciate every opportunity to ride your coat-tails.

UPDATE:

The next update will allow you to control the game by the iPhone’s accelerometer.  Here’s a sneak preview of the gameplay.