With Instagram, I was a late adopter. Maybe it was resistance to using the iPhone as my primary camera, or filters anyone can use, or the idea that I actually would want to see my friend’s photos, but it took me a long time to warm up to Instagram. Over Thanksgiving, I spent some time on my grandfather’s farm in rural Illinois and began to see the appeal and have since become addicted to the app and now check it as much, if not more than Facebook and Twitter.

Since Instagram has no real native web presence (aside from a simple single photo viewer) I set about looking for a plugin to pull in my most recent photos and found Instapress.

With Instapress, the WordPress admin can select any feed and choose how many images to display, whether to show the picture’s title or not, and whether to use a lightbox to display your images inline or not. The plugin is extremely flexible and can be used as a shortcode in a post to show a single image, as a sidebar widget, or can be embedded in a page with a single line of code. So far I’ve been extremely happy with its reliability and simplicity and highly recommend it to anyone looking for an easy way to integrate Instagram into their WordPress Blog.

Read more about Instapress here.

Check out my most recent Instagram photos here.

This week I received my first print from Canvaspop, a service that prints your Instagram photos on canvas, and I am impressed. The process was simply – login to the site, connect to Instagram and buy a print at pre defined sizes. There is even a LivingSocial deal going on right now where you can get $100 worth of printing for $40. The photo above is 12×12, printed on think canvas with a sturdy frame. I highly recommend the service for people looking to bring their digital photos analog.

Get the LivingSocial deal for a limited time.

Check out canvaspop.com.

Shepard Fairey installing a new piece in Williamsburg on the corner of Keap and Hope.

I rarely have posts that are just links to other design sites, but this is an exception. Almost every post curated by Graphic-Exchange.com is award worthy and it makes up one of the best design collections I’ve seen on the web. A great resource for designers of any kind and an endless source or inspiration.

Check out Graphic-Exchange.com here.

Pinterest is a bookmarking tool, introduced to me by Jenny Bowskill, that operates like a visual pinboard – letting you save images you like and follow people who share your aesthetics. Users set up categories (known as boards) and pin images by clicking a browser plugin or bookmarklet. Unlike some visual collections, a link to the original is always preserved, but a poster image is saved on Pinterest should the original change. The site also functions as a stream of images which you can repin, like or comment on. Pinterest is well thought out, easy to use, and its unique user interface has already been the subject of (accused) imitation by the new Myspace.

Visit my Pinterest profile.

Check out Pinterest here.

View the Fast Company design site here.

Follow @fastcodesign here.

Kickstarter is an amazing service for getting creative projects funded. I first discovered the site through the Designing Obama project, a beautiful book cataloguing the innovative visuals both online and offline for the Obama Presidential campaign.

Kickstarter projects are broken up into multiple tiers with different price points and rewards for each. People can contribute to a project in the amount they feel comfortable with, and will receive different rewards for the different price points. Think of it as the NPR model taken to the next level. And if the project hits its funding goal it gets produced. Simple.

Check out the Kickstarter site.

Read about the Designing Obama Kickstarter campaign.

Find out more about the current state of the Designing Obama project.

Notable is a web and iPhone based service that allows team members to easily share feedback on all aspects of a website. To start a discussion you create a new project called a capture, or a set to hold multiple captures. Captures can be created from a url, by uploading an image, from an iPhone screenshot or from a Firefox Plugin. After creating a capture your team can comment on the page’s design, code, copy or seo. Users can also output the results to a PDF, email, public or private urls.

Design

When uploading a jpg, or a capture from a url, Notable creates and stores a full page screenshot of your webpage. Multiple users can create transparent boxes with comments on top of the page giving the designer consolidated visual feedback.

Code

Code view is organized by html, css and javascript. You can isolate each source file and highlight lines of code by clicking and filling out a pop-up comment box.

Copy

The copy tab removes all graphics and markup from your page and reproduces the page as plain text. Unlike code view, you can highlight individual characters or words for comment.

SEO

The SEO tab analyzes how search engines see your page and only displays relevant content. The left column contains a list of keywords and keyword phrases appearing on your page. The right column breaks down the page by metadata, headers, first 100 words used on the page, bold/strong elements, alt tags and outbound links giving you a thorough view of how a search engine sees your site.

Pricing plans for Notable range from free to $119 a month based on the number of users and the total amount of storage needed. Notable is one of the most thorough site markup tools on the market allowing you to give feedback on site design, code, copy and seo. Pair that with the companion iPhone application and you have a tool that no production team should be without.

Check out Notable here.

This year I was lucky enough to be a speaker at the first annual Geekend conference. For three days last weekend self proclaimed geeks descended up Savannah Georgia for talks about design, social networking, technology and gaming.

The keynote speaker Friday night was Aaron Draplin from Draplin Design. He set a hilarious, open and friendly vibe that carried through for the rest of the conference. Get the full list of speakers on the Geekend Facebook page.

Saturday I gave a talk entitled “Connecting Fans With Bands” centered around how at Atlantic Records we are using design and new technology to promote our artists. My goal was to shed some light on how a designer can progress from print, to web and eventually to non-traditional devices using my story as a backdrop. I tried to make the talk one part backstory, one part examples and one part how to with some specific dos and don’ts when making the switch.

And after my talk (and more importantly) I had AMAZING BBQ at Angel’s BBQ. In an alley. Behind a church.

All in all it was an amazing time filled with some of the best discussions about design I’ve had in years. I left energized and excited to get back to making work in NYC. I highly recommend checking out the conference next year.

HYPE is a creative coding framework built on top of ActionScript 3. A major goal of HYPE is to allow newcomers to Flash and ActionScript to creatively play and express themselves while they are learning how to program.

Check out HYPE here.