In this article I’m going to give you a very short overview of the three technologies, to help you know the difference.

CSS3

CSS—or cascading stylesheets—is a specification under development. Many features are already supported by modern browsers such as Safari, Firefox, and Chrome (and soon to come: IE9). Let’s have a glance at the W3C’s (those guys who work on developing standards) description of what CSS is:

“CSS is the language for describing the presentation of Web pages, including colors, layout, and fonts.”

Okay, so it’s got something to do with layout. What can you do with CSS? Well, you can style HTML elements. You can animate them. It’s awesome. But it’s not HTML5! I feel tempted to, once again, quote W3C:

“The separation of HTML from CSS makes it easier to maintain sites, share style sheets across pages, and tailor pages to different environments. This is referred to as the separation of structure (or: content) from presentation.”

For me, that settles it. In case it doesn’t for you, separation is the keyword here. We’re separating structure (HTML) from presentation (CSS). Structure. And presentation. Not the same. But equally important.

Even though CSS3 is not HTML5, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t cool. You can do all sorts of amazing stuff with CSS3. So many people have created lists of stunning CSS3 effects, and I’m not going to attempt to do it over again, ’cause they’re all really good.

To learn more about CSS3 and what it does, check out CSS3.info.

JavaScript Frameworks

JavaScript frameworks/libraries/whatever are might popular these days. With relatively few lines of code it’s possible to do Ajax interactions, animations, and a bunch of other stuff. Popular frameworks include jQuery, Prototype, and MooTools—and they all share the same thing: it’s JavaScript. And JavaScript is not HTML5.

You can use JavaScript to enable HTML5 elements in older browsers (check out Modernizr), or you can use it to develop incredible web applications. JavaScript is amazing. Being able to do modifications on a website without reloading it is great. But it isn’t HTML5.

HTML5

“HTML is the language for describing the structure of Web pages.”

Yeah, I’m quoting W3C again. HTML5 is an emerging standard to take over HTML 4 and XHTML 1.1. With focus on structural elements and web application features, HTML5 really is going to be the next big thing. Recently, Apple launched their “HTML5” showcase. What’s funny is, that most examples are actually showcasing CSS3 and JavaScript. And as you all might remember—neither CSS3 nor JavaScript is HTML5.

It seems that HTML5 is becoming the generic term for “cool stuff you can do on the Internet”. I feel sorry for HTML5. It deserves to be recognized for what it is, and what it’s good at. As do CSS3. As do JavaScript. This confusion of concept isn’t doing good for anyone. Few years from now I fear my clients saying: “The design is a little bit boring. Maybe if you add some HTML5 effects…”.

So please, help spread the word: CSS3 is not HTML5. Neither is JavaScript.

Related posts:

1. Create a Cool Messy List with CSS3 and nth-child
2. 5 Cool Ways to Add Graphs to Your Website

But should they be? This post is in not an answer, it is an introduction to discussion—and hopefully reflection.

So, which comment fields do we see in comment forms today?

Name

Name is pretty obvious. We need a name to know who writes the comment.

E-mail

Is the e-mail field necessary? Well, many websites uses an e-mail field in the fight against spam. But is that really necessary? Most spam bots can figure out how to put an ‘@’ between two words in order to cheat. Still, it’s better to have a little security than none at all.

Website

In this field, the user can put the URL to their website—if they have one. Most people that visit my website don’t have a website—at least they don’t write the URL in the website field.

Comment

This field is of course obvious, as it is the comment itself.

So, these four fields are the basics of a standard comment form. But what could we else be needing? Let’s look at where we might be able to improve.

Headlines

Why not give your users the possibility to give their comment a headline? It, of course, depends on each website, but headlines can be a good way to summarize a comment, and help people find the comment they are looking for a lot faster.

Age

Depending on your site’s topic, age might be a good field to add. It might even replace the name field in case the site is based on the anonymity of the user.

Gender

Like with age, a site allowing you to be anonymous would be a good place to use a gender field in your comment section.

Social media

Social media is here to stay. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc., social media connects people. And even though the primary function of a comment section on a website is not to connect people, I don’t see why we can’t add to social media by letting our users link to their social media accounts in a comment form.

Let your users write the URL to their Facebook account, their Flickr user name, their Last.fm account, whatever! Still, you shouldn’t let it get too clumsy by filling the comments up with way too much information. If there’s no need to let them write it, don’t give them the option.

If those reading the comment find one comment particularily interesting, it is very easy to get in touch with the person who wrote it, as the e-mail address isn’t public.

Category

You might want your users to give different categories of comments, such as review, support, criticism, etc. The comments can be styled in different colors or within tabs. A great example of this is The Idea Shower, as seen in the picture below.

Final Thoughts

Remember, before everything, that you shouldn’t add a field if there is no use for them. The most important part of the comment is the comment itself—don’t confuse your visitors with too much information; you still want your comments to be readable.

This was my thoughts about adding new fields to a comment form. What do you think? Do you think it should stay the way it is or should we take advantage of being able to make every comment form different? Please write you comment in the standard comment form below…

Related posts:

1. How to Use Directions with Google Maps API V3
2. Which Social Networks Are You Part Of?
3. 5 Ways to Make Money with Your Blog

BuySellAds

BuySellAds is a very popular ad network that helps advertisers and publishers communicate. They have some very simple rules to follow to ensure the quality of the sites the ads are placed. First of all, the service evolves around design and tech sites with more than 100.000 impressions per month, which narrows it down a bit. Also, your website has to be in English. Many popular websites, such as the Tuts+ Network, use this network.
Visit BuySellAds

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is by far the most popular ad network in the world. It is very easy to setup &emdash; in less than 5 minutes, you will have working ads on your website. It takes a lot of visitors to make real money out of this, but it is definitely possible. You can use AdSense both to place ads on your website, in your e-mail newsletters, in your search results, and in your feeds.
Visit Google AdSense

TradeDoubler

TradeDoubler was founded in Sweden in 1999, and since then, it has grown to a very large marketing company. When you sign up, you will have to get your website accepted, and when you want to place ads, the companies will also have to accept your site as relevant for their products. Even though this might seem like a huge process, it can be well worth it. Some large companies, such as Apple and Dell, sell their ads here.
Visit TradeDoubler

Amazon

Amazon.com Associates puts Amazon products on your website, and allows you to make money from it. When people buy after following a link from your blog, you will get up to 15 %.
Visit Amazon.com Associates

Donations

If you’d like you can also ask your users for donation. That can be a great idea if you give away lots of free stuff. Most people won’t give you anything, but others will gladly spare a dime to help you out. For this purpose, you can use for instance PayPal. Instead of money, you can also ask for a beer.

I hope this article has given you a short glimpse into some different methods of earning money with your blog. Which services do you use, if any? Please share in the comments.

Related posts:

1. 5 Cool Ways to Add Graphs to Your Website
2. Should Comment Forms Have More Fields?
3. Great Designers to get Inspired by

Basically, you have two main options; You can use Flash, or you can use jQuery. What you prefer is entirely up to you, but I’d like to show you some of the possibilities within each technology.

Open Flash Chart

An example of a bar chart made with Open Flash Chart

Open Flash Chart is—as the name states—a Flash chart. If you run a WordPress blog, you might know it from the WordPress.com Stats Plugin. It is open source, and there are lots of customization options. You can make almost any kind of chart you can imagine, and it’s fairly easy to setup if you just follow the tutorials on the Open Flash Chart website. With the new Open Flash Chart 2, you can even use it with jQuery and save your graphs as images. To see examples, and to read the tutorials, visit the Open Flash Chart website.

Flot

An example of a Flot graph

Next up is Flot, a jQuery based method for implementing graphs. It is hosted at Google Code, and it works in all the major browsers (including IE6). It comes with a great bunch of examples, but the documentation could be better. The output of Flot will be a static image.

jQuery Visualize Plugin

An example of the jQuery Visualize Plugin.

This jQuery plugin helps you implement dynamic charts into your website without using Flash. Using the HTML5 canvas element it is possible to create great-looking charts without using even images. There’s a very thorough tutorial at the site that helps you set it all up. Also, it works in every major browser.

jQuery SVG

An example of a bar graph made using jQuery SVG

This is yet another jQuery plugin called jQuery SVG. It uses SVG, a language “for describing two-dimensional graphics in XML”. SVG is supported in most browsers. Actually, it is not only a graphing plugin. You can use it to create advanced graphics on your website such as text paths. Still, for graphs it is very usable.

Google Chart API

An example of a map chart made with Google Chart API

The last method is Google’s own Chart API. It is very simple, and all you get is static images. But the static images are cool. You can easily create world maps with selected countries colored in your choice of color. As with almost every Google project, the documentation is awesome. You’ll get some very fine looking graphs with little effort, and everything is customizable.

Conclusion

Now to the big question: Which method is the best? I don’t know. I guess it’s all about taste and what you need it for. But similar for the five mentioned methods is that you have some very great, free resources that easily lets you implement graphs into your website.

Related posts:

1. Adding Custom Google Maps to Your Website
2. 5 Ways to Make Money with Your Blog
3. CSS3 is Not Freaking HTML5

Before we start, check out what we are going to create:

Now, here is an overview:

Overview

• Google Maps API
• Getting the Coordinates
• Adding the Map to Your Website
• Adding Markers
• Customizing the Markers
• Adding Infoboxes
• Download

Google Maps API

The Google Maps API allows you to embed maps directly into your website. All it takes is a little JavaScript, and for beautifying—a little CSS. Version 3 of the Google Maps API has just been released, and of course, that is what we will be using here. You can read the entire documentation over at Google Labs, and while you are there, be sure to get an API key.

Getting the Coordinates

As I do not expect you to know the precise coordinates of your location, I will explain a very quick way Google has provided to do this. When you know the exact address, you can put it in an URL of this form:

http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=1+Infinite Liip,+Cupertino,+CA+95014,+USA&output=csv&oe=utf8&sensor=false&key=your_google_maps_api_key

When you enter this in your address bar, you will see this:

The coordinates of Apple's head quarter in Cupertino

The first number is the status code, and 200 means that everything is okay. The second number shows how accurate the address is—in this case the number is 8, which is good. The last two numbers are latitudes and longitudes, which are the numbers we need.

Adding the Map to Your Website

There’s no need to hesitate – let’s add that map to your website! Open your favorite HTML editor and create a standard HTML file with UTF-8 encoding. First of all, we have to create the viewport and tell our HTML file to get the JavaScript file from Google Code. Add these lines between <head> and </head>:

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<meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false"></script>

After the URL, you will notice sensor=false. As we do not use any sensor, such as a GPS, to locate the location, this is set to false.

Just below what we have just inserted, write the following:

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<script type="text/javascript">
	function initialize() {
		var latlng = new google.maps.LatLng(57.0442, 9.9116);
		var settings = {
			zoom: 15,
			center: latlng,
			mapTypeControl: true,
			mapTypeControlOptions: {style: google.maps.MapTypeControlStyle.DROPDOWN_MENU},
			navigationControl: true,
			navigationControlOptions: {style: google.maps.NavigationControlStyle.SMALL},
			mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP
    };

Let’s split this up to ensure that we understand it fully. In line 2 we create the function initialize(). Inside this function we are going to define the basic settings of the map. In line 3 we create a new variable, latlng. latlng stands for latitudes and longitudes. The variable contains the coordinates we’re going to use as the center of our map.
After that, we create the variable settings. You have a lot of options here.

zoom specifies—you guessed it—how far the map will be zoomed in. Play around with the number to get it to fit your location.

center specifies our center. By writing latlng, we refer to the variable we created earlier, and the coordinate inside that will be used.

The last code changes the layout of the map to a bit more minimalistic look in my opinion. The controls in the upper right corner (Map, Satellite, Terrain) are changed to a drop down menu, and the scaling/navigation controls in the left size are changed to small controls.

mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP defines that our map should be of the type ROADMAP – you can change this to either SATELLITE, HYBRID or TERRAIN.

Below the previous code, write this:

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var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"), settings);

This code creates the variable map, and defines that the map should use the settings we just created.

Write

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}
</script>

to end the function, and move to <body>, and write this:

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<body onload="initialize()">
  <div id="map_canvas" style="width:800px; height:500px"></div>
</body>

By doing this we are telling our site to execute the initialize() function when the site is loaded, and insert a <div> with the size we want our map to be.

Try to view your site now. Cool, isn’t it?

Adding Markers

Now we have to add some markers. Let’s start by creating a standard marker—we’ll customize it in a moment.

Right below

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var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"), settings);

insert the following code:

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  var companyPos = new google.maps.LatLng(57.0442, 9.9116);
  var companyMarker = new google.maps.Marker({
      position: companyPos,
      map: map,
      title:"Some title"
  });

Try to update your page, and watch the magic. So, what have we done?

First, we create the variable companyPos, where we specify the position of the marker. Next, we create the marker itself using the variable companyMarker. You can add more settings than these, but we will get to that later. These settings are fairly logical, so I won’t go into more depth with them.

Customizing the Markers

Even though this could be enough to show your customer how to find you, we can still make it a lot nicer. Create an image in Photoshop with the size 100×50 pixels, and create something similar to this:

Create your logo

Next, create a shadow for your image:

The logo shadow

To add these images as a marker instead of the standard marker, change the marker code to this:

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var companyLogo = new google.maps.MarkerImage('images/logo.png',
	new google.maps.Size(100,50),
	new google.maps.Point(0,0),
	new google.maps.Point(50,50)
);
var companyShadow = new google.maps.MarkerImage('images/logo_shadow.png',
	new google.maps.Size(130,50),
	new google.maps.Point(0,0),
	new google.maps.Point(65, 50)
);
var companyPos = new google.maps.LatLng(57.0442, 9.9116);
var companyMarker = new google.maps.Marker({
	position: companyPos,
	map: map,
	icon: companyLogo,
	shadow: companyShadow,
	title:"Company Title"
});

What we have done here is also really simple. The variable companyImage points to the name of the logo image. Then it defines the size of the image, the origin of the image, and the tip of the image (where the image will be attached to the coordinate). Next, we do the exact same thing for the shadow in the variable companyShadow. In our companyMarker variable we add icon and shadow, and that is basically it.

Now, if you refresh your site, you will se that the marker has changed into your own logo with an added shadow to it as well. To add more markers, you just follow the same method (remember to change the names of the variables).

If you have two markers very close to each other, you might want to add some z-index. The marker with the highest z-index, is the one on top:

Adding zIndex allows you to choose which marker should be on top

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var companyMarker = new google.maps.Marker({
	position: companyPos,
	map: map,
	icon: companyImage,
	shadow: companyShadow,
	title:"Høgenhaug",
	zIndex: 4
});

Adding Infoboxes

To add a description of your company when the visitor clicks on the logo we can add a infobox. With the Google Maps API it’s peace of cake.

Clicking your company logo will bring up an infobox

Paste this code right after you define the map variable:

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var contentString = '<div id="content">'+
    '<div id="siteNotice">'+
    '</div>'+
    '<h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">Høgenhaug</h1>'+
    '<div id="bodyContent">'+
    '<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.</p>'+
    '</div>'+
    '</div>';
 
var infowindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow({
    content: contentString
});

The code here is fairly straight-forward, and you are of course not limited to headlines and paragraphs – there is room for images as well. To make the infobox appear when your logo is clicked, simply add this code right before the last } in the initialize() function:

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google.maps.event.addListener(companyMarker, 'click', function() {
  infowindow.open(map,companyMarker);
});

To make the infobox just a little more pretty, add some styles in your stylesheet file:

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body {
	font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
	font-size:10pt;
}

And there you have it. One piece of fine-looking Google Map to include on your company website, your travel blog, etc.

Download

If you’d like to download the sample files, you can get ‘em right here. Be sure to leave a comment!

No related posts.

I’m sure there’s many other apps with cool icons out there, and if you like one in particular, please let me know in the comments.

Espresso ($78)

Now, this icon really makes me wanna lick the screen… The steam from the cup is so delicious! Espresso is MacRabbit’s web development software, and it’s not only the icon that’s nice.

Bodega (free)

Bodega is created by IDFusion Software and Centrix.ca. It is the iPhone App Store for Mac apps. It comes with a stunning interface, and it seems to be growing incredibly fast. And, oh yeah–the icon is great!

ForkLift ($19.95)

Are you as tired of Cyberduck as I am? Then you should try ForkLift. It is an advanced FTP client that is fast, and has all the features you’ll ever need from a FTP client. The interface is beautiful and so is the icon.

MindNode (free)

MindNode is a really cool piece of software. It helps you organize and structure your ideas in really neat mind maps. The icon is nothing I’ve seen before–I love the way the plant comes out of the frame.

QuickTime Player X (free)

With Snow Leopard Apple released QuickTime Player X with an entirely new interface and some cool new features (and unfortunately without some of the very useful features from QuickTime Player 7). Nevertheless, the icon got a complete redesign, and I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks they got pretty well away with it.

Times ($30)

Acrylic has tried to reinvent the RSS reader with their app Times, and I think they succeeded, although for me $30 is a bit too much to spend on a RSS reader. However, the app does feature a beautiful icon.

Coda ($99)

Coda is Panic’s web development client, and has for a long time been the by far most popular web development client as well. Now that Espresso’s out, let’s see what happens. Even though I actually never really understood why the icon is a leaf, I still think it’s a very beautiful icon.

Billings ($56)

Billings is really popular these days. It is a feature packed invoicing app with time billing and it’s very easy to use.

Related posts:

1. 250+ Sweet Icons for Your External Media
2. 5 Cool Ways to Add Graphs to Your Website

Twitter

Twitter is for me the most important social network. It is the place for me to share links to great articles, ask questions about software or design related stuff, and lots of other stuff. If you’re not a member of Twitter, you’re falling behind. Twitter is the fastest growing social network ever with an increase of unique visitors of almost 1400 % in one year. That’s crazy, and the number speaks for itself. Sign up now!

Follow me on Twitter

Facebook

I think I can surely say, that you’re a member of Facebook. If you aren’t—good for you! Facebook has over the last year become more and more commercial. Oh, and there’s also this thing about them owning your pictures (which they, as far as I know, are changing) and using them in advertisements. Still, Facebook is probably where most of your friends are. And in the end, it is a great way of keeping in touch with long distance friends, or just knowing every step they take. A couple of my friends have deactivated their Facebook accounts (you can’t delete it), and I’m considering following in their footsteps, but I don’t think I’m ready yet…

Be my friend at Facebook

Flickr

Until recently, I haven’t really used Flickr as much as I want to. Flickr is a great way of sharing your photos with your family and your friends, or with the world. Flickr became attractive to me the minute I found out that users with free accounts suddenly were able to create more than three sets, a feature that until then only was available for users with pro accounts. I’ve searched for similar photo sharing services, and there’s a lot of different alternatives to Flickr, such as Picasa, Zooomr and Fotonauts, but I just don’t think that any of them can live up to the features and the high standard of photos at Flickr.

Be my contact at Flickr

Vimeo

Vimeo is my new favourite social network. The cool thing about Vimeo over e.g. YouTube, is that it consists of only original videos. The design of the site is amazing, and it’s incredibly easy to use. It’s not as big as YouTube, hence not so immense. There’s a lot of great stuff for inspiration there, and you should definitely check out the Staff Picks channel, where some amazing videos can be found.

Be my contact at Vimeo

Dopplr

I only recently discovered Dopplr, a place to share you travelling experiences and plans. It allows you to plan your trip into details, and find other people who are going the same places as you. You can invite people to follow your trips, so you can keep them updated while you’re away. I haven’t tried this while I’m travelling yet, but I’m looking forward to this summer where my wife and I are spending a month in the states. Who know, maybe Dopplr will come in handy?

Connect with me at Dopplr

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is mostly for work related stuff. It’s a great place to meet new or future colleagues, and some have found their new job through LinkedIn just by knowing people who knows people, who knows people, who… You get the point! Use LinkedIn to build up a large network, and make sure you’re introduced to other peoples’ bosses—maybe they’ll hire you. LinkedIn is you professional identity online, contrary to e.g. Facebook which is… Well, not so professional.

Be my contact at LinkedIn

Social Networks I’m Not a Member Of

If I should pick one social network, that I know for sure I’ll never be a member of, it has to be MySpace. It is very infrequent I find a well-designed MySpace profile. It’s just all too confusing to me. I’ve tried using Last.fm and similar, but they just never fell into my taste. I like owning my own music. i use this, Wakoopa, and other equivalents, are not my style either, but hey, maybe someone like them…

That’s about it for me. Now it’s your turn! Which social networks are you part of? And why? Which social networks will you never sign up to? And why? Please leave you comment below!

Related posts:

1. Should Comment Forms Have More Fields?
2. Great Designers to get Inspired by
3. 5 Ways to Make Money with Your Blog

Nick La

Nick is the owner of Web Designer Wall, and runs N.Design Studio and Best Web Gallery. He has been around for many years, and has apart from a lot of great articles on Web Designer Wall also gotten tutorials posted in magazines.

• Interview with Nick at Web Designer’s Interviews

Collis Ta’eed

Collis is the CEO of the Envato network (if you haven’t heard of that, something’s gone wrong). The network contains Psdtuts+, Nettuts+, and other sites you should have subscribed to in your feed reader already. Collis is a great example of what hard work and making the right decisions can do for your business. As an example, Psdtuts+ has over 50.000 subscribers.

• Interview with Collis at Fuel Your Creativity
• Interview with Collis at Retire@21
• Interview with Collis at WalkMyBusiness
• Follow Collis at Twitter
• The Netsetter

Jacob Cass

Jacob is an amazing designer, running the blog Just Creative Design. He writes some very inspirational blog posts, and also is a very talented designer. One of his very interesting projects is the Graphic Design Group Writing Project, which you should definitely check out.

• Interview with Jacob at Abduzeedo
• Interview with Jacob at Inspiredology
• Interview with Jacob at My Ink Blog
• Interview with Jacob at Colorburned
• Follow Jacob at Twitter

Chris Spooner

Chris is an extremely talented designer with some very thorough tutorials. His blog is very exciting to read as his tutorials are very different from each other. Also, you should check out his personal website, which is a “self-updating social homepage”, as he puts it – a great idea for an online business card. You should also pay a visit to his portfolio site.

• Interview with Chris at Vandelay Design
• Interview with Chris at Inspiredology
• Interview with Chris at Just Creative Design
• Follow Chris at Twitter

Chris Coyier

Chris is the founder of CSS-Tricks, a blog that touches many more subjects than just CSS tricks… Chris makes some amazing screencasts, that you should definitely consider subscribing to. Are My Sites Up? is another great project of Chris’. The concept is very simple – add your site, and receive a notification whenever your site (or your client’s) is down. Also, Chris is behind Script & Style, a link sharing service for design-related articles and ressources.

• Interview with Chris at Nettuts+
• Interview with Chris at DesignM.ag
• Interview with Chris at Snap2Objects
• Follow Chris at Twitter

Who inspires you the most and why? Please share in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Which Social Networks Are You Part Of?
2. 5 Ways to Make Money with Your Blog
3. Should Comment Forms Have More Fields?

Whether you want to use music as a source of inspiration, or if you want to listen to it in a break, music can create wonderful feelings. It can make you review a problem, and maybe find a completely different solution, and lead you in another direction. A break where you listen to some music can make your mind wander far away from what you were doing, allowing to concentrate on nothing but the break. So go listen to some music!

Here are some of the artists I tend to listen to in breaks, while working, when relaxing… You get the picture!

Sigúr Rós

Sigúr Rós is probably my largest inspiration source when it comes to music. It is an Icelandic band, singing in both Icelandic and Hopelandic, a language written by Jónsi Birgisson, the lead singer of the band. Especially the songs written in Hopelandic touch me, because I can put whatever ever meaning I’d like into the words (however, I don’t understand Icelandic either).

Sigúr Rós is definitely not mainstream music, but I beleive that most people will find it relaxing. When listening to them, I find myself concentrating a lot more about the work I need to get done, because the music blends in with everything else. And when you get to know Sigúr Rós, you’ll not even notice that you’re listening to music, you’ll rather notice when you’re not listening to it.

Listen to

• “Track 4″ from the album “()”
• “Hoppípolla” from the album “Takk…”
• “Starálfur” from the album “Ágætis byrjun”

Jason Mraz

I love Jason Mraz. Jason Mraz is simple pop music, but yet incredibly deep. Take a moment to listen to his lyrics, and be amazed. The skills of that man are enviable. So far, he has made three studio albums, all of them of great difference, showing a large variety in genre; from pop to funk, from electronica to country.

When you get to know the music of Mraz, you’ll find yourself singing in the shower, and you’ll have a hard time not moving your lips when riding your bike. Jason Mraz makes you happy and satisfied. No more, no less.

Listen to

• “Mr. Curiosity” from the album “Mr. A-Z”
• “Curbside Prophet” from the album “Waiting for My Rocket to Come”
• “Butterfly” from the album “We Sing, We Dance, We Steel Things”
• Who am I kidding, just listen to all of it!

David Gilmour

David Gilmour was one of the members of Pink Floyd. He has made a couple of studio albums, but, to be frank, only one of them is worth listening to. It is called On an Island and was released in 2006. And it is amazing! Long, crisp guitar solos, and bulletproof choirs is just some of the ingredients used to make this album a piece of art.

This album really touches me. Every single note is chosen with dedication, meaning that every song is—yes, perfect! Of course, not all people would think that it’s perfect, but again, I’m just giving you an insight in what music I love and listen to.

Listen to

• “On an Island” from the album “On an Island”
• “Take a Breath” from the album “On an Island”

Tim Christensen

Tim Christensen is a Danish artists, probably not that familiar outside Denmark, but you owe yourself to listen to his music. He played in a band called Dizzy Mizz Lizzy, which unfortunately is no more. His solo is amazing in its completely own way. Tim Christensen sounds like no one else, and the same song gives you an entirely new experience every time you listen to it. His music is very varied, and his albums are showing a development in both style and personality. Every album has its own qualities, and are showing Tim Christensen’s skills at their best. If you ever get the opportunity, you should go to see a concert with the great Dane, cause it’s absolutely worth it.

Listen to

• “Caterpillar” from the album “Secrets on Parade”
• “No Easy Key” from the album “Honeyburst”
• “Hard to Make You Mine” from the album “Superior” (not on iTunes yet)
• “Wonder of Wonders” from the album “Superior” (not on iTunes yet)

Now I’ve told you a little about which music I listen to. Now it’s your turn! Where do you find inspiration? In nature, in music, other? Please write a comment below!

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