Last week, I had the opportunity to meet Gary Vaynerchuk at a book signing/networking event at World Market in St. Louis. Now, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t seen many of his videos and have never purchased a bottle of wine in my life, so I certainly can’t claim to be his biggest fan. However, after meeting him, I can safely say that this is one guy that really knows what he’s talking about, especially when it comes to knowing where the web is going. On top of that, he’s super nice.

After standing in line for about 20 minutes to get a signed copy of “Crush It,” I met Gary, shook his hand, and told him I had a strange request. My buddy Brad(@imbradmiller) couldn’t make it to the event because he was stuck at the office working late. Naturally, I had to rub it in that he couldn’t be there so I thought, “what’s better than putting him on the phone with Gary Vaynerchuk? Nothing.” So I handed my iPhone to Gary with Brad on the line. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I do remember him cursing at Brad, asking him why wasn’t able to make it. After joking with him a bit, he let him know that he was genuinely sorry he couldn’t be there. After hanging up with Brad, Gary signed a book for me and proceeded to kick my butt in an epic thumb wrestling match.

After the signing, Gary spoke for at least an hour. I think the most important thing he spoke on had to do with the companies he’s been investing in, Gowalla and Matt Galligan’s own SimpleGeo. After the event/talk, there were quite a few of us who went over to Robust Wine Bar and had some time to talk with Gary in a much more casual setting. I also met some awesome folks from the Social Media Club St. Louis. All in all, it was a great event and I’m certainly glad I was able to participate and spend a little time getting to know the Jets-loving Gary Vaynerchuk.

The video I posted is part 1 in a series of 7 videos posted by Karen Goodman (@karenstl), a real estate agent in the area, who runs a blog called Arch City Homes. I would encourage you to watch all the videos if you have time, as the advice and information he shares are indispensable. And also, big thanks to Karen for posting the videos!

To promote the release of the highly-anticipated Aperture WordPress theme, one of the most flexible and beautiful themes in the known world,  I went ahead and put together a desktop background for your downloading pleasure. Go ahead, tell your friends.

Download

Pick your resolution and enjoy. Make sure to right-click and save as… otherwise it will open up in a nice lightbox window.

2560×1600
2048×1152
1920×1200
1650×1050
1600×1200
1440×900
1400×1050
1280×960
1280×800
1024×768

Because it’s Monday and because I like you, I am releasing a vector scale icon that comes with 4 PNG icons in 512×512, 256×256, 128×128, and 64×64 and a PSD that has a smart object Illustrator file that can be edited for your needs (CS4 compatible). Click on the image above to see the sizes of the PNG versions. If you do happen to use the icon for anything, please do let me know, I’d love to see where you use it.

Download the Scale Icon (.zip)

Scale Icon by Chris Wallace is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.chris-wallace.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.chris-wallace.com/licensing.

One of the cardinal sins in the design community is stealing someone’s work and calling it your own. About a month ago, a good friend notified me that his site and portfolio were completely ripped off by a guy he found on ThemeForest. The guy basically took his entire portfolio, slapped a new logo on it, and uploaded it to his domain. My friend was distraught about the whole situation and had no idea what to do. As a Christian, he wanted to help the person, and wasn’t sure what the best approach would be. Obviously, he wanted to get the stolen portfolio taken down. At the same time, he didn’t want to come off as merciless or cruel by completely embarrassing and discrediting him by blasting him throughout the halls of twitter and Facebook (which seems to be a common practice lately). This got me thinking: What’s the right way to deal with a design ripoff?

Step 1. Direct Contact

For most design ripoffs, it’s very simple to get a site taken down by simply sending an email to the offending party letting them know you know about their site. Some people take the nice guy approach and hand-craft a nice, civil email stating:

“Hi there, I noticed that your site bears a striking resemblance to my own. While I am flattered you like my site so much that you wanted to use it for yourself, will you please remove my design? Thank you.”

Some people prefer a very stern email or perhaps a phone call (if the ripoff artist was so kind to have left a phone number):

“Hey buttmonkey, thanks for stealing my design, I really appreciate it. At the very least you should have changed the links to my site so I wouldn’t see your !#$^@ referral links in my Mint stats, you #&$%#@ moron! If you don’t take it down immediately, my lawyer will be all over your butt like flies on a zebra. By the way, you’re a moron.”

For me, I like to give them the opportunity to remove the design, apologize and learn a lesson before being called out publicly and defamed (otherwise known as Step 2):

“Hi there, a friend of mine saw your site the other day and let me know that the design had been stolen from my website and used on yours. While I am flattered you like my work so much that you want to use it for yourself, I can’t say I approve of you taking it without permission. It would be appreciated if you could have the site taken offline or replaced with a new design within 24 hours or I will be forced to take further legal action.”

If they haven’t removed the site within 24 hours, I then proceed to…

Step 2. Public Callout

If I fail to generate a reply, the designer writes back saying they won’t remove it, or they completely ignore my request, I then proceed to step 2, which involves bringing as much light to the situation as possible in an effort to discredit the designer and force him or her to realize that there are a lot of passionate people out there who have a sincere HATRED for design ripoffs and would do just about anything to get them taken down and discredited. This public callout should occur on twitter, digg, flickr, basically anywhere designers follow your work, post it there and let the fury rain down. For some, it’s as simple as tweeting out the following message and simply waiting for the ReTweet brigade to do their thing:

“Attention twitter followers, please explain to @frankiegoestohollywood that ripping my portfolio design is not cool http://www.awesome.com”

For a lot of designers, this is actually the first step, mainly because they are alerted by someone on twitter so they simply retweet it to get it squashed immediately. However, I think it’s good form to first email or call to give them an opportunity to take it down, apologize, and move on, but some designers will quickly point out, “Well, if they aren’t going to bother asking me to use my design, why should I be nice about it?”

Step 3. Contact Their Hosting Provider

If public defamation of character and public ridicule are not enough to get the design taken down, you’re going to want to deal with someone at a higher level than the rip-off artist: their hosting company. In most cases, this person is going to be hosted by a low-cost provider  like GoDaddy or Dreamhost or 1and1. I mean, if they’re too cheap or lazy to get their own design, they’re probably not interested in paying a lot for hosting. Just a hunch. Now, you are going to want to first do a WHOIS lookup to find out who registered the domain, where they registered it, and what nameservers they have the domain pointed at (which, in turn, will tell you who the host is). In the event they ARE with a hosting company and don’t have their own nameserver and personal hosting system (which would be pretty rare for someone that rips off design) you should be able to easily contact the hosting company and explain the situation. Simply show them your site, then direct them to the site of their customer who ripped your design off and you typically can get them booted off that host pretty quickly.

Step 4. Contact a Lawyer

For me, this is a last resort, but sometimes is necessary. If possible, consult with a lawyer that specializes in Intellectual Property because they will know the most about dealing with this sort of situation, especially in regards to trademarks, copyrights, and patents. In most cases, they will hit them with a Cease & Desist, which basically is a court order to stop using your design or be faced with a lawsuit or possible criminal charges. Hopefully it never goes this far, but honestly, it could happen to you and you need to be prepared to take any and all steps to ensure your hard work is not taken advantage of.

Step 5. Wall of Shame (Optional)

Now, if your name is Tim Van Damme and you’ve been ripped off by so many people you can barely keep track, I recommend putting together a site that showcases the various ripoffs and includes a (nofollow) link to their site (why give them any search engine juice?) to remind them every day that you know they ripped you off and they will be enshrined in your Wall of Shame until they decide it’s not worth the hassle anymore. Also, I would recommend signing their email address up for as much spam as possible, along with a daily email reminder with links to great design resources for learning how to design websites. Again, as mentioned, this step is entirely optional.

Atlantica – $30

One of the most popular authors and a guy I look up to, epicera, really hit a home run with the Atlantica theme, offering one of the most beautiful and unique themes available on ThemeForest to date. Buy this theme

Pacifica – $30

Another theme by epicera, he doesn’t miss the mark with his latest, Pacifica, which is another beautiful and highly functional theme based off the Atlantica series. Buy this theme

Noctis – $25

This is probably the most undervalued theme on ThemeForest. This theme is one of my personal favorites and really offers a high-end look for any video game or design blog. The background is beautiful and the abundance of beautiful images throughout really makes this one a gem. Buy this theme

WordFolio – $35

WordFolio is one of the more popular themes on ThemeForest, and for good reason. It is a gorgeous theme with a really unique jQuery slider to showcase your portfolio items. Buy this theme

Twicet – $35

From one of the most popular authors, Kriesi, Twicet is a very clean, easy-to-customize theme with a very minimalist look and feel. Buy this theme

Stylemix Folio – $25

This theme is actually a very nice one, coming in with a strong color palette and a good set of features like a jQuery homepage slider. Buy this theme

Smart Portfolio – $25

A great theme for sharing your portfolio, contact info, and social media sites you use, Smart Portfolio is clean and simple, just the way I like it. Buy this theme

Post It – $20

Post It is a neat theme, with 4 illustrated characters and color schemes to choose from. This is a unique theme and easy to customize. Buy this theme

Parade Theme – $20

This is a hidden gem on ThemeForest. This is a very beautiful theme that includes some really nice functionality and a beautiful, elegant look. Buy this theme

Imperial – $30

Imperial is a Matt Brett theme, and it is another great video game blog theme, offering some pretty wicked features and an abundance of activity on the homepage. Buy this theme

Are you using one of my mind-blowing WordPress themes? Do you have a question that you’d like to ask or potential bug you’d like to see fixed? Well, now you can, thanks to the brand new WordPress Theme Forum. Please remember that any support provided by myself is 100% voluntary and in no way guaranteed.

Check out the new forum and post questions or answers.

With the “smashing” success of Gallery 1.0 I am happy to announce the release of version 1.1, which includes quite a few changes, including a custom write panel (shown below), bugfixes for IE6 (mainly the navigation menu), and other bugfixes. As always, you need to grab and upload both the Gallery and Thematic themes.

Custom Write Panel

At the request of a commenter on Smashing Magazine’s release post, I have added a custom write panel, which streamlines the process of adding new posts by giving you a new section with your custom fields pre-defined and ready to be populated.

Custom Write Panels Make Life Easy

List of updates and bugfixes:

• Next/Previous buttons changed to basic links to avoid breaking long names
• ‘New’ icons no longer being cut off on top
• Custom field entry changed to custom write panel
• functions.php – remove sidebar instead of hiding it for non-pages.
• Single page images were only allowed to use a relative path, now allow for relative or absolute
• IE6 update, menu displays horizontally
• IE6 update, space between thumbnail rows eliminated
• Single page image container no longer cut off on left side
• Other minor CSS updates

After hearing that my brother was being taught “web design” by a guy calling himself Dr. Dude and is currently “learning” how to make animated gifs and a 360 flash panorama, I quickly became interested in finding out just what exactly is being taught in colleges and universities regarding web standards-based design. Soon after, I reached out to Christopher Murphy of the Web Standardistas in search of answers on the topic of web standards in education. Check it out at Six Revisions.