Mark Forrester - Independent digital designer and online entrepreneur

This month has seen a nice surge in website traffic, this is not attributed to the Digg effect or the Slashdot effect, but the ever growing StumbleUpon effect.

I’ve written about StumbleUpon before, when I first discovered it through my web stats almost a year ago now. It continues to impress me, both in the content it finds me, and the hits it sends me.

“According to eBizMBA, StumbleUpon ranked at number 6 for the 30 most popular social bookmarking sites for July 2007. The site was ranked above both Slashdot and Reddit but still is one of the least appreciated sources of traffic. The reasons for this are because people misunderstand the nature of the site. Because StumbleUpon was conceived as, and continues to be a site that is heavily used to explore content consisting of art, design, and photography, people think that other kinds of content cannot become popular on the site. “

Source: The unappreciated Stumbleupon effect – Pronet Advertising

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Something’s lurking just beneath the water. It’s grown, it’s matured, and it’s about to get snappy. That something is Afrigator Beta.

That’s right folks, I’ve been very busy along with Justin, Stii and Mike planning for the next phase of the Afrigator project. I’ve spent numerous days submerged in Photoshop pixel pushing. I’ve agonised over placement of new kick ass functionality in a new slick interface and I’m really excited about what lies ahead.

Rush on over to Afrigator and sign up to be a part of the Afrigator Beta testing. You’ll be a part of something very special.

This post is an update on the one I wrote a month ago on the subject of tele lenses for my Canon 350d.

I would like to say a huge thank you to the people who left comments and helped me to make an eventual easy decision on what to buy. Although the lens I opted for was out of my initial lens budget, I took the good advice left by Tristan Owen, The Pete and Peter and invested a bit more for a nifty feature, Image Stabiliser. (more…)

I’m hoping some photographer gurus read my blog and can advise me on what lens I should be looking for if I am after a tele lens for my Canon 350d under 250 pounds. I specifically want to use it for sports and wildlife photography (wildlife is something I very rarely see over here in London, apart from the occasional park deer, and garbage-eating fox, but something I want to cater for when i get back to South Africa) so I suppose it needs a quick focus speed and good image stabilisation (without having to pay huge amounts for the “IS” feature). I’m not that fussy on Canon, Tamron or Sigma, but I am pretty clueless when it comes to my little toy SLR camera, and value any comments. (more…)