porkchops

My PS3 came with a cable to attach to the RCA plugs (Red, Yellow, White), so you should be fine there.

What do you want to do with it, and what do your friends play? I went with a PS3 because the controllers are more comfortable in my hands, all of the games I'd want for the 360 are on PC (and PC is better than consoles ) and it doubles as a blu-ray player. Both consoles have about the same reliability and performance. Internet on the PS3 is free (though PSN gets hacked once or twice a year) but there are typically more people playing games on xbox live. You get a blu-ray player with the PS3. HD-DVD in the 360 isn't useful beyond gaming. Also keep in mind that some franchises are only found on one platform. 360 and Halo, for example. I hear the Kinect is miles better than the PS3 equivalent, but that's just hearsay. Pick the one you like and roll with it. When it comes to gaming, however, I feel the experience on a PC is way beyond what you can get on a console, so if money isn't an issue get a gaming pc instead.

It's certainly more common for the developer to do it themselves, but that's rarely the right answer. If you are strapped for cash and need a design to bring a product to market, a template can be a viable option until you can afford a designer. Otherwise the best option will always be to pay a professional designer. I haven't met many developers that are good enough designers to sell their services. I know they exist but they are absolutely the exception to the rule.

Design competitions are bad. If the company wants a new logo they need to just hire someone with a stellar portfolio, Especially if they have a budget of 15k. Crowdsourcing never produces good design. http://www.no-spec.com/about/

Weather on iOS is definitely Helvetica. Most of the Apple Apps are going to use Helvetica. The only place they use Lucida Grande is on their website.

Apple uses Helvetica for just about everything in iOS. They also use Myriad Pro for their web properties with Lucida Grande for body copy.

http://icondock.com/free/vector-social-media-icons I use the shapes from these to make the icons fit whatever project I'm working on.

http://helveticons.ch/ http://iconsweets.com/ & http://www.iconsweets2.com/ I use those at the office pretty frequently. Sometimes you have to add/subtract things from the icons to make them work for apps but they get the job done.

Web design and development won't be going away anytime soon. I suppose you might see more and more designers becoming front-end developers and designing in the browser, but there will always be a role for you if you have skills in either discipline. It's hard to recommend which path to pursue without knowing what you like. I'd guess that the easiest transition would be into design since architecture uses some of the concepts, but if you don't enjoy the design aspects of architecture maybe development would be a better choice? Both paths pay equally well, though it's a bit harder to get a high-paying design job compared to a high-paying developer job since there is a huge supply of designers available. The demand for developers will almost always be higher, too, since it usually takes a couple of developers to build what a single designer can design and we are still seeing people preferring to hire developers over designers. However, there is a huge push in the startup community to focus on design, so in the next couple of years there will probable be a shift towards designers being more important as companies try to follow a 'design excellence' strategy to differentiate themselves from their competitors. I'm not a developer so I'll let someone else address a good roadmap for that path, but for a designer you should learn: Design Basics. Principles like balance, gestalt, shape, line, color, dominance, etc. Understand how they work in print and on the web, since the mediums are very different. Even if you want to work in 100% web you can probably pick up a print project here and there for some decent cash on the side. Get a sketch pad and some pencils. Especially starting out, you should be making a dozen sketches for every design that gets to digital form. You can taper off as you get more experience, but even the best designers sketch on a regular basis. Master whatever tool you plan to use. If you prefer to work in Fireworks or Photoshop, master that. If you want to work in a browser, you'll need to master HTML/CSS. Master HTML/CSS. Even if you land a job where you don't have to code, it's essential to understand what's possible and what's practical on the web. Developers hate getting designs with stuff that is incredibly difficult to do or won't be able to be implemented well enough yet. Practice. Pick a brand and redesign their site. Come up with a fake company name and create a logo, stationery and website for them. Once you feel able to produce decent work, you can volunteer to work for a deserving non-profit and that will help you get practice dealing with clients. Keep Practicing. Once you land a job it's easy to forget to hone your skills. Keep designing new types of things, trying a new visual style, or trying to redesign a previous personal project. You always want to keep getting better at something. Oh... And have fun! If you don't enjoy what you do you'll end up in the same place in a couple of years, so don't force it.

If these are going on a scarf, it might be kind of neat to see the logo stitched rather than printed. Help out with the feeling of affluence/luxury.

You could create the cloud effect with the photoshop Difference Clouds filter. Layer some black brush dots on top and you can easily create the image you've linked.

This. Wordpress is incredibly flexible once you have a basic understand of how it works. You really shouldn't let the client dictate the layout to you. They are welcome to say what they like and dislike, but in reality you're the expert and it's your job to advocate for a layout that will be most beneficial to the user/reader. It requires a bit of diplomacy to make this happen, but do your best to treat the client like an adviser, not an art director.

Microsoft definitely has the best suite out there so far, but there is a lot of room for improvement. That is one market that could really use a product that's accessible, usable and able to replace MS Office in the average business workflow.

Unless I really want to watch something, I almost always say "screw it" and close the video when I see an ad. Same goes for interstitial ads or sites with a super-disruptive overlay-type ad.

I see what you're saying, and I suppose like most things it depends on the case, but I think it's also important to realize that more often than not people make the assumption that mobile users don't want the same content, which can be just as problematic. I think it's also important to note that when I say "same content" I don't necessarily mean copy needs to be identical, nor does navigation need to be identical, but functionality should be preserved and the majority of the options available to a desktop user should be available a mobile user at least somewhere. I recently went to the Lexus site on my iPad and wasn't able to configure a car. They deliver a mobile version that's clearly optimized for a phone and won't let me do anything besides look up information. They are making the assumption that a mobile user doesn't want to configure a car (or worse, their configurator uses Flash) and only wants to look up information. At the aforementioned conference Brad Frost gave a great presentation which was a more in-depth version of a recent article of his. His ultimate conclusion is that assuming "Mobile users won't want to do that" isn't a great way to handle content strategy for responsive/standalone mobile sites.

Seriously. If it weren't for the amazing text rendering and Firebug I'd be on Chrome for sure. Firefox crashes ALL the time.

Grats on the new phone. Especially since you are such an ardent defender of Apple, this just goes to show you that the major phone OS's are relatively on par. Regarding Windows Phone: My entire family (including my former die-hard Android dad) is on Windows Phone and loves it. They have a wide gamut of phones and each of them is thrilled with their device. I'm still a fan of iOS compared to the other two (I feel that the closed platform has been a huge boon to iOS's sense of polish and consistency, but I'm more than happy with the basic functionality that shipped with my 4S), but it's nice to see some serious competition in the mobile sector, it can only lead to great things.

As a designer you can do your best to make sure things are scalable. Try to design things that can handle both small and large amounts of data without negatively affecting the appearance or layout. However, there comes a point where you can't keep your design the way it is and still be scalable, so either you change it to something less what you intended and more scalable or accept that the user will be able to break it. That point is up to you, but I've found its safer to plan for scalability even if you have to choose a solution that is second most awesome.

So I just got back from a conference in Texas where the majority of the content was centered around mobile and the answer that seemed to be commonly shared was that it really doesn't matter whether you go responsive or use a separate mobile site. Most of the speakers suggested that both have their advantages and that the 'best' solution could differ on a case-by-case basis. Regardless of how you create mobile content, the only important thing is that you do it very well. Don't just strip away content for mobile users (unless the content is truly superfluous, then cut it from the desktop version, too) and make sure the user is able to do what they want to do. A responsive site is great, but can be a bit hassle to make perform well, and performance is essential to a successful experience. A well-done separate site that provides users with the same content as your desktop version in a format more suitable to their device is great, too. But, make sure that you handle the transition gracefully and keep all of the functionality that is in the desktop version. From a technical side, if you can make a responsive site that performs well (which is hard because a lot of people deliver all the assets of the desktop version and cut stuff away) it will probably make your life easier from a management standpoint. Is it better? Maybe, but if the implementation sucks it's no better than a separate mobile site.

This. Not to mention that good design (According to Dieter Rams) is timeless, so jumping onto a trend often makes the site feel dated down the road.

Just food for thought: Has anyone tried to build a web app responsively? Responsive design is a great theory but when you have a complicated web app, sometimes the amount of interface required just doesn't lend itself well to a responsive design. Even working mobile-first, sometimes the amount of stuff you have to do (whether it's a designer's decision or someone on the business side of things) is too great to gracefully transition between devices. Or, you run into design problems that yield two different solutions for small touch screens and large desktop screens. For brochure-style sites and simpler apps it's easy to translate between various content widths, but I'm still not convinced that, in practice, it's the best solution for complicated applications.

Aye, competition breeds innovation. Even as an iPhone user (and someone who respects the design and business success of Apple's other products) I feel like the iPhone 5 is a "resting on our laurels" version of the iPhone. Samsung is their only competitor, but with all the litigation that seems to be leaning Apple's way they clearly don't feel like they have any threats in their marketplace. Not sure that's a wise move from a business standpoint, but I've also found that Apple doesn't do anything without careful consideration of their grand marketing scheme.

It would also be nice to know if you Save for Web & Devices as a PNG, does the quality get any better? That would let us know whether it's something with your display/document or the JPG settings you are using.

No, we likely won't be able to tell if an image is made in Photoshop or Illustrator unless you have some really bad vector edge blurring that would happen in Photoshop. However, when you go to print you see any minute imperfection that may not be noticeable at 72dpi on the screen. Even working at 300dpi and CMYK I've seen artwork from photoshop print poorly, especially text.

Got a sample link? And maybe a screenshot of what you're seeing. If you're working in Chrome the text rendering engine isn't great. Firefox 4+ has the best since it uses subpixel antialiasing, but the other browsers lie somewhere in the middle between the two.