February 2008
40 posts
“There’s a permanence to books that underlines the importance of the ideas...”
– Stephen King, discussing Amazon’s Kindle - Entertainment Weekly
January 2008
67 posts
Yahoo now an OpenID provider - Compiler →
WatchVideo: Data Portability and What it Means for You - Compiler If removing barriers between consumers and your products is the key to success (and it is), then true data portability is an invaluable tool.
The Life Cycle of a Blog Post - Wired →
A wonderful infographic explaining the complex network of technologies and companies that create the ‘blog-o-sphere’. If only the navigation for this web version were in any way intuitive.
“With sites like Digg, it’s the wisdom of the crowds or the tyranny of the mob....”
– Rob Malda, Slashdot founder - NYT’s Bits
“Attractive things work better. When you wash and wax a car, it drives better,...”
– Don Norman, former VP of advanced technology at Apple, and principal at NN/g - Technology Review [Emphasis mine]
“The businessman wants to create something for everyone, which leads to products...”
– Robert Brunner, former director of industrial design at Apple - Technology Review
“There used to be a shortage of attitude and aggregation, but there are now...”
– Nick Denton, Gawker Media founder - Wired [Emphasis mine]
The Why behind the switch →
James Bennett takes on the thought process behind the proposed switch. [via Daring Fireball]
“We made thousands of fixes and improvements and those fixes deserve to stick.”
– Maciej Stachowiak, WebKit developer, in response to the proposed ‘switch’ - Surfin’ Safari The best point I’ve seen made yet.
Beyond DOCTYPE - A List Apart →
The IE team’s controversial proposal to create a modal meta element to switch between historical rendering behaviors.
Responses (against):
- Ian Hickson
- the Opera team
- the Mozilla team (and again)
- the Webkit team
Responses (conflicted):
- the WaSP
Responses (for):
- Jeffrey Zeldman
Howto: Apply CSS to non-standard elements in IE
Btw, if you want CSS rules to apply to unknown elements in IE, you just have to do document.createElement(elementName). This somehow lets the CSS engine know that elements with that name exist.
Discovered by Sjoerd Visscher. [via Ian Hickson]
“If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one—and if it...”
– Duncan Watts, creator of Big Seed marketing - Fast Company
NEA Survey Shows Steve Jobs Is Right: Nobody Does... →
Someone should tell the striking writers.
Previous item
Deliver a Presentation like Steve Jobs: A 10-part... →
Absolutely correct, but point no. 2 needs revision. One must not only demonstrate enthusiasm, but to be enthusiastic. Unless your job title is ‘actor’, this is something you won’t be able to fake. And I’ve never seen an actor give a corporate presentation.
For further reading: Edward Tufte’s The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint
“The Writers Guild is gonna kill me for saying this, but a script is nothing more...”
– Mark Haskell Smith - LA Times [Emphasis mine]
Tracking the Worlds Appetite for Innovation -... →
Europe: Your I.P. Address Is Personal - NYT's... →
“EBay was disciplined, on message, careful in its planning and conservative about...”
– Saul Hansell, on Meg Whitman’s legacy at eBay - NYT’s Bits
Clothing retailers try RFID, again - NYT's Bits →
Kaufhof picks up in an area abandoned by Prada, this time to improve operations instead of buzz and glitz. While using some of the same techniques, Kaufhof is also looking to these tools as ways to improve customer feedback based on actions:
The system could also spotlight items that are repeatedly taken to dressing rooms but not bought, which may indicate some minor defect.
As long as the RFID...
“If you are CBS, the fact that people are watching a few hours of online video a...”
– Josh Bernoff, Forrester Research analyst - NYT’s Bits [Emphasis mine]
“How much of an advertising medium can Facebook become? So far, it is a very...”
– Saul Hansell, Facebook Is No Kingmaker - NYT’s Bits
That’s not to say that value is lacking, but rather that expectations are greatly inflated. [Emphasis mine]
“In order for highly hierarchical organizations to be effective, they require one...”
– Ken Birdwell, senior developer at Valve, explaining the Cabal Process. As true for any interactive project as it is for game design. [Emphasis mine]
“Any design document is really nothing more than a framework to work from and...”
– Ken Birdwell, senior developer at Valve, explaining the Cabal Process. [Emphasis mine]
The Cabal: Valve’s Design Process →
An amazing and inspiring look at a decentralized, collaborative approach to creative projects. It has enabled its creator and main practitioner, Valve Software, to consistently create very high quality and well regarded work.
Picnik-in-a-Box: Photo editing via web services →
New competition for the still-closed Adobe Photoshop Express. [via Compiler]
Walt Disney World tests Nintendo DS-based... →
The new system apparently includes maps, wait times, event schedules, wishlists, and even games that appear while you wait in line for a specific attraction.
This is easily one of the most interesting and thoughtful attempts at merging location-based services with a brand’s offering. The fact that it’s happening on a gaming platform is icing on the cake. [via BB Gadgets]
“Every art form is expressed through a physical medium. The control and...”
– Chris Crawford, in chapter four of The Art of Computer Game Design [Emphasis mine]
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and...”
– Michelangelo [via Chris Hecker]
My OpenCongress: Actionable political social... →
[via Boing Boing]
Flickr Taps User Tags to Organize Library of... →
Yahoo’s new mechanical turk for images?
High Prices Just Feel Good - Science →
[via Reuters, Newser]
Mozilla hires 3/4 of Humanized - Compiler →
“There was this guy, and he walked into a room, and he saw a person sitting on...”
– Will Wright - GamesIndustry.biz [Emphasis mine]
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t...”
– Steve Jobs, dismissing the market for Amazon’s Kindle - NYT’s Bits
SteveNote Expo - the game →
How did I miss this? [via David Pogue]
HowTo: iPhone 'WebClip' icons - ADC →
[via Dan Dickinson, Daring Fireball]
UPDATE: Nathan Borror suggests using larger images, to take advantage of the 163ppi screen.
Confirmed: Network Solutions grabs domain names... →
Mentioned previously.
Jeff Bezos' plan for success
Start with the customer.
Figure out what they want.
Work backwards.
Figure out how to give it to them
Unfortunately, I think most businesses get lost around step 2. As told to Charlie Rose.
Reactrix: Wii-like, without the remote →
This looks fun for freestanding ad displays, but its real value would be lost if interaction designers can’t put something together more compelling than the ‘punch the monkey’ technique used in so many web banners.
“Simple is very important. Wired is too complicated.”
– An unnamed Sony executive at CES - NYT’s Bits I’ll always agree on the simplicity point, but wireless has plenty of problems of its own. (As the president of Samsung recently discovered).
Wireless connectivity has the unfortunate problem of ‘zero mapping’ (my own term,...
“If the head of a technology company still has some trouble getting technology to...”
– Eric Taub, on the flubbing of a CES presentation by Samsung Electronics president Dr. J.W. Park - NYT’s Bits
“Say goodbye to four simple remote controls and hello to a single complicated...”
– Rob Beschizza, discussing the trends at CES 2008 - Gadget Lab *Note: a CCNA is a certification in complex computer networking.
Free neighborhood geodata service from Urban... →
“Major PC vendors spend millions in research and development to enhance a...”
– The Economist, on a project that I very much wanted to see succeed. [Emphasis mine]
On the new Xerox logo
Armin Vit’s take is the best I’ve read, and yet…
He’s a bit too polite.
The new logo, beyond being too Web 2.0-ish, has zero soul. In a way, it has almost infantilized a brand with a lot of history.
The bland, overused and uncommunicative ‘Sphere-with-an-X’ thing will not be made better through as-of-yet uncreated animations.
I mourn the loss of the...