January 2011
December 2010
Taps on all caps
My sister’s photo business page on Facebook recently filled my news feed with large blocks of text in capital letters. We’ve all dealt with this: grandma only types her emails that way, your marketing intern thinks it enhances excitement, your lawyer says it’s a legal requirement (okay, maybe that one can slide…). My need to enlighten kicked in, so here’s a little reminder...
“Mozy may protect you from a zombie invasion in a post-apocalyptic environment.”
– Mozy’s Read Me during installation
Stabby, the ATM (or how real design differs from...
The following was written rather quickly as something of a rant. Take pity on any grammar fuck-ups.
It’s usually a bad sign when I wake up and read any work email. I immediately become cross and spend my (admittedly slow-moving) morning rituals preoccupied with how to word my bitter rebuttal to a bug ticket or last-minute feature request. It’s my fault, really, as no one should read...
Stabby, the ATM (or how real design differs from...
The following was written rather quickly as something of a rant. Take pity on any grammar fuck-ups.
It’s usually a bad sign when I wake up and read any work email. I immediately become cross and spend my (admittedly slow-moving) morning rituals preoccupied with how to word my bitter rebuttal to a bug ticket or last-minute feature request. It’s my fault, really, as no one should read...
3 tags
SEO, Legibility and minimalism in your →
2105:
“Write them for humans, not search engine spiders. Trust the Googlebot to figure it out.”
— Daring Fireball: Title Junk (via adactio)
In a post today, Daring Fireball noted msnbc.com’s junky title tags, along with other news organizations and made some conclusions about old SEO practices. The topic happens to be something I’m working on with an internal team…when Gruber...
“Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the...”
– Ricky Gervais: Why I’m An Atheist http://on.wsj.com/eZ9A2B
Frank Chimero: Rest in peace, medial s. You know,... →
viafrank:
Rest in peace, medial s. You know, that thingie that you sometimes see in type that kind of looks like a lowercase f, but really should be a lowercase s, but doesn’t really look quite right by your modern standards. You know, the thing that you see on the title page when you pick up your 17th…
I love Frank for this sort of stuff.
Instapaper Blog: Requiring email and passwords for... →
instapaper:
Since its inception, Instapaper has had a famously simple, one-field registration form…
Marco lays out his reasoning for switching to a traditional email/password sign in scenario for Instapaper, and I for one am glad to see it happen. I’ve followed along as he’s had to deal with countless duplicate accounts and frustrated users who weren’t sure which they’d...
Web 5.0
clientsfromhell:
Client: ”We want the interface to be edgy and all Web 5.0.”
Me: ”Web 5.0 doesn’t exist. Web 2.0 is an accepted standard and 3.0 is still just theoretical discussion at this point.”
Client: ”Exactly! If our site is first to market with Web 5.0 we get to set the standards and everybody that comes after will have to pay us royalties!”
Me: ”Ummm… that’s not how Web protocol...
“And this is their response to the election of an extremely moderate half-African...”
– Christopher Hitchens on the national embarrassment that is the tea party. (via jimray)
Netflix Instant Movies That Don't Suck: Surrogates →
netflixmoviesthatdontsuck:
A sci-fi thriller, Surrogates takes place in a world where the general population interacts through the use of remote controlled androids. When someone develops a weapon that can destroy a surrogate and kill the original operator at the same time, Agent Greer (Bruce Willis) embarks on the…
I loved this movie, and wish my sociology-degree-endowed wife would...
“In the early days of industrial design, the work was primarily focused upon...”
– Don Norman: Why Design Education Must Change (via 2105)
1 tag
MorrisonFilm: Me And My Cat Have a Conversation... →
morrisonfilm:
Me: Hey cat, what’s up? Cat: Oh how’s it goin’ man? Just licking my feet. Me: It’s about the tree. The Christmas Tree. Cat: Oh yeah, thanks for that. Me: No, see. It’s not for you. It’s a decorative tree for Christmas. Cat: Say what now? Me: You can’t touch it and you especially can’t…
TRUTH!
“We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly...”
– Carl Sagan (The Demon-haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
1 tag
BEES!!
barbchronicles:
BEES!!
Enough politics, let’s make with the laughs.
'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' repeal blocked in Senate;... →
And that’s why senators themselves deserve the most blame. Several Republicans who have publicly backed repeal—in particular Lisa Murkowski, Scott Brown, and Dick Lugar—did not vote for cloture. Their excuse is that they wanted to vote for the bill, but Reid’s petty political tactics got in the way. It’s an almost funny perversion of the situation that conveniently leaves them...
3 tags
If you don't know what to think about the... →
In light of the whole Wikileaks thing and the reaction of “burn him at the stake!” coming from pundits and the government, now is a REALLY good time to get a copy of Daniel Ellsberg’s book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. If you’re not familiar with the Pentagon Papers, you need to read his first person account. I read the book a few years ago, and it...
I own about 180 fewer LPs than my wife
Just did some accounting, and she has me stomped in her collection: http://dorkgasm.tumblr.com/post/2079055280/and-this-is-where-i-put-my-hours-of-boredom-to-use
The epic vinyl collection of The Bean →
My wife is awesome.
Seth's Blog: The inevitable decline due to clutter →
minimalmac:
Once you overload the user, you train them not to pay attention. More clutter isn’t free. In fact, more clutter is a permanent shift, a desensitization to all the information, not just the last bit.
See also: The forgotten cost of features
I want to pound that passage into the heads of every businessperson that argues to cram in “more stuff on the page.”