March 2008
20 posts
Back of the Napkin
I came across the book Back of the Napkin this weekend in a magazine. I thought it sounded interesting, so I went to the author’s website and found something shocking: perhaps the first tasteful and appropriate use of Comic Sans I’ve come across.
WatchI’m not sure I’ve ever thought of it in these terms, but I think I fit Joshua Porter’s web craftsman definition to the letter (on both the good and not-so-good side).
Cabel Sasser's talk from C4 →
I was really psyched to see that someone uploaded the video of Cabel’s talk from C4. Great insight into the meticulous attention to detail in Panic’s apps.
Steve Jobs Wants to [CLAP] Pump... You Up!
The curious folks at Apple Insider have dug up some very interesting looking patent filings recently. It looks like Apple is taking their Nike + iPod initiative to a new level with a full-fledged “digital fitness companion”. The system would include an iTunes-like application (or perhaps integrated into iTunes?), HR sensor, and a slick looking UI for the iPhone and iPod Touch. ...
Japan: URL's Are Totally Out
Cabel has an interesting post based on what he saw on a recent trip to Japan. It seems that the majority of print ads display a prominent rendering of a search form, complete with recommended search terms.
I agree with Cabel’s assessment that this will soon be a more common strategy in the US as well as quality domain names become impossible to come by. I also share his fear that...
Reading About What to Read
I just came across Brijit. It’s one of a couple of new sites that are relying on actual human beings(!) to read, summarize, and rate writings. They cover a nice selection of magazines as well as websites and podcasts. They rate each piece on a scale of 0-3, giving you a starting metric to determine whether or not to dig in deeper.
ExpressionEngine 2.0 Preview →
Looks like a nice (and much-needed) improvement to the current backend UI.
CommandShift3 →
Like Hot or Not, but for web design.
Paper Is Out, Cellphones Are In →
With things like the iPhone SDK and scanning semacodes for airline boarding passes, it really feels like we’re on the cusp of the next computing revolution.
Apple's Design Process →
An interesting-sounding presentation at SXSW by a senior engineering manager at Apple. Seems they take the notion of nailing down visual design upfront to an extreme - I love it.
The Tools Google Uses Internally →
A nice writeup based on yesterday’s KMWorld webinar.
iCopy →
Sorta kludgy, but a workable solution for copying and pasting text on the iPhone and iPod Touch (within Safari anyhow).
Research Papers Written by Googlers →
The majority are over my head and/or of no real interest to me, but there’s a handful that look quite interesting.
UPDATE: Bryce points out an equally cool collection of whitepapers by Yahoo braniacs.
GMail Address Trick
I wish I would have known about this earlier. So, if you’re using GMail or Google Apps, you can add a plus (+) sign after your username along with extra characters. When filling out a form online, you could use an address like
john+ivegotyourspamrighthere@gmail.com
This much I knew, and I use this trick pretty often. Problem is, some sites don’t allow the plus sign in their...
37signals Workplace Experiments →
If more employers respected and encouraged their employees like 37signals does, I probably wouldn’t be so thankful to be self-employed.
Uni-verse →
Very interesting sounding platform for creating distributed 3D pipelines. An interesting procedural game (ala. Spore) called Love is utilizing this project. Worth keeping an eye on.
iPhone Inspiration
So, this is a couple of months old now (nearly 5 years in Internet time), but understand that I did a great job blocking most iPhone news from myself while I couldn’t have one (long story: thought I was under contract with T-Mobile, got around it, now have an iPhone). Anyhow, this iPhone/Starbucks conceptual piece made the rounds a while back and I’m just now seeing it (thanks...