Building a Custom HTML5 Audio Player with jQuery : Ben Bodien, who also masterminds a lot of the jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3 material for Authentic Jobs , explains what it took to make Tim Van Damme’s audio player design for The Box a reality. … Read the rest here
Whenever I take a trip somewhere—like Copenhagen , for example—it’s a good opportunity to catch up on what I’ve been huffduffing . Trains, planes and buses are the killer apps of personal podcasting. In many ways, Huffduffer becomes more useful the further away you are from a computer and an internet connection. I didn’t get the chance to see Mark speak at this year’s Web Directions @media in London, but now that I’ve listened to his talk on Designing Grid Systems , I’m cursing the two-track format of the conference and the fact that I couldn’t be in two places at once. This talk is superb; one of the best presentations I’ve ever heard… Read the rest here
An interview with Think Vitamin : While I was in London for the Future of Web Design conference this past May, I had the pleasure of chatting with Keir Whitaker from Carsonified about Dribbble . You can also find the audio over at Huffduffer if you happen to huff the duff stuff. … Read the rest here
There’s been a lot of map-related activity on the BBC recently. The series of documentaries called The Beauty of Maps was all too short. Meanwhile, Radio 4 ran a ten-part series entitled On The Map . They would have disappeared down the Beeb’s memory hole but Brian did a little bit of digital preservation and passed them on to me. I’ve put them on Huffduffer . … Read the rest here
The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Animated) : The audio comes from a talk by Dan Pink, author of A Whole New Mind , given at RSA . The animated video, however, is by illustrator Andrew Park (thanks to Austin Kleon for finding that out). It all makes for a very interesting media experience. I watched the 11-minute piece totally engaged. … Read the rest here
Good vs. Great(er) Design : I’m not typically fond of publishing my slides without the additional context provided by audio or video from the presentation, as my slides aren’t meant to stand on their own. But I’ll do it anyway. This PDF contains slides from the updated version of my “Good vs. Great Design” presentation, given recently at LessConf and HOW Design Conference … Read the rest here
You may have noticed a lot of HTML5 vs. Flash talk lately. Substitute HTML5 for HTML5 video . Frankly, I’m a little baffled by this supposed dichotomy because you don’t have to choose. The way that video works, according to the spec , is for fallback content to be placed between the opening and closing <video> tags. So you can go ahead and use object or embed or whatever you need to put your Flash video in your markup… Read the rest here
HTML started as a very simple language. By many accounts, it’s still very simple. You create some text and you wrap some tags around it. The tags provide a small measure of meaning and allow user agents—aka browsers—to present the content in a meaningful way. In the early days of the web, browser developers quickly added features that helped web developers build more exciting sites and applications… Read the rest here
I had the pleasure of joining hosts Dan and Jeffrey for the second episode of The Big Web Show . We talked about Pete Townsend and cats that look like Hitler but mostly we talked about HTML5. Specifically, we talked about what’s between the covers of HTML5 For Web Designers . The audio is available for your huffduffing pleasure so go ahead and huffduff it if you fancy an hour’s worth of three-way markup action. The Big Web Show 2: HTML5 with Jeremy Keith on Huffduffer Tagged with bigwebshow html5 book audio huffduffer … Read the rest here
I took part at an event held last week in the same building as the Clearleft office. It was called Debating the Digital Economy Act …except it wasn’t really a debate. Everyone was in agreement that the legislation is dreadful and that the way it has been rushed through parliament was a travesty. Nonetheless, it was still a valuable gathering. Instead of debating on the pros and cons of something that has no redeeming qualities, we tried to tackle the issue of what we can do about it. One of the best points of the night came from Pete who pointed out how important it was that we de-geekify the discussion lest we get brushed aside as pitchfork-wielding digerati… Read the rest here
I went up to London today to have a chat about HTML5 with some of the developers in the trenches of the BBC World Service . It was only when I was on the train from Brighton that I realised I had left my reading material at home. Never mind , I thought, I’ve got my my Huffduffer feed to listen to. First, I listened to a talk from Robin Dunbar at The RSA entitled How Many Friends Does One Person Need? How Many Friends Does One Person Need… Read the rest here
We’ve added a third job type to Authentic Jobs , specifically for contract positions. You can read more about the hows and whys over at the Authentic Jobs blog . I’m repeating the screencast video here merely to give me a chance to talk about the making of it. Surprisingly, this is only the second screencast I’ve done throughout 11 years of doing web stuff. I’ve still got plenty to learn… Read the rest here
Recording Audio With Your Video DSLR : This is a fairly through primer on the topic, covering the RØDE VideoMic in this second article, and the Zoom H4n and lavaliere mics in the first article . For the record, I own the VideoMic and have strongly considered buying a Zoom H4n—it seems to be the on-board mic of choice for DSLR cinematographers right now. /via Coray McClellan … Read the rest here
Canon 5D MKII Firmware Update Includes 24p, Audio Control : This long-awaited firmware update brings cinema-quality video to the Canon 5D MKII. Still doesn’t offer 720p 50p or 60p mode like the Canon 7D, but a day for 5D owners to celebrate nonetheless. … Read the rest here
After just a couple weeks of testing, I gave up on the Canon HG10 w/35mm for shooting HD video. Not only was the quality not stellar, but it’s a hack that’s cumbersome and really difficult to work with. Following an enormous amount of deliberation and questioning if so many dollar signs were really worth it, I bit the bullet and sprung for a Canon EOS 7D and some quality lenses. No mistaking, this thing shoots incredible photos and equally impressive 1080p HD video. I still have plenty to learn about the camera and photography in general, but so far I’m really pleased with it… Read the rest here
The last thing I needed was more choice in apps for keeping a ‘Design Scrapbook’, but that’s what’s happened with Zootool . At first glance, it looked like just another FFFF ound , Ember or Img Spark , but it turns out it’s much more than that. The developer, Bastian, told me to think of it as more of a visual Delicious. Once I got into that mindset it made more sense. Zootool ‘lassos’ not only images, but documents (like PDF s), videos, and pages (not complete pages yet) and stores them in your ‘zoo’… Read the rest here
The last thing I needed was more choice in apps for keeping a ‘Design Scrapbook’, but that’s what’s happened with Zootool . At first glance, it looked like just another FFFF ound , Ember or Img Spark , but it turns out it’s much more than that. The developer, Bastian, told me to think of it as more of a visual Delicious. Once I got into that mindset it made more sense. Zootool ‘lassos’ not only images, but documents (like PDF s), videos, and pages (not complete pages yet) and stores them in your ‘zoo’. … Read the rest here
One of the problems of working in the knowledge economy is the constant need to keep abreast of current trends and thinking. This would be fine if you worked in a mature industry or one with a limited number of books, papers and conferences appearing each year. However in the knowledge economy of the web, more information is being published every day than could be consumed in a year. What’s more, that pace is increasing. The problem is exacerbated by a number of things. … Read the rest here
Last year, the good people at Web Directions asked me if I would like to write an article for the second issue of their Scroll magazine —an honest-to-goodness dead-tree publication. I told them I would be delighted. The theme of the issue was “place.” I took the word and ran with it, delivering an over-the-top pretentious piece about language, wormholes and virtual worlds. An edited version appeared in the magazine as Disrupting the conceptual metaphors of the web . I’ve published the raw, unedited version here in the articles section under its original title of There Is No “There” There . I also recorded an audio version, which clocks in at just over eight and a half minutes. … Read the rest here
As a self confirmed conference junkie I speak at a dozen events each year, and attend many more. As such I’ve probably seen close to a thousand talks over the last five years. Because of this I’ve got a pretty good idea what makes for an exciting talk and how you can guarantee your session will suck. As somebody who also organises two conferences, UX London and dConstruct I’m really keen on getting new talent into the speaking circuit while still maintaining quality. As such I’ve put together a quick guide to help both new and experienced speakers kick arse/ass. … Read the rest here