Apple to Provide Live Video Streaming of Today’s Event : I recall the last time we were able to watch a live-video Apple event. I believe it was for the launch of Newton back in 1994. On a serious note, this will be a first for everyone: The ability to watch it live with an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. /via Daring Fireball … Read the rest here
I’m about to head out on a little vacation, but I realized this Wednesday marks ten years of archives here at SimpleBits. Actually, there were a few other domains that came before simplebits.com (robotcom.com and cederholm.org). I’d actually been publishing short, frequent updates for a few years prior to 2000, either by updating a .html file by hand or using a hobbled together home-grown CMS built with PHP and Perl. Those old posts are long gone, but there’s about to be 10 years of archives still preserved here and that’s rather dumbfounding when I stop and think about it. It’s likely dumbfounding because the last 10 years also happen to have been the most eventful I’ve ever had. They’ve been both terrifying and wonderful; educational and exciting; important and enlightening. … Read the rest here
Twelve South’s Compass iPad Stand: A Review : I needn’t write a review of my own. This one covers everything, both the good and the bad — very little of it mind you, but I have the same problem with the foot peg occasionally muting the volume. However, I currently use the Griffin FlexGrip , which usually prevents the volume button from being depressed anyway. (I had to ditch the DODOcase , regrettably. More about that later.) In short, the Compass is one of the most useful, well-built pieces of hardware that I’ve purchased in quite some time… Read the rest here
Eight Principles of Information Architecture (PDF) : Not that Dan Brown , but this Dan Brown : Information architecture, a field in relative infancy and constantly rediscovering itself, does not yet have a well-established theory that drives the design of structures for websites. You can pick up two books on graphic design and see the same topics covered in each. Why is there no such agreement for books on information architecture? Indeed, information architecture has yet to normalize, and the constant new demands on our work make progress toward that goal challenging. While the industry has yet to settle on a standard theory, there are a handful of principles I keep coming back to – principles that guide my design decisions but don’t dictate a particular approach. … Read the rest here
Diagonal CSS Sprites : Aaron Barker describes a technique for preventing neighbor images from appearing by placing the images in a sprite diagonally, rather than horizontally or vertically. The tradeoff is file size, but Aaron argues the diagonal arrangement is a more reliable approach should the original container change size. … Read the rest here
Just before noon (Eastern U.S. time) today, An Event Apart Minneapolis sold its last available seat. That’s three events so far in 2010 and three sell-outs. If you were hoping to join us in Minneapolis but hadn’t registered yet, we’re sorry we won’t see you there! You can contact our Event Manager to get put on the waiting list, or you can join us for one of the remaining two shows of the year: Washington DC and San Diego . There are strong reasons to prefer either one. In Washington DC , we’ll have our second-ever A Day Apart , a full day of in-depth learning with Jeremy Keith and Ethan Marcotte taking on the topics of HTML5 and CSS3, respectively… Read the rest here
Tuning Condensed Fonts with Typekit’s WebFont Loader : Jason Santa Maria: With all the webfonts available for use on websites, we have to deal with something we haven’t had to worry about before: condensed fonts. Most of your standard typographic guidelines will still be the same, but the biggest difference is sizing and font stacks in your CSS…. I’ve solved this problem on my personal site where I use Mark Simonson’s Proxima Nova Extra Condensed by incorporating some of the events in WebFont Loader to adjust the size of my text when @font-face isn’t supported [or FOUT occurs]. I’m currently running into this exact issue with a project. Impeccable timing, Jason. … Read the rest here
The Pandorica Opens. Bloody hell. A great penultimate episode to a season that has really impressed me with The Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Amys Choice, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger. So many great moments to praise in this story, but one that sticks in my mind is that the Doctors clever, stirring, ‘Let somebody else try first’ speech starts with “…right…sorry…dropped it…”. Genius. … Read the rest here
The Pandorica Opens. Bloody hell. A great penultimate episode to a season that has really impressed me with The Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Amys Choice, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger. So many great moments to praise in this story, but one that sticks in my mind is that the Doctors clever, stirring, ‘Let somebody else try first’ speech starts with “…right…sorry…dropped it…”. … Read the rest here
The Pandorica Opens. Bloody hell. A great penultimate episode to a season that has really impressed me with The Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Amys Choice, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger. So many great moments to praise in this story, but one that sticks in my mind is that the Doctors clever, stirring, ‘Let somebody else try first’ speech starts with “…right…sorry…dropped it…”. Genius… Read the rest here
The Pandorica Opens. Bloody hell. A great penultimate episode to a season that has really impressed me with The Eleventh Hour, Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, Amys Choice, Vincent and the Doctor and The Lodger. So many great moments to praise in this story, but one that sticks in my mind is that the Doctors clever, stirring, ‘Let somebody else try first’ speech starts with “…right…sorry…dropped it…”. Genius… Read the rest here
Why I Sold Zappos : Tony Hsieh, recalling nearly a decade of financial ups and downs and the meeting with Jeff Bezos that eventually led to Amazon’s acquisition: Out of nowhere, Jeff said, ‘Did you know that people are very bad at predicting what will make them happy?’ Those were the exact words on my next slide. I put it up and said, ‘Yes, but apparently you are very good at predicting PowerPoint slides.’ After that moment, things got comfortable. It seemed clear that Amazon had come to appreciate our company culture as well as our strong sales. Hsieh is still with the company and wraps up his article for Inc. with a summary of challenges the company faces post-acquisition. /via Jason Kottke … Read the rest here
“I turned off comments in the last redesign of powazek.com because I needed a place online that was just for me. With comments on, when I sat down to write, I’d preemptively hear the comments I’d inevitably get. It made writing a chore, and eventually I stopped writing altogether. Turning comments off was like taking a weight off my shoulders. It freed me to write again.” Derek Powazeck Your right to comment ends at my front door Derek just echoed some of my thoughts, and helps me explain why I’ve turned of my comments recently. … Read the rest here
Google Checkout Nightmare and the $126,000 Phone Call : “prbuckley”, whose profile mentions being the owner of DODOcase (see my review ), explains he’s due $126,000 from payments via Google Checkout. But Google isn’t handing over the money, and their customer service is just as reserved. The discussion that follows in the comments is worth reading for business owners in a similar scenario, that of having far more orders than you can fulfill in a timely manner. I’ve run into the same issue with my letterpress posters before, and resolving customer service issues can be trying. Thankfully, I’ve had fantastic customers, and by now I’m much better at preventing delays from happening. … Read the rest here
I’ll be doing a 5 minute microslot on CSS filters at the next Oxford Geek Night on July 21st. CSS filters is the practice of linking to your stylesheets in different ways in order to control how different browsers and their versions get your CSS . It’s something I get quite a lot of questions about when people look at my source code, so I thought I’d explain it via a presentation! The OGN microslot is the ideal format for it. If you live nearish to Oxford, and haven’t been to Geek Night yet, do come and see what you’re missing. It’s a free event (sponsored by local gents/superstars Torchbox ) in the Jericho Tavern in Oxford… Read the rest here
The @media conference has been a constant star in the UK web standards community since 2005. This year, the baton was smoothly passed to those awesome aussies, John and Maxine of Web Directions, creating the hybridly-titled Web Directions @media that took place in London last week. Before the conference proper, there were two days of workshops in the Hogwartsian location of the superbly-named Goodenough College . I spent a day on Getting semantic with microformats and HTML5 . I think it went pretty well. I came to the conclusion that it’s easier to explain everything about microformats than to explain the new outline algorithm in HTML5. … Read the rest here
The Evolution of the World Cup Ball : Photographs by Jens Heilmann. Click each to enlarge. What may be really interesting to some of us is that these photographs were taken with a vintage-style, large-format analog camera. Fast-forward to 3:40 in this video to see it in action. … Read the rest here
The Evolution of the World Cup Ball : Photographs by Jens Heilmann. Click each to enlarge. What may be really interesting to some of us is that these photographs were taken with a vintage-style, large-format analog camera. Fast-forward to 3:40 in this video to see it in action. … Read the rest here
I’ve never over-run on a talk. Ever. Usually I embarrasingly finish around 10 mins early, leaving plenty of time for questions. Until last week at Future of Web Design that is. When it came down to the last 5 minutes, I realised I had a lot more to go, and had to really hurry the last couple of sections. Thankfully the feedback so far has been positive, but I promise this will be (probably) be the last time I talk on this subject. … Read the rest here
Typekit and Google Announce Open Source Collaboration : Commercial agreements with big names like FontShop , Veer , and now an open-source effort with Google. Jeffrey Veen on the latest news: We’re happy to announce that we’ve teamed up with Google to make webfonts ubiquitous and more accessible. Starting today, we’re making our Typekit font events an open source project called WebFont Loader …. Additionally, we’ll be supporting Google’s new collection of open source webfonts . … Read the rest here