LINKS FROM April 2006
Redesign Notes 1: Width-based layout
How to create a layout that changes depending on the size of the user's browser.
Tags: design javascript howto
Alternative Style: Working With Alternate Style Sheets
Step-by-step instructions for creating a site with a style swticher and a cookie to save the preference.
Tags: css javascript
"Are you capable of multiplying 147,631,789 by 23,674 in your head, instantly? Physicist Allan Snyder says you probably can, based on his new theory about the origin of the extraordinary skills of autistic savants."
A really interesting New Yorker article about Muzak and its attempts to rebrand itself from an elevator music to an audio branding company.
Tags: business marketing branding music
"Author and design critic Rick Poynor takes a hard look at his own profession and finds that, despite living in an age when everyone's a critic, real criticism is almost impossible to find."
Tags: criticism design culture art
"In order to harness collective intelligence: a) Information must flow freely and b) It must be harnessed/processed in some way -- else it remains a collection of opinions and not knowledge."
Tags: web2.0
The Ascendant Breed of Grown-Ups Who Are Redefining Adulthood
Tags: culture parents demographics nyc
"Boss management can stimulate better performance, improve your working life, job satisfaction, and workload. Give your boss a hand and reap the rewards."
Tags: business communication management productivity
The Marketplace of Perceptions
"Behavioral economics explains why we procrastinate, buy, borrow, and grab chocolate on the spur of the moment."
Tags: behavior finance economics marketing culture psychology
Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?
"Social technologies succeed when they fit into the social lives and practices of those who engage with the technology."
Tags: socialsoftware myspace culture youth socialnetworking friendster community
How smart companies are creating new products -- and whole new businesses -- almost overnight
Tags: business innovation marketing
The personal website of Bill Keagy of xBlog fame.
Tags: design art nicedesign
Danah Boy writes about her experience using marijuana for medicinal purposes over valium.
Tags: drugs health law politics
"Iconographer is a fully-featured icon editor. It allows you to both change the icons of items and to edit the icon resources used by various programs."
Tags: icons software free design apple
Character is the new dominant trend in design
"And character is what we want from design right now. In our spoilt, saturated consumer culture, we have become bored by the sleek, over-styled interiors we see in television makeover programmes and car commercials."
Tags: design furniture culture personalization
Film of the book: top 50 adaptations revealed
Interesting for what did and didn't make the list.
Future Perfect: Micro Breaks, Macro Breaks
"If you design mobile devices, applications or services you should be interested in micro and macro breaks - as a commonly carried mobile essential there is a fair chance that the mobile phone will be used during that break."
"A graphical look at what we've done and where we're going"
Tags: environment science visualization inspiration design
How Americans use their cell phones
A new Pew Internet & American Life Project Report.
TV after Advertising (and Advertising After TV)
"TV's liberation from advertisers shouldn't have sent brands running to find a new unrelated medium on which to promote themselves; their panicked migration to the Internet. . . only bespeaks a lack of faith in the selling power of the products . . . "
Tags: marketing advertising media2.0 innovation
"What's an engineer's worst nightmare? To realize that the supports he designed for a skyscraper like Citicorp Center are flawed---and hurricane season is approaching."
Tags: engineering design ethics management risk architecture nyc
"Being an executive is a tough job, no doubt. However there are a set of things any rational person has to believe about executives, that don’t match their behavior."
Tags: management business lists
"Listing Square will help you find a 'no fee' apartment in New York for FREE."
Tags: nyc free apartments
A photo site with facial recognition.
Tags: photography community privacy technology
"SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless."
Tags: backup mac software free
"The complete set of 50 passenger/pedestrian symbols developed by AIGA is now available on the web, free of charge. Signs are available in EPS and GIF formats."
The International Symbol for Man Tells All
A conversation with the symbol that represents man on bathrooms across the country and numerous other signs.
Tags: funny design interviews
The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order
McDonald's has begun to outsource drive-through order taking.
Tags: business food jobs technology outsourcing
Ill-structured process, clear outcome
"I wonder if we couldn't extend that value of learning slightly if we didn't equate it so strongly with structure. I think we can achieve intended outcomes, even if the learning isn't structured or sequenced in a particular manner."
Tags: education learning videogames design
"Disney said it will make episodes of its shows available online, for free and on-demand, the day after they air on broadcast."
Tags: disney television media2.0 advertising
How Not to Think Strategically About the Future of Media, pt 193941
"By focusing on unbundling without rebundling Disney is getting edge strategy exactly wrong. They are handing market power to folks like YouTube and MySpace - literally just forking over market power."
Tags: disney marketing media2.0 unbundled video business
Exploitation 2.0: Web 2.0 Wants to USE You
"Can there really be “edge competencies� without “edge compensation�?" Great question Scott.
Tags: media2.0 marketing usergeneratedcontent
"Audience relationship businesses take these proliferating content options as an opportunity, rather than a challenge. The more options there are, the more value that can be created by organizing, packaging, presenting and adding to these options for spe
Tags: advertising unbundled media2.0 community attention
On the cooption of language.
Tags: language design intelligentdesign
"There was a time when presents were mailed in November with the challenging admonition: Do not open until Christmas. That tradition has given way to a new challenge: anyone receiving a package in November has to attack it immediately to get it open by Ch
Tags: design packaging usability
"Our community provides a virtual banquet of learning opportunities for Web development, but if you’re looking for actual design information you’ll need to tighten your belt. The fare is paltry."
What It Means To Be An Intellectual
"What is "this drive"? It's the tendency to not simply accept things as they are but to want to think about them, to understand them."
Tags: thinking culture politics
"We're pretty happy to announce that the complete spam protection that WordPress users have enjoyed since Akismet started is now available for Movable Type."
Tags: blogs spam plugins movabletype
"This is a list of the most groundbreaking, cutting edge blogs out there. You see these blogs and cry, because they’re creatures of fierce untameable beauty."
Tags: blogs design inspiration
Why can't you pay attention anymore?
All of that data flying at you by e-mail, instant message, cell phone, voice mail and BlackBerry--it could actually be making you dumber.
Tags: attention brain health productivity multitasking psychology stress
My personal favorite: “Rows Of Seated White Men Typing At Conferences�
Tags: funny lists flickr geeks
Just in case I ever screw up the httpd.conf again.
Mark Lewis thinks about the future of the agency.
Tags: advertising business future media2.0 marketing
Referential vs. Experiential Bloggers
"The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this."
Tags: blogs
Lindon Leader, he of FedEx logo design fame and fortunre.
Tags: logos design branding interviews
"The results of the international contest of logos, trademarks and corporate identity Identity: Best of The Best 2006"
Tags: logos branding design inspiration
Finding Happiness in a Harvard Classroom
Six tips for happiness from Tal Ben-Shahar.
Tags: psychology happiness health productivity
attentionomics testing and urban spam
On bar postcards: "They sit, modestly at the edge of our attention-field and they'll only 'succeed' if they're sufficiently engaging, interesting or useful for us to want to march over and look at them, read them or ideally, use them."
Tags: media advertising attention marketing design
"Clearly, even the design of something as deceivingly simple as a urinal can have a myriad of issues to consider and design around."
Tags: design usability bathrooms
Wikipedia and other online databases provide a soupy morass of information, but where can we find the variety of views that leads to wisdom
The Multitasking or Music-Tasking Generation?
"At it's best, familiar music just induces a pleasant and brain-restful expectancy. Music primes the brain with for new associations, intuitive thinking, and even language."
Tags: brain music multitasking
Free for 1gb, $4.99 for 5gb, plus an API.
Tags: backup
Blogging For Blogging's Sake or The Tyranny of the Term
"Take “blog� as another example  “web log� software is simply a publishing platform  an easy-to-use content management system  but it has come to connote an iconoclastic, power-to-the-little-guy ethos."
Is it PowerPoint that's bad or is it the way people's presentations?
Tags: powerpoint design presentation
Epicenter software design: Building features from the inside out
"So, if you’re wondering where to start on a new feature or a new product, discover the epicenter. What’s the one thing it needs first before it needs anything else?"
Tags: design development process ui usability
When Design is a Matter of Life or Death
How do you address a problem you created?
Tags: architecture design ethics engineering
Some beautiful poster design from Japan.
Tags: design japan inspiration
"Boot Camp gives switchers a comfortable out if they wind up not liking or in any way regretting their switch to Mac OS X: they can use their Mac as a bona fide first-class Windows box."
Tags: apple microsoft competition software os windows
"But what if … what if we had a graphic vocabulary that actually meant something? What if it were a hard fact that, say, an open swoosh = transition, and a closed swoosh (halo) = transition completed."
Tags: design branding history language
Powazek: Just a Thought: Death to User-Generated Content
"Calling the beautiful, amazing, brilliant things people create online 'user-generated content' is like sliding up to your lady, putting your arm around her and whispering, 'Hey baby, let's have intercourse.'"
Tags: marketing language communication passion internet
Best Mexican Food in San Francisco
I love Mexican food and I'm going to San Francisco. Looks like a winning combination.
Tags: sanfrancisco food reviews
"s3DAV is a webDAV server which allows you to access a virtual file system using your Amazon s3 account."
"NewsLetter is a free batch emailer, speciallly thought for newsletters. . . it features the creation of plain text and HTML messages (simple or multipart)."
Tags: email free software apple
A fairly in-depth look at why Bose is not as good as everyone thinks.
Tags: music hometheatre reviews
"These are basically little nuggets of wisdom for bite-sized nutrition."
Tags: entrepreneur tips business
Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels takes on Robert Scoble, Shel Israel and corporate blogging.
Tags: amazon blogs corporateblogging business
Interview with the Pirate Party
A new Swedish political party with three goals: "Reform copyright, abolish patents, and strengthen the right to privacy."
Tags: copyright p2p politics sweden
"This list contains some of the more popular symbols and acronyms found on many Japanese automatic cameras."
Tags: camera icons photography reference
Tiny Ohio town freaked out by Mario prank
Some teenagers made giant power-up icons out of boxes and the town thought they had been attacked by terroritsts . . .
Tags: funny videogames terrorism
"An Open Source Tagging / Folksonomy module for PHP/MySQL applications."
Tags: php tags api opensource free software
The clickthrough's tyrannical efficiency
"Literally. The web unbundles the bundle - each story becomes a separate entity that lives or dies, economically, on its own."
Tags: unbundled advertising newspapers craigslist journalism media2.0
Thank You For Smoking opening main titles
Very nicely designed opening title sequence for the movie Thank You For Smoking.
Tags: movies design typography history cigarettes
Chernobyl. Causes and consequences.
A great print ad for a special National Geographic issue on Chernobyl.
Tags: design magazines advertising russia
A Mac uninstaller that will take $.05 off the price for every blogger that links to it.
Tags: apple software tools marketing
Another free stock photo site. Can't ever have too many of those.
Tags: stock free photography
Explaining the differences between Times Roman and Times New Roman, in case you were interested.
Tags: typography font history design
New York Times editor briefly explains their web redesign.
Tags: design nytimes newspapers internet
ARF Can't Define 'Engagement,' We Gave It A Shot
"How 'bout Time Spent (with medium) + Response Rate (average CTR, letters to editor, subscription/renewal rates, number of comments left on a blog) + Average Ad/Content Recall Rates + Uptick in Measured Brand Metric?"
Tags: engagement marketing business
The Mistake of Extending Brands
"In trying to protect and expand its brands, network television is shooting itself in the foot with an all or nothing strategy involving those brands."
Tags: unbundled television branding internet
The role of aesthetics in design
"So simply put, ugly!=good, but ugly doesn’t hurt that much until your market is mature enough for people have choices by which to exercise their aesthetic and user experience preferences."
Tags: design
"As a brand it would be good to keep in mind Gardner's advice - 'It occurs to me, (insert your brand here), that you spend too much [money] trying to be interesting. Why don't you invest more [money] being interested?'"
Tags: branding collaboration marketing passion advertising
14 of the Fortune 500, or 3%, blog.
Tags: corporateblogging blogs business
Gawker Walker Tour: A Young Manhattanite Follows the NYU Vomit Trail
Includes a stop at Josie Woods and this quote: "The era of the “blockbuster� party is over and the price elasticity of the Pleasure Principle has been stretched and snapped into the millions of niche gatherings at the shallow end of humanity."
"A widget implementation of the famous “Oblique Strategies� card decks from Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt."
Tags: widgets creativity dashboard free apple
You Got Questions, Ninja Got Answers.