December 2010
42 posts
Build Apps, Not Businesses →
Sahil Lavingia:
David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals is known for lambasting businesses that seem oblivious to the concept of profitability. I don’t really agree with him. I think that you should spend time doing fun little projects. Many fun little projects. Recognize that most of them will die, but that one or two may do well.
I got a degree learning how to write business plans and...
Seth Godin: Maybe Next Year... →
An excellent companion piece to yesterday’s What Did You Ship in 2010?
Notable Posts From My Tumblr-Era Archives
I made the switch to Tumblr in March of this year. As 2010 draws to a close, I’ve sifted through my archives since the switch. Below are some of the highlights.
One — Among everything I wrote this year, this piece is the most meaningful for me. It was from the heart and gave me a chance to share a side many of you aren’t familiar with. Just as importantly, it was posted in...
URL Design →
Some thoughtful advice from Kyle Neath on designing your URLs from the first forward slash to the last. This was a nice takeaway for me:
URLs are for humans. Design them for humans.
Seth Godin: What Did You Ship in 2010? →
Seth Godin’s recap of 2010 in terms of what he shipped. We’d all do well to do the same, as he suggests:
Your turn to post a list somewhere… You’ll probably be surprised at how much you accomplished last year. Go ahead and share with your friends, colleagues or the web… don’t be shy.
Jon Tan: 2010 in Retrospect →
Lovely little piece recapping Jon’s year in prose with photos.
Daniel Balsam Hates Spam, Became a Lawyer to Fight... →
An inspiring story about a California marketer who quit his job and got a law degree to sue spammers. In a nutshell,
‘I feel like I’m doing a little bit of good cleaning up the Internet,’ Balsam said…. ‘I feel comfortable doing what I’m doing, and I’m not going away.”
Typefaces for Dyslexia →
Ian Litterick, an assistive technology specialist (from what I can tell):
Serif fonts, with their ‘ticks’ and ‘tails’ at the end of most strokes (as found in traditional print fonts such as Georgia or Times New Roman), tend to obscure the shapes of letters, so sans-serif fonts are generally preferred. Many dyslexic people also find it easier to read a font that looks similar to hand writing as...
Last Day to Order for Christmas Arrival
Just a reminder that today is the last day to order a letterpress poster bundle to arrive in time for Christmas (U.S. addresses only). Orders will be shipped via USPS Express Mail.
Each bundle is just $79 and includes a full-size poster along with a smaller print. Both are letterpress printed. All other items in the store are on sale through the end of today.
Happy holidays, everyone.
NYT: The Words of the Year →
I needn’t be a mansplainer to tell you what this list is about.
Let’s Swap →
Great idea from from the crew at Hyperakt. Swap your art for others’ art. The featured artist can select which swap(s) to accept, and accepted swaps are posted for viewing. (It’s not clear yet, though, how featured artists are selected.)
The 11” MacBook Air as a Primary Computer?...
I acquired an 11” MacBook Air shortly after its release a couple months ago. It has a 1.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2 GB of RAM and a 128 GB flash drive. Though I’ve not tweeted much about it, every time I do, I get questions about its performance, especially from a design and development perspective.
So, a month ago, I spent a full day working on the 11”...
Fusion Ads Holiday Bundle, $79 →
A steal for 13 bundled items that include ExpressionEngine, Versions, Billings, Pictos, Keynote Wireframing Toolkit, and more.
An Open Letter to Carol Bartz, CEO Yahoo Inc. →
Thomas Hawk:
In your letter to your employees you say, it’s ‘no secret that we’re cutting investment in underperforming and non-core products so we can focus on our strengths (like email, the homepage, search, mobile, advertising, content and more)’
Email? The homepage? search ? mobile? advertising? Yawn.
You know what I don’t see in there? Flickr. Photos. I’m...
3 tags
Gift One, Get One Letterpress Sale
Just in time for Christmas shipping, I’ve put together three special bundles that let you give the gift of letterpress to friends and loved ones, while gifting one to yourself:
Salt Lake 16”x24” Signed Letterpress Poster and 8”x12” Unsigned Print
Colosseo 24”x16” Signed Poster and 8”x10” Unsigned Print (Pearl)
Colosseo...
ALA: Smartphone Browser Landscape →
Another one for Instapaper.
NPR: “The Sounds Of Star Wars” →
Although the article leads off announcing a new book by J.W. Rinzle (which is available on Amazon, and which looks like an interactive audio book for adults if you ask me), the more interesting part is an interview with sound designer Ben Burtt, architect of the original sounds of Star Wars.
Here’s Burtt’s account of how the legendary light saber hum was born:
I was a...
24 ways: An Introduction to CSS 3-D Transforms →
Really thorough and fairly technical. If you’re an Instapaper user, save this for holiday break reading.
Ampersand, The Web Typography Conference →
Scheduled for next June in Brighton (UK). I have high hopes for this.
DingbatPress Letterpress Gift Tags & Cards →
I wish I would have stumbled on this earlier. Beautiful, affordable letterpress cards and gift tags for your design-appreciative friends and loved ones.
Tabletop Product Photography Guide →
A nice round-up of tips and product suggestions from the knowledgable crew at B&H.
Letterpress Poster Christmas Sale Coming This Week →
Just a heads up that I’ll be putting my posters on sale later this week. Keep an eye on this site or follow along on Twitter.
Apple Names Flipboard iPad App of the Year →
Deservedly, in my opinion. That and the NY Times app are about the only two that I use nearly every day. (Although for the record, I liked the simplicity and stability of the first-version NYT app, not the latest.)
Now is a Great Time to be Unfundable →
Bryce Roberts, venture capitalist:
Wherever the ‘no’ comes from I think its refining. I believe it makes you confront painful realities that exist in your business….
I fear that, in this market, people are pouring rocketfuel into cardboard cutouts and no one is telling them. I strongly believe living through ‘unfundable’ periods is important for long term...
Dropbox for Teams →
Shared storage quotas, centralized administration, and “Dropbox Rewind” — an SVN-like service that allows you to roll back to previous versions of files. 350 GB for $795.00/year, with additional storage available in 100 GB packs for $200/year.
Type City Cleveland →
Started in 2007 by Chris Ramsay, adjunct professor at The Cleveland Institute of Art. His communication design students have submitted designs each year since. They’re all great, but Nick Matic’s Fountain of Eternal Life is especially nice.
Gowalla Advent Calendar →
Check in (or tweet) to enter. Lots of nice gifts — MacBook Airs, snowboards, charity: water donations, etc.
Impatient Nation: I Can’t Wait For You To Read... →
Linton Weeks, NPR:
Speaking for many Americans, prolific author Valerie Frankel wrote in the March issue of Self magazine: ‘I’ve always imagined that my impatient nature is a sign of my success — something that all busy, hard-driving, intelligent people share.’
But after melting down emotionally at a sandwich shop and a clothing store, Frankel wondered if her impatience...
Design Swap: Phil Coffman vs. Jesse... →
A sort of Layer Tennis-like collaboration on a design (this one appropriately titled “Butterfly Invasion”), as well as exchanging each other’s Twitter accounts for a day.
Minor correction: The image featured on the Design Swap page was done by the Design Swap crew. Phil and Jesse executed the two designs (featured in the image collage) on each other’s Twitter accounts.
Which Video DSLR to Buy? →
Nobody does video DSLR reviews like Philip Bloom. Always extensive, and always with extraordinary sample videos. (Related, I’m hoping to join Philip for a full-day workshop next March in Miami.)
Helvetica vs. Arial App →
Hint: The tail on the ‘a’ is a dead giveaway, every time.
24 ways: Golden Spirals →
While the tutorial has no real practical application, the closing paragraph sums up why you should give it a read nonetheless:
[This] has been a good excuse to play with proportions, positioning and the immediate child selector, as well as new CSS3 features such as border-radius and RGBA colours. If you are not already designing with golden proportions, then perhaps this will inspire you to...
Back Online →
Mark Wyner’s frank but optimistic remarks on yesterday’s major Tumblr outage:
This was related to a colossal database-cluster failure with Tumblr, the publishing system I use to publish my posts. The rest of my site, outside the Tumblr network, was in good order. But it sucked all the same.
I forgive Tumblr, though. They’re in their infancy and are still building a network...
GOOD: Holiday Gift Guide 2010 →
This list is probably unlike most others you’ll see this year. Instead of tech gadgets and such, GOOD asked a number of notable people what they recommend for gift giving. Here’s Corby Kummer, food writer for the Atlantic:
The greatest gift is to give someone three hours and help them throw out junk they don’t need, find out who locally takes what, and buy file folders. But...
TweetMag Screenshots →
I use Flipboard almost daily to flip through content posted by those I follow on Twitter. It’s a fantastic app. Now, the team at Teehan+Lax have been developing a similar app, and it looks to be even more fantastic than Flipboard. It has the typography and design you’d expecting from the discerning eye of Geoff Teehan, Jon Lax, and the rest of their crew.
For a demo video, check out...
Handpicked Job Openings
What a marvelous time of the year. Frank Sinatra, Philadelphia Brass Ensemble, and other classics are in full rotation.
If things aren’t quite as jolly for you, or if you’re wishing they were a bit more merry and work is to blame, I’ve thumbed through the listings on Authentic Jobs. Featured below are some of these.
Senior Web Application Engineer
...
Gowalla 3.0 Adds Foursquare, Facebook Places... →
Founder Josh Williams:
Gowalla is now the easiest and best way to keep up with your friends across services with a combined activity tab that merges the whereabouts of your Gowalla, Facebook and Foursquare friends. Additionally, Gowalla now supports checking in on both Facebook Places and Foursquare in addition to sharing with both Twitter and Tumblr.
I’d say this was a gutsy move by...
Valio Con 2011 →
I like the sales pitch: “Featuring talks from the ‘un-sung’ heroes in the industry on a variety of topics to get you inspired.” With catering by In-N-Out and a bonfire on the beach to kick things off, this California kid is tempted to book a flight for next May. (Early bird special ends December 10.)
Uncrate: The Gadget Guru Gift Guide →
Two of two.
Core77: 77 Design Gifts Under $77 →
One of two.
Spacelog →
This is fascinating. Original NASA transcripts from early space exploration. The transcript formatting reads like blog comments or a Twitter conversation. Every comment has a permanent URI — here’s the original “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Additional controls at the bottom of each page reveal the original transcript and a map showing where the crew was during the...
The 24 Ways Annual 2010 →
From the folks at Five Simple Steps:
This year’s 24 ways annual blog is going to be turned into a printed annual that will be shipped in the new year. In partnership with 24 ways, Five Simple Steps is taking the 24 articles from high profile web professionals and making something tangible and beautiful to read off-line, during the rest of the year. All the proceeds from sales will be given to...