May 2013
23 posts
“It’s easy for a brainstorm to be taken as direction. I talked to Tony Fadell of...”
– Aza Raskin
“Even Karp’s strongest backers say that the 26-year-old needs help running the...”
– All Things D
“I hope they let me work on some of the many exciting projects at Yahoo! Who...”
– Marco Arment (Tumblr employee #1) in 2009, responding to then-recent Yahoo acquisition rumors
Yahoo to hold press event Monday as Tumblr buyout... →
Maybe we should all start making plans.
RedPen.io →
In-browser design feedback with a great onboarding process.
One less JPG →
Good performance advice:
Before you go worrying about how to minify every last library or shave tests out of Modernizr, try and see if you can remove just one photo from your design. It will make a bigger difference.
Univision [Prematurely] Announces Spanish-Language... →
Maybe jumping the gun a bit as Sony hasn’t actually made a deal yet, but still:
“Metastasis” – Based on the critically acclaimed American series “Breaking Bad,” “Metastasis” is the story of a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He turns to a life of crime, producing and selling meth with a former student with the goal of securing his...
Clamp.js →
Truncates text beyond a certain number of lines.
Useful for stuff like two-line message previews in Web-based email apps.
“[Warner Bros.] get a possible hit movie, they didn’t have to lay out a cent for...”
– Ken Levine on the Veronica Mars Kickstarter
“The music industry lawyers haven’t figured out Vimeo yet and we can safely...”
– NIN art director Rob Sheridan
“Steve Gomez, Taco Bell’s food innovation expert, recalls seeing the first...”
– Deep Inside Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco. Not an Onion article.
“When launching in a new market, Lululemon Athletica sends missionaries to...”
– Steve Portigal
All you need to know about CSS Transitions →
Good reference.
"Reorganization" - Trent Walton →
If a process calls for multiple builds and rapid iteration, why not structure teams accordingly? I like the idea of smaller, tactical teams that are capable of executing multiple rounds of planning, design, and code quickly and independently.
“Anne Raimondi from TaskRabbit explained that you not only have to show your...”
– Cooper Journal
“The holy grail is to give Photoshop computer vision. The app should simply...”
– The Verge
Adobe Photoshop CC Features →
Includes typography presets, editable roundrects (!!) and conditional actions. Also: looks like I’m keeping this Creative Cloud subscription forever.
In a time when designing in the browser (or in apps like Paintcode) increasingly seem like the only way to work going forward, and apps like Sketch offer superior interfaces for UI work, it’s incredible that I still find updates to Photoshop...
“Grace: when you extend an offer of allegiance to everyone around you. Jim’s...”
– Robin Sloan
April 2013
11 posts
“What you tolerate defines your community.”
– Caterina Fake
Google Glass UI Best Practices →
Voice replies are intended to capture free form input by voice. Do not use voice replies to capture a limited set of options, such as possible moves in a game.
Technological Conservatism →
Transitional Interfaces →
Folks keep throwing around the word “delight” when referring to animation and cute interactions. Cool and great for those guys. Guess what though? Animation can be used functionally too. It’s not just an embellished detail.
This is what I obsess over for hours.
Reasons My Son is Crying →
“Don’t wait to change companies to unlearn things. Do it when you get promoted....”
– Marc Hedlund
Byrne on bypassing waffling →
bobulate:
David Byrne on his remote collaborations with Brian Eno:
The unwritten game rules in these remote collaborations seem to be to leave the other person’s stuff alone as much as you can. Work with what you’re given; don’t try to imagine it as something other than what it is. … The fact that half the musical decision-making has already been done bypasses a lot of waffling and worrying. I...
On "Curation"
Recently, quite a few design writers I respect have moved their blogs over to systems like Jekyll or Statamic. In these systems, all of your posts are just a group of text files in a folder. So it’s incredibly lightweight, and you get to own your data completely. After the last Tumblr outage, I decided on Sunday morning to move my blog to Jekyll. Cut to six hours later when, either due to my...
March 2013
22 posts
Starting and Sustaining →
A $99 ebook and spreadsheet covering the basics of starting an independent web app business.
“As you get older, you realize just figuring out how to be nice to the people in...”
– Mike White on Enlightened
Upstream Color Screening, Brattle Theatre
White male nerds with girlfriends. Adjacent halitosis. Baseline criteria for narrative comprehension requires an intense stillness from the viewer: to make out each line of deamplified dialogue, absorb each shot, register each facial tic. Listening to Carruth fumble for words post-screening, I admire his creative discipline. Both of his films represent wild creativity sharpened down to their...
Funny or Die Makes a Steve Jobs Movie →
Starring Justin Long (Jobs), James Urbaniak (Gates), Michaela Watkins (Melissa Gates), and Jorge Garcia (Wozniak).
“In true Internet fashion, it’s not based on very thorough research — essentially a cursory look at the Steve Jobs Wikipedia page,” said Ryan Perez, who wrote and directed “iSteve.” […] Mr. Perez said he wrote the 81-page script for “iSteve” in three days; it was taped in five.
“Meantime, undigital became luxury. Spas, once islands of tranquility and beauty,...”
– Liz Danzico
“When you check on your space suit before getting out of the space shuttle, you...”
– Bruno Latour
“This is the reality we live in – almost every organisation you come across is...”
– Leisa Reichelt
“We have a ridiculous 30 percent reject rate of assets delivered to us. I...”
– Netflix CPO on receiving content from major studios and TV networks
“If the user was expecting to create something through a form and doesn’t...”
– Attention spans: A theory — Small Bytes — Medium
SelfishTwit 1.1
I updated SelfishTwit, my Chrome / Safari extension which shows only the links on Twitter, to version 1.1 last night. You can now view proper names, @usernames and Follow buttons on individual profile pages. Since you can now actually follow people to get links from, It’s now feasible to install SelfishTwit once you join and never remove it, if you so choose.
You should download SelfishTwit...
“I reject the entire notion of journalism—and writing at large—being...”
– Ta-Nehisi Coates 