“The technological means to produce an archive are not beyond our skills; sadly, right now at least, the will to do so is insufficient. Let’s hope that doesn’t last forever.” The older I get, the more I want to become a digital pack rat.
“I realized recently that what one thinks about in the shower in the morning is more important than I’d thought. I knew it was a good time to have ideas. Now I’d go further: now I’d say it’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.” Completely agree.
Sigh.
Fantastic commencement speech about perspective in life. When reading it I couldn’t help but hear my mother’s voice saying, “You don’t have to look very far to see someone worse off then yourself.”
“But, he proposed, substantive conversation seemed to hold the key to happiness for two main reasons: both because human beings are driven to find and create meaning in their lives, and because we are social animals who want and need to connect with other people.” I totally agree.
Grin
My favorite part of this chart is that they call the 00’s the “Noughties”.
“Too many entrepreneurs stop after they build the product. They think that building products is what makes them an entrepreneur. But entrepreneurship is about building businesses, and the product is just one part of that.”
“Some computer scientists think it’s time for an overhaul.” Big science comes to computer science. It’s long, but a very interesting read.
“He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds” Great list.
Basically the “safest option is to shade the alternating, individual rows of your table with a single color”. If you can’t do that stick with a horizontal rule for each table row.
Jon Tan does a great job explaining explaining just what a fonts and a typeface are, very beautifully I might add.
“Are they the best a man can get? Fuck, no. Gillette is the best a man can get.”
A great set of tips here and I particularly like this bit: “Yes, designers can make mistakes and take wrong directions. And yes, you need to give them direction. But you must tell them what you need, not how to achieve that goal.”
Sure, it’s all just concepts and hand waving, but very impressive regardless.
A fantastic article from George Oates, one of the designers at Flickr. There’s too many quotes in there to choose just one, but it got me thinking about community design in a slightly different way.
“Now, of course, the question seems not whether Clinton will exit the race but when.” Sooner rather than later please.
“the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era.” Yes please.
Bar charts, timelines, sparklines, oh my. The article by Wilson Miner all about accessible data visualization is chalked full of great ideas and practical ways of implementing them.
“This completely self-sustaining prefabricated house generates its own power, collects its own water, processes its own waste and is 100% automatic.”
There was a side bit in a West Wing episode about this. The eventual resolution was they couldn’t get rid of the penny because it was still allowed in Illinois toll booths because of Lincoln and Illinois was too important of a primary state.
“If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it.”
Clients have proposals. They come in all sizes and shapes, from formal RFPs to an idea hastily sketched on a back of a napkin. But there is one thing they all have in common: Requirements. And each of those requirements almost always calls for a feature. Like a blog. Tagging. sIFR. Some AJAX. These days, even a site that sells toothpicks seems to need a rotating AJAX-powered image gallery.
Often times, we web pros spring into action when confronted with this dilemma. We draft estimates, outline how all these “necessary” features might fit within a client’s budget, and use our design and development skills to build something that doesn’t look like a cobbled-together mishmash.
I understand why almost every client requests these intricate features. They see a site that does something they really like. They love how you can zoom in on Google maps or drag and drop things into a shopping cart, for example. It’s easy to make that leap from “they do that” to “we should do that, too.” Unfortunately, it’s also a fundamentally a flawed approach.
A bit of a sensationalized title but a great piece regardless. It’s hard for me to not link to every post from this blog.