On the Edge

davidkaneda: “The Cooper Residence” by architect Randy...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:19:09 -0500

davidkaneda:

“The Cooper Residence” by architect Randy Weinstein is completely stunning. (via Contemporist)

When Books Could Change Your Life

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:08:00 -0500

When Books Could Change Your Life:

Absolutely fantastic article on why the books we read as adolescents hold such a dramatic power over our imaginations.

From the article:

“I think adults tend to forget about the fears of childhood,” author Jenny Boylan (She’s Not There and I’m Looking Through You) says via e-mail. “I was then and am now drawn to stories that paint a more complicated picture of childhood. Fern, in Charlotte’s Web, is poised between childhood and adolescence—she starts off rescuing Wilbur from death (yes, that’s right, DEATH WITH AN AX), and yet by story’s end she kind of forgets about Wilbur—she and Henry are `off at the fair.’ So to speak.

“At story’s end, Wilbur’s one friend—the wise, illuminating, literate spider—curls up and dies. Wilbur manages to save her egg sac, tends it all winter, and in the spring, the babies hatch out and—IMMEDIATELY LEAVE HIM. Except for a couple of them, who know nothing of Charlotte, and how she saved Wilbur’s life. Charlotte’s Web was the first book that made me weep, and I wept because I knew that it contained truth.”

As I think back on my reading of books with fairly “depressing” endings - or rather, books that faced the uncomfortable realities of life dead on - I am reminded that I would avoid the endings entirely. Once I saw the “writing on the wall” of the ending, I just closed the book and tried to ignore it - in the same way that an optimist might ignore the reality of the “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” finale.

Now that I’m older, I recognize that life doesn’t allow us to stem unfortunate endings at the pass. But as the author notes:

When we’re children, all the books we read are handed down to us, like the Ten Commandments, by grownups, who seem like, and sort of are, a different order of being from ourselves. They’re the gods of childhood, bigger and older and more experienced; they know more than we do, imparting what wisdom to us they think we can bear, empowered to tell us what to do. I’m over 40 now, no longer by even the most charitable definition a young adult, and I’m starting to realize, in something like panic, that I don’t understand anything, and that nobody else seems to know any more about it than I do. There aren’t any grownups. And maybe there aren’t any secrets left to tell.

Photo

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:27:38 -0500

The gist of every iPhone commercial.

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:15:53 -0500

couch:

aparticularpath:

Once upon a time I had a first-world problem, luckily I had a first-world product that increases my dependancy on technology, removes my need to consult other humans and deepens my handicap of extreme-laziness. My friends were thoroughly impressed.

"I look at the cheapest [iPad] as the best value because it comes out before the 3G model, and given..."

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:35:00 -0500

“I look at the cheapest [iPad] as the best value because it comes out before the 3G model, and given it’s a new platform I wouldn’t be eager to spend extra on a first generation/Revision A model. If spending monthly for the 3G service is no problem to you, I’d wait and get the cheapest 3G model when they come out.”

- From kevin.tumblr.com, in response to a question of which iPad is the best value.

Also, if you live in NYC, 3g is going to barely work anyway - so why spend the extra money on that model?

"If Apple becomes a company that uses its might to quash competition instead of using its brains,..."

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:42:59 -0500

“If Apple becomes a company that uses its might to quash competition instead of using its brains, it’s going to find the brainiest people will slowly stop working there. You know this, you watched it happen at Microsoft. Enforcing patents isn’t a good long-term play: it’s the beginning of the end of the creative Apple we both love.”

- Open Letter to Apple | Will Shipley

It’s great working in an industry in which many of the top performers have a consistent ethos which actually informs their day-to-day decisions. It’s rare that you hear of the best technologists selling-out (other than early exits from startups, I guess). But you frequently read strongly stated opinions on everything from technical architectures to corporate ethics.

I’m not sure what sets the field apart from others. It’s a shame banking doesn’t seem to have the same culture.

From Jason Santa Maria | “Final Moments” This view...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:50:00 -0500

From Jason Santa Maria | “Final Moments”

This view of Manhattan (similar to the view from our neck of Brooklyn) will hopefully never get old.

fingernails in oatmeal: Metaprogramming: Ruby vs. Javascript

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:51:16 -0500

fingernails in oatmeal: Metaprogramming: Ruby vs. Javascript:

I’ve recently been working more with Javascript outside of the browser, thanks mostly to node.js. To jump in and learn the language, I tried to emulate some of the metaprogramming I’d learned from working with ruby. I’m going to show examples in ruby and the equivalent code in Javascript. Let’s…

Flash and Web Standards, again

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:37:05 -0500

Flash and Web Standards, again:

jimray:

As someone who spent years as a Flash developer and who still manages a team of bright and capable developers with a lot of Flash expertise, I have to say that the only platform I’m really excited about these days is “the web” specifically the future that HTML 5, CSS 3 and javascript libraries like jQuery portend. Flash was interesting for so long because it let us do things we couldn’t do otherwise — vector animation, audio and video playback, motion graphics. Over the past few years, though, the number of problems that Flash uniquely solves versus the number of problems that Flash creates has all but leveled out.

This is about how I feel lately. Flex/AS3 is still my dayjob and the technology with which I’m likely to perform the majority of my work for the short-term future, but I’m really excited to see the “open” web stack actually allow for the creation of incredible app experiences.

Snow in Brooklyn | Cheery Observations Some gorgeous shots of...

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:33:01 -0500

Snow in Brooklyn | Cheery Observations

Some gorgeous shots of the NY snowscape

Content design with cojones « Made by Many Fantastic...

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:37:00 -0500

Content design with cojones « Made by Many

Fantastic article on evolving web design in the context of the iPad; as I’ve written before, it’s really exciting to see how UX will change in the next few years, especially if the desktop metaphor dies away.

I think it’s important to point out that even in the realm of blogs / CMS, we’re already starting to see a paradigm shift in how articles are presented. One of the best examples, I think, is Jason Santa Maria’s blog . The consistent nav structure, combined with the individual page layouts and designs, is an indication of how blogs and “structured” content can easily change as we enter a new stage of web UX.

Revised Font Stack

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:02:06 -0500

Revised Font Stack:

davidkaneda:

A Way Back takes a fresh look at default font stack, first citing statistics about pre-installed fonts, then making recommendations for popular sites like Yahoo and Facebook.

Good read, and the layout of the article itself is pretty great.

davidkaneda: As a concept, multitasking goes beyond just...

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:10:18 -0500

davidkaneda:

As a concept, multitasking goes beyond just background processes. There’s an aspect of multitasking which is purely visual. For example, when developing a website, I’ll often put the Photoshop file next to my browser, for comparison.

In a roundabout way, this means the iPad already has multitasking. Consider apps like Mail where, on the iPad, the list view and detail view have been combined to one screen. Users can not only read an email, but also instantly see when the previous email in that thread was sent, who sent it, and delete it—all without losing their place. To me, this is a form of multitasking. Extending this split screen idea to the app level presents a difficult UX challenge, but could be a better approach for multitasking than the typical “windowed” metaphor used on desktops.

I’m absolutely ecstatic to see how user interfaces evolve in the coming years. I really think the concepts of “files”,”folders”, and “windows” will start to disappear as an app-focused, cloud-based web evolves.

Day of the Tiger: How Newspapers, Networks, and News Aggregators Played Tiger Woods on Friday | Danwin: Dan Nguyen, in short

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:33:00 -0500

Day of the Tiger: How Newspapers, Networks, and News Aggregators Played Tiger Woods on Friday | Danwin: Dan Nguyen, in short:

Fascinating visualization of how major news organizations and websites handled Tiger coverage.

"I wrote that article in 2007, and I am stunned, but not entirely surprised, to hear that three years..."

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:02:39 -0500

“I wrote that article in 2007, and I am stunned, but not entirely surprised, to hear that three years later “the vast majority” of so-called programmers who apply for a programming job interview are unable to write the smallest of programs. To be clear, hard is a relative term — we’re not talking about complicated, Google-style graduate computer science interview problems. This is extremely simple stuff we’re asking candidates to do. And they can’t. It’s the equivalent of attempting to hire a truck driver and finding out that 90 percent of the job applicants can’t find the gas pedal or the gear shift.”

- Coding Horror: The Non-Programming Programmer

It’s really amazing to me that the gaping market hole for talented web developers and software engineers hasn’t been plugged. It’s the only area of the economy (of which I’m aware) that has remained unscathed by the downturn.

Why I Hate Your Web App

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:02:31 -0500

Why I Hate Your Web App:

Some interesting thoughts on how to make your web app stand out.

"When I do long division or even multiplication I don’t try to remember the intermediate..."

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:45:37 -0500

“When I do long division or even multiplication I don’t try to remember the intermediate numbers. Long ago I learned to write them down. Because of paper and pencil I am “smarter” in arithmetic. In a similar manner I now no longer to try remember facts, or even where I found the facts. I have learned to summon them on the Internet. Because the Internet is my new pencil and paper, I am “smarter” in factuality. But my knowledge is now more fragile. For every accepted piece of knowledge I find, there is within easy reach someone who challenges the fact. Every fact has its anti-fact. The Internet’s extreme hyperlinking highlights those anti-facts as brightly as the facts. Some anti-facts are silly, some borderline, and some valid. You can’t rely on experts to sort them out because for every expert there is an equal and countervailing anti-expert. Thus anything I learn is subject to erosion by these ubiquitous anti-factors.”

- The Technium: The 2-Billion-Eyed Intermedia

An answer to the question of “How has the internet changed the way you think” - fascinating reading, definitely check out the whole article. I have also found the very way in which I conceive the world, or think about problems, drastically changing of late. I’m not sure if that change is a good thing or not, but the change itself is very real.

"NBC points live video and audio on halfpipe athletes and coaches celebrating a gold medal with White..."

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:07:09 -0500

“NBC points live video and audio on halfpipe athletes and coaches celebrating a gold medal with White and is surprised to hear some profanity? Wouldn’t it have been more of a surprise if there wasn’t any?”

- News and notes from NBC’s Olympics coverage - washingtonpost.com

couch: I’m a big advocate for big interface elements so Trent...

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:22:59 -0500

couch:

I’m a big advocate for big interface elements so Trent Walton’s overview of what’s to come in web design, with the shift from mouse clicks to finger taps, makes a lot of sense.

"Whenever I see a brilliant kid decide to join Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, or Google, I think to myself:..."

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:39:47 -0500

“Whenever I see a brilliant kid decide to join Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, or Google, I think to myself: a startup just died, and as a result our world is a little less wealthy, innovative, and interesting.”

- Every time an engineer joins Google, a startup dies cdixon.org – chris dixon’s blog

Some good observations on the internet startup scene.