A while ago I wrote about Synergy and showed a picture of my desktop as of July 2007: That’s two 24″ Dell monitors (one for a Windows computer, the other for a Linux computer). I’ve had that setup for a couple years and I recently decided it was time to upgrade. So I bought a 30″ [...]

Jeffrey Zeldman releases his 2001 book, Taking Your Talent to the Web , as a free downloadable PDF . The book is, "...for print designers whose clients want websites, print art directors who?d like to move into full?time web and interaction design, homepage creators who are ready to turn pro, and professionals who seek to deepen their web skills and understanding." #

Research proves attractive things work better. How we think cannot be separated from how we feel. The next time a boss, client, or co-worker scoffs at the notion that beauty is an important aspect of interface design, point their peepers here.

Is there life after Georgia? We ask David Berlow, co-founder of The Font Bureau, Inc, and the ?rst TrueType type designer, how type designers and web designers can work together to resolve licensing and technology issues that stand between us and real fonts on the web.

On Thursday, my friends at Airbag launched Twitshirt , a simple but awesome service that lets you print the text of a Twitter posting on a tee-shirt. On Friday, the app was gone, replaced by a message stating, “we’re reversing the polarity.” Why? Because some people — and notably some people who turn out to be very influential in the Twitter community — had a problem with Twitshirt. Apparently, they felt like it was “stealing their...

I think the first song that I ever heard by The Decemberists was Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect : And here I dreamt I was a soldier And I marched the streets of Birkenau And I recall in spring The perfume that the air would bring To the indolent town. I was hooked. I sought out the back catalogue of the hyperliterary band and found nary a dud. When they opened their last album, The Crane Wife , with the strumming of a bouzouki (my instrument of choice), they won me...

Nice going, Ethan. Definitely one to keep in the ol' bag o' tricks. - archive link -

After my adventures in developing with Adobe AIR, I've been keeping an eye on the state of cross-platform desktop application frameworks. In the past year or so, I know of JavaFX and Titanium that have also hit the market. Not being a fan of Java, I stayed clear of JavaFX. Titanium, on the other hand, with its similarities to Adobe AIR, has been a more compelling option. Titanium is an open source platform for building desktop applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Applications...

I've been loving atebits' Twitter iPhone client, Tweetie, for a few weeks now (late adopter). On Monday they're releasing a desktop version, and from the preview video it certainly looks excellent (and unique). #

Wearable tweets, from the fine folks at Airbag Industries . Photo of my beta-tested shirt coming soon. #

In preparing for my talk for the Bamboo Juice conference at the Eden Project in Cornwall next week , I find I?m doing a lot of WWILF ing. After spending far too long reading about Stanford Tori and Bernal Spheres , and editing footage of a Von Braun-inspired orbital habitat , I got completely sidetracked into trying to figure out the storage capacity of the gold-plated record attached to Voyager 1. I still haven?t found an answer? I?ve asked Voyager?s cousin for help...

Whenever you put a link on a web page, make sure that it has text content. This may seem incredibly obvious, but it is actually not all that uncommon to find links that do not contain any text at all. These links usually come in one of the following shapes: <a href="http://example.com/" accesskey="0"></a> <a href="http://example.com/"><img src="image.gif" alt=""></a> In the first case, the link is invisible to everybody, but can be triggered...

One year after I graduated, I decided to go freelancing. This was something a friend and I decided to do if we didn?t find a fulltime job before the end of June of that same year, back in 1992. We got to know each other at the ad agency where I did an internship for about a month. This was a few years before I met Geert...

I present to you one case that I find fascinating: the tale of money management applications on the Mac. The story of a communication failure, a triumph of consistency and an eventual rise from the ashes. It is an excellent look into how communicating consistently and frequently can aid you significantly. Midnight Apps, had failed A small little application called Cha-Ching, developed by Midnight Apps, was offering licenses for its next version in the Macheist bundle . Users...

To some web professionals, accessiility means nothing because they aren?t aware it exists. To others it is a checklist of items that need to be ticked off because their boss or client tells them to. Others yet may use the same checklist as a guide that helps them understand accessibility and how people with disabilities use the web. But most of us don't go further than that unless we have a disability. So let's follow the advice given by Rob Foster in Accessibility to the Face and...

There's something about the DiggBar imbroglio (the Diggbroglio?) that has left me scratching my head: how is it that so many people are up in arms about the DiggBar when they've had nothing to say about the framing bars of StumbleUpon, FaceBook, etc. etc.?

Turns out, Firefox 3.1 is being renamed 3.5 due to all the new stuff that's being added. I'm particularly excited about this release for further progressive enrichment ammo, namely: @font-face for downloadable fonts, -moz-box-shadow and text-shadow (since Webkit has those as well) and more. #

Recently I treated myself to a solid-state drive (SSD). That’s essentially a hard-drive made out of memory chips. I bought the Intel X25-E Extreme, which uses faster single-level cell (SLC) memory chips instead of slower multi-level cell (MLC) memory chips. I wanted to put the drive through its paces, so I decided to see how fast [...]

Recently I treated myself to a solid-state drive (SSD). That’s essentially a hard-drive made out of memory chips. I bought the Intel X25-E Extreme, which uses faster single-level cell (SLC) memory chips instead of slower multi-level cell (MLC) memory chips. I wanted to put the drive through its paces, so I decided to see how fast [...]

Interesting comparison (my own) of packaging for Apple notebooks. I’ve been noticing a trend over the last few years to cut way down on box size for both hardware and software. But I still think it’s interesting to see side-by-side comparisons for similar items over time. This first photo shows the original box for a 12" PowerBook G4 purchased in 2004 (black box) next to the box for the current generation 15" MacBook Pro (white box) purchased in 2009. Another...