Spacebits
My friend Yaron direct messaged me: “You like Space?” Me: “Yes.” Almost one month to-the-day later we launched Spacebits together. If you like Space… you can subscribe via RSS or follow along at @SpaceBitsFeed.
Blog
Longer-form posts and essays.
Writing helps me think more clearly. This archive is longer posts; quick updates now live in notes.
Topics: AI, blogging, photography, programming, projects, Signboard
Move the web forward
Jeremy Keith, on his personal blog: It is entirely possible—nay, desirable—to use features long before they are supported in every browser. That’s how we move the web forward. If we waited until there was universal support for a feature before we used it, we’d still be using CSS 1.0 and HTML 2.0. We agree. For our broad features…
Brie Weiler Reynolds works from home
Brie Weiler Reynolds, writing on Medium about working from home: The salacious reality about what I really do when I work from home is that I…work. Interesting word use. She makes the point that so many people still do not understand how working from home can be a real, actual, job and how it has its perks and…
Matt D. Smith on blogging
Matt D. Smith, whom I met at Greenville Grok and whose work I admire, recently held a Transform Athens event and asked John Saddington to present. And present he did. On blogging, of all things. Here is what Matt wrote afterwards about the event and blogging: The very fact that you are reading this right now gives you…
The anonymity I know
Chris Poole, founder of 4chan, remarks (on his personal blog) on the debate for and against anonymity on the web: The combination of anonymity and ephemerality has fostered experimentation and creativity rarely seen elsewhere. It’s incredible what people can make when they’re able to fail publicly without fear, since not only will those failures not be attributed to…
Slack changes the way you work
Stewart Butterfield, on Medium, regarding the “innovation” that Slack brings: But, for organizations that adopt it, there will be a dramatic shift in how time is spent, how communication happens, and how the team’s archives are utilized. There will be changes in how team members relate to one another and, hopefully, significant changes in productivity. We at Plain have…
Fresh URL
Fresh URL is a JavaScript library that strips away all of the extra cruft at the end of URLs but does so only after each service that uses that cruft gets the data they need. Brendan Schwartz, CTO of Wistia, writing on their company blog on how it works: Here‘s how it works. Fresh URL detects which analytics…
Using Image Capture to clear your Camera Roll on iOS
David Sparks, on his blog MacSparky: I‘ve been sloppy about cleaning out my camera roll. I could do this on the phone but it isn‘t very fast. So I fired up my favorite Mac app for managing/copying/deleting lots of images at once, Image Capture. I‘m often surprised by how many Mac owners don‘t even know this application exists….
Non-nerds missing out on RSS?
Conor McClure, on his personal blog: What is an RSS feed? I thought you’d never ask. No, really; the non-geek community is seriously missing out by not taking advantage of RSS in this online-media-dominated world we live in. I agree. And sometimes, on Twitter, I pretend to know the way out. Sometimes I think that so long as…
A readable Wikipedia
The people behind 1910 Design & Company took at stab at redesigning Wikipedia: While big parts of the internet have gone through an amazing journey in terms of typography these last years, Wikipedia’s reading experience is still stuck in the 90’s. We wanted to take a few days and propose a direction through which Wikipedia could move forward,…
Making remote teams work
The excellent Mandy Brown, CEO of Editorially, on Making remote teams work: One of the most unexpected things that I’ve learned from working remotely is that it isn’t just about accommodating different lifestyles or taking advantage of technology’s ability to compress long distances. Remote working encourages habits of communication and collaboration that can make a team objectively better:…
Communication for America
Jeremy’s title. Not mine. Jeremy Keith chimes in about remote work (see last post) and the advantages the “time shift” can have when working on large client projects: As it turned out, it wasn’t a problem at all. In fact, it worked out nicely. At the end of every day, we had a quick conference call, with two or…
VelocityPage for WordPress
One of the most common misconceptions about Barley is that it helps you with page layout in some way. It does not. You can’t change anything about a page’s layout using Barley CMS, our editor, or our Barley for WordPress plugin. Barley is specifically designed to help you edit the content of a web page. The text, images,…
Pedometer++ 2.0
I’m loving Pedometer++. If you don’t have it, get it. It is free. And, it has just seen a significant update that adds some great features and a new design. Also worth reading is the tidbits that David Smith has learned from his development of this application and the feedback he’s gotten from those that use it. Two…
How snakes fly
Rebecca Morelle has written a piece for the BBC explaining that scientists have figured out how snakes can glide through the jungle: Prof Socha said: “As it jumps, it flattens out from just behind the head to where the tail starts. What it is doing is taking its ribs and rotating them forwards toward the head and upwards…
Choose the right path for you
Chris Poole, on his personal blog: Not every idea represents a venture-backed opportunity though. That isn’t to say the idea or opportunity lacks merit—it’s just that another vehicle may be more appropriate for pursuing it. Bootstrapping, borrowing from close friends and family, a traditional bank loan, et cetera can also help bring an idea to life, and before…
Rob Cockerham makes clear ice
Rob Cockerham was determined to make clear ice in his home refrigerator. It took him well over a dozen different tries and methods. Until: Around this time, I spotted a crystal-clear ice sculpture of Optimus Prime on Reddit. I asked in the comments how they got the ice so clear and was sent a link to a video…
Kiddo
My friend Yaron Schoen, whom I met at Greenville Grok last year, has a new startup that he’s been working on for at least a year. It is called Kiddo and it is for parents. This is where Kiddo comes in. We want to help change that mindset by creating powerful and well designed software that is built…
Jared Sinclair on the new Dark Sky
Jared Sinclair, on his personal blog, on the new Dark Sky: The raw idea for the redesign is good; the three-panel view with a side panel for the globe is an interesting riff on two established navigation patterns. But the execution is sloppy. It lacks clarity. It fails to shape the data into visually coherent elements. Titles are…
App.net Hackathon recap
The official ADN blog: The fourth #adnhackation was this past Saturday, and, as always, developers worked on some extremely creative and inventive projects, which open up new uses for an App.net account. Really hard to believe this was the fourth hackathon already. As in the past, some great projects seemed to have come from this one. I love…
The Mac turns 30
We’ve come a long way in 30 years. Steven Levy, writing for Rolling Stone in 1984: On a pleasant, light background (you can later change the background to any of a number of patterns, if you like), little pictures called “icons“ appear, representing choices available to you. A word-processing program might be represented by a pen, while the…
Revival Letterpress in Scranton, PA
A friend of our team, Matthew Hiller, has a great letterpress shoppe in Scranton, PA and his little business got covered in our local newspaper: Each order begins with a client consultation, followed by a briefing at which Mr. Hiller presents ideas for the design either on his computer or with handset type. He shows proofs and discusses…
Killing the Crunch Mode Antipattern
Chad Fowler, CTO of 6Wunderkinder, has written a post on his personal blog about how our industry glorifies working long hours and how it is ironically counterproductive. I agree and in general Chad is spot on. I’ve helped lead and develop software products for 15 years of my career and this is the lesson that takes the longest time…
How Van Gogh‘s Sunflowers came into bloom
Not everyone understood Van Gogh’s work at first. Frances Spalding for The Gaurdian: The artist Henry de Groux threatened to remove his own work from the 1890 exhibition if he found it in the same room as “the laughable pot of sunflowers by Mr Vincent“. A recent trip to MoMA in New York City has opened my eyes…