It’s Getting Hot In Here
Bjorn Lomborg, asshat or the biggest asshat? Discuss.
Blaze
The Blaze, a news site from Glenn Beck. From his introductory letter:
The Blaze will pursue truth. Of course we will make mistakes. Honest mistakes. And we’ll be quick with corrections. We intend to earn your trust and keep it day in and day out with hard work and a lot of transparency.
I look forward to the hard hitting conspiracy theories to come from The Blaze.
Lake of 1000 Islands
Island and Lake Combinations, including Largest Lake on an Island and Largest Island in a Lake on an Island. (Via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival.)
Link Bait and Switch
Amy Thibodeau on Fast Company’s Influencer Project and what it attracts. I’ll say this, within my stream, I didn’t once see anyone I follow link to this. Not one. I find it pretty astounding that I don’t follow any Influential people though, without any “social media marketers” in the mix, I must run with the wrong crowd.
Dimensions
The BBC’s Dimensions is beyond clever. Enter your postal/zip code to see an overlay of the size of the event, place or thing right where you are. Great idea.
Mayyors
Henry Owings says goodbye to Mayyors who’ll be playing their final shows next month. Seriously, in the past couple of years, these guys are the only thing that have blown my mind. Sad that they’ll be packing it in.
The details are the design
Mike Rundle posts his response to this Dribbble shot heard round the world. Worth the read.
A Tale Of Two Cities
Tim Bray on the reporting of the recent Android security scare & iOS security issue. One of these issues was nothing and Android got nailed for it, the other is/was a pretty substantial security risk and it got glazed over. Embarrassing.
Your Strategy
What the fuck is my social media “strategy”?. As the site says: “Making it up so you don’t have to”, and seriously, let’s all just admit that you’re making it up. Social media “consultants” and “gurus” are the “SEO professionals” of the current wave. Regurgitated marketing babble peppered with common sense. Curious about the next wave of snake-oil on the web? Pay attention to Content Strategists*. I need a portfolio to display at least some proficiency at what I do, it seems a lot of Social Media consultants only need their word and a few re-tweets of Seth Godin.
*not to suggest that content strategy isn’t important just that it’s the next to be pounced on by consultants and professionals.
The Glass House
From the Glass House Conversations site:
Each Monday, a host posts a provocation. People have only five days to respond. The boundaries of the conversation are set to just one week, ending on Friday evenings. After comments have closed a “Final Word” is chosen from the replies.
Stunningly beautiful and thoroughly engaging. Worth bookmarking.
Andy Hummel
Andy Hummel, bassist for Big Star has passed away at the age of 59. Shitty year.
ExpressionEngine 2.1 Released
ExpressionEngine 2.1 has been released, signalling the end of the 2.0 beta. This release clears up a bunch of bugs and reveals a whole new front end to the ExpressionEngine site. Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain again helms the redesign along with Simon Collison, Ryan Irelan, and Jason Morehead. I haven’t installed it yet (scared) but I like what I see in the changelog. Also worth mentioning, EllisLab is now offering a 30 Day Money-Back Guarantee. With the introduction of this guarantee, the encrypted trial has been done away with which was apparently fraught with issues. Worth a try if you’re looking for a CMS that doesn’t suck.
Bring Out Your Dead
Or, alternately, dig them up and keep them in your house and garage. Yuck.
optimizeLegibility
Anthony Kolber gives you the breakdown on cross-browser kerning-pairs & ligatures via optimizeLegibility. I had no clue. I am incredibly stoked.
Detective Comics
Well it’s about time. The DC comics app for the iPad is now available. So, you know, I’m excited.
Opt Out
Apple allows you to opt out of data collection on the iAd platform. Good.
Blue Note
Via Coudal: Every Blue Note album cover aka go get a design education from Reid Miles (and then go get a jazz lesson from The Jazz Messengers.)
Themes
If you are a professional designer (as in, a client came to you with web needs and you are going to build a custom site for them, and you are going to charge them more than a few hundred dollars) then using a template is, pardon me, bullshit.
I think about this a lot and I agree with Chris. Templates are helpful tools for beginners. There's a lot to learn when you're just starting out with a language or platform and templates are invaluable in these instances. But the day you write your first quote or say "I'm a web designer"? That's the day it ends.
Design is, by most accounts, solving problems. And in a world of clients with different products, different services, different outlooks, and different cultures, no problem is ever the same. If we can agree on that, we can agree that there is no possible way that any off the shelf theme can deliver a tailored solution to a client's problem.
There's also the ethical ramifications of using a theme on a client site. Let's say you're looking for someone to build you a bed. A quick search online brings up my name and you see I'm offering beds built for you at reasonable prices. We have a quick back and forth, you tell me a little about the bed you're looking for, we talk about color, discuss sizing and I assure you that I can build it and it'll be ready in two weeks. We agree that $1000 for your bed is a reasonable price and with that, I'm off to the races. In this case, "the races" is Sears where I promptly throw some money down on the cheapest bed I can find, get it home, paint the headboard blue and deliver it to your house. Another satisified customer. Is this ethical? Did I build you a bed or did I buy you a bed, paint it and justify that with a constructed discourse on how "I was careful to ensure that your bed supported your branding (blue)".
In the end, this way of working ends up harming the person/business you presumably wish to help. What a client ends up paying for is a site that can be difficult to maintain and difficult to extend or reshape if the client's needs change in the future. Difficult to maintain and difficult to extend always end up in the same place, another cost incurred for the client which can be much greater than their intial investment. All of this starts because someone bought a $50 theme, spent two hours creating and swapping out images, and charged the client $1000 for the privilege.
It's no fun to click around and see a site that's clearly built with a template and think to myself "that poor person got screwed". If you want to service clients, service clients. If you want to deliver based on need, do that. If your strengths are such that you're really great at determining what a client needs but you're not so strong at executing? Bring someone in to execute those needs and inform the client that you've added a new team mate with more expertise in that area. Anything else, quite honestly, is hucksterism. It's a diservice to yourself, your clients and your peers.
*A quick note to be fair: there are those that do bill out the template as a line item. I have no problem with that. If the client knows that they paid for a template/theme and want that, that's totally fair. Also worth noting: there are those that rebrand WordPress and market it as an in-house CMS. There is, as far as I know, a special level in hell reserved just for those people.
*If you want to find out if you've been mislead, view the source of your site. If you see something like this: "http://www.somesite.com/wp-content/themes/atlantica/style.css", do a quick Google search for "Wordpress" and the name of the folder directly after "wp-content/themes/". If your site looks basically identical and you paid more than $100 over the price of the theme, you may not be dealing with a very reputable designer.
We All Go A LIttle Mad Sometimes
The Village Voice celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first showing of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho with Andrew Sarris’ original review. I likely don’t have to tell anyone that Psycho is a favourite of mine. Hitchcock directs, Herrmann composes and Bass does the titles*. There’s nothing there not to love.
*obviously, this trio is repeated and proceeded by other Hitchcock films but Herrmann and Bass come dangerously close to perfection here.
Greene is an understatement
This entire Alvin Greene thing has me absolutely captivated. To call this odd is really not doing the story justice. Collected for your notes, a few of Greene’s video interviews:
The Big Picture - Keith Olbermann - ABC News - PubliuSC - Shep Smith
CNN - Shep Smith
Something here is off. Way, way off. The PubliuSC interview in particular borders on either the absurd or illness and at one point, he is clearly reading from notes. Also, he’s a Democrat against unions? This story is going to end up as something incredible.
125 Banners
Isaac Pinnock from Made By Many on the 125 banners he saw while browsing and the number of clicks he made on those advertisements. Answer: none.
Son of a Gun
Jesse Matheson’s Son of a Gun. Having seen/known Jesse when he was just beginning, watching this makes me so incredibly happy.
Safari Extension Development
Safari 5 has been released (download here) and with it comes a new feature called extensions. What are extensions? Apple says Safari Extensions are “a new way for developers to enhance and customize the browsing experience”. Yeah, so if you use Firefox Add-Ons, you already basically know. If you want to build your own, Apple has kindly posted the Safari Extensions Development Guide to get you up and running. As usual, the docs are clear, concise, and easy to understand*. Adding extensions to Safari is a great step forward for the browser I use daily and I’m pretty excited to see what’s coming down the pipe from all the go-getters out there.
*If you don’t already have the Safari Reference Library in your bookmark bar, you really should. I use Apple’s docs more than the W3C.
Where All Of This Is Going
If you haven’t read Adam Lisagor’s excellent iPad TV post yet, you should. I think he’s on to something with this:
If you look at QuickTime’s UI elements across the iPad and iPhone OS and compare them with QuickTime X’s UI on the Mac, it’s not hard to conclude that Apple is making efforts at a shared UI language which spans both platforms, for the sake of unity and singularity of purpose. When QuickTime X was released, its player controls now locked within the bounds of the video frame, disappearing and reappearing on mouse hover, Apple was preparing us, ever so subtly, to begin to touch our video.
After a week with the device, it’s becoming pretty clear that the interactions that Apple exposes via the iPad are just plain natural. Handing it off to my mother yesterday, she intuitively knew what to do. To me, that’s amazing.
The Tower
Emmet Matheson lists the residents of Leonard Cohen’s Tower Of Song and then follows up. Reading Emmet’s follow up, I’m reminded of all the great things that can happen when you follow a path.
Pain or Pleasure
Lodewijk Schutte’s PHP in Templates: Pain or Pleasure slides from his presentation at the ExpressionEngine/CodeIgniter conference. I found this presentation enlightening and the room was filled. Worth at least a once over.
MojoMotor
MojoMotor a lightweight, inline CMS from EllisLabs. Looks neat.
Yeah. No. We’re sticking with Flash.
NBC and Time Warner say they’re going to stick with Flash for online video delivery. This seems especially out of character for NBC. I’ve never known them to make incredibly wrongheaded decisions.
More On America Speaking Out
Mule Design has an excellent post pointing out some of the failings in the GOP’s America Speaking Out site. Well stated. Also, add Mule to your feeds for heavens sake.
Winnebago Man
Jack Rebney, who you would remember from his delightfully expletive filled RV promo video, is soon to be immortalized again in Winnebago Man–a tribute to the man, his mouth and anything else you’d like to stick in your fern. Brilliant.
Granular
The NYT live-blogs Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook privacy announcement. I’m concerned about the privacy issues but I’ve also got to extend that concern to the Like button and Open Graph. While I’d like to believe this is altruistic, yeah, I don’t.
America Speaking Out
American politics fans rejoice! The House Republicans have created America Speaking Out – a site to foster debate and allow everyday citizens to influence policy. Sound like a vibrant community filled with thoughtful political debate? I won’t make up my mind until I’m certain that the reptilians aren’t involved and more people have gotten behind a repeal of the Civil Rights Act.
Food Safety & Farmers Markets
With all the hubub around Farmers Markets in our fair province, I would be remiss to not point out this lady’s thoughts on the subject.
Zuckerberg On Privacy
The Washington Post runs a Mark Zuckerberg penned editorial on Facebook’s upcoming privacy measures. We’ll see.
SoundManager 2
SoundManager 2 now has HTML5 audio support. Flash free (with fallback) and Canvas & JS animations. Worth a look if you’ve planned to add some audio that you may or may not be legally within your rights to post but you figure, really, who could care? Plus nobody asked you if it was OK to put any into that Degrassi episode right? So screw ‘em.
Our Solar System
Our Solar System is a totally nifty experiment using CSS border-radius, transforms & animations by Alex Giron. This one pretty much requires Safari so, you know, one more reason to update your browser.
Switched Up
Moved to a Media Temple DV, grabbed a hold of ExpressionEngine 2, wrapped it up in HTML5–The Markup Language, shit all over it with some -webkit garbage, went straight up @font-face on this mother and then set it out on its own into the world. Feed should still be the same, some links are missing but coming (for instance, an about page), and it really looks way more sharp in a WebKit browser (think Chrome, Safari or um, WebKit). Looks OK in Firefox and Opera and I could give a #$*& less about IE. Anyway, just wanted to pump one out before EECI2010 so I didn’t look like a total hack, just mostly one. I hope it’s a little easier on your eyes.
Steinway & Sons
Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain designed Steinway & Sons site. And, it’s built with ExpressionEngine. If you asked me to name my top 5 favourite web designers, Jesse would be at the very top of my list. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. If you need a crash course on how to set type on the web, any one of his sites will pretty much lay it out for you.
Yeah, yeah. Facebook blah, blah.
Because you haven’t already seen it linked around 100 times today. From the New York Times–Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options. I know I’ve been really getting my hate on for Facebook lately but even they realize that they’ve got a problem on their hands. “Buy in” by obfuscation is just, you know, wrong. I don’t agree with it, I think it’s sketchy and I think that shit travels downhill. I’d hate to be a brand further down that slope when it starts its descent. Go ahead and Like this entry.
HTML5 for Web Designers
A List Apart’s new print publishing arm, A Book Apart, has just made Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers available for pre-order. if I didn’t already trust the folks at A List Apart to provide me with great, worthwhile content, I’d still buy the book because it’s beautiful and orange. Oh, and here’s Jason Santa Maria on just that subject!
FB’s Eroding Privacy Policy
The EFF on Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy. Related: why I’m not on Facebook anymore–I’d prefer to remain a moving target.
Thoughts On Flash
Steve Jobs lays out Apple’s position. Short read: Forget about it.
Panic Email
Great write up from CampaignMonitor on Panic’s great HTML emails. So much great stuff happening here. That “airmail” line trick is pretty much brilliant.
Goldman
I tried to listen to as much of this as possible yesterday, which is to say, I listened to roughly half of the 11 hour testimony. Dry? You bet. Heated in parts? Sure, thanks to Levin. If you missed it, if you care, NYT has you covered with the archived live-blog coverage. Worth a read.
Transmit 4
Panic has released Transmit 4,“knock it out of the park” update to their already fabulous FTP application. The killer features? Local to local views, desktop mounting of external disks and file syncing. I’ve been playing with it for the past few days and in that time, I’ve only quit it twice. It’s that good. If you own Transmit 3, it’s an easy on the wallet update of $19 US and worth every penny. Added benefit? The new Transmit page on the Panic site is delightfully CSS animatified. Go buy it.
Worth A Revisit
Dave Shea’s Revised Image Replacement techniques page. I use Phark, you know, -9999px. How you choose to roll is up to you but it’s important to remember that we’re using these methods to replace text on the page for users with CSS off and to aid in accessibility. You’d think this was common knowledge in 2010.
An Event Apart
I’d linked to Luke Wroblewski’s An Event Apart notes yesterday on Twitter but if you don’t have the time to go through them all, you’d be doing yourself a service by reading up on Kristina Halvorson’s Better Content By Design presentation, Jeffrey Zeldman’s Put Your Worst Foot Forward, and Dan Cederholm’s The CSS3 Experience. Makes me wish I was there.
Adding Up
Travis Smith on the increasing costs of building with ExpressionEngine. I agree with the assertion that some functionality currently supplied via commercial extensions should be rolled into the core (or, in the case of search, updated to meet or exceed what is available with an add-on).
Sneak Peek
Here’s a sneak peek at the latest project I’ve been working on with my wife. It’s been going pretty good. Design wise, I don’t think there’s anything I’d change.
A Safe, Positive Space
Ann Coulter, right-wing zealot and proponent of free speech, had her University of Ottawa speech cancelled last night. To quote Mr. Ezra Levant, “isn’t it ironic that it takes a provocative American coming to Canada to reveal the shortcomings in Canadian free speech?” Mr. Levant, I assure you that free speech is alive an well in Canada. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t feel it within my rights to declare Ms. Coulter the vile, contemptible cunt that I believe she is.
Vonnegut At The Blackboard
“I started going to the library in search of reports about ethnographers, preachers, and explorers, those imperialists to find out what sorts of stories they’d collected from primitive people. It was a big mistake for me to take a degree in anthropology anyway, because I can’t stand primitive people, they’re so stupid. But anyway, I read these stories, one after another, collected from primitive people all over the world, and they were dead level, like the B-E axis here. So all right. Primitive people deserve to lose with their lousy stories. They really are backward. Look at the wonderful rise and fall of our stories.”
Children By The Millions
If you were to ask my wife what my desert island disk is, she would likely respond with “Keep An Eye On The Sky” and she’d be right. When the time came to pick a song for the first dance at our wedding the discussion was brief. It was Thirteen though you likely could have guessed that. If I’m practicing/pretending to be a drummer, it’s a pretty safe bet that September Gurls or In The Street is blasting through my headphones. I play along with these songs so much that I’m certain I’ve stunted my development. Not that that’s a bad thing. If I’ve gotten drunk and we’ve talked about jamming, I’ve likely told you I want to “blatantly rip-off Big Star” and I’m almost certainly telling the truth.
Big Star was a band with three albums worth of hits that would never be hits. A band so many light years ahead of their peers that even their most beloved member couldn’t see their worth. Compiling the soundtrack to my life, Big Star would feature prominently. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Alex Chilton has passed away at age 59.
“I can feel it. Now it’s time. Open your eyes. Fears be gone, it won’t be long. There’s a light in the sky.”
One Pixel
Via @rands - 1pixel = 1 million dollars. That should get you fired up.
The Story Of The Apple Startup Chime
Via my lady(?)–Jim Reekes, the man behind the Macintosh start up tone. Interesting/fun sidenote, the legal disclaimers on the Apple site have a class of sosumi.
Smoke a pole
Via @danlapoo–this French ad campaign equating smoking to giving some old man a BJ. Look, I’ve been a smoker for quite a few years and never-not-once has a cigarette blown up in my face.
Demonstrate The Value Of Your Work
Joshua Hughes on Solving The Problem of Undervaluation. Good advice for managing client interaction/expectations.
EECI2010
Just a note that Early-Bird tickets for the ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference 2010 end on March 1st. Holy smokes! That’s next week! $525 gets you into the full conference including MasterClasses so if you’re into that sort of thing, get on it. I’ll be there taking in the sights, trying to come out of my shell and attempting to meet nice people while I try to get a little more in tune with extending EE. My wife will be there exploring the city and shops and listening to me talk about the things I’ve learned or to the nice people that we meet. Should be fun!
McCain on EE.
Forty on the process behind creating John McCain’s 2010 Senate site. The site is built with HTML5 for the markup and ExpressionEngine for the backend so, you know, it’s like total wade-bait.
I hate you. Don’t leave.
I Hate You. Don’t Leave.–a short film by the incomparable Jeff Way. Jeff should make more videos.
Creatives Wanted
Local Regina ad agency Brown is looking to fill 3 positions. Specifically, an Art Director, a Copywriter and an Interactive Producer. If you, you know, have training in any of those areas and are looking for a job, it might be worth your while to send a resume in that general direction since jobs in the field here are pretty scarce.
Ribbons Everywhere!
Wow! Do you know what’s all over the place right now? Yeah, that’s right. Ribbons! Well of course you realize I couldn’t be left behind in the growing trend of “Ribbons on the Internet” so I had to make one.
What? Yep, it’s that tiny. Yep, it’s a layered Photoshop file. Don’t like the texture? Go ahead and change it. Don’t like the colour? That’s cool. A moment with Hue/Saturation should make short work of adjusting to taste/scheme/whim. They’re all over the place! It’s trendy! Yeah, I likely made it ‘cause I’m going to use it on something! Aren’t I creative? Since I’m lazy and you’re quite possibly lazy, feel free to download it, use it, break it, stretch it. Do whatever you want with it, it’s my gift to you.
Download the .zip here: Ribbon.zip and remember, ribbons are usually for prized horses, trees and lapels. Zoom in to 3200% at your own peril.
Guess who’s coming to dinner?
Jim Pankiw, who’s made some bad judgement choices in the past, has thrown his hat into the ring as an Independent candidate in the Saskatoon-Humboldt riding. Mr. Pankiw has taken the bold step of using the internet to get his message of equality out into the world. And how can I be certain that his message is equality? Equality for all people everywhere? Sometimes you just have to check with the source.
Makes me wanna pee the bed.
Copyranter finds two of the most awesome Goodnights ads you will ever see. Unfortunately missing is a Ghostbusters re-enactment. Don’t cross the streams.
The Smiths Project
Janice attempts to sing every Smiths song before the end of 2010.
How You Got There
Processed Identity–“a source for information about the value of the creative process designers have used to define visual identities for clients.” Yeah, that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue but probably worth following if you’re interested in process/decisions/defence.
Internet Online Website!
Aquent’s Internet Online Website. From the copy: “Aquent’s InternetOnlineWebsite.com is a website about websites (and marketing, direct mail, t-shirts, etc.). Each familiar feature of the site is designed to be explored; rolling over them will pop up a helpful information window, letting you know what disciplines and technologies go into making that thing, and the type of people you’ll need to get the job done right.” Soooo…that means you need more than just a copy of Dreamweaver?
Vintage Ad Browser
The Vintage Ad Browser–100,000+ Vintage Advertisements to Explore. (Via zeldman.com.)
Doing it right.
Ok, colour me impressed. Here is a great example of local ad agency Brown doing it right by tying their outdoor/signage to a nice little piece on QR codes. Since the launch of their new site, Brown has taken the opportunity to educate and inspire client “next-steps” while promoting their own expertise and forward thinking. Too often, ad agency blogs end up being a self-congratulatory pat-on-the-back for the latest piece of “great creative from the minds at name_of_agency” which has never made much sense to me. If you want to promote your portfolio, use your portfolio. If you want to promote your agency and your staff as experts, use your blog. Inform your clients or potential clients, inspire them to help you and your staff do creative work, use your own voice as a voice of influence and don’t be afraid to give away a few secrets. You’re in advertising right? So advertise.
Why Music Sounds Worse
NPR on why music sounds worse. Short answer: compression. Horrible. (Via @emmetmatheson.)
Hourly Rates
Build Internet on hourly rates. I seriously can’t believe that 25% of people are charging under $25. If you are charging under $25, you should really read their entire Pricing Bootcamp. Also, get a contract. If you don’t have a contract, you are going to have scope creep.
Damn it!
Seriously. After reading Andy Clarke’s post on 24 Ways this morning, I was inspired to talk a little about my process which starts with pencil and paper some brief sketching and then a journey into Coda to start marking it up and then over to CSSEdit to style it and then screenshot that page and throw it into to Photoshop to examine some fourishes/graphic benefits. I’m not kidding. I seriously started to write this post, complete with my experience with pre-press, my love of constraints and my full on belief that design is problem solving and since the web is a text based medium, that’s where it starts and that is the problem you are trying to solve. I intended to talk about my process for turning what you’re looking at now into something more like this. Seriously. But damn it, Meagan Fisher beat me to it and talks about designing in markup and CSS in her 24 Ways article. I guess it can wait.
(Yes, you will have to put up with it because I was really working on this mother of all posts today. It’ll have to wait until I make the switch to EE 2.0 on the server instead of locally)
Ignorance Is Bliss
Andy Clarke gets mildly kicked in the crotch in some of the comments on his 24 Ways Article–Ignorance Is Bliss. I don’t get the whole “what if there are revisions? It’s a lot of work to re-write the entire page” and “we always have to get approval on comps first” sort of mentality. First off, you are designing for the web which is, you know, interactive. Photoshop files? Surprisingly not very interactive. Secondly, dude, it’s HTML and CSS, it’s not rocket surgery. If you’re strictly pushing pixels, consider a different career. If you’re doing both think of it this way; starting in the browser means half your work is already done! Congratulations! Take a break and enjoy a job well done. Kudos to Andy for writing a simple, linkable “case study” for progressive enhancement.
EDIT: Dan Rubin’s comment actually sums up my feelings in a much less snarky way. Summed up: manage expectations, educate your client and focus on experience. I think it’s important to remind clients that the last person you’re designing for is them and that your focus and theirs should be firmly on the end user. You/we are designers not fine artists. We are selling solutions to problems not pretty pictures. It’s a very important distinction.
That “Clicking” Quagmire
From The Guardian UK–Facebook now has 350m users - and there’s no point in advertising to them. This is something that has driven me mad for some time. Of the users I know, none (and I mean none) actually click on ads on Facebook or Google for any reason other than curiosity. Curiosity is all well and good but it doesn’t pay the bills. John Naughton is kind enough to get some numbers for us: “In 2007, the market research firm ComScore reported that 32% of internet users clicked on banner ads in a given month. By 2009, that number had fallen to 16%. ComScore also concluded that a hard core of 8% of all internet users – christened “Natural Born Clickers” – are responsible for 85% of all banner clicks on the web.” A 16% loss over 2 years seems like a lot to me though I’m sure there’s value here but I’m unable to find it. A quick Google search for “online advertising return on investment to business” yields no useful results but does return a lot of SEO sites and scammy feeling links. I’ll send the query out to the Internets and anyone who finds some solid, credible information should forward links to my attention. The question remains: who’s clicking the ads? I’m seriously asking.
*On a related note: if you are going to advertise online, it would likely be helpful to shine up your web presence or create a nice boutique site for your promotion. I know just the guy since you’re asking.
Second and Park
New to me–web writer Tiffani Jones’ Second and Park. Writing that’s worth a read. Start here, then here, then here. Then add it to your feeds.
Best/Worst Identities
Brand New’s Best and Worst Identities of 2009. Number 1 worst? Bing. Number 1 best? Wolff Olins Aol. Yep, Aol.
What happened here?
Is it 2012 already? Did the poles shift? I mean, WTF just happened?
Dude, it’s snowing in my WebKit.
Natalie Downe from Clearleft has made winter happen on your desktop. If you’re using a current version of Safari or Chrome, head to this page and throw the bookmarklet into your link bar and let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
Affiliate Buttons
Hey! I wasted some time so my loss is your gain! Do you like hastily drawn buttons with a blatant disregard for pixel-perfection? Do you like transparent png’s that may or may not fit into the colour scheme of your site and a small bit of messing with hue/saturation in Photoshop? Then step right up Bucko, today is your lucky day! Two, count ‘em, two tiny buttons for Amazon and iTunes. Small enough to put in your shirt pocket. Tiny but readable mind you and yours for the taking. As I say, my loss is your gain. My intent:
Oh, but the times they do change. Changed my width, changed my mind and the walls came tumbling down on these two tiny buttons. If you want to grab ‘em and put them to good use, be my guest. The typeface is Nevis by Ed Merritt so if you wanna add to the collection, that’s a good place to visit.
Download the buttons here: Affiliate Buttons and remember, be safe and have fun, don’t change your mind on a grid and zoom in to 3200% at your own peril.
Advertising Agencies and UX
Karri Ojanen on how Advertising Agencies Don’t Need Ux Designers. The takeaway: “The solution is to make the user experience designer the creative director. Not just any user experience designer type, but the kind that can think in terms of functional concepts, of which creative design is then a part of. When an ad agency looks for a creative director, they should make sure the person has a solid insight and experience of usability, and an understanding of a user experience designer’s field of work. This is not yet the norm.” A little personal addition: make sure the person has at least some working knowledge of the technology they’re using. Just a casual observation.
The Survey For People Who Make Websites
A List Apart’s annual survey of the state of web design. If you’re one of those “people who make websites”, add your voice to the choir.
Scrolling
456 Berea St. on the myth of the fold. The “fold” occasionally makes it’s way into some of the “conversations” at my workplace and my first thought is always “what fold?” Thinking in these terms (especially for interior content) inevitably leads to excessive linking which only adds a usability problem, not solves the first.
Keeping America’s Edge
Jim Manzi on Keeping America’s Edge in a global economy. Linked to because a) I’m fascinated with American politics/society and b) I’m certain there are parallel lines to be drawn here. (Via Andrew Sullivan.)
Wireframes
Andy Rutledge on Wireframes. Some good observations though I’m not certain I agree entirely.Presenting wireframes to clients can be a good way to have stakeholders evaluate their content critically which, you know, is not a bad thing.
And I’m all eyes.
In case you’re old and can’t stay up late–Jawbox performing Savory on Jimmy Fallon. Not my favourite song but it’s nice to see them back briefly.
Controversial Material
Been on a bit of a Smothers Brothers kick lately and so…Controversial Material.
Web Copywriting
Relly Annett-Baker at 24ways.org on The Construction of Instruction. Good advice for those involved in writing web copy. (Just a side note, copyblogger.com is another resource worth looking at if you’re wanting to learn a little more about writing for the web.)
Pay up.
So…I guess the Canadian Recording Industry owes somewhere around $6 billion for copyright infringement. A friend (and the source for this link) noted: “Canadian Recording Industry, you suck”. That’s a little lighter than the language I’d use but it works.
You’re already this screwed.
Michael Geist on ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) and how it effects Canada. Long story short–we’re fucked. Anything that leads Canada into the clusterfuck that is American copyright law is not a good thing. A very important issue to watch. (See also Cory Doctrow’s extensive reportage at Boing Boing and read Freedom of Expression by Kembrew McLeod)
The Lady’s Taken Over
I still haven’t read the book (though I intend to) but apparently Andrew Sullivan is/has and is turning the Daily Dish into Palin Central. I’m not sure where I stand on all the attention Sarah Palin receives but I am sure that come next year she’ll start riding the white horse.
Lizard In Toronto
All in all, a great show. Yow was not as drunk as I’ve seen him & he got dropped which cut the set a little short. Denison was, as always, impeccable. Watching and listening to Mac McNeilly was eye-wateringly great. That dude is nuts. Even the lady enjoyed herself. Good company, good sound and good times all around. Not the best video but here’s a taste.
Cyclist Hit By Taxi
A cyclist, who in this instance happens to be a friend, was hit by a cab and knocked off his bike in Toronto on Friday night. If you were a witness or have any information about the incident, I urge you to contact the police or the cyclist (on Twitter: @theyshootactors). This is a very serious matter and seems to be increasingly commonplace on the streets of Toronto. A posting on Craigslist details the incident and provides a further way to contact the victim which I’m including here in it’s entirety.
From Craigslist:
You were in the back of a cab heading West on Dundas Street towards Ossington on Friday night, October 30th at about 1:45 AM. I was on my bike in the lane adjacent to your taxi. The driver got in a shouting match with me over how much room I was taking up on the street while he was straddling the line dividing our lanes. That cabbie decided to cut the argument short by steering the car into me, knocking me off my bike in traffic.
Two cyclists picked me and my bike up off the street and watched over me after I had blacked out. I am very grateful to them, but neither got an ID or description of the cab and neither did I.
While this occurred I saw a passenger in the back of the cab (female?) on the passenger side. I checked with police and no one called the accident in last night. I will be filing my own report and I urge the passenger to please do the same. I spent the night in the emergency room because I remembered very few details of my night when I regained consciousness. I’m sure my helmet saved me from very serious injury, but I am cut and bruised, and you don’t have to be a cyclist to realize the risk posed by a driver who deliberately uses his car as a weapon. If you see this, PLEASE contact the police about what you saw. Thanks.
Here’s hoping Aaron is alright and prosecution against the driver is forthcoming. So many sick people in the world.
EE2.0 CP Tour
Ryan Irelan gives an overview of the new EE2.0 Control Panel. The CP has gotten a huge overhaul and the File Manager is a great addition to what is currently one of the most wonked aspects of ExpressionEngine. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the current theme and that’s one thing I’ll tweak once it’s available. It seems a little too informed by Veerle Pieters personal aesthetic and not generic enough for clients. That is to say, if I built a site for my father, I don’t think he’d enjoy working in it. To each their own, just my take.
EECI09 Keynote
Leslie Camacho’s keynote from EECI09. Gets interesting at about 14 min. in, talk of EE2.0 starts going full tilt at 20 min. Also, Ryan Irelan’s EECI09 Wrap-Up on EEInsider. Things are coming together.
Edit: One thing that’s worth a mention from the keynote is that there will be a Corporate license. There was no mention of pricing but it should help place EE as a viable option for those looking for the full-time, one-on-one support that usually comes with that particular type of license. And given that EE2.0 is built on CodeIgniter, it means that those in Corp. environments looking to extend the functionality or build upon an already solid foundation should have no trouble at all. Speaking of CI, given the strength and activity of the folks over on that side of the EllisLab fence, there will likely be a lot coming down the pipe to extend EE even more. Exciting times for my favourite CMS.
EE 2.0
ExpressionEngine 2.0 has gotten a release date of Dec. 1, 2009 and a bump in licensing of $50 across the board. No word on whether EE’s Core version will still exist/remain free. $299 dollars for a commercial licence? I’m not sure how I feel about this. It’s the cost of doing business I suppose but I’m guessing this is going to slow adoption.
My wife’s boyfriend broke my jaw with a fence post.
Rhett and Link make advertising fun. Very “Crazy People” (Sony. Bony.). Right up my alley. This one is for Cullman Liquidation and you can buy a trailer or not. He doesn’t care.
Who just screwed you?
The CRTC. Related: Maybe focus on providing better/upgrading systems. “Canada–Yeah, we let them screw you on bandwidth and cellular. But how about that healthcare?” See, I should be a copywriter.
Precisely the wrong question
Worth a re-read–Seth Godin on “the clutter of the impersonal” when marketing meets social media. The key here is to remember that Social Media isn’t a billboard. If you treat it like a billboard, any trust you hope to build into a brand will disintegrate. Penetration may have had some insight here, Don’t Dictate.
Creep
Greg Hoy on identifying potential problem clients/projects. Worth the read.
I know I shouldn’t but…
Realize the beat falls on the two and the four. Realize the strings are tuned E A D G B E. Realize singing isn’t for everyone.
Future Leaders Of America Dept.
Meghan McCain–Andy Warhol fan and future stock photography star of online “meet singles in your area who want to #%&!” ads everywhere. How’s the weather look to the new GOP? Slightly ignorant with a chance of trashy.
Comments on Signal Response almost never get used for anything other than alerting the general public about pharmaceutical avenues that they may otherwise not know about. If you feel you must comment, go ahead but be cool about it. You can use some markup in here. I'll leave it to you to guess which.