January 2010
51 posts
“Although most founders focus on their cash burn rate, very few focus on the burn...”
– Tim Young, via Hiten
December 2009
66 posts
Rails Maintenance Pages Done Right →
Improving Conversion Rates by Tracking Form... →
“Watching your continuing coverage of the people of Iran continuing their fight...”
– The Camera Is Mightier - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Good, an outstanding magazine (and project in general), has a great end-of-decade list, The Decade in Design.
As with most chronological retrospectives, the more recent years (well, 2009 in particular) are a little goofy, but it’s a great list nonetheless. It’s an especially good list for the early years of the decade.
Iconfinder →
A really good tool for finding stock icons.
The Mountain Goats — “Isaiah 45:23”,...
“If you depend on grants each year, then the sunflower project will only work if...”
– Jacqueline Novogratz, in The Blue Sweater, a book about her life’s work
this is such a great point and why i no longer want to be involved in traditional philanthropy. i only want to support projects whose aim is economic sustainability (via fred-wilson)
Charlie says: I’m not 100% on this,...
It’s ironic that Rails developers are so glowy about agile development and rapid-iterations of their app development, but Rails itself is a lumbering beast, developing slowly and in massive chunks.*
I would love for them to just push what they have on Rails 3 so we can get on with it.
* I know that “lumbering” and “slowly” and “massive” are subjective,...
“I do not suggest that nothing happened in the past ten years. Things happened;...”
– Rob Walker (via dbreunig)
Caedmon’s Call: It Came Upon the Midnight...
WaPo Sits on Eyewitness Account on Snowball Gun... →
The City Paper excoriates the WaPo and its handling of the gun-at-a-snowball-fight incident in DC.
1 tag
UI Eggs - Brizzly's Title Field
I love it when web apps include subtle elements that make the user experience better. Here’s one.
Brizzly is an excellent, web-based Twitter client. As a run-of-the-mill, easily-distracted web worker, I’ll leave a tab open to Brizzly, and check back in on it “on occasion” (read: too often). Look! A Brizzly tab!
Normal, right? BUT when I have a new tweet to read, Brizzly...
Is checking voice mail, text, and e-mail messages... →
“An addiction to checking your voice mail, text and/or e-mail messages may be cluttering up your life. It also might be interfering with your pursuit of what matters most to you.”
For the record, I think Erin Doland is one of the most consistently solid bloggers writing today.
This morning, I couldn’t sleep (headcold / coughing fit), and, for some reason, I fell down a rabbit hole of tax reform. Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t.
BUT, I ended up doing a fair amount of reading on a form of taxation that makes a lot of sense to me — a progressive sales (consumption) tax. Rather than being taxed on the money that you make, or on the interest that you...
“The digital world, even the high end brands, has become a sleazy carnival,...”
– Seth Godin
Wow. The Tumblr dashboard is not very friendly to definition lists. (Update: or data tables. Really?) Guys? Want some CSS help? Lemme know.
A Datapoint
Siteblogs.nytimes.comMeasure380pxLeft / Right Padding (on Measure)40pxFont-Familygeorgia,”times new roman”, times, serifFont-Size14pxLine-Height21pxMargin0 0 14pxPadding0Color#333 I’d love to compile this for a ton of well-designed sites, tumblelogs, etc. If you feel like reblogging this with a new site’s data, that’d sure be cool of you.
b.c.a.g.
Charlie says: My money’s on “boa constrictor attorneys general.”
taphead:
because my girlfriend and i are awesome, we spent a good swath of yesterday evening discussing a complicated grammar problem. we have no idea how to solve it, so we are asking you.
so let’s assume you have a boa constrictor, and somehow it is sworn in as the attorney general of your state. still...
“The irony … is that the more advanced the automated system, the more crucial the...”
– Lisanne Bainbridge in Automated to Death on sophisticated automated systems that require less skill and involvement while operating normally, but demand expert and fast response when encountering unexpected situations (typically overwhelming the operator, who is unprepared as a result of extensive...
1 tag
Had a quick idea this weekend. In Chris Anderson’s Free, he talks about a health club that is free to join, but if you don’t show up to work out, you have to pay the monthly membership fee. (Update: looks like it’s Denmark’s “Equinox” … here’s an article.) The idea is a simple one: As long as you show up and work out, at least once a week, the health...
Minimalism Versus Simplicity
valhallaisland:
Often friends or family upon seeing my bedroom or computer setup comment on the “minimalism”. That description has never sat well with me. It’s not until I’ve started following minimalism blogs like Minima and Minimal Mac that I’ve realised why.
What I’m striving for isn’t minimalism but simplicity. While simplicity is taking away all but the essentials I feel like minimalism...
“Of the things I’ll miss when print books are gone … getting to know...”
– Kathy Sierra
“Cut back on surfing the Web for non-professional reasons. It’s negatively...”
– How Adults Achieve Happiness - BusinessWeek (via mikehudack)
An opportunity
superamit:
Buying things is too hard. Much of the time, I want to buy something to solve a problem, and I want it to be good. It doesn’t need to be the cheapest or even the best money can buy, just a very good, reliable, solution.
But in markets where there are many product offerings, the research required to find that solution requires a ton of time — time that’s wildly disproportionate to the...
20 Pieces of Music That Changed the World →
A really good music history / sociology radio series. Via Kottke.
To file under “obvious in retrospect”:
Every time I add a feed to Google Reader, I have to slog through this page:
And every time, I curse it. Why, Google? Why have this stupid friction between me and my content? That’s not your style. That’s not how you do things. I mean … I don’t know anyone who uses a Google Start Page. It feels like the kind of start...
I wish Tumblr made it clearer which blog you were posting to.
If you just got a flurry of posts from my blog, I apologize. I’m testing something out and didn’t realize I was posting to my actual blog, rather than my sandbox blog.
change over time
jakelodwick:
In the past, I would Google search someone after I met them. Now, I Twitter search people I already know right before we hang out.
“Power without love is reckless and abusive,
and love without power is...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr., via Culture Making
fred-wilson:
Bittersweet Dirt Off Your Shoulder...
Avatar: Game Changers Don't Come from the Top....
This isn’t to say that Avatar won’t make a lot of money. I fully believe it will. But will it “change the game”? I think the post below sums it up well: “probably not.”
mikehudack:
ericmortensen:
I have not seen Avatar. Few have. Yet I keep reading these stories about it being a game changer that will revolutionize the industry. I have not seen Avatar,...
