Reblogs for 20100829

  • Don't forget about color

    Mspair The airport in Minneapolis is expensive and reasonably thoughtful in its design.

    But the signs are monochromatic. As a result, the tired traveler wanders in circles, looking for her destination. Imagine how much easier it would be to find out where you were going if every sign with the word TAXI on it had it in yellow instead of white. Once you knew the color of where you were going, you’d just naturally scan for it.

    Google and our text-based low-res online world seems to argue against color as a signal, but it’s extraordinarily powerful. You don’t need to make a big deal of of it, subtle is enough. Make the button you want pressed green on every page. Soon, your users will naturally gravitate to green buttons…

    This works in Powerpoint presentations and even contracts. A little goes a long way.

  • Photo

Let’s talk about CSS, baby

Okay, I have a bone to pick with you, Internet. Can we please agree to code our HTML attributes (class, id) in a better way?

Here’s my position: hyphens are superior to underscores

I can back this up with at least two arguments.

  1. In most text editors that I’ve used, keyboard shortcuts CTRL+Left/Right/Backspace will skip over underscores, but not hyphens. So that means if I’m trying to traverse (via keyboard, like a good computer ninja) over
    some_long_ass_CSS_class_name_someone_wrote

    then I’ll have to succumb to trying to guess how long to hold Left/Right… or worse yet, use the mouse!

  2. It’s an extra keystroke to type an underscore. Over the course of one small project, this might not seem a lot, but if it’s your craft & profession, This is a lot of extra keystrokes. Plus, it would speed up your probably-inevitable-RSI.

MailChimp, I’m looking at you!

As much as I love MailChimp, I was frustrated when trying to style their embeddable signup form. All these underscores!

Agree/Disagree?

I’m going to start using this format for writing my code. In fact, I already have. If you look at my recently redesigned homepage and inspect the first image on the page (me standing in the subway) you’ll see the link surrounding it is class=”pants-toggle” and the image itself has class “no-pants”.

If you dig on this, implement it yourself. Either way, I want to hear what you think in the comments.

Reblogs for 20100828

  • ALERT: Smoking Hot Bartenders Is A Scam

    Some clever scammers have launched a clickjacking attack which results in visitors to a site which displays photos of “smoking hot bartenders” to “Like” the site without their knowledge. It’s an interesting scam and the people behind it are now trying to generate some money from the site by launching the standard scam quizzes which get users to pay money and complete offers.

    Yesterday, many users saw their friends liking a page that said “:|:|:|:|:| Smoking Hot Bartenders :|:|:|:|:|”, as described Simon Mosk. Once clicked, users were prompted with the site pictured below.

    Smoking Hot Bartenders Screenshot

    On this site, if a user clicked anywhere, something stating that they “Liked” the Smoking Hot Bartenders showed up in their profile. It was a viral campaign which spread across thousands of users, however the scammers appear to now be attempting to monetize that traffic with quizzes. The bottom line is this: if you see this show up in your friend’s feed, don’t click the link.

    There are plenty of other places to find photos of “hot bartenders” on the internet, so there’s really no need to visit this one!

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  • Photo

Reblogs for 20100825

  • TEDxChange: Learn more about the Millennium Development Goals

    On September 20, live in New York and webcast around the world, TEDxChange will examine the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs. (Watch TEDxDubai’s video, above, for a preview.)

    Established 10 years ago in September 2000, the eight MDGs are an audacious set of goals for changing the world — with an equally audacious target of 2015 to reach them all. The UN has been tracking progress on the MDGs since 2000, watching as the economic slowdown pushed some goals back (like expanding access to education), while other goals inch forward (like increasing access to antenatal care). But throughout the list, much work remains to be done. You can find out more about each goal below; follow the links to reach the data-packed MDG Monitor mini-site for each goal, with stats, maps and individual success stories:

    1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
    2. Achieve universal primary education.
    3. Promote gender equality and empower women.
    4. Reduce child mortality.
    5. Improve maternal health.
    6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
    7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
    8. Develop a global partnership for development.

    Cohosted by TED and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, TEDxChange will look at how the world is doing on these goals so far, and energize the world for next five years.

    You can watch TEDxChange live via webcast (visit the Facebook page to RSVP for the webcast), or you can join (or host) a local TEDx event.

    And you can join the conversation on the MDGs right now on the new Gates Foundation community page >>

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  • On Hustling

    Sometimes people ask what hustling is. This great poster by Joey Roth provides one answer:

    The “hustler” image on the right is pretty much what I try to do every day: lots of work, lots of messaging. The messaging isn’t always directly related to the work at hand—sometimes I’m supporting other people with their own hustling. But on a good day, there’s plenty of work and and plenty of messaging.

    Another way to look at it is:

    Style without substance = flash. (Also, no one respects these people.)

    Substance without style = unknown. (Everyone who knows these people respects them… but not many people know them.)

    Style with substance = impact. (The goal.)

    Remember when we talked about strategy and tactics? The interesting thing with hustling is that people can copy your tactics without understanding your broader strategy. Charlie Gilkey recently referred me to a similar quote from The Art of War: “Everyone knows my tactics, but no one knows my strategy.”

    When you take the time to build something worthwhile instead of just taking up space, you engage with strategy and tactics every day. And you hustle.

    ###

    Book Update: Thanks for all the comments, emails, Twitter messages, and courier pigeon deliveries for the 99 free books last week. It was a three-hour project to pick the winners, but Libby and the biased judges managed to overcome. If you got an email from us this weekend and sent your address via the Google form, your book will be on the way tomorrow.

    Everyone else, the book will be available everywhere starting September 7th, and I really appreciate your support.

Gadgets, Tigers, and A DJ Mix From Outer Space

Oh boy, do I have lots of fun stuff for you today!

First, I’m not sure if you know this… but I’m an avid (to say the least) gadget-blog reader. I regularly surf several of them to see what’s hot in upcoming technology. Can’t we all just be living in the future already?! So, I found the following video via The Singularity Hub. It’s a parody of a Microsoft concept vid.

Watch and enjoy:

Then, have a listen to this mysterious DJ mix from “Felix YZ”, who is definitely not just a pseudonym of mine. Did you see how it says on Soundcloud that I captured the stream from a low-earth-orbiting party satellite? You can’t just make up awesome stuff like that.

Carrying on… Stay with me here, children, we have a lot to get through today!

Did you know there’s a totally righteous place in Thailand where you can chill out with Tigers? (Not the Detroit-based Major League Baseball team, but the jungle cats that are so Officially Bad-Ass that they needed to be capitalized.) Continue reading “Gadgets, Tigers, and A DJ Mix From Outer Space”

Reblogs for 20100819

  • An Implantable Antenna

    Researchers at Tufts University have designed a small antenna from liquid silk and micropatterned gold, designed to spot specific proteins and chemicals in the body, and alert doctors wirelessly to signs of disease.

    (Hu "Tiger" Tao)

    According to Fiorenzo Omenetto, professor of biomedical engineering at Tufts University, implanted in the body, silk can conform to any tissue surface, and, unlike conventional polymer-based implants, it could stay in place over a long period of time without adverse effects.

    Scientists say the implant could someday help patients with diabetes track their glucose levels without having to test themselves daily.

    Omenetto and his colleague Richard Averitt, associate professor of physics at Boston University, used similar principles to create a metamaterial that’s responsive not to visible light, but rather to frequencies further down the electromagnetic spectrum, within the terahertz range. Proteins, enzymes, and chemicals in the body are naturally resonant at terahertz frequencies, and, according to Averitt, each biological agent has its own terahertz “signature.”

  • (via planettampon)

    (via planettampon)

  • Sensory hijack: rewiring brains to see with sound

    A new device, vOICe, that translates visual images into “soundscapes” to restore a form of sight to the blind, is turning our understanding of the senses upside down. Some long-term users of the device eventually report complete images somewhat akin to normal sight, thanks to a long-term rewiring of their brains.

  • The Future of Interfaces is Mobile, Screen-less and Invisible

    Reto Meier, an “Android Developer Advocate for Google,” recently laid out a forecast of where computer (or at least mobile) interfaces are headed:

    Five years from now: first widely available flexible displays and built in HD projectors

    10 years from now: transparent LCD patches that can be applied to regular glasses, and full virtual keyboards and voice input eliminate physical keyboards entirely.

    20 years from now: contact lenses that project a visual feed directly onto your retina, and we’ll interface with computers through mind control.

  • Agincourt

    Agincourt

Where Should I Live Next?

One very cool thing about living in this day and age (especially considering my primary skillset of computer-nerding) is that I feel like I can pretty much go anywhere.

I was fortunate in that my Mom took me for a few trips while I was growing up–I remember visiting Ecuador and St. Martin very vividly. If you haven’t been to either, I just remember that Ecuador has tiny streets and a lot of poverty, and St. Martin was a beach paradise where I first got comfortable speaking French.

However, unlimited choice can be stressful. I really like traveling, but I can’t just visit every country in the world, right? Plus, someone else is already doing that. Continue reading “Where Should I Live Next?”