Links

07.19.2010 // 0 Comments Transloadit

Handy-looking file upload/conversion API

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06.09.2010 // 0 Comments Locals and Tourists

I love these heat maps — they show the locations of photos taken by locals versus tourists in cities around the word.

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06.08.2010 // 0 Comments Weightshift: On rdio

Naz wrote a review of rdio so I wouldn’t have to. I agree with almost every single word (and I’m also pretty much a virgin to music streaming services).

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05.31.2010 // 0 Comments Is This Really The Future of Magazines or Why Didn’t They Just Use HTML 5?

The Wired Magazine iPad app, in my opinion, is a pretty big UI and IxD win. It’s easily the best-designed magazine to come out of the App Store since the iPad’s launch, and it is, for the most part, a joy to use. But it’s built by packaging up two PNGs for each page (one landscape, one portrait), and frankly, that’s just an idiotic and incredibly inelegant way of doing it.

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05.31.2010 // 0 Comments Smokescreen: Flash Player in Javascript

A pretty amazing piece of work, this JS Flash player looks far more advanced than the Gordon project which floated around awhile back. It’s apparently going to be open source, as well. I’m not sure something like this will work as a long-term solution, but it may be an effective way to get many legacy SWFs to play on platforms that don’t support Flash. If nothing else, it’s a technical marvel, for sure.

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05.17.2010 // 0 Comments iPhone Timeline: Media Account vs. Affidavit

Nice piece by my cousin Brian Ford detailing differences between media accounts and the recently-released affidavit in the saga of the lost fourth-generation iPhone prototype.

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05.17.2010 // 0 Comments Filling in the Gaps

Props to Snook for having on of the few rational takes on Flash. Much of the web standards community act as zealots when it comes to Flash, and it is, quite frankly, an embarrassing show of just how little they really know about the entirety of web development.

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05.12.2010 // 0 Comments HTML5 Readiness

Very cool CSS-powered infographic by Paul Irish and Divya Manian.

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05.12.2010 // 0 Comments Flash Works On Touch-Based Devices (Video)

Adobe Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow shows how Flash on touch devices handles mouseover (hover) events. It handles them just the same as Safari on iPhone does — it dispatches a mouseover event on the first touch, and a click event on the second.

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05.11.2010 // 0 Comments Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol from a Web Developer’s Perspective

Really great take on why the Facebook Graph API is exciting and different than anything before it.

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05.11.2010 // 0 Comments Disastrous Flash demo heaps further embarrassment on Adobe

The Telegraph writes up the FlashCamp Seattle debacle with a typically divisive headline. Of all the publications that have ever mentioned my name, I think The Telegraph is probably the most widely-distributed. Crazy.

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05.10.2010 // 0 Comments Veerle’s blog 3.0

A fresh design from Veerle, who is always one worth watching!

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05.10.2010 // 0 Comments Spring cleaning — 12 things the world should toss out

A pretty great list from the Washington Post.

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05.09.2010 // 0 Comments Mark Boulton: Back To Reading Feeds

Mark’s experience of NetNewsWire for iPad getting him back into habit of easing RSS/Atom feeds perfectly parallels mine. I hadn’t read feeds ia year or so, and now I’m back to doing it every day, from the comfort of my couch.

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05.08.2010 // 8 Comments Jeremy Keith: The format of The Long Now

I’m sorry, but the idea of HTML as a universal data storage format is pretty ridiculous. If the “data” in question is blog posts, maybe. But what if your data is tables and tables of numbers? Or heaps of video? Or needs to represent complex relationships between objects? No serious company would ever attempt to store all of their data in HTML, and neither should you.

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05.03.2010 // 0 Comments Fraser Speirs: Back In

I think Fraser nails it, here.

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05.02.2010 // 0 Comments 60 Minutes: Conan O’Brien

Conan’s first TV interview since being ousted from NBC.

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05.02.2010 // 1 Comment Ben Ward: Understand The Web

A pretty great piece by Ben Ward discussing “web apps,” and how much of what is being talked about aren’t really “web apps” at all, because they’re a very different beast than the “interconnected bits of information” that make up the web. I think it’s fair to say that “web app” may not be the best name for these things — although I’m not sure what to call them, instead. I’m in full agreement with most of what Ben says — but this last line just doesn’t fly with me: “The idea of undermining the core function of the web to achieve that is detestable.” I fail to see how building native-like apps using web technologies “undermines the core function of the web” at all. To me, it simply adds another function. Just as Cocoa apps aren’t part of the web, but rather tangential to it, I would say native-like apps that live in the web are also not part of the web, but tangential to it. They sit alongside it, not hurting the web one bit.

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04.30.2010 // 0 Comments HTML5 Geolocation with Fallback to Google Ajax APIHTML5

This looks a bit more bulletproof than the fallback I’ve done on BarStar — might have to switch to this when I get a moment.

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04.30.2010 // 0 Comments When can I use…

Handy chart detailing “when you can use” various advanced web development techniques.

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04.29.2010 // 0 Comments Syncopation in the Super Mario Bros. theme

Nothing like a good music theory blog post to get me going.

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02.10.2010 // 0 Comments Django Advent - Messages for the rest of us

My article on Django Advent, covering the new messages framework for Django 1.2.

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02.02.2010 // 0 Comments BarStar - A a real-world social game for karaoke fiends

Just realized I hadn’t linked to the personal project Scott Phelps and I have been working on lately. It’s in beta now. It’s a mobile, social game intended to be played by people who are out at bars doing karaoke. If you like to sing, check it out!

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01.14.2010 // 0 Comments django-registration-facebook-backend

Exactly what it says on the box — a Facebook Connect backend for django-registration — and it looks well done, to boot.

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01.05.2010 // 0 Comments Why Twitter Will Endure - NYTimes.com

In so many way I think Twitter is built and designed poorly, but I totally agree with this article. Just goes to show that it’s the idea that really counts.

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12.11.2009 // 1 Comment Simplest jQuery Slideshow

I wish more designers thought like Snook. People love jQuery plugins, and for good reason, but half the time they’re overkill or not exactly what you want, and you can very quickly and easily write a custom script instead.

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12.10.2009 // 0 Comments Great Viva Beads, Always FREE Shipping

My Dad has made a website. He’s selling these Viva Beads, which are cool little bracelets and such. If that’s something you’re into, check it out.

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