When it comes to Twitter, 2010 personally left me with a bad taste in my mouth. When the company purchased Loren Brichter's atebits [http://www.atebits.com/] — and programming skills — I was probably affected more than most people because of our ads in Tweetie for Mac. Other 3rd party Twitter client developers aside. I could certainly understand Loren's decision and hold no hard feelings towards him. But the few communications I had with the team at Twitter left me wishing there was a little mo…
Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a decent amount of discussion on the subject of Tumblr [http://tumblr.com/], Posterous [http://posterous.com/] and the rise of the micro-blog. Without recapping all the details, the general feeling of many is this: these services make it so easy to post that the quality of the content produced by the users of these services is very low. And with the rise of blogs like “f*&%yeahwelshcorgis [http://fuckyeahwelshcorgis.tumblr.com/]”, many would agree.…
I have many memories of my dad working around the house on various renovations or working on a vehicle in the driveway. He had a workshop full of tools and a large toolbox filled to overflowing. Many of the tools within were mysterious to me as I had no idea what their intended purpose was. But whatever the job, there were a few tools that were always included. One in particular stands out in my mind — an orange screwdriver with a cap on the end. You could unscrew this cap and inside were 10-15…
In my various interviews over the past year, a common theme of mine has been the relationship between design and development on the web. I am curious to hear Garrett's thoughts on this as well. The interview As someone who dabbles in the creation of web sites as a hobby and follows the true professionals online, it appears that there are not a lot of people who are highly skilled on both sides of this fence. It seems like most folks tend to spend more time on one side over the other and their c…
Sam Brown is a freelance Web Designer and Developer from Edinburgh, Scotland who specializes in usability and web standards, is a geek, and loves all things technology. Besides his own blog [http://sam.brown.tc/], Sam runs some very cool sites such as Posh CSS [http://poshcss.com/] and We Love TXP [http://welovetxp.com/]. I've been reading Sam's blog for a couple of years now and have come to appreciate his work during that time. After my discussion with another famous web developer early last…
I never intended for interviews to be a regular feature here. But after my discussion with Dan Benjamin [https://chrisbowler.com/journal/probing-the-hive-mind], I realized how informing it can be conducting an interview—and enjoyable. It seems the easiest way to really gain insight into a person and the subjects they specialize in. So here is the second ever interview in this space, and a third is in the works as we speak. There has been some discussion lately on the merits of interviews, and h…
We live in a time where it has become extremely difficult to be focused on any one thing at a time. If we are able to achieve this proper focus, lack of proper environment and our own abilities are not able to sustain this focus for long. The disciplines of simplicity and solitude are not practiced by many and I fear we are slowly losing the ability to do so even when a chance presents itself. > Where shall the world be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.…
The snow is gone. Grass shoots are poking through. The pleasant gifts from your neighbour's dog have almost dissipated. Spring has arrived, and with it comes the desire to get off the computer and go outside. Two things I really love about spring: yard work and sitting on the deck with a nicely brewed local beer. And it's this time of year when I start to remember all the projects I thought about doing at New Years. Four or five months later, the improving weather reminds me that once again al…