Ideas and Discoveries
conference
Big in Texas
I’m Austin-bound in 2008, thanks to a surprise windfall: free registration at the SXSW conference.
conference
Ghost in the Machine Tag
With Hack Day fast approaching and my gadget-building reveries fading, I’m toying with the idea of making a web gizmo to generate machine tags.
customerservice
Understanding the Piano
User communities own and define technologies as much or more than the inventors. A piano from 1817 is the perfect example.
ew.com
Ancient Architecture: The Gods Are in the Details
An Acropolis visit is an object lesson in the value of quiet design decisions amid colossal projects.
art
Night at the Museum
Nuit des Musées shakes up stodgy preconceptions about museums and reveals them as lively, relevant places.
conference
Heck, Let's Hawk a Hack at Hack Day
I’ll be at Hack Day in London next month. Want to team up to build something outrageous?
business
Long Road Ahead: Motivation, Ambition and Daunting Projects
The Paris Marathon prompts your correspondent to ponder what makes creative people tick in adversity.
art
YouTube Battle
In a promising concept that needs some refinement, YouTube DJs go head-to-head in a fight to create the best mix.
bigmedium
Your Word Processor Is Distracting You
I kicked Microsoft Word to the curb seven years ago, and my plain-text world has been more productive ever since.
Flattery and Kind Words
I was flattered last week by several pointers from various “design inspiration” sites which featured this site as a destination.
creativity
Magic Boxes, Canned Chaos and Creative Totems
A creative totem distracts you from the mundane and everyday just long enough for your mojo to kick in and save the day.
money
Currency Usability: Show Me the Money
Currency may well be the most important travel interface. In that match-up, Europe wins the coin toss against the US, whose coins border on the unintelligible.
productivity
Optimal Time for Optimization
“Avoid premature optimization” is one of the axioms of software development. It’s basically fancy talk for “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Water Rising
The Seine overflows its banks, a sure sign of spring.
art
Vu Magazine: Photos, Robots and Cutting-Edge Design
I expected nostalgic photos, but instead got insight into how technology works to spark design innovation.
Firebug 1.0: It’s Hot, Baby, Hot!
The final 1.0 release of the Firebug extension for Firefox is a web developer’s dream.
art
MoMA Lesson #2: Interface Design and the Path of Least Resistance
Audio-obsessed museum visitors prefer to listen to their audio guides rather than look at the art, revealing a lesson in interface design.