We’re mixing it up for today’s episode of The Big Web Show. Instead of interviewing one or more amazing web innovators per our standard practice, Dan Benjamin and I will interview each other.

I’ve known Dan since Netscape 1.0 was the best browser money could buy. He is a fascinating, complex, profoundly multi-talented gentleman. If you know him as the Jedi CEO and chief on-air talent of the web’s most awesome podcasting network, then you have tasted but a slice of his talent pie.

Dan is a broadcaster, screencaster, writer, software developer, designer, and entrepreneur. Also a pioneering blogger, co-founder of Cork’d, Theravada Buddhist, and much more. We could probably do a whole season of Big Web Show episodes just on Dan (but we won’t). And, too, he’ll be asking me stuff.

Adding piquancy, Dan is recovering from a cold and I’m in the middle of one, so I’ll be “taping” from behind a box of Kleenex in my apartment.

That’s nothing. I once taped an entire episode of The Big Web Show wearing wet trousers. Yes, really. There was no time to change and the show must go on. How my trousers got wet is a whole thing. I don’t want to talk about that. The point is, that’s how much Dan and I care about the show. I was miserably uncomfortable but it was showtime, and if you re-watch the old episodes you won’t even be able to tell which is the one where I’m Mr Wetpants—I’m that smooth.

So please join us today, Sep 30, 2010, at 1:00 PM Eastern, for Episode 21: “Just the Two of Us.” (And after a story like that, how can you refuse?)

The Big Web Show (“Everything Web That Matters”) is taped live in front of an internet audience every Thursday at 1:00 PM ET on live.5by5.tv.

Edited episodes can be watched afterwards, often within hours of taping, via iTunes (audio feed | video feed) and the web.

Filed under: Big Web Show, The Big Web Show

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MY EX-WIFE is one of my heroes. Six years ago today, during 33 hours of labor in a stiflingly hot room, she brought forth our daughter. When my body rebels in the gym, I think of her courage and push out another rep. When a lift or stretch hurts, I remember what she did and breathe through the pain. From her and those long moments, I learned mind over matter. From witnessing and helping during those 33 hours, I learned that life is blood and bone, and that we can achieve anything if we push hard enough.

Thank you, Carrie, for that lesson and for this girl. Happy sixth birthday, dearest Ava. And, by wonderful coincidence and similar courage and marvels, joyous first day on earth, Nash Thomas Hoy. Fill your lungs and holler, boy!

Filed under: family, glamorous, The Essentials

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Tired of staring at your font collection, wondering what a trained graphic designer would do with all those typefaces? Unsure whether Times or Miller is the more appropriate choice for that vaguely left-leaning newspaper you have to design? Want to make sure that info-graphic you’re designing looks hot? Then, friend, you need So You Need a Typeface, a large, hot-looking info-graphic suitable for printing and framing (or at least taping to the wall of your cubicle).

From the good folks at Inspiration Lab.

Filed under: Design, Fonts, Fun, Typography

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“Cheap, complex devices such as the iPhone and the Droid have come along at precisely the moment when HTML5, CSS3 and web fonts are ready for action; when standards-based web development is no longer relegated to the fringe; and when web designers, no longer content to merely decorate screens, are crafting provocative, multi-platform experiences. Is this the dawn of a newer, more mature, more ubiquitous web?”

—The Future of Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman

Originally written for .net magazine, Issue No. 206, published 17 August in UK and this month in the US in “Practical Web Design” Magazine. Now you can read the article even if you can’t get your hands on these print magazines.

See also: I Guest-Edit .net magazine.

Filed under: Accessibility, Adobe, Advocacy, Apple, Applications, apps, architecture, Authoring, Best practices, Browsers, business, Code, content strategy, CSS3, Design, Designers, development, editorial, Happy Cog™, HTML, HTML5, industry, javascript, Platforms, Publications, Publishing, Real type on the web, Standards, State of the Web, The Essentials, The Profession, W3C, Web Design, Web Design History, Web Standards, webfonts, webtype, Zeldman

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UPDATE: As of today, 27 September 2010, Jeremy’s book is ranked 33. It has climbed 11 points since yesterday.

Jeremy Keith’s excellent HTML5 For Web Designers, the first publication from A Book Apart, is a hit in the American iTunes store.

Comments, if you wish, may be left at Flickr.

Filed under: A Book Apart, Advocacy, Apple, Authoring, Best practices, books, Design, E-Books, Happy Cog™, HTML, HTML5, Standards, State of the Web, Web Design, Web Design History, Web Standards

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Listen up, web designers. From Stuntbox with love comes Gridulator, a dandy free web application that calculates multi-column grids for all your pixel-based web layout needs. Creator David Sleight explains how it works:

Tell Gridulator your layout width and the number of columns you want, and it’ll spit back all the possible grids that have nice, round integers. Just the thing for pixel-based designfolk. There are inline previews, courtesy of the canvas element, and when you’re all set Gridulator can crank out full-size PNGs for you, ready for use in your CSS, Photoshop docs, or what have you. And there’s full keyboard control for you snazzy power users.

More:

• Gridulator itself
• Say Hello to Gridulator

Thanks, Stuntbox!

Filed under: Applications, apps, art direction, Authoring, CSS, Design, Web Design, Web Design History, Websites

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Thanks, Michel Bozgounov.

Filed under: Design, Fun

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Attending the SXSW Interactive festival in 2011? Be sure to see Jeffrey Zeldman’s Awesome Internet Design Panel.

He brought us The Web Standards Project, A List Apart, Designing With Web Standards, A Book Apart, and so much more. Now legendary blogger, designer, and creative gadfly Jeffrey Zeldman brings us a SXSW panel.

You, the people, have spoken. We will not let you down.

Filed under: Appearances, SXSW, Zeldman

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Happy Cog’s redesign of the Scientific American website, featuring wicked web fonts Prelude and Brunel, is alive!

Roger Black Studio did the print redesign and supervised the project; Font Bureau created Prelude; Paul Barnes designed Brunel and Webtype hinted it.

For the Happy Cog team:

• UX design: Whitney Hess
• Graphic design: Mike Pick
• Front-end code: Tim Murtaugh

Filed under: Acclaim, Design, Happy Cog™

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Rich Ziade, creator of the popular reading tool Readability, guests on Thursday’s today’s episode of The Big Web Show, co-hosted by Dan Benjamin and taped before a live internet audience.

Richard Ziade is the founding partner of Arc90, a consulting firm, product shop, and idea incubator based in New York City. Arc90 has a reputation as one of the best web application design shops around. Alas, nearly all their web application design work is for private corporate clients. Thus most of us don’t get a chance to see and learn from Arc90′s work. Fortunately we can get a taste of what they’re about by visiting the Arc90 Lab, where the company shares ideas, tools, and the occasional experiment in web technology.

During Thursday’s Friday’s taping of The Big Web Show, we will probe Rich (if you’ll excuse the disgusting imagery) to find out where his ideas come from, how Arc90 manages the balance between product development and client services, and how to build a reputation when your client services agreements prevent you from having a public portfolio. I will also try to force Rich to tell our listeners if he has any awesome future plans for Readability.

Prior to Arc90, Richard worked in various roles crossing disciplines in design, technology and product management. Rich shares his occasional thought on design and technology at his blog: www.basement.org.

The Big Web Show (“Everything Web That Matters”) is taped live in front of an internet audience every Thursday at 1:00 PM ET today at 2:00 pm! on live.5by5.tv. Edited episodes can be watched afterwards, often within hours of taping, via iTunes (audio feed | video feed) and the web.

Filed under: Applications, apps, Big Web Show, Chicago, Design, Small Business, software, The Big Web Show, Typography

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