Category: Memes

Harmless giggles.

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Accessibility Community Design development eric meyer events Ideas industry maturity Memes Standards technorati Tools

Happy fourth birthday, real world semantics

Four years ago today, Tantek Çelik and Kevin Marks gave a presentation on real-world semantics. Working backwards from HTML extensions like XFN (created by Tantek, Matt Mullenweg, and Eric Meyer), the paper showed how designers and developers could add semantics to today’s web rather than starting from scratch or waiting for a “purer” markup language to bring us an “uppercase semantic web.”

As with ‘most all great ideas, the principles were simple and, in hindsight, profoundly obvious. Do what designers were already doing. Instead of toiling over new languages that might or might not get adopted, use existing (X)HTML elements such as rel and class, and agree on such things as common class names for simple things like relationship definitions.

On behalf of all web designers and developers, thank you, Tantek and friends, and happy birthday.

[tags]microformats, semantics, realworld, tantek, xfn, hcard, 4years[/tags]

Categories
Memes

Inappropriate “Talk Like a Pirate Day” remarks

  1. Aaaaar! Ye have cancer, Mr Finkelstein.
  2. Aaaar! Be leavin’ you, I will, and fightin’ fer custody of th’ youngins, damn yer eyes
  3. Aar! That joint be not mine, old father!
  4. Aaaaaaaar! Home a day early, ye are, husband. This varmint a poor stranger be who lost his clothes.
  5. Aaar! ‘Twas my right of way!
  6. Aaar! The tightening of credit conditions has the potential to intensify the housing correction and restrain economic growth more generally, aar. Today’s action is intended to forestall some of the adverse effects on the broader economy that might otherwise arise from the disruptions in financial markets, aaaar!
  7. Aaar! Yer brat should not play so near me pit bull doggie, aar!
  8. Aaar! Come out with your hands up, blast ye!
  9. Aaaar! Lass, ye come upon me unawares! I bought these for the articles, be it so!
  10. Aaaaaaar! Peace be upon he who follows the guidance: People of America this talk of mine is for you and concerns the ideal way to prevent another Manhattan, and deals with the war and its causes and results, avast!

[tags]pirates, talk like a pirate, talk like a pirate day, avast, aar! aaar![/tags]

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Applications Ideas iphone Memes

10 Things the Next iPhone Will Do

  1. Provide the option to download and save YouTube videos for 99 cents.
  2. Accept voice commands, read text aloud in any of six user-selectable voices, and provide optional verbal audio feedback on all actions.
  3. Improve built-in camera to 6 Megapixel and include a feature-limited version of Aperture.
  4. Facilitate borrowing from your local public library.
  5. Translate incoming or outgoing e-mail messages. Supported languages will initially include Spanish, Russian, two kinds of Chinese, and Australian.
  6. Vibrate when you approach someone with compatible musical tastes.
  7. For drivers: pay monthly E-Z Pass fees and beam E-Z Pass fare at toll kiosks.
  8. For mass transit riders: pay discounted monthly transit fee and beam per-ride fare at subway entrances and on boarding buses. Also good at Six Flags.
  9. Locate lost keys, pets, children, or anything else tagged with RFID.
  10. Copy and paste.

[tags]apple, iphone, RFID, cameras, 6 megapixel, australianforbeer[/tags]

Categories
art arts Blogs and Blogging Design Happy Cog™ links Memes people Philadelphia writing

Link ‘n Park

Travel day. While I’m singin’ in the rain between New York and Philadelphia, here are some nice, dry links for your pleasure.

Cover Browser
Jackpot link! Recall every lost issue of Amazing Spider-Man. Identify with Betty or Veronica. Discover the Mad Magazine you never knew. Cover Browser intends to catalog the cover of every comic book (not to mention every book, game, DVD, magazine…) ever printed. With 77,000 entries, they are just getting started. Via Veer.
Things on Things
If basking in the nostaliga of Cover Browser (above) makes you feel like everything that can be digital is becoming so—and if that thought (however inaccurate it may actually be) makes you wonder if widespread digitization is changing the way we perceive and value reality—you’re not alone. But you may not be as articulate about it as the pseudonymous author of the untitled essay posted yesterday at Things Magazine. Read it. Bookmark it. Share it. Via Coudal.
Learning from the Facebook Mini-Feed Disaster
The great Jared Spool on lessons to be drawn when a hot new feature fails to please the public for whom it was ostensibly created.
Multi-touch on the desktop
Hockenberry on interface design. Some people who love the iPhone can’t wait for multi-touch to come to the desktop. Hockenberry explains why it won’t.
Radio Telepathy
Eclectic music podcast.
Design Interviews: ROB WEYCHERT of Happy Cog Studios
Web designer, artist and writer Rob Weychert on typography, humor, haiku, neurotically meticulous attention to detail, and the bearded cult.
iTrapped
A photoset on Flickr (and a new meme). Fun!
There is no “first blogger”
Scott Rosenberg, co-founder of Salon corrects the breathless coverage of The Wall Street Journal, beginning with its fallacious assertion that “It’s been 10 years since the blog was born.” There are journalists who get this stuff right, but not nearly enough.
Icon Archive
Over 12,500 desktop icons, organized in sets, for Windows, Macintosh and Linux Systems. Non-commerical use is allowed in most cases. The site’s offerings are culled from other sites (e.g., Star Wars 2, by Talos, comes from Iconfactory); original authors are credited and linked.
“No Compassion“
Artist Jiri David’s manipulated photos of Bush, Putin, Berlusconi, and Chirac.
Hope is Emo, Chapter 9
Hope gets emotionally damaged at a family wedding. (Video.)

Get up in my grill. View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia.

[tags]comics, cover art, digitization, UI design, rob weychert, jared spool, facebook, multi-touch, icons, manipulated images, hope is emo, wallstreetjournal, salon, blogs, blogging, first blogger, radiotelepathy, itrapped [/tags]

Categories
industry Marketing Memes

Web 2.0 Thinking Game

The most telling detail in The Economist‘s coverage of Google and YouTube was the subhead: “Google’s acquisition of YouTube shows that ‘Web 2.0’ has come of age.” A few weeks back, The Economist was calling “Web 2.0” a trend. Their phrase was, “hot Web 2.0 trend.” The magazine now intends “Web 2.0” to be understood as a sort of second edition:

This week’s pairing of Google and YouTube may come to be remembered as the moment “Web 2.0″—ie, the web, version two—came of age.

Clearly “Web 2.0” means different things to different journalists on different days. Mostly it means nothing—except a bigger paycheck. But let’s simplify what The Economist is saying:

Web 1.0: AOL buys Time Warner.
Web 2.0: Google buys YouTube.

Put another way:

Web 1.0: New media company buys old media company.
Web 2.0: New media company buys new media company.

If we’re stuck with this meaningless Web 2.0 label, let’s at least have some fun with it. Here’s my new game. I’ll start, you finish:

Web 1.0: Joshua Davis on the cover of Art News.
Web 2.0: 37signals on the cover of Forbes.

Web 1.0: Users create the content (Slashdot).
Web 2.0: Users create the content (Flickr).

Web 1.0: Crap sites on Geocities.
Web 2.0: Crap sites on MySpace.

Web 1.0: Writing.
Web 2.0: Rating.

Web 1.0: Karma Points.
Web 2.0: Diggs.

Web 1.0: Cool Site of the Day.
Web 2.0: Technorati.com.

Web 1.0: Tags.
Web 2.0: “Tags.”

Web 1.0: Bookmarking.
Web 2.0: Bookmark sharing.

Web 1.0: Pointless Flash widgets.
Web 2.0: Pointless “Ajax” widgets.

Now you try it!

[tags]web2.0, games, economist[/tags]

Categories
Design film links Memes music people tv work

Four things

I blame Mark Simonson.

Four jobs I’ve had
  1. Writer for The Washington Post and City Paper
  2. Laborer in a PVC coating factory
  3. Art director
  4. Keyboardist (Yatz, Spoons, Pop Maru, Insect Surfers)
Four movies I can watch over and over
  1. Rushmore
  2. Swing Time
  3. North By Northwest
  4. Best in Show
Four places I’ve lived
  1. New York City
  2. Washington DC
  3. Bloomington IN
  4. Pittsburgh PA
Four TV shows I love
  1. The Office (Brit.)
  2. Arrested Development
  3. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
  4. The News Hour with Jim Lehrer
Four places I’ve vacationed
  1. Istanbul
  2. Rome
  3. San Francisco
  4. London
Four of my favorite dishes
  1. Madras Rava Masala at Dosa Hut
  2. White Omelette at Penelope
  3. Sag Paneer
  4. Tofu in Spicy Ramen
Four sites I visit daily
  1. Coudal Partners
  2. Daring Fireball
  3. Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
  4. A List Apart
Four places I would rather be right now
  1. Anywhere with Carrie, baby, and doggie.
  2. Seriously.
  3. That is my answer.
  4. Home best.
Four bloggers I am tagging
  1. Eric Meyer
  2. Tanya Rabourn
  3. Jason Santa Maria
  4. Greg Storey