• The Heads-Up Grid is an overlay grid for use during in-browser website development, built with HTML + CSS + JavaScript. http://t.co/EcgTkcD #
• Golden Grid System – a folding grid for responsive design. h/t @malarkey http://j.mp/mZnVJi #
• Nice responsive redesign! Well done, Meltmedia! http://t.co/tQQGW8J #
• RT @jasonsantamaria: I’m writing a book about typography for @abookapart! Lucky number 7: http://t.co/7CkSz0l #
• I love how everything Apple does, even slipping on a banana peel, is perceived as strategic. #
• Paul draws a napkin map of London. http://t.co/p4co2ZM #

Okay, that last one isn’t a web design link and the Apple comment could go either way, but that’s how I roll. Follow me on Twitter for more snarkeractive funucation!

HEY, YOU WITH THE STARS in your eyes. Yes, you, the all too necessary SXSW Interactive attendee. Got questions about the present and future of web design and publishing for me or the illustrious panelists on Jeffrey Zeldman’s Awesome Internet Design Panel at SXSW Interactive 2011? You do? Bravo! Post them on Twitter using hashtag #jzsxsw and we’ll answer the good ones at 5:00 PM in Big Ballroom D of the Austin Convention Center.

Topics include platform wars (native, web, and hybrid, or welcome back to 1999), web fonts, mobile is the new widescreen, how to succeed in the new publishing, responsive design, HTML5, Flash, East Coast West Coast beefs, whatever happened to…?, and many, many more.

Comments are off here so you’ll post your questions on Twitter.

The panel will be live sketched and live recorded for later partial or full broadcast via sxsw.com. In-person attendees, arrive early for best seats. Don’t eat the brown acid.

20110312-NodeXL-Twitter-sxsw by Marc Smith.

From: www.connectedaction.net.

Connections among the Twitter users who recently mentioned sxsw when queried on March 12, 2011 scaled by numbers of followers.

A larger version (zoom for details) is available here: www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/5521097041/sizes/o/.

—Anatomy of the Goodreads.com Friend Spam Dark Pattern

(Hat tip: Andrew Travers.)

Attention, web design geeks, contest fans, standards freaks, HTML5ophiles, CSSistas, grammarians, bookworms, UXers, designers, developers, and budding Haikuists. Can you do this?

Do not tell me I
Am source of your browser woes.
Template validates.


Write a web standards haiku (like that one), and post it on Twitter with the hashtag #bbd4 between now and November 30th—which happens to be the fourth international Blue Beanie Day in support of Web Standards.

Winning haikus will receive free books from Peachpit/New Riders (“Voices That Matter”) and A Book Apart.

Ethan Marcotte, co-author of Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition and I will determine the winners.

Enter as many haikus as you like. Sorry, only one winning entry per person. Now get out there and haiku your heart out!

See you on Blue Beanie Day.

P.S. An ePub version of Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition is coming soon to a virtual bookstore near you. Watch this space.

IN THE TRADITION of “People who bought ‘Assmasters’ also bought ‘Assmasters II,’” Twitter has chosen four of my Twitter friends and is presenting them to me as being “Similar to You.” Pray what does this odd-in-this-context phrase, with its “Related Products” vibe, mean? Does it mean if I like myself, I would also like these people? Surely not, for I already know that, as demonstrated by the fact that I follow them. Were they chosen for discussing similar subjects (e.g. design, web design, CSS, semantic markup)? Unlikely, as that would imply Google-like keyword data mining and analysis bordering on artificial intelligence.

Then, what? It can’t mean people whose tweets resemble mine, as the Twitter writing style and frequency of the listed friends is purely their own. People with whom I have followers in common? That seems most likely, but it’s just a guess.

I’m curious to know what Twitter and its new CEO (hi, Dick!) mean by this. What is the marketing purpose of this feature? Am I to view Twitter as an informal “personal brand analysis” service? That could be cool for me and for the four people who are “Similar” to me. But surely most users would be uninterested in such a service, unless, unbeknownst to me, nearly everyone who uses Twitter is a marketer who views it primarily as a channel. And most companies don’t spend money developing long-tail features, of interest only to a tiny fraction of their users.

I love Twitter. I wish I’d invented it, and not primarily because if I’d invented it I’d be taking the Japanese women’s gymnastics team on a round-the-world cruise. I wish I’d invented it because it is something really new on the internet, like the web, and filled with potential, like the web. As a designer, I pay attention to Twitter same as I do Apple, Google, Flickr, and Facebook. The new feature intrigues me precisely because its language feels “off” and its purpose eludes me.

Also of interest, although less so: what data is being used, and how is it being analyzed?

What’s your theory?

i’m UNfollowing you on twitter — here’s why

LOVE your stuff!!!

however, your twitter posts have taken over my twitter stream: a good 30% of my stream is YOUR stuff. so i’ve decided to UNfollow you, sorry.

thought: you could write a script of some sort to set up a Zeldman LITE twitter account, with (only) 1-4 posts/day. or you could post em yourself, manually.

or not.

i’ll keep reading your site, regardless. thanks for reading.

Morality isn’t how you think, it’s what you do about your violent carnal greedy cowardly natural impulses. #

Good religion attempts to explain our deep connection to others. Bad religion scares us out of being monkeys. #

God loves my sin more than it shames me. Ladies. #

“Here it is, our next Web Trend Map. No Metro lines, no URLS. This time, it’s the 140 most influential people on twitter, sorted by #name #handle #category #influence #activity. Plus: When they started tweeting and what they first said. …”

Where does the data come from?

“We analyzed the data in our Web Trend Engine (30gigs), got a sneak peek into the top 100 list from the Max Planck Institute PDF Twitter research team (200KB), we talked to Twitter directly, and we asked our audience to make sure that we get international tweeters in there as well.”

iA » Cosmic 140—Final Beta

As promised, a super-hot update to A Feed Apart, the official feed aggregator for An Event Apart, is up and running for your web design conference pleasure. You can now tweet from inside the application, and can even arrange meet-ups and make other social connections there.

Must-read: Designer Ali M. Ali talks about the interface design.

Steve Losh did back-end programming.

Nick Sergeant and Pete Karl created the original A Feed Apart and led the redesign effort.

If you can’t attend the sold-out show, which begins Monday, May 24, you can follow the live Tweetage from the comfort of your cubicle.

Enjoy An Event Apart Boston 2010 on A Feed Apart.

The internet is not a numbers game. It’s about dialog, persuasion, and influence.

You don’t want a million people reading your HTML5 blog. You want members of the HTML5 working groups and key influencers from Google, Apple, and Microsoft reading your HTML5 blog. Likewise, it’s better to have twenty meaningful comments than a thousand +1s.

Ditto with Twitter follower counts. What it would gain you to acquire all the followers in the world? Bragging rights? Mysterious leverage? The ability to convince a not-very-bright business person that what you have to say matters, because n millions follow you?

Following doesn’t mean paying attention. You don’t want numbers on Twitter, not really. What you want is to follow and be followed by human beings who care about issues you care about.

This thing we make together. This thing is about hearts and minds, not eyeballs. Especially not eyeballs that aren’t even watching. Eyeballs is so 90s. And it was never the right metric.

This thing. If numbers are your strategy to win at this thing, you’ve already lost. This thing is not a game. There is no winning. There is only mattering. If you don’t understand that, you aren’t making a difference.

Contrary to popular belief and Twitter’s terms of service, you cannot copyright a Tweet. Under US law, copyright is granted on publication to “original works of authorship” finalized in “fixed forms of expression” but this does not extend to names, titles, or short phrases (PDF).

As messages sent via Twitter cannot be longer than 140 characters, they cannot be copyrighted. However original, witty, or profound they may be, nothing more than good manners protects your original expression of authorship. If you wish to let other people quote or use your Tweets, you need not “license” them; indeed, technically, you cannot license them, since they are in the public domain the instant you publish them.

If you write a clever Tweet and wish to assert ownership (and if money is no object), you may apply for a trademark. Good luck with that.

Otherwise, your Tweets are like the air. Anyone can do anything like to them, including quoting them with or without your permission. If an enterprising company wants to take something you said on Twitter and slap it on a tee shirt, they may do so. If a gent of the disturbed persuasion wants to engrave your tweet into a 600-foot swastika, he may do so.

If this disturbs you, suck it up, or stop using Twitter—or mark your Twitter feed as private. This will not copyright your Twitter mutterings but it will keep many people from seeing them.

If it deeply disturbs you (and money is no object), mount a case to change the law.

Me, I plan to use Twitter forever. And any party so inclined may make a whistle of my Tweets. But my saying so here is irrelevant because you cannot copyright a Tweet.

Update: Comments are now closed, but you may read what others had to say. Thanks to all for a lively and illuminating discussion.

Follow me on Twitter: @zeldman

Have another?

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