I CHAT with internet radio pioneer, design author, and brand maven Debbie Millman about broadcasting, writing, teaching, publishing, learning to be happy in your own skin, and the importance of early failure to long-term success and happiness. Enjoy Debbie Millman on The Big Web Show.
(Want more Debbie? Check Observer Media–Debbie’s legendary audio interviews with the likes of Jessica Walsh, Milton Glaser, Massimo Vignelli, Maria Popova, Stefan Sagmeister, Dave Eggers, Jen Bekman, Gary Hustwit, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Erik Spierkermann, Jessica Hische, and many more.)
IN EPISODE ? 97 of The Big Web Show?, Erika Hall? (Just Enough Research, Mule Design Studio?) and I chat about why funding startups nobody needs is killing innovation; how designers can use research to stop bad ideas and find great ones; Russell Brand; and the secret history of Unsuck It.
IN EPISODE No. 96 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”), I chat with my friend Mike Monteiro, author of Design Is A Job, and co-founder of Mule Radio, about the joy of client services; how to sell great work; the relaunch of the show on the Mule Radio Network; and the one weird secret that all the best-loved applications, services, and content sites have in common. Enjoy the show.
IN EPISODE No. 95 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”), I interview Jake Archibald of Google Chrome about upcoming web caching standards, how the network connection is merely a layer of progressive enhancement and why you should build your app offline, communicating with non-developers, accessibility standards at BBC and The Guardian, the forking of Webkit, and why the much-linked article “Why Mobile Web Apps are Slow” proves no such thing.
Jake Archibald is a Developer Advocate at Google working with the Chrome team to develop and promote web standards and developer tools. Prior to Google, Jake worked on lanyrd.com/mobile/, using modern web standards and good old hackery to work smoothly on ancient devices, while adding enhancements to newer devices such as offline support.
Jake also spent 4 years working at the BBC writing low level JavaScript that catered to their strict accessibility and browser support requirements. He authored and maintained the corporation’s Standards and Guidelines on JavaScript, and sat on their working groups for accessibility, markup, and download performance.
DALTON CALDWELL is my guest on today’s Big Web Show, sponsored by Happy Cog™. In one of the most interesting discussions we’ve ever had on the show, we go deep on the essence of social software, ponder if everything that starts out great on the web turns to crap, explore how different business models inevitably shape digital experiences, get the real story behind some of the most popular software in internet history, and overturn more than a few canards.
Dalton is the CEO and co-founder of App.net, an ad-free social platform and API. App.net aims to be the backbone of the social web through infrastructure that developers can use to build applications and that members can use for meaningful interactions.
Previously, Dalton founded the music-sharing service imeem in 2003, serving as CEO until its acquisition by MySpace in 2009. Dalton graduated with honors from Stanford University in 2003 with a a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and B.A. in Psychology.
We discuss Scott’s latest thinking about “responsible responsive design,” whether responsive design is destroying creativity on the web, working with CSS flexbox, what’s new with the jQuery Mobile project, why people fear JavaScript and love jQuery, the size and management of Filament Group’s multi-device test suite, the secret history of the jQuery logo, and much more.
[And for more Scott Jehl design and development wisdom and wizardry, please enjoy today’s Full-Length Friday Web Design Video at An Event Apart. Scott Jehl: Interacting Responsibly (and Responsively!) is a brilliant 60-minute exploration on how to improve the responsiveness (if you will) of responsive web design.]
Thanks For The Pepperoni
This episode of The Big Web Show is sponsored by Lynda.com, an online learning company with more than 77,000 video tutorials that teach software, creative, and business skills. Try lynda.com free for 7 days by visiting lynda.com/bigwebshow.
Scott is also a jQuery team member, most recently leading the development of the jQuery Mobile project. Follow him on Twitter at @scottjehl and on Github at scottjehl.
IN EPISODE No. 81 of The Big Web Show (“Everything Web That Matters”) I interview Tina Roth Eisenberg, creator of swissmiss and tattly, founder of Creative Mornings, and cofounder of teuxdeux. We discuss discovering your path as a designer; why the motto “let it go or fix it” can help you create great product ideas; how to be a good boss; and how kids can have a profoundly positive influence on your career.
IN EPISODE No. 80 of The Big Web Show (“Everything Web That Matters”) I interview Daring Fireball author John Gruber about his background in computer programming and journalism; the joy of designing print layouts with QuarkXPress and the transition from print to web; why investors who are angry at Apple have it wrong; why some web standards geeks who once passionately disliked Apple have grown warmer toward the company; and the secret story behind the name, “Daring Fireball.”
IN EPISODE No. 79 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”), I interview CSS guru, Microformats co-founder, O’Reilly and New Riders author, and An Event Apart co-founder Eric A. Meyer (@meyerweb) about upcoming CSS modules including grid layout, flexbox, and regions; his career trajectory from college graduate webmaster to world-renowned author, consultant, and lecturer; founding and running a virtual community (CSS-Discuss); becoming an O’Reilly writer; the early days of the Mosaic Browser and The Web Standards Project’s CSS Samurai; “The Web Behind” variation of The Web Ahead podcast, and more.
Eric A. Meyer has been working with the web since late 1993 and is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML and CSS. He is the principal consultant for Complex Spiral Consulting and lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which is a much nicer city than you’ve been led to believe. Author of “Eric Meyer on CSS” (New Riders), “Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide” (O’Reilly & Associates), “CSS2.0 Programmer’s Reference” (Osborne/McGraw-Hill), and the CSS Browser Compatibility Charts, Eric co-founded and co-directs An Event Apart, the design conference “for people who make websites,” and speaks at a variety of conferences on the subject of standards, CSS use, and web design.
IN EPISODE No. 77 of The Big Web Show, I interview returning guest Sarah Parmenter about designing an app for the homeless; the challenges of multi-device design; teaching HTML and CSS to young people; designing a complex reader app; the ideal number of employees for a small design studio; Brooklyn vs. small-town UK; and more.
The Big Web Show features special guests on topics like web publishing, art direction, content strategy, typography, web technology, and more. It’s everything web that matters.
LIVE TODAY AT 3:00 PM (technology willing), tune in to 5by5 live as I interview Rich Ziade, founder, hero, and villain behind the Readability reading platform, whose latest controversial move, announced earlier today, is to give $150,000 to charity.
I’ll ask Rich to answer charges that Readability crosses a line in the emerging orbital content space which other products in that space somehow have not crossed. I’ll also ask him to explain his vision for the platform, and tell us where it goes next. Got questions for Rich? Post them on Twitter using hashtag #askReadability.
After the live session, the interview will live on eternally as Episode 71 of The Big Web Show.
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DAN BENJAMIN is my guest on Episode No. 70 of The Big Web Show, the weekly podcast on “everything web that matters.”
Dan is a broadcaster, screencaster, writer, software developer, designer, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of 5by5 Studios, an internet broadcasting network where he hosts a handful of shows with people like John Gruber, Merlin Mann, and me. Dan is the author of Hivelogic and has written for A List Apart and O’Reilly.
For almost two decades, Dan has created publishing tools including those which have powered A List Apart and 5by5. He devised the Email Address Enkoder, co-founded Cork’d, and founded Playgrounder. The latter two have since been acquired by Gary Vaynerchuk and Uncrate, respectively.
HAPPY COG Creative Director Christopher Cashdollar is my guest in Episode No. 69 of The Big Web Show, the weekly podcast on “everything web that matters.”
In 35 lively minutes, Chris and I discuss the joys and challenges of redesigning typography mega-site Fonts.com; nimble versus waterfall; process versus inspiration; running a creative department that is interactive in every sense of the word; the two sides of a design education (learning and teaching); fostering collaboration; and the transition from doodling eight-year-old to graphic design student to interactive creative director.
Chris is a multi-disciplinary graphic designer with twelve years of interaction design experience. He is currently the Creative Director for Happy Cog Philadelphia, and an adjunct instructor for Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design.
Tantek has played a key role in the development and popularization of practical social network portability technologies such as the hCard and XFN microformats. In 2003, Tantek collaborated with Eric Meyer and Matt Mullenweg in the invention of the XHTML Friends Network (XFN), which has since become the most popular decentralized social relationship format in the history of the Web. In 2004 Tantek proposed hCard for representing people and organizations, which has since similarly become the most popular user profile format on the web.
During his years as Technorati’s Chief Technologist, Tantek played an active role in refining and evangelizing hCard, bringing it from a wiki proposal to one that’s endorsed and supported by individuals, numerous small organizations, major companies ranging from AOL to Yahoo, and implemented for over a hundred million user identities and business listings on the web.
At Microsoft, Tantek led the development of Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh and its Tasman rendering engine, which was the most standards-compliant layout engine of its time. He was also an early member of The Web Standards Project, and is the creator of the Box Model Hack, the first IE hack that let developers work around the incorrect box model in old versions of Internet Explorer.
The Big Web Show features special guests and topics like web publishing, art direction, content strategy, typography, web technology, and more. Get episodes delivered to you automatically:
