Abandonedography

Armchair travelling to Ballardian locations.

Histories Past

Documenting history through photography.

Adiphany

Clever advertising.

National Geographic Found

Celebrating 125 years of National Geographic, this Tumblr blog is a curated collection of photography from the archives. Many of the pictures are being published for the first time.

Ross Andersen – Humanity’s deep future

A really great interview with Nick Bostrom about humanity’s long-term future and the odds of extinction.

First public use of what Became Proxima Nova by Mark Simonson

Who knew? The reissue of the classic thirteen-part Star Wars radio series was the first appearance of a proto-Proxima Nova.

The canonical smart city: A pastiche by Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird

Sorta sci-fi from Adam.

Consider this a shooting script for one of those concept videos so beloved of the big technology vendors.

How people sit in meetings and what it really means

Show me on the teddy bear where Nate Bolt touched you.

Ten tips guaranteed to improve your startup success by Anil Dash

It’s a big ask, but if you can action these ten tips from Anil, your startup will crush it.

Our Incredible Journey

A collection of those appalling doublespeek announcements that sites and services give when they get acquired. You know the ones: they begin with “We’re excited to announce…” and end with people’s data being flushed down the toilet.

Google Keep? It’ll probably be with us until March 2017 - on average

Charles Arthur analyses the data from Google’s woeful history of shutting down its services.

So if you want to know when Google Keep, opened for business on 21 March 2013, will probably shut - again, assuming Google decides it’s just not working - then, the mean suggests the answer is: 18 March 2017. That’s about long enough for you to cram lots of information that you might rely on into it; and also long enough for Google to discover that, well, people aren’t using it to the extent that it hoped.

Instant artist statement: Arty Bollocks Generator

Don’t let James Bridle get a hold of this.

Kyle Bean - Portfolio

Kyle’s new site is looking lovely and responsive (thanks to Josh). But mostly it just gets out of the way so you can take in his truly amazing work.

The Secret Door - Step Through To The Unknown… | Safestyle UK

Prepare to lose yourself for hours as you keep hitting “take me somewhere else” through these most bizarre and wonderful Google street view locations.

Strassenblickfernweh indeed.

Map Projection Transitions

A lovely way of demonstrating the differences between map projections. Drag for extra fun.

Brett Jankord – Active development on Categorizr has come to an end

I think it’s a bit of a shame that Brett is canning his mobile-first device-detection library, but I totally understand (and agree with) his reasons.

There is a consensual hallucination in the market, that we can silo devices into set categories like mobile, tablet, and desktop, yet the reality is drawing these lines in the sand is not an easy task.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind: A visualization of drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004

This powerful timeline illustrates how drone attacks have increased dramatically under Obama’s administration.

Specializing yourself into a corner by Scott Kellum

I can empathise with Scott’s worries about fragmentation on the front-end with Saas, Styles, LESS, Compass, yada, yada, yada.

I want to share my code with everyone who writes CSS, not a subset of that group.

Science Hack Day is coming to your city! by Ariel Waldman

Want a Science Hack Day where you live? Make it so!

I’m done with the web by Randy Luecke

I find it hard to agree with any part of this. To me, it shows a deep misunderstanding of the web—treating the web as just another platform, without understanding what makes it so special.

I think I may have found my polar opposite.

The hilarious obsession with file size is the start of my frustrations with the web community.

Life & Thyme

Good writing. Good design. Good food.

Moving on by Harry Brignull

I’m going to miss having Harry around at Clearleft. Sounds like he might miss Clearleft too:

What I’ve loved about Clearleft is that it’s just so different to any other agency I’ve worked at. There’s no company process – everyone’s encouraged to experiment and try different techniques to suit the client’s needs. There’s hardly any internal meetings. I’ve never once had a conversation about my billing efficiency. The focus is on quality, and profitability is almost seen as a by-product. You’re encouraged to share your learnings externally rather than keep them in-house. Everyone’s trusted and given a lot of independence.

Why Americans Are the Weirdest People in the World

A truly fascinating and well-written article on how changes are afoot in the worlds of psychology, economics, and just about any other field that has performed tests on American participants and extrapolated the results into universal traits.

Given the data, they concluded that social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations. Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.

TEDxSummerisle

Oh, God!

Oh, Jesus Christ!

Don’t Be Afraid To Teach Interactions by Timoni West

Timoni tackles the tricky topic of teaching taps.

Discoverability can be hard, but that shouldn’t stop us trying out new interactions.

Learning to See on Information Architects

A sweet, beautiful love letter to design, from Oliver.

Titles are Toxic on Rands In Repose

Yes, yes, yes!

In Toxic Title Douchebag World, titles are designed to document the value of an individual sans proof. They are designed to create an unnecessary social hierarchy based on ego.

ROCA: Resource-oriented Client Architecture

I like these design principles for server-side and client-side frameworks. I would say that they’re common sense but looking at many popular frameworks, this sense isn’t as common as it should be.

On Responsive Layout and Grids by David Bushell

I agree with David: most pre-rolled grid “solutions” are way too complicated. And in any case, applying a pre-existing grid framework for a new project seems kind of like applying a pre-existing colour palette.

As David points out, it really needn’t be so complicated.

Ideas of March — All in the head

A wonderful rallying cry from Drew.

The problem:

Ever since the halcyon days of Web 2.0, we’ve been netting our butterflies and pinning them to someone else’s board.

The solution:

Hope that what you’ve created never has to die. Make sure that if something has to die, it’s you that makes that decision. Own your own data, friends, and keep it safe.

Did we miss your tweet from earlier?

In case you missed it earlier…

Notes on remixing Noon, generative text and Markov chains

Jeff Noon and Markov chains—a heavenly match by Dan.

Thumbs and Ammo

Ay!

Responsive Day Out in Andy’s sketchbook

A report on the Responsive Day Out that focuses on three themes from the day: progressive enhancement, process, and design systems.

inessential.com: Why I love RSS and You Do Too

Brent Simmons pens a love-letter to RSS, a technology that you use every day, whether you realise it or not.

They Keep Using That Word ∙ An A List Apart Column

David gets physidigital.

On Silos vs an Open Social Web by Tantek

Tantek steps back and offers some practical approaches to reclaiming a more open web from the increasingly tight clutches of the big dominant roach motels.

Notice that he wrote this on his own domain, not on Branch, Medium, Google+, Facebook, or any other black hole.

Dark Archives in Contents Magazine

A really lovely piece on the repositories of information that aren’t catalogued—a fourth quadrant in the Rumsfeldian taxonomy, these dark archives are the unknown knowns.

Benjamin Parry at Responsive Day Out 2013

Benjamin’s notes from the Responsive Day Out.

How to lose weight (in the browser)

A handy one-stop-shop for tips on improving front-end performance.

What we learnt from the Responsive Day Out conference on 8 Gram Gorilla

A nice write-up of the Responsive Day Out from three different perspectives.

Science Fiction Film as Design Scenario Exercise for Psychological Habitability: Production Designs 1955-2009

A white paper that looks to sci-fi films as potential prototypes for habitats for humans in space, with an emphasis on dealing with the psychological issues involved.

No to NoUI by Timo Arnall

A well-reasoned and excellently hyperlinked piece from Timo pushing back against the calls for “invisible” design.

To be fair, I’ve only ever heard the “no UI” argument in the context of “sometimes the best UI is no UI at all.”

Still, this is a great explanation of why “seamlessness” in design is by no means a desirable attribute.

blech/cloud-to-moon on GitHub

Best. Chrome extension. EVER!

Paul’s Chrome extension replaces every instance of “the cloud” with “the moon” (something I do in my head anyway).

It’s forked from an extension that replaces every instance of “the cloud” with “the clown.”

Oh, and Ben has written a version for Safari …forked from code that converts every instance of “the cloud” to “my butt.”

Learn CSS layout

A handy step-by-step guide to all the ways you can use CSS for layout.

A List Apart Issue № 371

This issue of A List Apart is a great double-whammy. Lara Swanson has a ton of practical tips for front-end performance enhancements, and Brian dives deep into making your own icon fonts.

We’re not ‘appy. Not ‘appy at all.

An excellent explanation from Tom Loosemore on why the Government Digital Service is putting its energy into open standards and the web, rather than proprietary native apps.

An interview with Jeremy Keith on The Industry

I really, really enjoyed this chat with Conor, especially the quick-fire round.

Note: I’m happy to report that between doing the interview and its publication, I managed to get the redesign of The Session out the door.

The Aleph: Infinite Wonder / Infinite Pity

Just like in the Borges short story, you can now see everything at once …from Project Gutenberg, or from Twitter, or from both.

This may be the only legitimate use case for (truly) infinite scrolling.

Responsive Day Out – A designer’s perspective | 383 Blog

A write-up of the Responsive Day Out from the perspective of a designer whose background is off-web:

Unlike the experts, I haven’t had to make the transition from designing for desktop for years to suddenly becoming device agnostic, which is what I think the main issue seems to be.

There Was Once a Certain Kind of Cinema

A magnificent piece of writing from Michael, examining the influence of Sergio Leone on George Lucas.

Sensory Interfaces (SI) on O Danny Boy

Dan isn’t keen on the term “natural user interface.” Here’s why.

Antiphonal Geometry · Harmony and proportion in responsive web design

This is the full text of Owen’s talk at the Responsive Day Out. It makes for a terrific read!

Keir Whitaker on Responsive Day Out 2013

Here’s Keir’s roundup of the Responsive Day Out (which was preceded by a Shopify meetup the night before).

Seb Lee-Delisle: Playing With Code

A nice feature on Seb in the latest issue of Make magazine.

The Accessibility Project

This is a great initiative. I’m going to learn a lot from it. I hope that I might even be able to contribute to it sometime.

For discussion: viewport and font-size data in client hints

The “client hints” proposal looks really interesting: a way for user-agents to send data to the server without requiring the server to have a library of user-agent strings. But Scott has a few concerns about some of the details.

Control your own content

Honestly, if you value the content you create and put online, then you need to be in control of your own stuff.

Mailappapp by Visual Idiot

Revolutionising the way you revolutionise email.

A Responsive Day Out, 2013

Another in-depth round-up of the Responsive Day Out, this time from Vasilis.

Quotes and Accents

Jessica’s handy guide to writing the right quotes and accents on a Mac keyboard.

How was Responsive Day Out? by Flow Interactive

Yet another round-up of the Responsive Day Out. I’m pleasantly surprised by the number of people that have been blogging since the event.

Responsive Day Out by Tom Prior

An in-depth blow-by-blow account of the Responsive Day Out by my fellow Brightonian.

Using SVG on CSS-Tricks

Chris takes a look at all the different ways you can use SVG today.

The World Wide Web is moving to AOL! by Brian Bailey

Biting satire that hits its mark superbly. Ouch! Be careful — this is sharp …and funny.

Not click. Not tap. Select. : Cennydd Bowles

Cennydd uses the word “select” as an input-neutral term for what we might be tempted to call clicks or taps. Personally, I like the term “choose”, although that word might have too much intent bundled with it.

What can I plant now?

This is handy—a month by month list of which vegetables you should be planting right now.

Responsive Day Out - a set on Flickr

Another nice set of photos from the Responsive Day Out.

#responsiveconf at Wolf’s Little Store

A write-up of the Responsive Day Out from one of the Belgian contingent. They’re a notoriously hard-to-please bunch but it sounds like a good time was had nonetheless.

Sadly, the ol’ “web app” get-out-of-jail-free card is whipped out once more. You know the one I mean.

The Perfect Cup of Tea

Anna documents her tea-making process.

Springboard – Coming soon from Clearleft

The latest Clearleft product will be like having an intensive set of discovery, collaboration, and exploration workshops in a box. Perfect for startups and other small businesses short on time or budget.

It starts in Spring but you can register your interest now.

Anatomy of a responsive page load

The slides from Andy’s excellent pragmatic talk on performance and aggressive enhancement at the Responsive Day Out.

Antiphonal Geometry: harmony and proportion in responsive web design

The slides from Owen’s magnificent talk at the Responsive Day Out …but you really had to be there.

Response Day Out Conference by Glenn Jones

Glenn’s notes from the Responsive Day Out. He thinks I brushed over the question of advertising (I don’t think I did, but no one topic got much airtime) and the question of “sites vs. apps”—that I did brush over: give me one good reason why we need to make a distinction (that nobody can agree on) between some sites and others. Seriously.

Responsive design – have we come full circle?

Everything old is new again. Ross noticed that many of the themes recurring at the Responsive Day Out hark back to best practices from over a decade ago: progressive enhancement, performance, good ol’ information architecture…

Program Your Own Mind 2: A responsive day out

Some thoughts and soul-searching prompted by talks at the Responsive Day Out.

Our thoughts about Responsive Day Out by Si digital

Some nice recollections from the Responsive Day Out.

The gradient chart by Cennydd Bowles

A very handy technique from Cennydd for answering the “it depends” question of when you might need a separate device-specific site (‘though I think that a separate can be a good option in addition to a responsive site, rather than instead of).

Antwerp Open Device Lab

Do you know anyone in Antwerp who wants to be part of a communal open device lab? Point them here.

A Responsive Day Out, Brighton by Hydrant

A nice write-up of the Responsive Day Out with all the right take-aways.

A Responsive Day Out by David Bushell

David shares his first ever speaking experience at the Responsive Day Out. I’m so, so happy he agreed to do it—he was great!

Responsive Navigation

David’s slides from the Responsive Day Out.

Responsive Day Out – Food for thought

Some musings prompted by the Responsive Day Out. I don’t agree with everything here (I certainly don’t think any of the speakers were demonising Photoshop, and pointing the finger at browser makers to solve our problems doesn’t help with existing and older browsers) but it’s always interesting to hear what other people got from the event. I definitely agree with the final point that we need to be sharing more, and not just on the narrowband paltry medium of Twitter.

Notes from Responsive Conf — Phunky Venom

Some bullet points from the Responsive Day Out to keep you going until the audio and video is ready.

Creating a physical internet to save money and energy on logistics

I remember a talk and discussion at SxSW a few years back about trying to improve the efficiency of trade networks by making them more web-like: there are ships full of empty cargo containers, simply because companies insist on using the container with their logo on it. I really, really like the idea of applying the principles of packet-switching to physical networks.

But here’s the hard part:

The technology is not a problem. We could do it all in 10 years. It’s the business models and the mental models in people’s minds.

The Edge of the Web at Responsive Day Out

Slides, videos, and links from Paul’s presentation at the Responsive Day Out.

Write The Future by Tom Hunter — Kickstarter

Now this looks like my kind of event:

A new micro-conference on science, technology, communication and fiction, organised by the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

100 meters above the sea

I met up with Nick on Wednesday night at the Altitude event in Portsmouth and we had a chat about his crazy week.

Focusing on our future — some changes to our product line-up

What an Orwellian title for a blog post announcing the wholesale destruction of user’s content. Oh, Yahoo, you sound so proud of your cavalier attitude towards the collective culture that you have harvested.

Vile fuckwits.

Playing with game console browsers

The slides from Anna’s terrific talk at the Responsive Day Out.

Responsive Day Out 2013 - a set on Flickr

Marc’s pictures from the Responsive Day Out.

Responsive web design: the war has not yet been won

This was the crux of Elliot’s excellent talk at the Responsive Day Out. I heartily concur with this:

Once you overcome that initial struggle of adapting to a new process, designing and building responsive sites needn’t take any longer, or cost any more money. The real obstacle is designers and developers being set in their ways.

Asset Fonts

The slides from Josh’s super-quickfire presentation at the Responsive Day Out.

Posts from March 1st 2013 on Decade City

A blow-by-blow account of the Responsive Day Out by Orde Saunders who liveblogged the whole thing.

Logical breakpoints for your responsive design

Vasilis examines the multitude of factors that could influence an ideal measure.

Our Work Here is Done - The Web Standards Project

The WaSP is closing its doors. It has been a privilege and an honour to serve with such a fine organisation.

CSS 3D Clouds

A beautiful experiment with CSS transforms and a smattering of JavaScript.