July 2011
1 post
OS X Lion's Gesture Language
OS X Lion interprets mouse and trackpad gestures as commands. Those commands are actually a language. They have a vocabulary and a grammar. Here’s my theory.
Grammar
In Lion’s gesture language, each gesture is an imperative sentence, composed of a verb and an object. You do a gesture by making a motion or some number of taps. In so doing you use some number of fingers. The number of...
November 2010
1 post
"Industry shady—it need to be taken over"
merlin:
The State of Jay-Z’s Empire - WSJ.com
I’ve recommended this excellent profile on Jay-Z to like 10 people now, but I haven’t had time to write anything substantial about it, so here. Just go read this.
There’s a handful of impossibly useful and non-obvious lessons for indies in this article that had me pumping my fist every few paragraphs.
Okay. Here’s a few (emphasis mine):
Read...
September 2010
1 post
Marco.org: Most common words unique to 1-star and... →
marco:
I wrote a script to crawl U.S. App Store customer reviews for the top 100 apps from every category (minus duplicates) and compute the most common words in 1-star and 5-star reviews, excluding words that were also common in 3-star reviews. Keep in mind that the results are not representative of…
August 2010
2 posts
Design for Tightest Constraints First
When designing, sometimes you create variants — multiple designs to meet the same goals in different situations. Usually you begin with the “full” version, and then you redesign to produce a lesser variant. But then you end up with Travel Battleship, and nobody likes those damn things.
Some background. Lately I’ve been following @whitneyhess on Twitter, whom I found by...
Reading List →
Did I mention I made an iPhone app? Check it out.
July 2010
1 post
June 2010
1 post
The thing about Apple marketing
chrisereneta:
“That’s the thing about Apple marketing. They don’t talk about how many gigabytes of memory or how many CPU cycles or how many apps (much). They aim for your heart, and show you how technology can make your life better during its most important moments.”
—Gina Trapani, via Daring Fireball
While I also think the new FaceTime video on apple.com is well-done and emotionally...
March 2010
6 posts
Touchscreens are better than you think.
When you first use an iPad, you’ll be surprised how quickly you understand it.
Indirect and Direct Input
People see the iPad, and they see a touchscreen, and they think of an ATM. They conclude that it kind of sucks, and you couldn’t do real work on it. But newer touchscreens are better than what we’re used to. Not only can you use multiple fingers, but the iPhone (and iPad...
“DVD players don’t make fake whirring noises for five minutes before letting you...”
– Marco talks about overdoing real-object metaphors in software.
Patents: Same old story
merlin:
You a big fan of aggressive IP enforcement? Like to think a well-litigated market is a healthy market? Hate those little entrepreneurial nuisances like “competition from emerging media?”
Well, then, you would have loved the early 20th century.
Because you had to get Thomas Edison’s permission to make any movie. Then you had to pay him.
Pretty sweet, huh?
Read More
Merlin’s...
Rework →
The authors of Rework founded 37signals, a company about my company’s size that does what we do: A servlet framework and web apps. The book is a collection of ideas about working in teams, customer service, building the right thing, and so on. It’s about the high-level stuff those individuals think and do, and how it makes that company successful.
I read it in one sitting because...
"Backup" is an insidious misnomer
I was doing a backup of my disk this afternoon, and I noticed the term “backup” is used by software in a really misleading way.
The term is typically used in a few senses, which I want to separate.
You can “back up” your data, or “do a backup”, by copying it — “I backed up.”
That produces a “backup copy” somewhere else — “I have...
February 2010
4 posts
“I didn’t know George Washington wore tights so tight. I actually couldn’t put...”
– The RZA, on dressing up as George Washington (via putthison)
Mule Design Studio's Blog: The Failure of Empathy →
iPad Stencil →
pws:
I’m just as anxious as anyone else to start designing for the iPad. I always have to start with paper. I put together a stencil that is based on actual scale. If you can get some use out of it feel free to download.
This is great. About to post a derivative work…
January 2010
7 posts
Watchputthison:
Michael Alden demonstrates how a hat should be worn.
In favor of self-promotion →
I’ve given this link a more diplomatic title than its author did. “A Rant About Women” is just an attention-grabbing device. But as you’ll notice, that just demonstrates the message.
Read the comments too, there are some great ones and many thoughtful perspectives.
100 Cupcakes →
Person made 100 cupcakes, each based on a game. See how many you can identify. I like #97 :)
You speak just fine. →
Here are some grammar rules that are completely bogus and that you shouldn’t waste another moment of your life adhering to. Oh I just broke one. Boo hoo, it’s fine.
December 2009
5 posts
Alice's adventures in algebra: Wonderland solved →
givemesomethingtoread:
What would Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland be without the Cheshire Cat, the trial, the Duchess’s baby or the Mad Hatter’s tea party? Look at the original story that the author told Alice Liddell and her two sisters one day during a boat trip near Oxford, though, and you’ll find that these famous characters and scenes are missing from the text.
“Normal people do have one thing figured out that we geeks don’t: sometimes, it’s...”
– nrbd (via marco)
(LIES.)
“For every 100 copies of a physical book we sell, where we have the Kindle...”
– Jeff Bezos (via marco)
November 2009
7 posts
“Attack with your strengths rather than defend your weaknesses.”
– Chairman Gruber, offering advice that seems useful to pretty much any situation I can think of. (via merlin)
Article on picking good fonts →
A great primer. Enough to get you on your feet for picking type styles, primarily for display on a screen, but just as useful for printed pages. Give your next powerpoint a little class.
(If you do use special fonts in a powerpoint, make sure and install them on the computer you present on, or it might switch you back to Arial. shudder)
PS: A List Apart’s iPhone stylesheet makes a lovely...
“An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to win...”
– Paul Graham, in an article about Apple’s risky alienation of developers. Via Marco Arment.
“Stay white!”
– My dermatologist, as I was leaving. She was attempting to remind me that tanning is unhealthy.
Play Orbital.
marco:
Orbital for iPhone is a ridiculously good game.
So far, I’ve managed to hit 38 in Gravity and 12 in Pure. And I can’t stop playing it.
It’s true, Orbital is great. My top score is around 40 in Gravity. I suck at Pure though.
October 2009
7 posts
“Hello,
I want to apologize for not attending class yesterday. However, I was...”
– Some professor has an email address a lot like mine and misprinted it on a handout. From time to time I get email from their students. I used to reply and help them out. Then I asked the professor to correct the address. I’m still getting mail, so… from now on they’re going on the...
The Joel Test →
(Just go ahead and skip this one, it’s boring.)
Today I found myself rereading a classic Joel Spolsky article about whether your software engineering process is any damn good.
Do you use source control?
Can you make a build in one step?
Do you make daily builds?
Do you have a bug database?
Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
Do you have a...
NYT: "Obama becomes Japan's English teacher" →
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/timeframes.html →
History of the driver's side →
“In the past, almost everybody travelled on the left side of the road because that was the most sensible option for feudal, violent societies. Since most people are right-handed, swordsmen preferred to keep to the left in order to have their right arm nearer to an opponent and their scabbard further from him.”
And:
“Pakistan also considered changing to the right in the 1960s,...
September 2009
7 posts
Calculator obstructs inversion-triggered... →
Remember peer editing? →
Ha.
Great, I got a tumblr page
Now I can post links and pictures of my cat.
… oh but I actually plan to.