Typography is important in all types of media, and it’s increasingly becoming more important on the web too. Here’s a good guide to web typography…
The Elements of Typography Style Applied to the Web
I love free things. If I could get music for free I would, but a lot of us understand that nothing is really “free”. I get that, and that’s why I buy music on iTunes instead of download it via a p2p network. I’d prefer to give away a lot of things for free too, but then I wouldn’t be making any money, and without that little bit of income, I wouldn’t be able to continue what I was doing.
It might just be me, but I feel obligated that if I’m going to use something that someone else created, that I should compensate for it. I listen to music a lot, I watch video a lot, and use software a lot. If I just keep taking all of that for free, then the people making it wouldn’t be able to keep making it, and that would mean I don’t get the enjoyment I used to.
I think Steve Jobs understood that all of us would pay for music, if it was affordable, and what we got in exchange for the money was something that we wanted - 99 cent downloads, instant enjoyment, good quality. I think he’s trying to do the same thing with video (be it TV shows, music videos, or movies), and I’d love to support him in that, but the quality of the video just isn’t good enough for the $1.99~$12.99 price tag.
A lot of my friends would agree with me when I say that we listen to music many, many, many times more than we watch a single episode or movie, so I don’t see why the movie industry won’t let Apple provide better quality products to customers that would prefer to pay and download then download for free off of a p2p network.
Hopefully this will change in the near future, I love using iTunes to manage my media, and can’t wait for it to manage my video too.
My mom sent me a link about a conference that’s taking place in Portland this September. It’s called Invergence;
Interactive convergence –when two previously separate areas converge and then integrate user interaction and participation.
It seems pretty interesting so far, too bad I wont be able to make it.
Anyways, it had an interesting page listing all the cool things about Portland, here’s a few of them:
(Sorry, I couldn’t take off any… they were all just too good 
)
Every year our school host’s a festival. The students use each classroom to make haunted houses, art galleries, restaurants and use the GYM for doing performances like dance and music. It’s customary that the seniors get to use classroom #158; it’s the largest classroom in the school.
Before I start talking about what happens, I’m going to explain a little bit about how the people who organize it are chosen. At the beginning of the school year we get to choose which ‘chore’ we want to do, this ranges from organizing a yearly sports festival, school festival, etc. and also organizing events within the grade to do things together (like cook together, yes, we do cook together).
Once we choose what we want to do, the chosen ones get to start planning and organizing it within the school’s rules, and the whole process is heavily monitored by the school staff. Everything needs to have paperwork and approval by the teachers (not just receipts for costs, but also what your plans are, how you’re going to do it, when you’re going to do it, who’s involved, who’s idea was it…. you get the picture).
Last year was great, they had one restaurant setup in it, and had a dark, laid back setting. I remember it was kinda green-ish, but that’s about it. Oh, the food was great too.
Apparently though, this year’s organizers didn’t like last year’s restaurant, and wanted to make it more interesting. Guess what they did?
They split it up into four different restaurants. They thought this would be easier, more cost efficient, and less work for each individual, and more interesting for the customers (keep note on how they worry about the customers here). When I heard this plan, and before it became final, I did try to tell them that it would make things more complicated and cost more.
In the end, they sort of listened to my advice. They decided we will be running three restaurants instead.
I guess I should also mention that the head hancho for the seniors used to be a friend of mine, but, for reasons unknown to me, is not anymore. (I’m assuming this is also why he didn’t put me in the same group as his).
They split it up like this:
I thought this would mean it’d be kind of like the cafeteria floor in a mall, where stores have their little booths and all the customers get to sit wherever they want regardless of where they bought their food. When my former friend told all of us that the cafe was the only one that’s allowed to do drinks, we were all fine with that at first. So when the deadline to turn in the paperwork for what we were going to sell came, we didn’t think of adding drinks to it. The cafe group was kind enough to let us know at the last moment, that they were going to build a wall around the cafe to make it separate from everyone else’s.
I don’t understand their thinking. We sell food, when people buy food, most of the time they buy a drink to go with it. Now I get the fact that building a wall around the cafe might make it seem more like a cafe, but then they leave the big problem of not having drinks for the customers with the food groups.
I went ahead and asked a few teachers if it would be possible to add drinks to our menu, a few, not a lot so we don’t oversell the cafe. They gave me the green light. Here’s where the problem is, since my former friend has some sort of grudge against me, and he’s also one of the more popular kids, got in the way of me arranging a meeting with my group on discussing which drinks we should sell, and some of his other group members also stopped me with the reason that “because we didn’t approve it, you guys can’t sell it.” Does it sound like they would have approved it even if we did ask?
When I talked to one of the girls who I’m on better terms with, one of the reasons they didn’t want us selling is that if we do, people won’t buy drinks from their cafe, and then all the money they put into making it would come back, and it would have been a waste.
I totally understand that, and I don’t want that to happen to them either. But I’m also thinking about the customer and how they are going to feel when there’s nothing to drink and they’re thirsty.
So I proposed two options and with this common rule: we only sell drinks to those who are buying food, and if someone wants a drink, we direct them to the cafe.
I don’t think there’s any downside to either of these options right? The customers are happy, and the cafe still earns money.
The situation is still in progress, and this is just how far it’s come. What do you think would be a better idea for this situation? Any suggestions, comments?
I stumbled upon Zentation while catching up on my reading, and watched a presentation by Guy Kawasaki.
First off, I’d like to say the site is pretty nifty. While watching a video of the speech, you can also see the slides of the presentation on the right side of the page. As the presentation proceeds, the slides change with it. I think that’s pretty cool 
Guy listed 11 things about the Art of Innovation.
I definitely liked some of the points he made. Especially numbers 2, 5, and 11 
Take a look at the presentation when you have time. (Even if you don’t have time, make some for it, it’s worth it:)
Rupert Murdoch will be take his company, News Corp. green by 2010. Now, that’s a big company, with over 47,000 employees on five continents. But news Corp. isn’t the only one. Pepsi recently announced it will be purchasing 1 billion kilowatts of renewable energy over a 3 year span. Apple, Inc. CEO Steve Jobs recently published “A Greener Apple” which talks about the steps Apple has taken, is taking, and will be taking to reduce it’s environmental impact.
I think the steps these companies are taking are the first for a whole wave of corporations that want to go green. Now that CFL (compact florescent lamp) technology and LED light bulb technology is improving, it will be easier for consumers to make changes, even if they are small steps. I’ve been able to convince my mom to purchase CFL’s, and in Japan we turn off everything we’re not using at the moment. There are lots of small steps we can take to make a difference, and in my opinion, it’s our duty to take those steps.
I noticed this ad from Ask while I was in California on spring break… what I thought it meant then was “the algorithm sucked, and that’s why ask jeeves is no more.” I might have been wrong then. Here’s a small bit from SEO’Brien:
A couple weeks later that puzzling billboard was replaced with various messages apparently meant to provide clarification: “The algorithm is from Jersey,†and “The algorithm is banned in Chinaâ€Â
The first confirms the campaign is from Ask; their Teoma algorithm was developed in Piscataway, NJ.
It was the point about China that left me scratching my head again. Yes… it is…. so what? This is a message I would have expected from Yahoo! years ago when Google was banned from China leaving Y! the dominant engine (other than their own). Now, of course, Google is live and well in China (though still facing challenges).
So Ask is seemingly pointing out that their own algorithm, that which killed Jeeves, is banned in China.
After reading that post, I think what Ask is trying to do is say “hey, we didn’t bend to China’s laws just to have our search engine function their.”
I think it’s a good ad campaign, so many people complain about how Y! and Google changed their algorithms to fit China’s requirements, and now here’s Ask which stood up to the rights to share information freely.
Google Apps for Your Domain Name has been talked about a lot this past year, I’ve been using it for 11 months now, and the features just keep piling up (prior to today’s announcment, they added the ability to purchase domains). Today they formally released it as Google Apps. There are two versions, the free one, and the Premier one. The premier one has these features
The free version doesn’t include the API’s, 24/7 support, and only has 2GB of storage. All beta users now have the free versions of Google Apps. (I wish they would have just let us have the Premier version for the accounts that are already set up )
There’s always the issue of privacy when you used a hosted solution for your email. Since most of us already have a Gmail account, (or some form of other free hosted email), using it for private uses probably wont be a problem, it’s the corporate customers that will need to decide whether or not to trust Google with their data.
Google is targeting the Premier version to Small Businesses and the Enterprise, and the free version to Educational institutions, families, and organizations.
When I first got my web hosting, it was through iPowerWeb. Their hosting back in 2003 was good for it’s price, and the customer service then was also great. Something like 10GB of storage and 50GB of bandwidth, with 3 mysql databases, 5 subdomains, and 1 domain. Now, they have 200GB of storage, 2TB of bandwidth, and well, the customer service sucks…
Since they had an easy way to setup a reseller account, back then I thought it was the best thing around. I could manage my clients hosting through it, without the clients having to deal with hosting. During 2005, all the hosting companies started upgrading their accounts, and that’s when I started looking at other hosting companies again.
I first tried midPhase, which was offering ‘unlimited bandwidth’, but after 3 days of using it, I felt like it just wasn’t right, and I took advantage of their moneyback guarantee. I looked at 1&1, bluehost, etc. but they just seemed like a corporation wanting to make money.
So, I had a problem. No hosting. The very next day, I stumbled upon DreamHost’s website, the design was different from what it is now, it really looked like a company that had lots of friendly employees and friendly customers. (They have the Website of the Month, community forums, etc.)
I bought the 2 year Code Monster plan, which is $15.95/mo. It used to be something like 60GB of storage and 600GB of bandwidth, and then last year they upped it to something like 400GB storage and 2TB bandwidth. (Now they’ve been slowly bringing it down, until their sales decline).
Key points:
A few things I wish:
Even with those two downsides, I still highly recommend DreamHost for cheap, good quality hosting.
SourceForge has been around as long as I can remember. Everyone in the web development community has heard of, and probably even used it many times. I’ve personally only used SF.net to download projects, that part works great, multiple mirrors, easy access to the author’s website… But the search part, forums, etc. is just a pain to use. Their new redesign looks great, but they still haven’t changed it’s features.
Google Code on the other hand, is slick, fast, and also provides developers ways to integrate Google technologies into their products. When you create a Google Code Hosted Project, it comes with a handy downloads page, it’s own wiki, an ‘issues’ place (which is kinda like tickets/forum topics), a project summary page, and it even has a way for you to view the source code for your project too!
Whenever i thought of Linux computers, or whenever someone referred to them, I always had a certain stereotype in mind. It was that you installed it yourself on a computer from Dell, HP, Apple, or one that you built yourself. (I knew there were some small companies that sold pre-built computers with linux on them, but it didn’t seem like any would make it big).
system76 is one of those small companies that I think might help bring linux mainstream. They’ve got a full lineup of computers, from desktops, laptops, to servers. They provide software pre-installed, and with the most user friendly linux distrobution I’ve ever seen, Ubuntu.
The website is pretty decent, though there is a few glitches with the customizing process… I’m still all for Apple + Macs though, 
This is a follow-up post to “Blogger at top of everything ‘blog’ searched.”
I’m glad to see Google has removed the “web tips,” which it briefly added last month.
I still think the original idea was a good one, and that if Google could properly implement a system where users could help pick which websites are put up as tips. They’ve already made Google Groups successful, I don’t think it would be much harder to implement.
I always thought that Apple would be the only company designing Apple computers. I guess I was wrong.
The “Unofficial Mac tablet” is a MacBook heavily modified by Axiotron and Other World Computing. The features it offers are nearly the same:
Some things that normal MacBooks don’t have:
It of course lacks the normal keyboard and trackpad.
I think both companies did a great job at creating the first full featured Mac Tablet, but of course, it lacks the one feature I think every tablet should have; a multi-touch screen like the iPhone.
I’m sure if the ModBook sells well, Apple will reconsider going into the Tablet PC market, and hopefully, create a multi-touch screen tablet.
Well, the whole world has already heard about Apple’s new iPhone (the name they are keeping, even though Cisco owns the trademark) and Apple TV.
The iPhone is, well, much more than I expected, and I’m sure much more then anyone else expected. 200 new patents, an iPod built into it, super thin, and has 5 hrs of talk time or 16 hrs of music time… I mean, that just blows you away. On top of that, it has the multi-touch screen, and runs on OS X.
I think Apple really hit it this time. Even at the steep prices, it’s cheaper than getting a separate smart phone (ie. Palm) and then getting an iPod nano 8GB. They’ve partnered with the largest cellular service provider in the States, and have integrated Google into the phone nicely too. (As for yahoo mail, well, I was hoping they would integrate .Mac instead….)
Apple’s take on how the phone should work is great too, I think they really did “reinvent the phone.”
AppleTV also hit the sweet spot. The form factor is small, it has 802.11n wireless (which theoretically has 600mbs throughput!), and an unexpected hard drive.
I’ve been reading on the AppleInsider forums about how the HDD should be bigger, but I disagree. It is a streaming device, that’s what it does, streams. The HDD was a nice addition so people can have their latest unwatched/listened content streamed to the device, but I was more thinking along the lines of… well, I was thinking you could load it up with some of your fav. content, then when you go over to your friends house you just bring that and the cables and there you have it, content to go.
It’s got a USB 2.0 slot in the back, which could be used to connect to an external drive, though I’m not so sure. (BTW, the new AirPort Extreme has nearly the same look as the AppleTV, and it also has a USB 2.0 plug to connect to an external HDD). The best part, it’s $299.
To summarize, I think I’ll get a AppleTV first, then get a iPhone when I move back to America (or if they come out with a Japan-network-compatible version )
