I met Alex last year at SXSW, almost by accident. My friend Gary Vaynerchuk wanted me to meet a friend of his, Tara Hunt. Alex was there with Tara and we ended up chatting—I had to ask him about those awesome tattoos. And then, when he announced he needed tea & honey for his ravaged […]
Self-righteous quoting. That is: I’m being self-righteous, not the person I’m quoting. “I think the most challenging aspect,” she says, of becoming the first woman to be made music director of a major U.S. symphony orchestra, “is people’s need to focus on the fact that I’m a woman.“It’s really entirely irrelevant to what I do.”—For […]
Tomorrow I’ll find myself at home again—for almost the first time in the past 6 weeks. Thomas and I spent all of February in New Zealand, and 3 days on either side in San Francisco. We got back to my home in Maryland for all of 2 full days before flying out again to SXSW […]
To (very) long-term readers, this might look familiar. It’s from 2 and a half years ago, originally. It had 1 non-spam comment and even I had forgotten I’d written it… I found it by accident looking for another article that went missing. (Mephisto’s design makes it very easy to delete articles rather than deleting their […]
Sometimes it’s the little coincidences that seem to be telling you you’re on the right path, stick to it. The setup… In this case, driving back from Baltimore yesterday I had a long discussion with Thomas about why programming sucks, why programmer’s tools aren’t as good as we tend to think they are, why programmers […]
Links for the past week or so (including older stuff that’s resurfaced in my del.icio.us or consciousness for whatever reason): Interaction Design Why ‘usability’ is a path to failure ‘Me’ vs ‘You’ vs ‘I’ (interface language, not touchy-feely intrapersonal relationships) Intuition, pleasure and gestures Just Doist It Lie-ins and Tigers — even if you’re not […]
Thomas Fuchs, of Script.aculo.us fame, has gone out on his own again as a consultant. If you need some of the world’s best JavaScript expertise, he’s your man. Heck, I’d hire him. Or at least, I’d contribute design ideas and photographs for his site (which I did). A site which, by the way, is powered […]
In the annals of self-help and fluffy business books, this idea is nothing new. But it seems to bear repeating, anyway: So if you wanted to change this business model of orifices, as Jobs described it, would you play it safe, as the Nokias and Motorolas of this industry have been doing for many years, […]
In a whirlwind of part-time activity, my buddy and long-term partner-in-crime Erik Kastner and I have launched a little toy we call Befuddlr. The premise is simple: browse Flickr groups, click a button, and race to solve a custom photo puzzle… as easy or as hard as you like. You don’t have to take our […]
Instead of 1,000 words, let me just give you a picture to introduce this article: Thanks, eBay. Caution: probably outdated screenshot. This one’s from the library, folks, about a year old. But at one point, it was there, and really… that’s enough for me. It was the best of times, it was the worst of […]
