Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.
from: A List Apart: Articles: Understanding Web DesignOne could just link to A List Apart and be done with it. That would be short shrift to some excellent content though. A List Apart has damped the zealotry a bit in recent years and most of the preachy comes out of empirical observation these days. Take this article and its author for instance. Zeldman used to be all fire and brimstone but now measures his statements (somewhat). Where the article might have lambasted the designer who revels in brochureware, it now quietly mocks.
And underneath it all is a really good article on what web design is and why it isn’t like designing in any other media.
Category: On the Web
Intimidating Spam
Subject: FUCK YOU
From: “HEY YOU PIDAR!!” <order@carderproduct.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 09:55:23 -0400
To: me@mydomain.comHI SHITTER
IF YOU WANNA BUY SOMETHING —>
GO TO http://www.carderproduct.com
FUCK YOU, SHIT!!!!
EVEN DONT THINK TO ABUSE FOR SMPAM!!!
If that doesn’t get me buying something, nothing will…
Lemon Curry? No, It’s the Larch.
Is YouTube bad? Is it good? Would it exist if it strictly relied on user-generated content? Who cares?
Not me when you can find someone has compiled links to 150 Monty Python Sketches hosted on YouTube. Then again, you’ll have to act fast as many of the sketches have already been pulled.
Which, ultimately, is sad. It’s not like the grainy as all heck postage stamp sized video has any real worth besides keeping the sketch in memory where someone is more likely to drop the $X.xx it would require to purchase a damned DVD box set.
New and Improved Stereotypes
New and Improved Stereotypes is funnier than one might assume. I imagine it is due to the illustrations.
The Son of EOD
An Entirely Other Day is back. I think today just got 24% brighter all the sudden.
Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
Penny Arcade! – Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies)
Now I don’t have to go scrambling around the damn intartubes the next time I want to show someone this comic. Proof positive that my Zen management strategy also works for information discovery.
Mac Rumors post generated drool
Assuming Apple doesn’t blast the prices on the Mac Pro given the current prices reflect 2006 prices for 2006 technology, I will soon need to re-evaluate my tolerance for buying on credit. I haven’t purchased a computer since January of 2006 and no PC tower of any sort since November of 2001. The drool-inducing factor of a Mac Pro able to address 16GB of RAM and 1+ TB of hard drive space, all with 4 – 8 processor cores and big improvements on the motherboard (look at that FSB!) is too much to resist. It’s the kind of machine that, if properly maintained and upgraded as time goes by, could prove useful for well into the next decade.
What could spark such a post?
Zen Master Greg
Sometimes I mourn the waxing of Usenet. So much of it has been overtaken by web-enabled GUI slickness. There is a whole generation (at least) that hasn’t experienced the joy of text-based cynicism. Before the web there was only usenet. And it rocked, cf Zen Master Greg.
Black poverty in Omaha, Nebraska. | MetaFilter
Black poverty in Omaha, Nebraska. | MetaFilter is a nice roundup of links coming from an intermittent series put out by the Omaha World Herald. By nice I mean convenient. The poverty itself and the problems it generates are not nice in the least.
Hyperwords Project
Is it Web 2 3.0? Is it just a jumble of Firefox extensions? Is it useful?
I’m not exactly sure. Still, the Hyperwords project is fascinating to me. It’s a Firefox extension that basically shortcuts a wide variety of search engines and other knowledge expansion tools. It also lets you work with the page or pages open in your browser in myriad ways. I have really only just started playing with it but have had some fun with it so far. See for yourself by watching the introductory video.
I can say that it dramatically reworks your context menu. This currently frustrates me but I’m willing to see if the frustration dissipates in the long term as the functionality proves its mettle.