For years, designers have struggled with integrating interesting, expressive fonts into web pages. Until now, the general rule has been to stick to the commonly available font families — the default stuff installed on every Mac or Windows PC — and use images for anything out of the ordinary. This works ok, but (alt tags […]
Web 2.0
GOTV: Text messages vs. Robo-calls
A couple years ago I helped build this site for researchers at Yale studying the effectiveness of various “get out the vote” efforts. Scott Beauchamp (a colleague from my Winfire days) dropped me a note yesterday saying the site was linked in a couple of places from a great article on Slate discussing the contrasting […]
Pinging your network
I got hooked on the concept of Twitter when it took off at SXSW 2007. I don’t often have time to write an essay, but I can generally manage 140 characters. Over time, I’ve tried and tested a number of Twitter-like micro-blogging networks. Jaiku, Plurk, FriendFeed. And social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook allow a similar status […]
What is Office 2.0?
This week, I’ll be attending the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco. Most of my colleagues and friends gave me quizzical looks when I told them about the conference, wondering why on earth I’d want to go to a conference about Microsoft Office. Office 2.0 may be about a lot of things, but it’s most […]
What’s the traffic going to be like in 2 hours?
I’ve always loved maps, even since I was young. Google Maps is my current fave. I can access it via my iPhone. I can get a streetview of my apartment building. And I can get real-time traffic updates. But what if I want to know what the traffic will probably be like a few hours […]
Flickr adds video support
This has been a long time coming. Flickr now allows video uploads. They show up in your photostream alongside regular photos. They can even be played right in thumbnail mode and embedded on your own website, like this: Nicely done!
WordPress 2.5 is ready to roll!
The good folks at WordPress have officially released WordPress 2.5. It comes with a long list of nice enhancements, including a completely redesigned administration console that looks and feels great. I upgraded this blog in exactly five minutes, including the time required to upload the new files and upgrade the database. It worked like a […]