Links (& blurbs about them)

Thought-provoking JavaScript articles

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010  

Prototype.js developer Kangax has some good JavaScript articles on his blog, including one about delete in JavaScript and another about subclassing Arrays.

The center cannot hold

Saturday, October 30th, 2010  

Mark Greif’s postmortem of hipsterdom What Was the Hipster, feels a bit premature, but he absolutely skewers the subculture:

Hipsterdom at its darkest, however, is something like bohemia without the revolutionary core.

“The alphabet remains”

Saturday, October 9th, 2010  

Hermann Zapf, circa 1967:

Autocomposition, and computerized composition are already with us. Designing types and letters for the new technology will increasingly involve mathematics and the laws of electronics…. Tradition and progress must be logically united. Does the new technology mean the serious lettering artist will be dispensable? No. The alphabet remains. But we will have new tasks to learn. But in learning them, we must take time to observe the world around us, and remember above all the artist’s challenge: to ensure, despite technology and mass production, that beauty is never lost.

The Art of Hermann Zapf from Johnny Dib on Vimeo.

Another skill to omit from résumés

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010  

Ryan W is done building Facebook apps:

Clients don’t care that it was Facebook (not you) who broke the feature that was working yesterday, and they don’t care that what you said you could do two months ago can no longer be done because Facebook decided to change the platform (again).

I built a (very simple) Facebook app for a client back in March, and it left exactly the same bitter taste in my mouth.

“…and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter.”

Monday, September 27th, 2010  

Malcolm Gladwell’s article in The New Yorker on high-risk, strong-tie social networks vs. low-risk, weak-tie ones is a must-read for everyone who thinks that Web 2.0 will redefine political activism.

Redesigned Moscow Metro map by Art. Lebedev

Sunday, September 26th, 2010  

The inimitable Art. Lebedev Studios have done a beautiful job of redesigning the Moscow Metro map:

Moscow Metro map redesign by Art. Lebedev Studio

Who’s more popular, The Rani or Borusa?

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010  

This visualization of Doctor Who villains since 1963 will tell you:

Move over, U+20A8

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010  

India unveils a new symbol for the Rupee.

Dan Ariely on online dating

Thursday, July 8th, 2010  

Interesting interview with the economist Dan Ariely on why online dating is so unsatisfying:

Online dating is becoming the poster child for a class of problems that software / the web is really, really bad at solving.

No clue about type design

Thursday, July 8th, 2010  

Bruno Maag doesn’t pull his punches in this interview about Aktiv, his Helvetica-killer:

…Max Miedinger [Helvetica’s designer] didn’t have a clue about type design. He was the salesman at [foundry] Haas’sche Schriftgießerei for Christ’s sake.

Ouch.