posted by DL Byron on May 31, 2005
Next week I'll be in Telluride, Colorado keynoting the Annual Meeting of the Colorado Ski Country. I'll discuss 11 years of the web, where it's been, where it's going, and why blogging matters. I'll also cover how blogs are changing business and the way we communicate.
other posts tagged:
posted by DL Byron on May 23, 2005
Scott is on vacation in Bishop CA, climbing, chilling, and sending videos from the road with a DV camera, Powerbook, and Free Wi-Fi. Today he sent a video of Jesse Bentz climbing (3M QT) the Jedi Mind Trick. The video plays like a commercial for beer, or a new cologne, or something. I don't know much about climbing, but the video is bad ass. The audio is from Ratatat Remixes.
other posts tagged:
posted by DL Byron on May 22, 2005
The Lusty Lady is part of Seattle's culture. It's a downtown icon that has been featured in art galleries and there's even a book about it. I've always thought how poetic it was to have a peep show, with witty puns on its marquee, right across the street from the Seattle Art Museum. There's a tourist choice for you: strippers or paintings, high culture v. low.
True to form, with a Star Wars theme, the marquee for this week reads, "Revenge of the Stiff and Star Wars Peepisode III."
other posts tagged:
posted by DL Byron on May 21, 2005
I spoke at the AIGA Currents9 Influenced conference yesterday and created a sample blog for the event. It's appropriately called, "Sample Blog," and includes slides and links on Blogging your portfolio and Designing with standards. The blog was created in part to show how quickly you can start blogging and as a blogging sand box, where I'll sample various blogging technologies, memes, and more.
other posts tagged:
posted by DL Byron on May 17, 2005
I'll be speaking about Standards-based design and blogging this friday at the AIGA's Currents9 event. The organizers have put together an impressive schedule. I'll have Clip-n-Seal samples and deals on Photoshop training DVDs with me. Please say hello and I'll see you there.
other posts tagged:
posted by DL Byron on May 16, 2005
What's behind the door at number 102? I have no idea, but I was very curious. Thick welds on the door held various pieces together, including a hook, bars, and mismatched plates. The hook must've been for delivery drivers. One of the plates was hinged to open a door viewer and another for the dead-bolt. Rusty doors always capture my imagination.
During the worst of the dotcom bust, I worked for UPS as a driver helper during the holidays. I dropped off packages at a lot of doors. One day, the driver said, "check the castle door, when you drop off the next package." We were in a condo building, with 4 floors and one massive, gothic door. It was a door you'd expect Vlad the Impaler to open up and, well, impale you. The door was from Bulgaria, had columns, gargoyles, a huge knocker, and handle. The owner had invented boot-lace eyelets.
Later in the day, during our lunch, I told the driver that if Clip-n-Seal ever went big, like the eyelet guy, I was going to buy myself one big, rusty mother-of-all doors for my house. He chuckled and we started to deliver more packages.
other posts tagged:
posted by DL Byron on May 10, 2005
Apple’s Dashboard and widget’s may prove to be even more important to computing and design than Spotlight. I saw it this morning, when my daughter checked the weather widget to plan what to wear for the day. She also clicked around on a few others, including the time and creatures in my head. With widgets, all those little computer utilities are in one convenient place. That’s not a new concept, a desktop portal, but I think for the kids, it’s just click on this icon, and another, get what you want, and go about the rest of your day. There's a change in how we access information. It’s going to desktop portals and search and that’s going to impact the way designers think about information architecture, user experience, and design.
An example of this change in thinking is 37 Signal’s Backpack, a great new web-based PIM. I tried it out last week, clicked around for a few, and then thought that all of the meetings where I would use it are with clients and I don’t have access to the internet when I’m on site with them. A Backpack widget that I could use offline, then upload and share when connected would help me with clients, in meetings, and on the plane. Even better if that widget could be synced and Spotlighted. Then I wouldn’t have to search the Backpack site for my meeting notes, but could Spotlight them. Discussing this topic with me in an instant message, Nick Finck said, “information is going towards microinformation … when we want to know what something is we don’t want to have to dig through a whole encyclopedia. we just want the short 2 sentence result.” Right. Check the Web 2.0 article on Digital Web.
Note, Backpack is a great product that users are raving about. My thoughts aren’t intended to point out any defect in their product, but instead are forward looking. I’m also thinking about blog design in the same way. Will users want to click through your blog, it’s categories and permalinks, or just search for topics. Clip-n-Seal is included in a chapter of Scoble and Shel Israel’s blogging book and I can’t find it on their book blog. The chapter was there last week and it’s somewhere now, but it would be nice if I could search that site, rather than click through every page. When Spotlight is extended to RSS then we’ll really have something. As Nick continued, “imagine… search: kottke, independent … 6,200 results, here are the top 5 most popular ones verified and 1 through 3 are emails between you and him about it.. maybe 4 is a paypal receipt of the money you sent him.. and 5 is the original post he made on his blog about it.”
other posts tagged:
posted by DL Byron on May 05, 2005
Ever since our trip to NYC, I've been haunted by the Bunny Man. It was Easter Sunday, we were walking around a lot, and we keep passing him. It was the creepiest bunny I'd ever seen. In fact, before then, I'd never thought of bunnies as creepy. I think it was the vacant eyes and the way he gripped the hand rail to steady himself, as if it the suit was just a shell covering a slithering monster inside.
This week, I googled Bunny Man and there's an urban legend, a psycho-bestiary graphical novel, and an even freakier, cabbage-patch-kids-like doll.
other posts tagged:
posted by DL Byron on May 03, 2005
I'm on a productivity roll this week, with Tiger, Mail, and Backpack.
Entourage has a ton o' great features and all those whizbang features are really slow on Panther and incredibly (unusable) slow on Tiger. Entourage is also not indexed by Spotlight, which has already saved me once. MS has promised an update, but I'd been thinking about it for a while and finally decided to switch to Apple's Mail application. I imported 17K mails, spent a few hours cleaning up the import and now, instead of attempting to organize everything, I'm setting up Smart Folders that display the results of a search. For example, I set one to show the last 30 days of email and another to show me all mail with Clip-n-Seal in the title.
Resisting the urge to be tidy takes a while, but it's a reality when you have 17K emails. Mail imported amazingly well. I screwed it up by trying to get tricky with rules (set by if mail is older than and less than) and then had to figure out what was what. I started over and finally resulted to
Note: Do not mistakenly drop a folder full of mails to your desktop instead of a folder, or you'll get "EML Hell" as demonstrated in the photo and curse eml files.
Once I got my desktop cleaned up from eml hell, I tried the new PIM (personal information manager) app from 37 Signals. It promises easy collaboration to gather your ideas, to-dos, notes, photos and files online. Then share the ideas, set email and reminders. Now, I'd like to see a Backpack Widget, where I can bang out a brilliant new blog business plan in bullets, have it uploaded, shared, and added to a growing list of such amazing plans.
Comments (2)
other posts tagged:
posted by DL Byron on May 01, 2005
After upgrading OS X to Tiger (I used the Archive and Install method) I started restoring my Localhost server (Websharing) and absolutely could not remember how I got MySQL running with MovableType locally. I googled it, looked all over for it, and finally typed "MySQL" into Spotlight. The directions were in an iChat I had with Doug in March and Spotlight found it. 10 minutes later, I was up and running. Spotlight saved me hours of work.
After that, I realized that I don't care where my data is, as long as an application finds it for me. Spotlight finds data as quickly as I type.
Underneath that beautiful interface, OSX is a 'nix box and that means I run my blogs locally on my Powerbook for testing, development, client demos, and lectures.
For more on using localhost, Movable Type and MySQL with OSX check
And Walt Mossberg's review of OS X and Spotlight.
Comments (2)
other posts tagged:
Browse by Month: 2012
Browse by Month: 2011
Browse by Month: 2010
Browse by Month: 2009
Browse by Month: 2008
Browse by Month: 2007
Browse by Month: 2006
Browse by Month: 2005
Browse by Month: 2004
Browse by Month: 2003
This practical book explains the real-world techniques, tools and concepts designers and marketers can use to build a blog that enhances their business objectives. Buy It!
