The All-seeing Eye
So look, I didn't see the signs. Oops. But they saw me, snapped a pic, sent it to me, and charged me $25 for their trouble. Nice.
And yes, I drive a station wagon. What?
Oh right. Something about the wonders of technology...
21st Century Skillset
In a culture column of the International Herald Tribune titled "What Technology Has Taught us at Dizzying Speed," Alice Rawsthorn muses on some areas in which technological change has rendered some skills obsolete and introduced new ones. Of course, skill change resulting from technological advances is not a new concept, but the especially quick turnaround that the author observes today seems to be unprecedented.
"Just think of all of the skills that, if (like me) you're over 30, you learned years ago, but rarely use now because something else does the job for you. Who needs to learn how to spell when you can use spell-check software? To read a map in the age of sat nav? To be good at math when there are calculators? To remember exactly where that great antiquarian bookstore is in Paris when it's so easy to Google it? Those old skills haven't suddenly become useless..."
How to call a javascript function from flash.
A small example of how to call javascript from flash.
How to Promote Your Blog Content
First: If you're new to blogging, read our newsletter, Is it Time to Start a Blog? and check out our webinar, How to Blog.
Once you've created a guideline or editorial calendar for your blog, you can get started writing. Each blog post you write should be promoted off-site in order to increase awareness of your blog and drive traffic to your site. Keep in mind that shorter posts, especially those that are just added to share a link and perhaps a brief comment, should not be promoted in the same manner as a more lengthy post. I use the following sites every time I post to my blog...
Simplicity
Take a moment to watch this video of John Maeda (of MIT Media Lab fame, now President of my alma mater, RISD) speaking at the TED conference about simplicity patterns. I really enjoy Maeda's whimsical take on simplicity in our lives (you'll see what I mean).
This reminds me of a slogan that we say here at Newfangled - sometimes sarcastically, sometimes in a celebratory way - "Another day, another rectangle," which points out that, from a design perspective, sometimes websites are just rectangles. It's that simple ;-)
Also, for you TED enthusiasts out there, here's an interesting take from this week's New York Times Magazine: Confessions of a TED Addict.
Slideshare is Awesome
When I started developing material for this month's newsletter, How to Use Google Analytics, I knew that I wanted to include some kind of multimedia presentation showing our own analytics account as an example. I thought about using various screen capture tools to create a video, but I wanted to make sure that the analytics screens were a bit clearer and the size could be easily enlarged. At some point, Able asked our LinkedIn group about SlideShare, which prompted me to check it out. It ended up being just what I was looking for...
History According to the ‘Net
I just read an opinion in the Guardian titled We're In Danger of Losing Our Memories, by Lynne Brindley, the chief executive of the British Library. This is something I've considered before, but first, a pertinent quote:
"At the exact moment Barack Obama was inaugurated, all traces of President Bush vanished from the White House website, replaced by images of and speeches by his successor. Attached to the website had been a booklet entitled 100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration - they may never know them now. When the website changed, the link was broken and the booklet became unavailable..."
The End of Solitude?
I came across a wonderful piece written in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled The End of Solitude, by William Deresiewicz, which emphatically voices a concern that I have found growing in me with increasing fervor. Here's a long, but important quote: "But we no longer live in the modernist city, and our great fear is not submersion by the mass but isolation from the herd. Urbanization gave way to suburbanization, and with it the universal threat of loneliness..."
Keeping Your Site Safe from the Bad Guys
One thing that has evolved almost as quickly as the web itself is the rise of security problems associated with it. Web developers today have to take great care in not introducing security holes into websites. These security lapses can come from something as seemingly innocuous as a simple contact form.
Time Definitely Has Value
I am just finishing up reading Blown to Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy by Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster, which, written in 2000, was an exploration of how new methods of information delivery and interaction were eliminating the traditional business strategic distinctions between richness and reach. Evans and Wurster expected the internet to level the playing field, at least for a time, of competition in capitalist markets. Of course, we know now that they were right. However, a passage early in the text has got me thinking that they probably discounted something pretty important...