Art Imitates Life

Speckboy: Mobile Web and App Development Testing and Emulation Tools

Art Duszynski — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:35:50 +0000

Speckyboy Design Magazine has a great collection of emulators to test apps and sites for iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Symbian and Palm operating systems. I’m going to have to grab these and start playing…

TechCrunch: The iPad is a Kindle killer, but for all the wrong reasons

Art Duszynski — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:24:57 +0000

I’ll summarize Paul Carr’s piece at TechCrunch with this simple statement – just because the iPad is a cool device, that doesn’t mean it’s a great device for reading. Quite the opposite, in his view. The whiz-bang features of the device make the Kindle (and other e-readers) look positively ancient. However, the interface and features actually detract for a fulfilling reading experience. Best paragraph of the piece:

The iPad is emphatically not a serious readers’ device: the only people who would genuinely consider it a Kindle killer are those for whom the idea of reading for pleasure died years ago; if it was ever alive. The people who will spout bullshit like “I read on screen all day” when what they really mean is “I read the first three paragraphs of the New York Times article I saw linked on Twitter before retweeting it; and then I repeat that process for the next eight hours while pretending to work.” That’s reading in the way that rubbing against women on the subway is sex.

Go read it.

GigaOm: Buying Palm Would Thrust HTC Into the Smartphone Spotlight

Art Duszynski — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:38:59 +0000

This is an interesting thought from Kevin C. Tofel at GigaOm. With Palm’s fortunes looking increasingly iffy, they are reportedly looking for a buyer. Kevin posits this thought: What if HTC bought Palm? He makes some good points about why this would be a good move for all involved, although I’m not sure if Android and Palm’s WebOS would benefit equally in this arrangement. HTC has been doing some excellent work building hardware for Google’s phone OS (watch for the Incredible to be added to the Verizon lineup later this month) and WebOS is a strong alternative. It could be very interesting.

Smashing Magazine: 50 New CSS Techniques For Your Next Web Design

Art Duszynski — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:17:06 +0000

Typography

From the always-excellent Smashing Magazine, here are some great tips for CSS newbies and experienced hacks like me alike.

The tips are grouped into these categories:

Security and Performance
Page Layout
Menu and Navigation Customizations
Typography
Other Cool Techniques, Tips, and Tricks

SitePoint: The Slow Lingering Death of IE6

Art Duszynski — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:47:13 +0000

Internet Explorer 6 continues to be the bane of a web developers existence. It is a major virus gateway for your computer, and with it’s goofy implementation of HTML and CSS and the DOM, it makes it hard to build the kind of sites that users enjoy, uh, using. Why won’t this madness end? Craig Buckler offers a few reasons:

IE7 and IE8 can only be installed on Windows XP SP2+ or Vista. Many people continue to use older versions of Windows or avoid automatic updates.

Many large corporations have legacy applications that only support IE6. Upgrading these systems incurs significant costs which may not be justifiable – especially in the current economic climate. As a result, their employees have been unable to switch to alternative browsers.

Many IT novices are ignorant of what a browser is, how to upgrade, or why they should.

Some users simply prefer IE6 to IE7 and the competing browsers.

Please. This technology is eight years old. MS, can’t you try to nudge people along a bit? The web dev community would heap praises upon you, showering you with candy and flowers. And I think we might even be able to arrange for 72 virgins upon your entry into heaven. Whaddaya say? Is it a deal?

Babylon’s Burning: From Punk to Grunge

Art Duszynski — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:11:30 +0000

Great read. Heavily weighted toward the 75-80 time period, but an impressive history (and analysis) of a period too often glossed over as a bunch of people in mohawks and ripped clothing spitting on each other. A very nice history of record labels, too. Good stuff.

Amazon says:

What Makes Them Click?: Herd Behavior When Shopping Online

Art Duszynski — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:51:19 +0000

Susan Weinschenk, author of Neuro Web Design (a great read, btw), has a great little post about research into online herd shopping behavior done by Yi-Fen Chen.

Four studies were done, each with a pair of similar holiday traveling books to choose from. Each study displayed the popularity of each book differently; one with star ratings, one with sales volume, and two with variations of consumer recommendations vs. expert recommendations. Here’s what happened:

And in the fourth study, Chen tested a recommender system, (“Customers who bought this book also bought”) vs. the recommendation of the website owner, (“Our Internet bookstore staff strongly recommends that you buy…”) People followed the recommendation of the website owner 75% of the time, but they followed the recommender system 88.4% of the time.

Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future

Art Duszynski — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:27:46 +0000

I’m really looking forward to this one.

Amazon says:

Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web

Art Duszynski — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:09:29 +0000

Amazon says:

Fresher Styles for Web Designers: More Eye Candy from the Underground

Art Duszynski — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:08:09 +0000

Amazon says: