A beautiful piece by James on the history of light as a material for communication …and its political overtones in today’s world.
What is light when it is information rather than illumination? What is it when it is not perceived by the human eye? Deep beneath the streets and oceans, what is illuminated by the machines, and how are we changed by this illumination?
I really like Dan’s take on using Photoshop (or Fireworks) as part of today’s web design process. The problem is not with the tool; the problem is with the expectations set by showing comps to clients.
By default, presenting a full comp says to your client, “This is how everyone will see your site.” In our multi-device world, we’re quickly moving towards, “This is how some people will see your site,” but we’re not doing a great job of communicating that.
It’s worth remembering sometimes just how amazing Twitter can be.
People who don’t know us wanted to send their friendship to a 15 year old learning-disabled girl who was sad. For no reason other than their own humanity. This is a beautiful thing.
An excellent design technique from Samantha that allows you to nail down a visual vocabulary without using something as wishy-washy as a mood board or as rigid as a fully-blown comp. Brilliant!
The style tile is not a literal translation of what the website is going to be, but a starting point for the designer and the client to have a conversation and establish a common visual language.
This is an excellent idea: buy up a communications satellite and use it to provide free internet. I kinda wish it were a Kickstarter project though.
An interesting take on the business models of social networking sites.
An alternative to the space elevator, an inflatable tower nine miles tall and tethered to a mountain top, could be made of commercially available materials.
danah boyd addresses the Microsoft Research Tech Fest.
We have a new network protocol, courtesy of Vint Cerf and NASA. Move over TCP/IP, here comes DTN: Disruption-Tolerant Networking.
Tantek is quoted ("EMAIL shall henceforth be known as EFAIL") in this LA Times article on the tyranny of email.
Weighing up the pros and cons of allowing comments on blog posts.
Twitter for great justice!
I've seen plenty of engagement announcements but I believe this may be the first ever proposal via Twitter. She said "yes".
A thoughtful post from PPK on the quality (or lack of it) in discourse around Web standards.
I love this article by Amber Simmons. The truth shines through.
An LA Times article that "gets" Twitter.
Brian Suda has a theoretical solution to real-time interplanetary communication: "I get on my tachyon voip phone and make a call from mars to earth at 9:00am it takes 10 minutes to travel there, but the tachyons travel backwards (so i think) that would be
This is the plain vanilla look.
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