The 100 best typefaces of all time →
As compiled by the FontShop editorial board. Each font is ranked with a description and series of images that illustrate the evolution of the font from its inception to modern times.
As compiled by the FontShop editorial board. Each font is ranked with a description and series of images that illustrate the evolution of the font from its inception to modern times.
This slide from a tech talk by Instagram’s Mike Kriger says it all. You can have fast tech, but sometimes clever design allows you to pounce on that tech earlier in the user experience.
There’s a lot of big tech sites out there, but for very in depth comparison pieces, Ars Technica is unparalleled. Their hit streak continues with this look at a Apple/iTunes branded mastering technique to squeeze better quality out of MP3s. A lot is covered here, including basics on how music is moved from a master copy to CD or MP3.
A List Apart’s Eric Meyer interviews Mozilla lead Tantek Çelik on his plan for Firefox to support webkit prefixed CSS properties. After reading, I’m even more puzzled on what Mozilla’s plan is long term here. So, Mozilla is targetting Webkit CSS prefixes in Firefox, but only “specific ones”? Then they may utilize Webkit prefixes on just mobile Firefox, but not necessarily the desktop?
Meyer hits on a huge point later in the interview:
The promise of vendor prefixes was that implementations could be tested in the wild and problems corrected before behavior was formalized. That paid off handsomely with gradient syntax, for example, where totally incompatible syntaxes were tried out, and eventually a unified syntax was found. This plan seems like it imperils that ability—that, once vendors start supporting each others’ prefixes, we may as well drop prefixes altogether.
A decidedly not cool move by Apple here. Note that Apple is not rejecting Dropbox and Rdio API integration as a whole (that’s front page, “bring the pitchforks” kind of news); instead it’s about the way their APIs authorize users. In particular:
If the user does not have Dropbox application installed then the linking authorization is done through Safari (as per latest SDK).
Once the user is in Safari it is possible for the user to click “Desktop version” and navigate to a place on Dropbox site where it is possible to purchase additional space.
Apple views this as “sending user to an additional purchase” which is against rules.
This is a stretch, at best. As the cloud storage wars among these big players heat up, this kind of sidestepping by Apple looks especially shady.
Update: A lot of other bloggers have pointed out that Apple’s 11.13 rule that restricts external purchases has been around for a while. Others say it’s a simple fix on Dropbox’s part. I think both, while true, somewhat miss the point. First, it appears Facebook Connect is in a similar predicament for authentication (you get bounced to a web page where it’s possible after several clicks to purchase or sign up), yet didn’t get rejected, which implies Dropbox is being treated differently. In addition, just asking Dropbox to fix or patch doesn’t excuse overzealousness on Apple’s part.
Bottom line, it’s one thing to reject an authentication web page that has a direct buy/sign up link on the first page – I see Apple’s concern there – but it’s another to reject sign up/buy several clicks away.
Giles Richards for The Guardian:
At eight, Jann [Mardenborough] thought he might have a chance of making it as a racing driver. Steve, an ex-professional footballer, had taken him to a kart circuit, and before long the owner took notice and told Steve his son was a natural. But finance proved the stumbling block. The local track closed down and the nearest alternative was in Bristol. “I stopped when I was 11,” says Jann, “because it got too expensive.”..
In the middle of 2011, Mardenborough had entered an online competition on Gran Turismo 5 that offered one final shot at the real thing. Out of 90,000 other virtual racers, he made it into the top eight in Europe and won the chance to test himself against other gamers in a real car at Brands Hatch. That he had kept it to himself for so long was entirely in character for a boy who did not like to make a fuss. “At that point we had no idea what it was,” admits Steve.
Seven months later, in January this year, Mardenborough, who’d never set foot in a racing car, was at the wheel of a serious piece of kit in the Dubai 24 Hour race – and at the beginning of what appears to be a very exciting career.
Wow.
This Atlantic piece on famed Braid creator Jonathan Blow has been passed around heavily online, but I finally got around to reading it this weekend. I’d recommend it, if nothing more for seeing author Taylor Clark – someone who’s clearly not a gamer – try to assess the “hard core” gaming scene from a fresh journalistic angle.
That said, Jonathan Blow comes off as pretty unpleasant. The guy clearly has a near messianic view of his own importance in gaming; he knocked out an “objectively better game than Pac-Man” on his Commodore 64 as a teenager? Total illusions of grandeur.
Also Clark makes too many generalizations of the industry. He’ll start out with something semi-reasonable:
Even the industry’s staunchest defenders acknowledge the chronic dumbness of contemporary video games, usually with a helpless shrug—because, hey, the most ridiculous games can also be the most fun. (After all, the fact that the Super Mario games are about a pudgy plumber with a thick Italian accent who jumps on sinister bipedal mushrooms doesn’t make them less enjoyable to play.)
But then he goes onto a whopper:
But this situation puts video-game advocates in a bind. It’s tough to demand respect for a creative medium when you have to struggle to name anything it has produced in the past 30 years that could be called artistic or intellectually sophisticated.
I’d be as fast to chime in about the general intellectual laziness about the current gaming industry as Clark. But 30 years of lack of artistry or intellectual sophistication? Completely false.
A three part documentary testing the latest crop of high end digital video cameras. 12 cameras are tested head to head, from the expensive Red One M-X (getting increasingly popular on the indie film circuit) to the well known Canon 5D Mark II and Nikon D7000 DSLRs.
It’s rather technical, but if you want to see where the film and camera industry is moving, this is a good start.
Really interesting analysis and breakdown by the opinionated Tom and Lorenzo couple of Mad Men’s fashion. It’s deeper than just what’s trendy in the late 60s; by reading their episode recaps (with plenty of helpful screen grabs) you learn a lot about costume design and how subtle choices can help characterization on film and TV.
I first heard about this over at the Brooklyn Creative League, and I’m digging this collaborative tech for project management. It’s crazy cheap ($3 a year for 3 minigroups and a gig of storage) and looks very straightforward. It’s so inexpensive I’d consider it for non-work web collaboration with friends out of NYC.