Monthly Archive for October, 2007

Carroll Gardens Featured on Gridskipper

Grid­skip­per put together a nice fea­ture on our neigh­bor­hood in Brook­lyn, includ­ing a snarky comparison:

Car­roll Gar­dens fea­tured on Grid­skip­per
Car­roll Gar­dens is quaint, and for those in love with the West Vil­lage but who simply can’t afford to live there, it will do.

I’m not sure that I agree with this – we chose to live in Brook­lyn over Man­hat­tan, and I would argue that the neigh­bor­hoods to the north (Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill) are prob­a­bly more fit­ting equiv­a­lents. Also, with few excep­tions, Car­roll Gar­dens is still very much a family neigh­bor­hood. Sure, it might be chang­ing, but take a walk down our street during the day, and you’re going to see a lot of old men who’ve lived there for 50 years, as well as kids play­ing on the side­walk. Err, maybe that is what the West Vil­lage is like.

Still, can’t deny that Car­roll Gar­dens is awe­some, and rel­a­tively afford­able, con­sid­er­ing the restau­rant and bar options – we rarely make it into the city on weekends.

[via]

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Carroll Gar­dens Fea­tured on Gridskipper’

October 31, 2007 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Promenade

Lower Manhattan

Lower Manhattan

Had a lovely walk along the Brook­lyn Heights Prom­e­nade, on a fall day. [from iPhone]

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Promenade’

October 30, 2007 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments

Vamoose Bus

I know what bus I’m taking now, when­ever I need to get to Boston or DC:

NYC-​Boston bus offers free wi-​fi, and reser­va­tions
…will pro­vide riders with free WiFi on its leased buses, which are equipped with routers. Vamoose is sell­ing one-​way reserved seats for $22.

Free wi-​fi and a guar­an­teed seat, for $40 round trip? Done.

More at Vamoosebus.com.

October 28, 2007 » Tags: , , , . » 3 Comments

Unoriginal

copy cattimothytipton.com is using a slightly mod­i­fied ver­sion of my K2 stylesheet, with­out atttribution.

The post layout is the same, and he’s using the same exact side­bar mod­ules, in exactly the same arrange­ment. His CSS is full of my custom selectors/classes, and is still hot link­ing to images on my domain.

It’s one thing to take some­one else’s work, pick it apart, and learn from it. It’s quite another to just take someone’s work, remove attri­bu­tion, and tweak it just enough so that it has your name on it.

My site is built-​off of the K2 frame­work, which is the work of a lot of excel­lent design­ers and devel­op­ers. The dif­fer­ence is that I’m upfront about attri­bu­tion, AND, I’ve taken the time and care to fash­ion some­thing new.

So, Tim­o­thy, might I sug­gest read­ing Greg Story’s post on How to prop­erly steal the design of a website?

I ran a diff on the two stylesheets, and took some screenshots:

no attributionbreaking IMG references instead of removing?hotlinking to IMG on my domaincopying IMGs over to your own servercustom selectors

October 27, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , . » 0 Comments

TiVo HD and Copy Protection

Why do I pay money for this?I am an avid hockey fan, since I was a kid grow­ing up in Buf­falo. I love watch­ing the game, and I espe­cially love watch­ing my home­town team, the Sabres. For the past 2 years, I’ve forked over $150 to sub­scribe to the NHL Center Ice cable pack­age, so that I can watch every game of the season. With our TiVo, I can record each game, and watch it when­ever I have time.

That is, I did, until this season started. We recently upgraded our TiVo unit from an old Direc­TiVo, to the new Series 3 TiVo HD, which appar­ently imple­ments unnat­u­rally strict copy pro­tec­tion on pre­mium con­tent. Because the new unit uti­lizes Cable­Cards, TiVo has dif­fer­ent rules for these TiVos as com­pared to Series 2 units, accord­ing to their sup­port page:

Since the Series3 and TiVo HD are DCR devices, in addi­tion to the Macro­vi­sion rules for analog con­tent, they must also comply with the con­tent pro­tec­tion poli­cies for Dig­i­tal Cable content.

What this means is that NHL Center Ice con­tent is copy pro­tected, and will be deleted within hours of the game’s com­ple­tion. Gone. Irretrievable.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘TiVo HD and Copy Protection’

October 25, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , . » 4 Comments

Gmail Adds IMAP Support

Via the Offi­cial Google Blog:

Gmail adds IMAP sup­port
“Are you guys ever going to do IMAP?” Well now I can say: Yes. Yes, we are doing IMAP. In fact, we are doing it for you for free on all devices and platforms.

This is great news, espe­cially for iPhone users, (instruc­tions here). Now, you can keep your mail account synched between mul­ti­ple com­put­ers and devices.

UPDATE: Derek makes a good point about some advanced mail set­tings on the iPhone – make sure to align your Drafts, Sent, and Trash folders.

October 24, 2007 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Apple Picking

Stickball

We went Apple Pick­ing upstate, in War­wick, NY. Jason and I dis­cov­ered some­thing more chal­leng­ing than chuck­ing apples at each other – spear­ing them with a stick, and then attempt­ing to fling them at each other. The one pic­tured above is bounc­ing vio­lently towards me.

It’s been 3 years since we last went apple picking.

More below the fold. [from iPhone]

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October 21, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , , . » 0 Comments

Saturday Scoot

Narrows

We unchained the scoot­ers this after­noon, and mean­dered around Brook­lyn in the sun. Not too many days like this left. [from iPhone]

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Saturday Scoot’

October 20, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , , . » 0 Comments

iPhone 1.1.1 and 3rd Party Apps

iNde­pen­dence for iPhone
It ain’t pretty, but I used this to upgrade to the 1.1.1 firmware, and then to man­u­ally copy installer.app onto the phone. Hello 3rd-party apps!

Beware, this is a lot more com­pli­cated than the way things were, before 1.1.1.

October 19, 2007 » Tags: , , , , . » 4 Comments

2007 Web Design Survey

A List Apart releases the results of their 2007 Web Design Survey, and I’m feel­ing nicely aver­age for my profession.

Close to 33,000 web pro­fes­sion­als answered the survey’s 37 ques­tions, pro­vid­ing the first data ever col­lected on the busi­ness of web design and devel­op­ment as prac­ticed in the U.S. and worldwide.

ALA pro­vides a PDF with the survey’s find­ings, but they also pro­vide the raw date in Excel format, which you’re free to play around with, pivot, and chart.

October 16, 2007 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Business Week Redesign

Business Week redesignI saw that over at Brand New today, that Busi­ness Week mag­a­zine has done an inter­est­ing rebrand­ing and redesign.

Noth­ing major on the logo­type – gone are the serifs. But, between the covers is the real treat:

It’s inside that the mag­a­zine feels more rel­e­vant with a clean design and con­sis­tent typo­graphic treat­ments that sway you from begin­ning to end. Simple size shifts from front of the book to fea­ture sto­ries to back of the book are enough indi­ca­tors that you are chang­ing sec­tions with­out resort­ing to extra fancy open­ing spreads for the fea­ture stories.

It has a very crisp and modern look, remind­ing me a bit of CNN International’s on-​screen design. I wish other Amer­i­can pub­li­ca­tions and media would take this approach. The worst offend­ers are sport broad­cast­ers, who use tick­ers, graph­ics, and picture-in-picture inter­views to do every­thing but show you the game.

UPDATE: David Sleight takes a look at the typog­ra­phy behind the redesign.

October 16, 2007 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Apple’s Web Apps Portal

Still no word on when or if Apple will offi­cially allow 3rd-party apps – but some of these are really cool, so long as you’ve got wi-​fi or AT&T EDGE. Here are my new favorites:

  • Weather.com // Way better than their old mobile site, with fore­casts, and maps.
  • Fan­dango // Set your loca­tion, and movie times are not far behind. This is also way better than their old Mobile site, (as well as MovieFone’s).
  • Tipr // It takes your check total and a spec­i­fied tip per­cent­age and gen­er­ates a total that is a palin­drome – so you can ensure that you’re not get­ting ripped off.

And, some oldies that haven’t yet made it into the directory:

October 11, 2007 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Heights

Heights

A sleepy Sunday after­noon on Atlantic Ave. [from iPhone]

October 11, 2007 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments

Google Acquires Jaiku

I don’t know many Amer­i­cans that use Jaiku, a Twit­ter-like ser­vice that allows you to micro-​post your day from the web, or mobile phone. But, with the announced acqui­si­tion of the Finnish com­pany by Google, I bet more will take a look.

A Q&A on the deal is avail­able on the Jaiku site, but they are freez­ing new sign-​ups for now.

October 9, 2007 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

Alma Mater

Lisa and I still keep in touch with a lot of friends from high school, some of which we’ve known since grade school. We were all trying to remem­ber today if there was an alma mater anthem for our High School. As none of us were par­tic­u­larly rah-​rah back then, we couldn’t remember.

Three of us, how­ever, could remem­ber the words to our grade school anthem – which is a bit shock­ing, con­sid­er­ing the last time I heard it was some­time in 1988, in the fifth grade. I think they forced us to sing this thing during assem­blies, through­out the school years:

Coun­try Park­way is our school,
where we learn to obey the rules.
We do our best and take great pride,
with our Country’s flag flying high.

Here we work and here we play
Learn­ing new things every­day.
From north to south and east to west,
Our Coun­try Park­way is the best.

Creepy, in its empha­sis on con­for­mity – espe­cially for a fairly pro­gres­sive public school district.

October 8, 2007 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Splat!

It’s been nearly 24-hours since I relaunched this weblog, and the feed­back has been encour­ag­ing. Thanks to every­one who emailed or left a comment.

I talked last night about my desire to use a typo­graph­i­cal grid for this design, but I also knew that this had the poten­tial to look quite anti­sep­tic and ster­ile. I thought of the com­ment that David Carson makes in the Hel­vetica film, as he points to the word “caffeinated” that has been printed out in Hel­vetica Black and hung on the wall next to other iden­ti­cal look­ing words: “This doesn’t say ‘caf­feinated’!” To avoid the trap, I needed to work in a design ele­ment that would make things a little more interesting.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Splat!’

October 5, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , . » 0 Comments

A New Nedward.org

Today, I’m launch­ing ver­sion 6 of nedward.org, a typo­graph­i­cal grid-​based layout, with heavy use of Hel­vetica Neue. This site has always used a sim­i­lar shade of green, so I wanted to main­tain that bit of con­sis­tency with the past, while intro­duc­ing some­thing very dif­fer­ent. I also wanted to bring together my con­tent from twit­ter, flickr, del.icio.us, and last.fm, while keep­ing it dis­tinct from the weblog con­tent – yea, I’ve gone back on my post is a post comments.

The last major revi­sion of this site was launched on May 1 2005, but even that was some­what of a realign­ment of the pre­vi­ous design, which dated back to 2001. I’m a big pro­po­nent of Cameron Moll’s realign not redesign rule – so I spent the past few years tin­ker­ing away, refin­ing the same basic layout.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘A New Nedward.org’

October 4, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , , . » 8 Comments