Monthly Archive for April, 2008

Adding Flickr to WordPress 2.5’s Media Bar

I’m a big fan of the new Word­Press admin inter­face, espe­cial­ly the new media but­tons that lets you quick­ly add pho­tos, videos, and audio to your posts.

wp-media-flickr 1But what if you use Flickr for your pho­tos? Well, there is a great plu­g­in called Word­Press Media Flickr, writ­ten by yu-ji. It adds a lit­tle Flickr media but­ton, and makes adding a pho­to from your Flickr pho­to­stream a piece of cake.

His site is in Japan­ese, but he has a great screen­cast show­ing the plu­g­in at work.

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April 28, 2008 » Tags: , , , . » 2 Comments

McCain’s Optimum Look

Can a type­face tru­ly rep­re­sent a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date? Yes­ter­day on the Times’ Cam­paign Stops blog, Steven Heller invit­ed sev­er­al design­ers and crit­ics to com­ment on John McCain’s use of Opti­ma for cam­paign collateral. 

Is it dat­ed? Clas­sic? Does it con­vey strength? Or, quirk­i­ness? The replies run the gamut; many of them fun­ny or tongue-in-cheek. Michael Beirut notes the font’s resem­blance to the one used to carve the names on the Viet­nam Vet­er­ans Memo­r­i­al, and Matthew Carter mus­es about how the type­face will hold up with the addi­tion of a run­ning mate this sum­mer. But, my favorite judge­ment comes at the end, from Rudy Van­der­Lans:

What does Opti­ma say about Sen­a­tor McCain? Noth­ing. It prob­a­bly says more about the design­er than any­thing else. Who, except design­ers, would judge a can­di­date by the typeface?

Oh, and ear­li­er this month, Heller did a sim­i­lar dis­cus­sion with brand­ing expert Bri­an Collins, on Obama’s Gotham-heavy design scheme.

April 22, 2008 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Google Earth in 3D

Google Earth now has 3D-build­ings, and it’s real­ly fun to play with. Here is the Times Build­ing, where I work:

Times Building

A 3D rendering of the New York Times Building in Midtown, as shown in Google Earth.

If you have Google Earth installed, see it for your­self. Or, try land­ing on the deck of the Gold­en Gate Bridge, (just zoom in).

There seems to be data for a lot of cities, includ­ing my home town of Buf­fa­lo, and for­mer home of Boston.

April 17, 2008 » Tags: , , , , , . » 0 Comments

Pukka: Simple. Delicious.

Despite recent crit­i­cism, I use and love del.icio.us almost every day. Fre­quent­ly, I’ll quick­ly book­mark a page that I want write a longer post about lat­er, when I have the time. (A lit­tle short­cut tool helps to stream­line this.)

Pukka: Simple. Delicious.Del.icio.us pro­vides a few ways to expe­dite the book­mark­ing process – there are exten­sions, but­tons, and book­marklets – but, I pre­fer Justin Miller’s Puk­ka, a native OS X app that great­ly speeds up the post­ing of bookmarks. 

With Puk­ka, you don’t have to wait for any­thing to load – just high­light some text on a page, and click its book­marklet. Up pops the appli­ca­tion with the URL and high­light­ed text already insert­ed. Type a few tags (auto-com­pletes from exist­ing tags), hit return, and you’re done. Puk­ka recedes to the back­ground to do its thing, and you’re back in your brows­er, and on your way.

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April 8, 2008 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments

Battlestar Galactica, Season 4

BSG-season04

A lot of geeks are going to be parked in front of the TV tonight, (even more than usu­al on a Fri­day night), for the sea­son pre­miere of Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca. Go ahead and laugh, but over the course of its 3‑plus sea­sons, BSG has become one of the more cul­tur­al­ly impor­tant shows on TV:

…Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca is one of the more beguil­ing series on tele­vi­sion, an action-adven­ture dra­ma that trav­els through time and space to explore moral­i­ty, pol­i­tics and metaphysics.

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April 4, 2008 » Tags: . » 0 Comments