I just received confirmation that my ‘Ban Helvetica: The Brave New World of Web Fonts’ presentation has been accepted into MinneWebCon on April 12, 2010 at the University of Minnesota. I’ll be covering; optimizing fonts for web use, browser compatibility, licensing, and answering your questions. Registration is a very reasonable $200.
Author Archives: Garrick van Buren
Expertise is Declared by Others, Not Yourself
One of the ongoing undercurrents of my thinking is the concept of acknowledged expertise. A concrete example – we’re the worst people to write our own résumé. Talking with people we’ve worked with is better. Having others describe us and what we do is far more accurate – if only because there are more of …
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Big Economy by Any Measure
Too much of the popular economics news paints an economically adversarial picture between the US and other countries of the world. Aside from the obvious issue that all economies are tied together because economic behavior doesn’t like to be restricted by arbitrary boundaries, the US economy is unbelievably larger than other countries. 3x bigger as …
Users are a Side Effect or Why Google’s Web Applications are Free
“I get the feeling that all of Google’s products were invented for Google to help streamline the way it does things.” – yellowbkpk Exactly. Just as I wrote about Google’s AppEngine last year, Google’s applications – whether Gmail, Wave, Maps, or the recently announced Buzz – are about reducing costs and streamlining their business. In …
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Importance Persists
I woke up a to an inspiring post from Michael Janssen, one of Cullect’s biggest supporters: “Still, I hope Cullect can come back in some form in the future, as it was hands down the best reader that I had ever used.” Wow. That means a great deal to me. Cullect was originally built during …
Confidence is Relative in Markets
The DJIA’s eratic-ness (regular 100pt fluctuations then flat for weeks) has me looking for another metric of economic confidence, like a stronger US Dollar. (What’s with the Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ following each other in lock step?) Back in August, Pete suggested the reason the DJIA was climbing was the same reason oil prices were …
The iPhone, iPad, and the End of QWERTY
“It is just a tragedy that we are taking QWERTY into a new era of devices” – Alec Longstreth in a Wall Street Journal article on this topic. “The solution was to place commonly used letter-pairs (like ‘th’ or ‘st’) so that their typebars were not neighboring, avoiding jams. While it is often said that …
Prediction: Apple’s Next 2 iPads: iPad iChat & iPad One
When the first rumors of the iPad began circulating – I immediately dismissed them on the grounds it wasn’t clear to me how a tablet fit into Apple’s deliberately simple product line. I’m still not convinced it does. It could be argued there’s enough space between the iPod Touch and the Mac Book for another …
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Introducing Garrick-by-the-Month
Sometimes you could use a small boost on a web project. Maybe the small boost is help refining a use experience design. Maybe it’s quickly building out the first version of a new web app. Maybe it’s simply having access to a trusted advisor on a regular basis. These projects don’t require a full-time user …
Installing ImageMagick & RMagick on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
This marks hour 4 of setting up ImageMagick & RMagick on my MacBook Pro – without MacPorts (MacPorts and I had a falling out years ago). In an effort to save all of us that time, here’s how I got ImageMagick and RMagick working on my MacBook Pro running 10.6.2 Snow Leopard Download and unpack …
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