Shortly Over Part 2: Twitter Returns Long URLs
After maintaining years of awkward, inconsistent URL shortening behavior because of some vague argument about SMS capabilities – Twitter has announced links passed through their service may or may not be shortened to t.co.
This is a win for the casual users of Twitter that still send & receive URLs through the service.
Dan Pink on Incentives and Work.
A great talk & animation on motivation for all the slower, smaller, better-smelling horses out there.
Every Proper Noun is Free Marketing
This is simply sandbox to flush out this idea. I promise more incoherent ramblings and typos than usual.
Scrabble now allows proper nouns in some game play. Seems like a great opportunity for Mattel to sell double word scores to the highest bidder.
If every proper noun is marketing, who are you marketing right now?
There’s only one right answer.
A Long March
For the past 10 years (as long as I’ve been noticing) March has been tough month for me. It’s as if my mind and body finally succumb to the winter’s weight. The smallest things start to seem overwhelming and their failure inevitable. Rather than magical place full of opportunity and wonderfulness, the world seems trite, annoying, and unhelpful.
It’s not an enjoyable way to spend one day or 31.
Yet, despite the calendar marking the end of May and the mercury forecast to hit 90°F, my mind is stuck in March.
Sturgeon’s Law, Now Recursive
Theodore Sturgeon is credited with saying, “90% of everything is crud”
In this age of always-on, real-time, democratized media there’s so much more of everything – 90% isn’t what it used to be.
Even if we determine the remaining 10% of everything isn’t complete and utter trash. We still need to cull for relevance, importance, and action-ability. Another 90% gone?
Yes. I think so.
“Most things in the world don’t need you, you don’t need most things in the world” – Dave Slusher
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It seems to me, that like XML and violence, the world would be a better place with less Javascript.
Initial Thoughts on Google Offering Droid for @font-face Use
My initial thoughts on Google offering a hosted version of Droid:
This is more an extension of their mobile play than getting into the font hosting.
- Here’s why:
- The Android handsets only display the Droid family of fonts.
- Google’s stated a number of times they’re serious about being successful in mobile.
- Google is a web app company – not a native-software-on-the-device company (i.e. Apple, Microsoft).
- By offering a hosted version of Droid – they’ve made it much easier for their internal teams to simulate what their web apps (i.e. Google Docs, Calendar, etc) will look like on Android devices w/o needing to actually use a phone.
Of course, I reserve the right to change my position when I see Google hosting something other than Droid. 🙂
- Some relevant articles I’ve written on how I interpret Google’s product strategy:
- Users are Side Effects
- The Difference Between Yahoo and Google
Update – I’m now changing my position 😀
This guide explains how to use the Google Font API to add web fonts to your pages. As I mentioned on the Kernest blog – this is a huge win for openly licensed fonts.
Returning the Page
Back in art school – I spent some time with a designer-turned-fine-artist name Eric (last name since forgotten).
Aside from his crash course in contemporary fine art of the late 1990s the thing I remember most about him was his answer to my question:
Why did you switch from design to fine art?
He looks up, while adjusting the positioning of a Deutsch Mark on a string and a piggy bank in a sculpture spanning the diagonal length of his apartment, and states:
“Graphic design is ephemera. It’s meant to be thrown away. I want to create something that’s meant to stay.”
2005-Present: I Protect
Great talk from Linda Stone on what comes after ‘continuous partial attention’. She argues that it’s filtering, engagement, discernment, and a striving for intimacy and a quality of live. “Understanding Workers” vs. “Knowledge Workers”
Conversely, being tuned into the always-on, real-time stream creates a constant sense of crisis. Additionally, this constant fight-or-flight actually prevents innovation and creativity.
I wholly agree. But you already knew that.
Good stuff.
May I have your attention please? – Linda Stone – SIME 09 from Ayman van Bregt on Vimeo.