jcksn

The stocks performance dynamically changes while you are watching the page, a great use of “progressive enhancement”:

With consumers turning to cheaper alternatives for their shopping, from necessities to toys for their kids, a number of retail stocks have come out firmly ahead on the list of top 10 performers of the S&P 500.

via 10 best- and worst-performing S&P 500 stocks of 2008 – MarketWatch.

Tomorrow, 6:30 sharp, at the Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan, I’ll be speaking at Refresh Detroit. The talk will cover the transition from print to web design, the differences between the mediums, and how to utilize your print design skills when dealing with the web. There will be lots of Q&A, so bring your thinking caps.

I’m super excited to be able to meet everyone at Refresh Detroit and honored to give this talk. See you there!

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

via Goodbye Google | stopdesign.

Cufón aims to become a worthy alternative to sIFR, which despite its merits still remains painfully tricky to set up and use.

via About – cufon – GitHub.

I was on Joystiq – reading about the 1up layoffs – and noticed that they’ve implemented a very interesting comment approval / rating design.

As people vote comments down they become less and less opaque eventually rendering them all but illegible.

A clever way of quieting the more obnoxious voices.

via Joystiq Comment Fading on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

This is a set of shapes for making wireframes (low-fidelity web page schematics) in OmniGraffle version 5.x (Mac OS X). It consists of most of the basic elements you’ll need to create user interface specifications. The images below show the stencil in action.

via OmniGraffle Wireframe Stencils | Konigi.

This is distressing in so many ways, George is amazing and this is mind boggling.

Sent a quick, unsatisfying goodbye to the team. I watched as my access to various parts of the guts of Flickr fell away. I noticed how naturally I searched for any and all bits I could think of, just in the hope that it still existed. But no. I was shut out entirely within about 14 hours of the phone call.

…

Got on the flight to Hong Kong. Now on Hong Kong to Sydney, where I sit now, annoyed by everyone. Still shocked. So fucking brutal.

Not what I had in mind at all.

via kewlchops: Not quite what I had in mind. via Daring Fireball

keyboardr is a homepage. It speeds up your internet expirience.
And if you like, it helps you keeping your hands on the keyboard.

via Julius Eckert » About keyboardr.com.

I’ll let you be the judge on this one. :)

Sexy People is a newish site posting some ridiculously retro and sometimes unbelievably unbelievable pictures of “sexy people.” One of my favorites, Tzen… total pimp.

via SEXY PEOPLE: Tzen.

At the heart of the game of cat-and-mouse played by bloggers and spammers is Captcha, purveyor of those staticky demands to enter the code exactly as shown above.

via Ask H&FJ | Hoefler & Frere-Jones

Being an Automattician and all, I’ll be attending WordCamp this Saturday the 16th.

As lorelle mentions, there are also quite a bit of wonderful treats surrounding WordCamp, like a WordPress Genuis Bar and a WordPress Charity Scavenger Hunt!

I’m extra excited to go, since somehow, they missed it, and are allowing me to present! There are going to be some really amazing speakers, like: Jane Wells, Andy Skelton, Andy Peatling, Alan Levine, Tantek Çelik, Noel Jackson, Joseph Scott, Lloyd Budd, Mark Jaquith, Stephen O’Grady, Jeremy Clarke, Aaron Brazell, Sam Bauers, Will Norris, Liz Danzico, Chris Lea, Tom Coates, Chuck Lewis, Stephan Spencer, Steve Souders, and more!!!!

Live On The Web by Steven Meisel was done over a year ago, but I happened to miss it. Ridiculous satire. I bet his art directors are just laughing themselves silly with this – or patting themselves on the back.

modelcouture: Agyness Deyn, Coco Rocha, Denisa Dvorako.

All in part to an offer I just couldn’t refuse, I’m now part of the Automattic team. I’m very excited and very honored to be working with such an awesome team. I’ll be working on top secret projects (and some not so top secret projects), pushing pixels, flipping bits, and bringing my insight to all that I can.

Most of you (that’s you Mom) know Automattic through their work on WordPress and Akismet.

Amid all this hi-tech digital trickery, it is sometimes nice to be able to cast one’s mind back to the simpler analogue age and the measuring devices of the past. For example, we hooked up an analogue meter like those used in many industries for decades, fed it some different input and ended up with a literal desktop dashboard that measures average website response time.

Last.fm – the Blog · Quality Control

Wordpress 2.6 was released last week. It’s definitely my favorite release thus far. There are a lot of reasons to be excited about it, but I won’t waste my breathe – the Automatticians already have in this awesome recap video:

But, the coolest feature, and the one I’m proud to have spent a lot of time and hard work on, is the Press This bookmarklet:

“Charming Large Restored Carriage House” as found on craigslist

It’s good to see I’m not the only one feeling that most CSS frameworks are missing the point. SenCSS really is a nice starting point for getting a site’s CSS going – especially for those starting out with CSS, SenCSS would be a dream.

SenCSS was developed mostly for myself. I noticed that the stuff common to most of my designs and projects wasn’t the layout, and thus all layout CSS frameworks had very little use for me (I’d be writing exceptions all day, no thanks!). However, There was a lot to gain from a smarter CSS Reset, vertical rhythm and a set of often used styles. Basically I wanted something that i could drop it, start working on my layout and fine tune when the layout was finished.

Introducing SenCSS | KilianValkhof.com

2008 Design Trends from WebDesignerWall [via Matt]

• What does your garbage can of failed motivations look like?
• I hope Ze Frank writes a book some day.
• John Dyer growing every type of beard.

• [via Secret Experiment]

• 
• Design Is In The Details

• 
  Advanced Beauty from mate on Vimeo.

  I found this somewhere and can not remember where. I’m sorry.

• Timoni is a super talented designer. Watch out.
• I can not wait till Spore comes out, until then, checkout the Creature Creator!
• The Ampersand Masters Thesis
• The live Firefox 3 download counter.