People still asking for spec work from designers. Grrr …

So, today I received a really interesting looking tender document.  It was well thought out, neatly presented, contained all the information I’d need to put together a full proposal and was, all in all, pretty enticing.  Except for one thing.  One of the things they requested in their document was: A concise submission should be...

Companies starting to shift away from Google?

Are we starting to see a little bit of a Google backlash?  Not sure, but two major players in the past week or so have announced that they are no longer going to be using Google Maps to provide their mapping solutions. Foursquare is an extremely popular social media site that lets you discover nearby...

So, it has come to this

More from the excellent xkcd.com.

The right kind of water

I love needmoredesigns.com – they’re a web firm based in Portland, Oregon.  They do good work, which you can check out on their site.  But it’s their blog that is never less than informative and frequently fascinating. Today, for instance, I learnt that boiling water first and then letting it cool, reduces the oxygen in...

Everybody’s favourite Duluthian

Everybody’s favourite Duluthian now has an Etsy store.  You can spend days looking through the lovingly made bits and pieces on Etsy … but you’d be hard pushed to find anything more joyful than this work by Marian Lansky (from Kenspeckle Letterpress fame).

Smartphones overtake computers shipped in 2011. Yikes.

It had to happen … and it did in 2011.  Sales of smartphones outstripped sales of traditional computers.  Apparently, there was a 60% increase in smartphone shipments from 2010 to 2011 – which is remarkable in itself when you think how ubiquitous iPhones and the like have been – or, rather, for how long they...

Apple Store in Grand Central

For 3 extremely memorable years, I was lucky enough to walk through Grand Central Station, NYC twice a day, almost every day.  To say it’s an inspiring building would be damning it with faint praise as well as stating the bleeding obvious.  It’s one of my favourite buildings and so much of it is so...

Nerdy Christmas Cards!

Ha!  Found these great Christmas cards for the web-devs in your life … fun stuff: (via)

Sorry, we’re sleeping right now

So, I was in the support section of a web app earlier today, sending a brief email question.  Web apps need to be available 24/7 and many need to be supported similarly.  It is often disappointing to see the ‘we’re not in right now, but send the message anyway …’ message. Over on the right...

Password Strength

So, this made me think – the latest cartoon from XKCD.com.  I urge everyone to be using strong passwords for their email, their FTP information, their wordpress installation – etc. etc.  And I normally go with the approach outlined in the first row of images below – choose a common enough word, throw in a...