David Berlow of The Font Bureau has proposed a Permissions Table for OpenType that can be implemented immediately to turn raw fonts into web fonts without any wrappers or other nonsense. If adopted, it will enable type designers to license their work for web use, and web designers to create pages that use real fonts via the CSS @font-face standard.

I like this idea. It means we don’t need to introduce a new format, meaning designers won’t need to have two separate files for each font.

I also wonder, with all of this talk lately from some fairly prominent type foundries, just how many had actually expressed interest in the work that Typekit is doing. Though, maybe I’m just misunderstanding the issues.

(Via Zeldman.)

Aside from a very limited few who concentrate on more socially relevant design, our work rarely dabbles in the kind of relevance we’d like to claim. We don’t save lives or fight poverty. Even those talented designers we laude most aren’t curing cancer. Mostly, we solve minor problems; the rest of the time, we do window dressing. I like to think that we’re the “plumbers” of communication.

I sometimes encounter this attitude that Eric so thoughtfully articulates and calls out, and feel I am less of a designer because I don’t know everything there is to know about design, who the great designers are, etc.

I then have to remind myself: I’ve only been doing this for 16 months. I don’t design full-time. I have no schooling. Everything I know is self-taught, on my own time.

If you’ve got to beat Lance Armstrong at something and you get to choose the game, would you really roll up to his front door, pedaling your Huffy?

The question before this asks “Why is it that everyone competing with Apple chooses to compete on Apple’s terms?” I agree that the strategy makes absolutely no sense, especially given that, as far as Apple is concerned, the retail stores are just one part of a very far-reaching marketing/customer service/public relations strategy. I would be surprised if I could walk into a Microsoft store and have every one of my questions answered, or to be passed on to exactly the right people on the phone should the issue need escalated.

(Via Fast Company.)

The Brand New Sketchbook

I bought one because they look beautiful.

At least on this Mac, iTunes sync isn’t working after the 8.2.1 update. We were wondering if this day would come after the back and forth between Apple and Palm on the issue. It’s as-yet unclear exactly what method Apple is using to block Pre sync, but we suspect is wasn’t easy. …Which means we also suspect it might not be easy for Palm to turn it back on.

It’s interesting that this update literally provides nothing for the consumer. iTunes 8.2.1 is all about Apple protecting their own interest.

To be really effective in crafting your brand it’s not enough to stand for some things and to exclude some things. Beyond that, it is best to articulate why your brand excludes what it excludes. Doing so allows people to determine if they identify with your brand beyond the qualitative measures of the product or service you’re describing. This articulation hints at the culture, lifestyle, quality, philosophy, standards, or social dimension that your brand offers and that your customers and potential customers are associating themselves with when they seek out or acquire your products and services.

(Via Andy Rutledge.)

As designers, we often pursue radical departures from simple. We search for a solution that re-thinks everything. That thinking is valuable — it let’s us make paradigm shifts when needed. But the solution that anyone could have designed, the simple solution, is usually the best. The hard part is choosing it. - Rob Goodlatte

Dustin Curtis ran a test on his blog to see how different iterations of a phrase would affect click-through rates to start following him on Twitter. Based on his study, there is a massive increase in click-through rates when you introduce a direct command compared to simply requesting that an action be taken.

At the very least, the data show that users seem to have less control over their actions than they might think, and that web designers and developers have huge leeway for using language to nudge users through an experience.

Apple today announced that customers have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications in just one year from its revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. The App Store is also growing at an incredible pace with more than 65,000 apps and more than 100,000 developers in the iPhone™ Developer Program.

Wow, I guess it’s still working.

Through Fever, I can see precisely who reads my content, what they do, what they are interested in, and what they write. I can see very clearly who my readers are, and so rather than deduce that my readers enjoy my writing and subject matters through the growth of my subscribers, I can very precisely see who they are and what they are interested in.

This new level of openness is new to the world of news, let alone specifically RSS readers.

The Signpost came out once a week because that was all our little town needed. Had it been a daily, it likely would have been one sheet folded in four, with extra space for personal notes. When I was learning to read I would read the Signpost. It was all the news I needed to hear.

As I got a little older I began to pick up the London Free Press, the local paper for the city nearby. A full daily paper with news, sports, entertainment, comments, business and more found its way to our family’s doorstep every morning. When I began reading the Free Press, my world was opened wide. Suddenly there was an influx of news, more than I could possibly dream of reading.

Fast forward a few years with the introduction of blogs, news websites, social bookmarking sites, Digg and later, Twitter, and with it all a need to better manage the news I consumed. That’s when I was introduced to feed readers, a personal inbox where the world’s news could be digitally delivered right to me. Google Feed Reader and later NetNewsWire would become my gateway to the world’s news. From personal blogs to tech news sites, design websites to music news sites and everything in between, my reader replaced the traditional newspaper. It was instant, it was personal and it was free.

Until it became too much.

Overload

When I read a newspaper, I rarely read most of the articles. I glance at some of the major headlines, blow past the minor ones, and linger in the comments and business sections for a bit before heading off to work. Out of hundreds of articles I maybe read 3-5.

On the other hand, when I open my feed reader I am bombarded by 40-50 articles, all of varying length and quality, from several hundred different sources. There’s no indication aside from looking at where the article came from to decide the priority any given article should have. In most cases, I blow through it all and only read what a few friends have written. I know I’m missing a lot of great stuff, because I don’t subscribe to feeds I’m not interested in. The contrast to this are the times when I’ve let my feeds simmer a little too long, only to have several hundred articles waiting to be addressed. On occasion this is a welcome escape. More often than not, however, a click of the “Mark All as Read” button frees me from the daunting task ahead. Only, who knows what I’ve missed…

More of What I Want, When I Want

A few months ago a friend shared a great tip to help counter the issue I was having with my feed reader. His suggestion was to put my feeds into three separate folders, called “1st,” “2nd,” and “Sparks.” The idea was to put only the must-reads into the 1st folder. The 2nd folder was for blogs I enjoy, but if I missed something wouldn’t be the end of the world. The last folder was for new blogs, that with time would either find themselves either in the 1st or 2nd folder, or out of my feed reader altogether. For a few months, this really worked well, and I found myself having a better grasp on what I really wanted to read. Thought, even with this system I had to be careful not to subscribe to too many blogs, or the system would become useless.

98.6°

The problem with RSS feed readers today is that no priority is placed on different types of posts. Going back to the newspaper analogy, stories are given priority by the type size of the headlines, the position in the paper and on each individual page, the presence of an image and length of an article. In a feed reader, however, all articles are given the exact same priority: unread. There is nothing to differentiate between a beautifully written article from one of your favourite writers and a post full of lolcats. The user is left to fend for himself, or to hopefully build a system that hopefully separates the wheat from the chaff.

98.6° and Climbing

Enter Shaun Inman’s latest creation, Fever. Fever is a combination of a normal RSS feed reader and a personal recommendation service, à la Digg or Reddit. Unlike Digg or Reddit, news is filtered not through a community voting system, but rather through links tracked through your own personal feed subscriptions.

To do this, Fever introduces what it calls the “Hot List.” To create this Hot List, Fever asks you to distinguish between your essential feeds, called Kindling, and your supplemental feeds, called Sparks. Taking the links that are tracked in your Sparks, the Hot List feeds you recommended stories and links that you won’t want to miss. The more feeds that link to a particular story or link, the hotter that item becomes and the higher it sits in your Hot List. Your Hot List can track items back over a period of a day, a few days, a few weeks and up to a month. You’ll never miss the most important news because you were too busy being Rickrolled again.

Like Inman’s previous product, Mint, Fever is a self-hosted app built to run on your own hosting server using PHP and a MySQL database to operate. While this may deter casual users who are not comfortable with self-installed web apps, that has never really been Shaun’s market. Fever, like Mint, is targeted at a tech-savvy market that values quality design and unique functionality.

Like a Real App, in the Browser!

One of the identifying qualities of an Inman creation is the high level of attention to detail, both in the aesthetics of the product as well as how the product functions. With Fever, Inman does not disappoint on either level.

When Fever first loads, users are presented with a two column layout that displays links to the user’s groups, Kindling and Sparks, and Saved items on the left, and the Hot List on the right. Kindling are the feeds that generally have a great deal of unique content, and that you enjoy reading on a regular basis. Sparks, on the other hand, can be feeds that display primarily links to other sites, or feeds that are high-volume but may not have must-read content with each post.

Hot List items are displayed with the item’s temperature in big, beautiful Helvetica Neue and a thermometer graphic indicating hot hot each item is. A link to the item is displayed in bold, with each feed that links to that item listed below so you can read not only the hot item, but also the commentary of others.

The Hot List is a great solution to a number of problems. First, it is the best solution so far to the problem of news and information importance. Again, in most feed readers each news item is given the same visual priority. In Fever, the most talked about items are brought right to the forefront. This is perfect for those times when you only have a few minutes to spare and would rather spend it reading the most interesting stories rather than sifting through countless top 10 lists.

Second, the Hot List not only highlights the hot items, but the supplementary running commentaries as well. This is handy when you want to get a varied perspective on a particular piece of news. For instance, last week Google announced the release of their first operating system, Chrome OS. While it was interesting to read the news, the running commentary behind the news was staggering. Jason Kottke and John Gruber both had incredibly interesting things to say about the Google news release, and I was able to access both commentaries directly from Fever’s Hot List items. On a larger scale, this system could potentially replace the need for reading blog comments as commentary posted on the item’s page, allowing the focus to be on well written, thoughtful commentary that doesn’t dilute the conversation.

Stay in Bed with a Fever?

Of course, no feed reader is complete without a mobile counterpart. Fever comes with a Mobile Safari-optimized version, complete with the appropriate iPhone icon. The mobile version of Fever looks beautiful, and the Hot List is the perfect companion for those quick fixes while on the go.

Meltdown

With all that is positive about Fever, there are a few minor things I hope will be addressed in future releases¹

First, I wish there was a bit more documentation as to how the whole system works. Shaun did release a demo video to explain many of the features, however I was still lost on some things. The main one was how Fever refreshes the feeds. At 248 feeds, Fever takes a few minutes to refresh them all. Initially I had Fever set to refresh when I went to the site, which meant I had to wait almost 5 minutes to start reading anything. It also meant that I had to load my feeds in my desktop browser before loading Fever on my iPod touch, otherwise the feeds wouldn’t refresh.

This was very frustrating, until I dug a little deeper and found out about refreshing using cron. Even now I’m not entirely sure what cron is, other than knowing that it replays a certain code every 15 minutes to refresh my feeds. The code can be found under “Extras” in the main Fever menu.

Second, the iPhone app, while aesthetically beautiful, lags quite a bit in how it transitions from one section of the app to the other. While it looks like a native iPhone app, it doesn’t function like one, and that is unfortunate. I don’t know if there’s a way for Shaun to create a native Fever app for the iPhone, but if there is, I’m sure there’s a market for it.

Thirty Bones

Finally, the only major downside to Fever: the price. I am absolutely in favour of paying for quality products. I also have a passion for supporting the independent developer community. Where the issue arrises here, however, is that there are so many incredible feed readers available for free, it’s hard to justify the $30 price tag for Fever. When NetNewsWire and NewsFire, two incredibly beautiful and functional desktop apps, and Google Reader, a fully functional web-based reader are all free, $30 seems quite steep. The Hot List is a very unique feature in the feed reader world, but I’m not entirely sure it justifies the price.

I am hoping that Shaun uses future versions of Fever to push the envelope of what a feed reader can be. I would love if there were some social aspect to it, where my Hot List is affected in some way by my friends’ Host Lists. I suspect that future releases will also include some of the extensibility of the current version of Mint, including different themes and plugins. Perhaps Inman would be able to produce a hosted version, so that those not as technologically savvy could themselves catch a bit of the Fever.

Contagious

With Fever, Inman has at the very least produced a very unique feed reader, while at the same time has laid down the foundations for what is potentially the most promising solution to the problem of information overload.

Woah.

(Via Nathan Smith.)

People post ridiculous “art” to Tumblr which often consists of a photo with “meaningful” text overlaid. These pieces frequently make it into Popular. We reblog them here and call them out for being stupid.

This could be fun.

(Via Garrett Murray.)

So what is the Internet doing to our brain? Apparently it is turning us into the literary equivalents of goldfish. Our dwindling concentration is endemic. We’re losing our capacity to be present with each other without checking our handheld electrical apparatuses to receive new messages from the mothership. We are becoming a generation that finds it difficult to read a conventional book from cover-to-cover.

A great follow-up to James’ talk at PodCamp London about how the media we create recreates us.

Just wanted to pass on a quick note that the wedding website I did for my friends Justin & Tracey is up on the portfolio. I hope to have the invitations I designed up soon.

Firefox and Opera are great browsers that have greatly advanced the cause of web standards, but because they are choices in a space where most people don’t make choices, their power to convert is necessarily somewhat truncated. The millions mostly don’t care what happens on their desktop. It’s mostly not in their control. They either don’t have a choice or don’t realize they have one, and their expectations have been systematically lowered by two decades of unexciting user experience.

By contrast, the iPhone functions in a hot realm where consumers do make choices, and where choices are badges. Of course many people are forced economically to choose the cheap or free phone that comes with their mobile service. But many others are in a position to select a device. And the iPhone is to today’s urban professional gym rat what cigarettes and martinis were to their 1950s predecessors. You and I may claim to choose a mobile device based on its features, but the upwardly mobile (pardon the pun), totally hot person standing next to us in the elevator may choose their phone the same way they choose their handbag. And now that the iPhone sells for $99, more people can afford to make a fashion decision about their phone—and they’ll do it.

Dorchester Park - a set on Flickr

I’m not a photographer. I don’t own a camera. But, tonight I borrowed my Mom’s for a nice Saturday evening stroll. Here’s what I saw.

Update: I forgot to mention that the photos look way better at I Hardly Know Her.

Do you know what work is, Michael Arrington? I don’t think that you do.

(Via Fake Steve.)

I don’t believe in new beginnings because we can’t leave our stories behind and start brand new ones. We carry what we’ve experienced into each new day. But I do believe in healing and I do believe in redemption. I believe in new chapters. Thank God for new chapters. May we all have them and be able to look back well at the chapters in the past and say to ourselves, “So that happened.”

I’m still not here.

(Via Longbrake.)

Vauban is a suburb of Freiburg, a university town in Germany. Vauban is unique for several reasons, one of the most notable is that it is a non-automobile community. They don’t use cars. It has been completely retrofitted for walking, bicycle use and public transit. Tony Paterson writes, “Instead of the roar of traffic, the residents listen to birdsong, children playing and the occasional jingle of a bicycle bell.”

Jealous.

Recognize that by being useful and good to others, you will eventually build a very strong team of supporters. They’ll lift you up to new heights and protect you. If you falter they will be there to bring you back up and support you.

Loved this story.

Google isn’t worried about Yahoo! or Microsoft’s search efforts…although the media’s focus on that is probably to their advantage. Their real target is Windows. Who needs Windows when anyone can have free unlimited access to the world’s fastest computer running the smartest operating system? Mobile devices don’t need big, bloated OSes…they’ll be perfect platforms for accessing the GooOS. Using Gnome and Linux as a starting point, Google should design an OS for desktop computers that’s modified to use the GooOS and sell it right alongside Windows ($200) at CompUSA for $10/apiece (available free online of course). Google Office (Goffice?) will be built in, with all your data stored locally, backed up remotely, and available to whomever it needs to be

(Via Mike Rundle.)

It doesn’t matter that H.264 isn’t technically free: it’s near-universal and incredibly practical. MP3 isn’t free, but it’s everywhere, except where it has been replaced with the also-not-free AAC. Until last year, JPEG was under possible patent restrictions, but it has been supported by every version of every Mozilla browser.

The Vancouver 2010 Olympics website has put in place a policy directed at those who choose to link to Vancouver2010.com. Not sure whether my link contradicts the policy or not.

I will say, the leading on the site makes my eyes hurt.

(Via Dave Fleet.)