
Today "Now, Elvis, look, you get up there, you sing your song, but don’t move too much"- The First of Elvis [Vanity Fair] is an interesting profile of photographer Al Wertheimer’s days of shadowing Elvis Presley in 1956, the year Elvis-mania hit. Wertheimer describes what made Elvis different:
“He dared to move,” says Wertheimer. “Singers just did not move onstage in those days. You stood there like Frank Sinatra or Perry Como, and you sang from the waist up. Elvis broke all the rules. He moved his hips. He charged the microphone. He was introducing something t…(more)

Today "Why You Aren't Done Yet" and REWORK book signings at SXSW- 37signals is going to be at SXSW in full force. We’re showing up eight strong. Jason will be doing a reading from REWORK and a book signing on Saturday at 10AM on the Day Stage. Yours truly will be talking about Why You Aren’t Done Yet on Sunday at 11AM in Ballroom A with a book signing following that.
We hope to meet a ton of customers, readers, and anyone else who wants to chat at SXSW. If you see anyone at the conference with a 37signals badge, please walk up and say hi. And…(more)

Yesterday REWORK is now in stores;li>-
Alright, the big day is finally here! REWORK is now available in stores. You can order the US version online from the following booksellers:
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Borders
Indie Bound
800 CEO READ
International versions are either out already or coming soon. Check with your local retailer. There’s also an audiobook version read by Mike Chamberlain (listen to a sample).
At the book site, you’ll now find a P…(more)

Yesterday QUOTE: The competitor to be feared is one who never;li>- The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.
—Henry Ford
…(more)

3 days VIDEO: Our new office, pre-construction. Lease signed-
Our new office, pre-construction. Lease signed today. Move in scheduled sometime in July. Full story, floor plans, and vision shortly.
…(more)

3 days [Lingo] Slack, YAGNI, and low ceremony- Three terms that came up repeatedly during our San Diego retreat:
Slack
All the stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into bigger, concept-driven iterations. We save one of our programmer/designer teams for slack work — small scope things that build up, a bug that needs to be fixed, a quick support assist, etc.
YAGNI
You ain’t gonna need it. It’s easy to get carried away discussing how you could possibly do this, that, or the other thing. It’s harder to step…(more)

Product Blog update: Basecamp email improvements, Highrise case studies, etc.- Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:
Basecamp
New in Basecamp: Stylized email notifications
We created new email designs for milestones (and 48-hour milestone reminders), file uploads, messages, to-dos, and comments.
New in Basecamp: Post a message via email
You can now email a message directly to a project. This means you can post messages without even being logged in. Just send a message via email from your desktop, web-based email client, or mobile phone, an…(more)
- PHOTO: I ran some statistics on the last few years
-
I ran some statistics on the last few years of Basecamp activity and uncovered this strange, recurring anomaly.
…(more)

Yesterday The pros and cons of Twitter marketing;li>- Twitter offers a cheap, quick way of spreading your marketing message. But it can just as easily cause your brand some major damage, reveals Paul DouglasContinues...…(more)

3 days Paul Dawson- EMC Conchango is known for producing functional customer experiences that last a long time. Oliver Lindberg catches up with the agency’s experience director, Paul Dawson, to chat about their approach and the recent acquisitionContinues...…(more)

Stephen Fry- We’re delighted to bring you a special interview with the man who sent Twitter mainstream: actor, writer, presenter and national treasure, Stephen Fry.In this video interview, Fry talks candidly to .net editor Dan Oliver about his use of Twitter, online money-making, mood swings, the Daily Mail and his ability to bring down websites with a single tweet. Watch it here.Continues...…(more)

Q&A: Mike Beltzner- At the end of January, Mozilla unleashed Firefox 3.6. We hook up with director of Firefox development Mike Beltzner to spill the beans on the latest improvements, what’s bubbling in the labs and the state of the browser warsContinues...…(more)

Pad science- What effect is the iPad going to have on web design and development?Continues...…(more)

The brains behind : 4chan- 4chan is the web’s largest – and most notorious – imageboard, responsible for such popular memes as lolcats and rickrolling. We talk to its creator, mootContinues...…(more)

Why Google isn"t evil- Geoffrey Cain reveals how Google.org, the philanthropic wing of the search giant, is using its algorithms to save the worldContinues...…(more)

Become a one man web agency- Web design can be a complex affair, and when you’re doing it all by yourself, working with big clients and running your own business, what’s the best way to approach a project and stay on top? Elliot Jay Stocks looks at the life of the independent designerContinues...…(more)

Today doubleTwist’s iTunes Alternative (That Works With Android) Adds Podcast Support- Over the last six months, doubleTwist, the iTunes alternative that lets you manage your music, videos, and photos, has really been stepping up its game. In October the company integrated an Amazon-powered MP3 store, allowing users to download and sync their music directly with any of hundreds of compatible devices, much as they would with the iTunes/iPod combo. And today it’s adding a new feature that makes it an even more viable iTunes competitor: support for podcasts.
Co-founder Moniqu…(more)

Today Indiagames Partners With IPL And Facebook To Launch Social Cricket Games-
Earlier this year, Google landed a “landmark” deal with Global Cricket Ventures, the licensing partner to the Indian Premier League (IPL), which would give them the so rights to live stream cricket matches from the IPL on YouTube. This is a huge deal because the streaming of the 2010 IPL season (which starts on Friday and lasts for 45 days) is the first time a large-scale global sporting event will be streamed; with the reach expected to be at least a half-a-billion viewers. Now of…(more)

Today Brizzly’s Been Busy — Buying Apps, Creating Guides, And Going On Picnics.- Since it launched last July at our Realtime Stream CrunchUp, Brizzly has been one of the best web-based Twitter apps. It offers support for viewing pictures inline, shortened link expansion, multiple Twitter accounts, and even some Facebook support. But they’ve been quiet in recent months. Now we know why.
The Brizzly team went into hibernation because they made a couple of acquisitions, and have been working on a new feature. First, they bought one of my favorite Twitter iPhone apps, Bird…(more)

Today Sonos To Take Investment From Index Ventures, Add Mike Volpi To Board Of Directors- Sonos, the Santa Barbara, California based startup that develops of wireless multi-room music systems, is taking a new round of financing from London-based Index Ventures, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Partner Mike Volpi, a forcer Cisco exec who found himself in the middle of a huge drama last year around eBay’s Skype spinoff, will join the board of directors of Sonos.
Volpi will bring real expertise to the Sonos board. As recently as 2007 he ran an $11 billion routing and acces…(more)

Today With Its New Release, Gowalla Expands The Check-In Game (Video)- Regular readers will know my love for all things location. In particular, these check-in location-based services fascinate me, mainly because I see them as a bridge between social networks as we’ve known it, and actual social interaction in the real world. Foursquare has been my app of choice over the past year (it launched almost exactly a year ago at SXSW). But the latest version of Gowalla has me thinking about switching sides. At the very least, I’ll be using both at all times no…(more)

Today Why AOL May Just Abandon Bebo Rather Than Sell It- Newly independent Aol is still struggling with the fate of Bebo, the social network they acquired for $850 million in 2008.
No one argues that Aol overpaid for Bebo. And the social network has fallen from 22 million monthly unique visitors when it was acquired to just 14.6 million today (Comscore worldwide). But even so, Bebo clearly has some value on the open market.
Despite that value, Aol’s best financial option for Bebo will likely be to abandon it rather than sell it, say corporate …(more)

Today How The iPad, And The Slate Computer, Will Evolve In The Next Two Years- With the iPad hitting pre-order in two days and shipping in April, it's important to think about when and why to buy the iPad. Based on our understanding of the product lifecycle and expected moves by Apple's competitors, we foresee big changes in the ultraportable landscape with the ultraportable/netbook as we now know it mutating - or branching - into a new species of media oriented Win7 and Android devices. Here's what we can expect.
April 3, 2010 - Big launch. Light crowds at the Apple Stor…(more)

Today How To Use Video SEO To Jump To The Top Of Google Search Results- Editor’s note: In the following guest post, Fliqz CEO Benjamin Wayne reveals some of the secrets of using video to help boost the search results rankings of your website. Fliqz is an online video platform.
As most search engine optimization (SEO) experts are aware, getting a first-page Google result is harder than ever. Not only do Google’s search and indexing algorithms continue to evolve in complexity, but Google has given over more and more of its search results real estate to “ble…(more)

Today Ozomatli: Download the single and see our exclusive photos-
The awesome LA band Ozomatli rocked TED's Wednesday night block party in Long Beach last month -- check out our exclusive photos from the street (and see many more photos here).
Download Ozomatli's new single, "It's Only Paper," from their upcoming album Fire Away (due out April 20). Spinner.com calls the single a "dance-heavy sonic mosaic of hip-hop, funk and Latin grooves" with a socially conscious message -- and a guest vocal from Jack Johnson. (At right, below, is another Ozo fan:…(more)

Today How I fell in love with a fish: Dan Barber on TED.com- Chef Dan Barber squares off with a dilemma facing many chefs today: how to keep fish on the menu. With impeccable research and deadpan humor, he chronicles his pursuit of a sustainable fish he could love, and the foodie's honeymoon he's enjoyed since discovering an outrageously delicious fish raised using a revolutionary farming method in Spain. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 19:02)
Watch Dan Barber's talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk,…(more)

3 days The year open data went worldwide: Tim Berners-Lee on TED.com- At TED2009, Tim Berners-Lee called for "raw data now" -- for governments, scientists and institutions to make their data openly available on the web. At TED U in 2010, he shows a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up. (Recorded at TED University 2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 20:07)
Watch Tim Berners-Lee's talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 600+ TEDT…(more)

New Best of the Web talks: Richard Feynman, Srikumar Rao- Richard Feynman: Physics is fun to imagine
In this archival footage from BBC TV, celebrated physicist Richard Feynman explains what fire, magnets, rubber bands (and more) are like at the scale of the jiggling atoms they're made of. This accessible, enchanting conversation in physics reveals a teeming nano-world that's just plain fun to imagine.
Watch Richard Feynman's talk >>
Srikumar Rao: Plug into your hard-wired happiness
Srikumar Rao says we spend most of our lives learning to …(more)

Exclusive photos: The LXD in rehearsal-
This morning, we shared the LXD's tremendous TED2010 performance with the world. But on the night before TED started, some of us on staff got a private preview, when we snuck away from our pre-TED prep to watch them practice for the first time on the TED stage. Photographer Duncan Davidson caught these intimate shots of the LXD dancers, choreographers and friends.
See lots more photos of LXD in rehearsal >>
Photos: TED / James Duncan Davidson
…(more)

In the Internet age, dance evolves: The LXD on TED.com- The LXD (the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers) electrify the TED2010 stage with an emerging global street-dance culture, revved up by the Internet. In a preview of Jon Chu’s upcoming Web series, this astonishing troupe show off their superpowers. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 17:30)
Watch The LXD's performance on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 600+ TEDTalks…(more)

Help the Abreu Fellows win a grant-
The Abreu Fellows are in the running for a $250K grant from Pepsi. You can vote for them once a day ... all month.
The Abreu Fellows program is a project of Jose Abreu's 2009 TED Prize wish -- to teach children around the world to play music using El Sistema ("the system"), a proven and self-sustaining model that teaches kids life skills along with musical skills.
Learn more about El Sistema >>
Watch some El Sistema alums play in perhaps the best orchestra you've ever seen >>
Vo…(more)

Before Avatar ... a curious boy: James Cameron on TED.com- James Cameron's big-budget (and even bigger-grossing) films create unreal worlds all their own. In this personal talk, he reveals his childhood fascination with the fantastic -- from reading science fiction to deep-sea diving -- and how it ultimately drove the success of his blockbuster hits "Aliens," "The Terminator," "Titanic" and "Avatar." (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 17:08)
Watch James Cameron's talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk,…(more)

Yesterday Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web;li>- You’ve probably heard that Apple recently released the iPad. The absence of Flash Player on the device seems to have awakened the HTML5 vs. Flash debate. Apparently, it’s the final nail in the coffin for Flash. Either that, or the HTML5 community is overhyping its still nascent markup language update. The arguments run wide, strong, and legitimate on both sides. Yet both sides might also be wrong. Designer/developer Dan Mall is equally adept at web standards and Flash; what matters, …(more)

Yesterday Web Standards for E-books;li>- E-books aren’t going to replace books. E-books are books, merely with a different form. More and more often, that form is ePub, a format powered by standard XHTML. As such, ePub can benefit from our nearly ten years’ experience building standards-compliant websites. That's great news for publishers and standards-aware web designers. Great news for readers, too. Our favorite genius, Joe Clark, explains the simple why and how.…(more)

Accent Folding for Auto-Complete- Another generation of technology has passed and Unicode support is almost everywhere. The next step is to write software that is not just “internationalized” but truly multilingual. In this article we will skip through a bit of history and theory, then illustrate a neat hack called accent-folding. Accent-folding has its limitations but it can help make some important yet overlooked user interactions work better.…(more)

Training the Butterflies: Interview with Scott Berkun- Whether it’s in front of a huge audience or a handful of executives, smooth public speaking is essential to a successful web design career. Yet most of us are more afraid of speaking in public than we are of death. In a lively give-and-take, Liz Danzico interviews Scott Berkun, author of Confessions of a Public Speaker, for tips on how to prepare for public speaking, how to perfect your timing, and what to do when bad things happen.…(more)

Words that Zing- When someone consults a website, there is a precious opportunity not only to provide useful information but also to influence their decision. To make the most of this opportune moment, we must ensure that the site says or does precisely the right thing at precisely the right time. Understanding the rhetorical concept of kairos can help us craft a context for the opportune moment and hit the mark with appropriately zingy text.…(more)

The Problem with Passwords- Abandoning password masking as Jakob Nielsen suggests could present serious problems, including undermining a user’s trust by failing to meet a basic expectation. But with design patterns gleaned from offline applications, plus a dash of JavaScript, we can provide feedback and reduce password errors without compromising the basic user experience or losing our visitors’ trust.…(more)

Using SVG for Flexible, Scalable, and Fun Backgrounds, Part II- In Part II, dig deeper into the technology behind using SVG for your site design. Explore how to incorporate SVG in a cross-browser friendly manner, including using SVGWeb to ensure that the SVG shows in Internet Explorer. And discover the unique characteristic that makes SVG ideal for page backgrounds: scalability.…(more)

Using SVG For Flexible, Scalable, and Fun Backgrounds, Part I- Many of us think of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) as an also-ran: fine for charts and tables, but not much else. Yet SVG can actually enhance a site’s overall design, and can be made to work in even the most stubborn browser. In Part I of a two-part series, Shelley Powers covers important basics of working with SVG, including browser support and accessibility.…(more)
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