
Today Karl Rove's book vs. REWORK - what the American People need to know- REWORK, our new book on starting, building, and growing — or not growing — a business was released one week ago today. The book is selling out around the country and rocketed to #3 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list. Thanks to everyone who picked up a copy and spread the word.
But there’s this book right ahead of it by this guy named Karl Rove. Heard of him? Turns out his book just came out too. And he’s all over the press (well, part of it) pitching, pitching, and …(more)

PHOTO: Sculptor Alex Queral carves up phonebooks-
Sculptor Alex Queral carves up phonebooks to create portraits. Above: James Brown. [via TC]
…(more)

Method picks a fight with the jug- There are two kinds of companies I really like. One that ignores the competition entirely. And one that picks a fight. Method, and their new laundry detergent line, is a great example of the latter.
The new Method laundry product eschews the standard awkward, heavy, messy jug for a svelte, light, one-handed, easily stored, pump-powered dispenser bottle. It’s so much better.
They claim it works better too, but I’m not concerned about that for this post. Even if it works …(more)

Zappos pranks itself for new ads- Ad agency Mullen chose to focus on Zappos’ famous customer service for their new ad campaign. The twist is, behind the puppets and comedy are recordings of actual customer service calls. Mullen’s making of video explains how they basically pranked Zappos to get the audio for the ads. The results are funny, fresh, and true to the experience of calling Zappos. Awesome stuff.
…(more)

There is an inverse relationship between level of anonymity and quality of conversation- 37signals Answers (recently launched) is our first new app built with 37signals ID integration. That means everyone involved is using real names and avatars.
And wow, what a difference it makes. Trading anonymity for accountability has led to radically improved conversations.
I’d point to a specific example but it’s more what’s missing now. A lot less antagonism and a lot more thoughtfulness and general politeness. Great to see.
…(more)

QUOTE: A perfectionist is someone who finishes the- A perfectionist is someone who finishes the backside of a drawer, which I consider completely unnecessary.
—An interview with Helmut Krone.
…(more)

"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 that w…(more)

"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 pl…(more)

Today The Red in Jupiter's Spot Not What Astronomers Thought- Detailed thermal images reveal Jupiter's Great Red Spot is far more dynamic and structured than had previously been thought.
…(more)

Today SXSW: Motorhead Mania Cranks Up as 'Lemmy' Blitzes Austin- The badass bass player for the world's loudest rock 'n' roll band cracks up the audience at the world premiere of a documentary about him. The movie reveals intimate details about the living legend.
…(more)

Today Storyboard: A Look Back at the Dot-Com Boom and Bust- This week's behind-the-scenes podcast focuses on 10 years after the dot-com boom and bust. Senior editor Joanna Pearlstein hosts a conversation between contributors Matt Honan and Steven Leckart about the dot-com era's major players, total failures and missed opportunities.
…(more)

Today PayPal Fist-Bumps Square- PayPal's latest upgrade to the PayPal iPhone app lets you pay (and be paid) by bumping fists.
…(more)

Today Rugged Night-Vision Specs See Through the Muddiest Dark- As a Wired Editor's Pick, Luna Optics' night-vision binocs can do almost nothing wrong. They're warrior tough and have an artist's vision, with unmatched light-magnifying power and impressive versatility.
…(more)

Today Methane May Be Building Under Antarctic Ice- Microbes living in lakes beneath the ice of Antarctica and Greenland could be producing methane. The greenhouse gas could be building up and released if the ice melts.
…(more)

Today Lonely Classmates.com Users Get $9.5M in Lawsuit- Classmates.com is offering to settle a lawsuit that accused the site of falsely leading people to believe their old schoolmates wanted to contact them. A proposed settlement would give $3 each to more than 3 million paying customers.
…(more)

Today Climate Quick Fix Could Create Toxic Algae Blooms- A new study suggests that fighting climate change by seeding the ocean with iron could result in algal blooms that produce a neurotoxin, killing marine life and eventually working its way up the food chain to humans.
…(more)

Today Take online payments today!- More and more services are offering quick, easy and cheap ways of collecting money via your site. Martin Gill, director of HomeMade Digital, reveals who you can trust with your cashContinues...…(more)

Yesterday How to create your best layouts;li>- When approaching a fresh site design, what’s the best way to tackle layout and ensure a guaranteed win? Elliot Jay Stocks shares his top layout tipsContinues...…(more)

The pros and cons of Twitter marketing- 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)

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)

Today AT&T Emails SF Customers That The Network Is Getting Better (Did The Call Fail?)-
When bashing AT&T’s network, two cities usually come up above all others: New York City and San Francisco. AT&T has even acknowledged just how bad it is in those cities. But they’ve also said for a while that they’re working on making it better. And apparently now that work is far enough along that they’re emailing customers about it.
Over the past week, AT&T has been emailing its customers in San Francisco to let them know that the network is getting better.…(more)

Today Big Data Is Less About Size, And More About Freedom-
Editor’s note: Big Data has been around for a long time between credit card transactions, phone call records and financial markets. Companies like AT&T, Visa, Bank of America, Ebay, Google, Amazon and more have massive databases they mine for competitive advantage. But lately, Big Data is finding its way to the smallest startups. The Web and cloud computing brings Big Data everywhere. But what exactly is pushing Big Data forward?
To answer that we brought in an expert, Bradford Cro…(more)

Today Social Gaming Startup MetroGames Gets A $5 Million Infusion From Playdom- Argentinian social gaming company MetroGames, has just raised $5 million in series A funding from game developer Playdom. According to a release, the investment will be used to expand MetroGames’ development of games and its social gaming platform. Playdom’s CEO, John Pleasants will join MetroGames’ board.
MetroGames has over 30 games on both Facebook and its own standalone social gaming site. In the release, Pleasants said that he believes that the company will become a &ldqu…(more)

Today Xobni’s BlackBerry App Is Just An Excuse To Sync Your Contacts Through Xobni One-
It took almost a year, but Xobni finally released its email app for the Blackberry. It works as a standalone app integrated with the email on your Blackberry, but similar to Xobni’s Outlook plugin, it ranks your contacts by importance and pulls in social data from Facebook, LinkedIn and other places.
Along with the Blackberry app, Xobni is introducing another product which may turn out to be more important in the long run. It is called Xobni One, and it syncs your Xobni contacts in Outl…(more)

Today CODE Advisors Absolutely, Definitely Not Working With MySpace On A Spinoff- Lots of scuttlebutt around Silicon Valley that new investment bank CODE Advisors is out pitching a MySpace spinoff to potential buyers and investors. Sources include people who’ve actually been pitched.
CODE Advisor partner Quincy Smith says “We have not been engaged by News Corp. or MySpace on a sale of the company.” MySpace also contacted us to deny the rumor – “The story is false.” – although we hadn’t actually gotten around to asking them yet. …(more)

Today Spotify Consumes More Internet Capacity Than All Of Sweden- Today, during his keynote address at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek had a big revelation: “On certain days, we’re consuming more Internet capacity than Sweden has as a country.”
Ek made the statement when asked why Spotify chose to use a P2P model, rather than centrally store all of its music in one place and stream it from there. Ek noted that if they were to stream from one UK datacenter, they’d consume all the bandwidth. So instead, they leve…(more)

Today Google Automates The Creation Of YouTube Overlay Ads-
In its relentless push to turn YouTube into a profit center, Google is trying anything it can to pump more advertising into the billions of videos people watch on the site. Now it is automating the way that Flash overlay ads can be created and displayed on YouTube videos. Through the self-serve Display Ad Builder in Google AdWords, mom-and-pop businesses can now create Flash overlay ads as easily as they can create display banner ads and place them in YouTube videos.
Overlay ads have been aro…(more)

Today Live Blog: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek Says Music Service Now Has 320,000 Paid Subscribers- I’m here at the last keynote of SXSW, where Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is being interviewed by Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk. Ek will likely be revealing some new announcements about Spotify during this interview. I’ll be live blogging my notes below.
Van Buskirk kicked off the keynote by asking how many people in the audience had used Spotify, leading a significant portion of the audience to raise their hands. This was surprising, because Spotify is only widely available in Europe (y…(more)

Yesterday Suspended animation is within our grasp: Mark Roth on TED.com;li>- Mark Roth studies suspended animation: the art of shutting down life processes and then starting them up again. It's wild stuff, but it's not science fiction. Induced by careful use of an otherwise toxic gas, suspended animation can potentially help trauma and heart attack victims survive long enough to be treated. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010, in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 18:13)
Watch Mark Roth's talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and fin…(more)

A viral scene from TED's Saturday SXSW panel- Cast: Audience at TED's Saturday-morning panel "How to Create a Viral Video." Hands: Damian Kulash from OK Go. (Proof.) Camera: TED's Jason Wishnow. Inspiration: Surprised Kitty and her 21 million views on YouTube. (If you're at SXSWi, come to...…(more)

New Best of the Web talk: Gary Vaynerchuk- Gary Vaynerchuk: Do what you love (no excuses!)
At the Web 2.0 Expo, entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk gives a shot in the arm to dreamers and up-and-comers who face self-doubt. The Internet has made the formula for success simpler than ever, he argues. So there's now no excuse not to do what makes you happy.
Watch Gary Vaynerchuk's talk >>
…(more)

The magic of the placebo: Eric Mead on TED.com- Sugar pills, injections of nothing -- studies show that, more often than you'd expect, placebos really work. At TEDMED, magician Eric Mead does a trick to prove that, even when you know something's not real, you can still react as powerfully as if it is. (Warning: This talk is not suitable for viewers who are disturbed by needles or blood.) (Recorded at TEDMED, October 2009 in San Diego, CA. Duration: 9:06)
Watch Eric Mead's talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, …(more)

Come see TED's two panels at SXSW- South by Southwest 2010 starts Friday in Austin, Texas, and the TED team is heading down to present two panels: How to Create a Viral Video Saturday, March 13, 11am From pranks and mashups to world-changing talks, viral videos...…(more)

Ozomatli: Hear the new 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).
You can stream 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 Oz…(more)

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)

Gary Lauder's new traffic sign: Take Turns- Fifty percent of traffic accidents happen at intersections. Gary Lauder shares a brilliant and cheap idea for helping drivers move along smoothly: a new traffic sign that combines the properties of "Stop" and "Yield" -- and asks drivers to be polite. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010, in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 4:27)
Watch Gary Lauder'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+ TEDTalks.…(more)

Web Standards for E-books- 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)

Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web- You’ve probably heard that Apple recently announced 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)

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)
This page has been viewed 24483 times
Page rendered in 2.3232 seconds
Total users: 0
The most visitors ever was 290 on 04/27/2007 01:56 am