October 28th, 2009
An eye-opening article courtesy of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University: In a recent study Rafael Di Tella (Harvard University) and Ignacio Franceschelli (Northwestern University) have found that in Argentina, where the Kirchner administration has a major hand in the financial fortunes of the major newspapers, the amount of advertising space purchased by the government had a direct influence on the proportion of negative government-related front page news published. Coincidence?
October 27th, 2009
I wonder; could Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, be responsible for mistakingly leaking the name of Apple’s impending tablet device. A host of technology blogs from all corners of the web are reporting on week-old remarks from Keller in which he refers to the delivery of journalism on mobile platforms. While casually listing a plethora of other mobile devices Keller mentions the ‘impending Apple slate’.
Is Keller merely substituting the word ‘tablet’ with an alternative/related term? Or could there be more to the story than meets the eye? Reaction to the touted name has been overwhelmingly positive.
October 27th, 2009
Peter Nencini presents an interesting argument that examines if we as practitioners in the field of design, specialise too early in our careers. In the process, Nencini also touches on some interesting points regarding collaboration and multidisciplinism.
Specialist expertise is slow-grown, rooted in natural ability and will-to-learn. But our specialisms are conjoined. The conjunction. The in-between. The bit where we talk to each other. And where we make things together.
October 24th, 2009
The Cube 02™ font comes in the guise of a vector file that’s jam packed with 36 brilliantly blocky characters.
Description: Cube 02™ is applicable for any type of graphic design – web, print, motion graphics etc and perfect for t-shirts and other items like logos, pictograms.
Via Dan the Man
October 21st, 2009
One of the major issues curtailing the perceived creditability of independent (and to some extent, mainstream) online journalism is the that of trust. E.g. How objective and trustworthy is an article found on the internet, in comparison to a one printed on the front page of the New York Times?
In this article, Craig Newmark (the founder of Craigslist) seeks out a path that’ll allow for the repairing of “some current issues with trust and curation”.
I’d agree with Newmark when he says that more has to be done in terms of how quality news content is curated, developed and given prominence on the air/page/screen.
…really good journalism is buried, not curated into the front pages, and then, infrequently if at all repeated… if big news is not prominently displayed, and then repeated, its a tree falling in the forest — Craig Newmark
October 21st, 2009
Good-riddance Comic Sans — Hello Irma Slab. Typoptheque have announced that their web-font service is now well and truly, alive & kicking. No longer will web designers be forced to use ‘web-safe’ fonts such as Times and Arial. Instead, they can now make use of Typotheque’s ever-growing catalog of neatly crafted typefaces.
Their pricing is fair, their licensing terms make sense and their process of embedding (using PHP) is smarter than that of its current rival (Typekit, which ultilises JavaScript). I’m looking forward to experimenting with a 30-day free trial license. You can pick up a trial license for yourself over at www.typotheque.com.
October 20th, 2009
The Nook is Barnes & Noble’s answer to Amazon’s Kindle.
Commentators have noted that it has an immediate advantage over the Kindle in terms of hard-ware related aesthetics and functionality.
Good name and much nicer looking hardware than the Kindle, with a color touchscreen underneath the e-paper display instead of the Kindle’s clunky looking keyboard — John Gruber
On a recent trip to the USA, I couldn’t get enough of the Barnes & Noble bookstore located at Boston University. Their staff were more than friendly and their design section had a wide and varied range of fantastic titles. They obviously put a lot of time, thought and resources into ensuring that user experience is second to none. The Nook looks set to become the ebook reader of choice this coming holiday season.
October 19th, 2009
The jolly good chaps over at Apple recently communicated by way of email with their iPhone developer base. In that email they announced a dramatic shift in policy: In-app purchases are now go (within free apps). The ramifications of this announcement will see the ways in which apps are built and sent to market change dramatically.
New Yorker, Marco Arment, lead developer at Tumblr and creator of Instapaper maintains a great blog at marco.org. He has written a post that nicely summarises the fantastic and ‘not-so-great’ aspects of in-app purchasing.
October 18th, 2009
Alan Kaufman’s article entitled, ‘The Electronic Book Burning’, in the most recent issue (No. 120) of the Evergreen Review, provides a hard-hitting assessment of digital publishing from the prospective of a Jewish-American novelist, memoirist and poet. Continue Reading »
October 18th, 2009
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
Ayn Rand
October 14th, 2009
Search Engine Land’s editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan recently interviewed Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt. The Google supremo answers some tough questions and offers some foresight on the direction in which the publishing industry is heading. Google’s Fast Flip service will definitely be worth keeping an eye on.