While having lunch today with rodbegbie we talked a bit about companies we like that we pay to use and are happy to pay to use. I can think of four right off the bat, but I'd love to hear if you have any you particularly like.
These companies are of course a huge influence on my thinking in this post about Simpleform and mlkshk, and absolutely what I am trying to emulate.
@ me on Twitter, I'm torrez.
Update: Some nice companies sent in via Twitter:
There's a project in San Francisco called The Awesome Project (link to news article) that is actually a pretty good idea—but, San Francisco being San Francisco there is the inevitable project that is creating "audio tours for ferry rides across the San Francisco Bay that address the consequences of rising sea levels." Christ. Or done to death "displays pictures of the sky taken every 10 seconds for a year from a camera atop the Exploratorium."
Anyway, Twitter account here. Web site here. Let's hope there are more "string zip-lines from the Transamerica Pyramid" and less "paint a flower for every prarie dog that will die today."
UPDATE: I just re-read this and I don't know why I'm so grumpy about these ideas. Idea people really should just use Kickstarter though.
If you were a fan of We ♥ Prints my wife has expanded and moved it to a new site that not only publishes prints, but all forms of art that is affordable and good. It's called Hey Stuff and she's been posting several items a day so be sure to add it to your newsreader.
Imagesoak is a fantastic application for finding things to read and look at based on the interesting photos and images that accompany them. Nevermind what I just said, just go there and start scrolling. I've already made it my homepage.
As we get Simpleform going one thing I think I've absolutely settled on is that I don't want to take any investment money from anyone. We have earned (old fashioned LOL!) enough this year while consulting to not have to think about it as we set out to build our product, and I think we'll be fine for next year too, so we have some running room. Plus I can sell a guitar or something if things get crazy.
Mail Me Daily, how it works:
I'm so curious how this board actually rides. The wheels + bearings must make it weigh a ton, and all those wheels seem like it wouldn't go very fast because of the varying friction. Still, I'd love to try it here in SF.
Found this on Laughing Squid.
I probably don't understand the iPhone 4 antenna attenuation issue (I barely get Photoshop) but…
The internal layout likely dictates why the antenna has the break below rather than above—meaning they needed space for the camera—but still, I was holding my phone and I noticed my finger never goes between those buttons.
Update: Turns out you can't have an antenna at the top of the phone.
Justin Watt, one of the finest engineers at Federated Media (and one of the best I ever worked with), is headed out on a trip around the world with his girlfriend Stephanie.
The best part, and something that is typical of Justin and Stephanie's attitudes in life, is they don't really have an end date planned.
While I don't think I ever had the courage to quit my job and set sail around the world, I feel pretty cool to know some people who are actually doing it. I do hope they can blog it all.
Geeking out with this, but here's an idea on how templates and the template languages should do date formatting. Instead of requiring me to type (and remember) something cryptic like:
"%A %d %B %Y %I:%M%p"
I should be able to type something like this:
"Monday 12 July 2010 02:30PM"
And the formatter be smart enough to figure out that the first word is obviously a day name, the next number a day of the month since you wouldn't put a bare year after a day name, the month, the full year, and then following that is obviously a time.
So tired of looking up date formatting strings for every framework and language.