Stefan Klocek writing a good one for the Smashing Magazine:
In this article, we’ll introduce you to a strategy for fixing the broken experience that starts with surface improvements, goes progressively deeper into structural issues and ends with a big organizational shift.
Nice tutorial over at CSS-Tricks.
Over 800 pages if you are interested.
James Hamilton wrote and article about using ARM processor in servers. He describes how ARM architecture offers better price/performance ratio and consumes less power.
It’s very nice example of disruption. You see, ARM started in small niche of processors that were constrained by small power consumption. They build up knowledge advantage in this field over the years.
And as mobile computing in form of smartphones and tablets is taking over the world, ARM is no more a niche player, they are providing architecture for billions of processors.
And now, ARM is going up market. Interestingly enough it’s beginning to take the very high-end of the processor market – servers.
How long before it is going to strike the real Intel fortress of desktop processors? Well, maybe not that long.
Another interesting aspect is that ARM is licensing the architecture so that others may be producing the chips or even doing their own design of them, as Apple does for their iPhones and iPads.
A marketplace for premium Bootstrap themes and templates.
Nice things happen when standards come up.
Brian Groudan on Mozilla UX blog:
I worked closely with Mozilla user experience researchers and designers to rethink how Firefox can better offer “save for later” in the browser.
Overview of the design process phases follows.
Easy could mean faster. Easier could mean more obvious. Easy could mean a lot of things. But the part of easy I like is when you take an existing problem, study it until it becomes clear, toss out everything that makes it blurry, and carefully polish what’s left over.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately because we’re finishing up a brand new product. In some ways it’s entirely new territory for us, but in other ways it’s familiar.
— Jason Fried, Signal vs. Noise
I agree with his point and am looking forward to the new product. I bet I will learn something from 37signals again.
Nice overview how to code for high pixel density (160 PPI and up) displays.
Via @daeltar
This will look like an off-topic, dear front-end designing/coding friends, but trust me, I will tie it back to design.
I bet you’ve heard the song “Somebody That I Used To Know”, originally by Gotye. Catchy tune, a bit more indie/hippie than I like, but I would give them the lyrics, those are timeless as is the occasional need to do open surgery on our own feelings, because, you know, nobody else understands us.
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Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
— Lao-Tze
The promise of the Surface was that it could deliver a best-in-class tablet experience, but then transform into the PC you needed when heavier lifting was required. Instead of putting down my tablet and picking up my laptop, I would just snap on my keyboard and get my work done. But that’s not what the Surface offers, at least not in my experience. It does the job of a tablet and the job of a laptop half as well as other devices on the market, and it often makes that job harder, not easier. Instead of being a no-compromise device, it often feels like a more-compromise one.
No compromise is bullshit.
This is a great device. It is a new thing, in a new space, and likely to confuse many of Microsoft’s longtime customers. People will have problems with applications — especially when they encounter them online and are given an option by Internet Explorer to run them, only to discover this won’t work. But overall it’s quite good; certainly better than any full-size Android tablet on the market. And once the application ecosystem fleshes out, it’s a viable alternative to the iPad as well.
— Wired
“Likely to confuse longtime customers”? Even from nerd point of view the Surface is “Yeah, nice, but…”, I think from the point of businesses it will be more of a “Why?” and for home users it could be “What?”.
I doubt that anyone expects the Windows 8 and new Microsoft tablets to be great success rivaling the iPad. I think the success will be if it does not flop.
Anyway, Microsoft is looking in the face of falling profits down the road and the question is what it should do?
Via Daring Fireball
Nice work, thanks GoSquared.
You may’ve heard this phrase also in a more humble (and original) form “let hundred flowers bloom”. And I don’t know about you, but I usually come across it in business context, where it means for the business to try many different ways at the same time. For example try many different products for different segments and see what catches on.
I’ve always had a problem with this phrase.
I am convinced, that for anything to succeed in the web business today, it needs to be polished in what it does. As John Gruber puts it:
Figure out the absolute least you need to do to implement the idea, do just that, and then polish the hell out of the experience.
Problem is, you can’t polish the experience of thousand or even hundred flowers at the same time, no matter how big company you are. See Google.
Polishing is usually thought about as the sort of “last 20 %” of the project, maybe less. Applying the 80/20 rule here, I would suggest, that it may be that 20 % making the 80 % of results. So we would be wise to put a lot of effort to it, which is exactly what you can’t do with “thousand of flowers”.
And anyway, why should you listen to something a known mass murderer proposed?
Nice work by Kiandra team.
Good lists – part 1, part 2 – by Smashing Magazine. As always, if you are looking for something more specific, try searching my Zootool bookmarks.
Horace Dediu is killing it again, this time with James Allworth.
Just one of the many thoughts: The cycle of disruption – When product is not good enough (in disruption theory kind of sense) the market tends to be better for integrated player (e.g. Apple). If a product is good enough it tends to favor modularization. Modularization in turn leads to being open for disruption (not just) from your suppliers that integrate in some new way. And we are at the beggining of a new cycle with new integrated player.
Jetstrap may be useful.
Via @jakubspanihel