Articles
“It’s not about being different or difficult. It’s about being memorable”
July 22, 2010
--John Fogerty on Merle Haggard
Subtraction by addition: Thumbnail design in 37signals’ Sortfolio and Google Chrome
July 16, 2010
After updating my Sortfolio entry and browsing around a bit, I noticed that thumbnails for Sortfolio listings looked a whole lot like my Google Chrome home screen. Just better. Here are some screenshots:
Sortfolio
Chrome
The 4-column layouts echo each other. There is more information in the Sortfolio thumbs, which would seem like a greater challenge for the designer.
But this section of Sortfolio still reads lighter and richer than the similar Chrome screenshot. The use of white space, shadow and rounded corners in Sortfolio’s layout creates more shape and legibility for the eye. Comparing the two, Chrome looks more like a quilt made up of tightly bordering tiles. Sortfolio’s thumbs actually read like individual objects.
At first, the two layouts seem remarkably similar. But Sortfolio’s design shows what can happen with some very subtle additions that actually serve to simplify the layout and lighten the cognitive load. Subtraction by addition.
Image quality in Plupload using Flash, Gears, Silverlight and HTML5 runtimes
June 2, 2010
Plupload is a well endowed, highly configurable multiple image uploader that provides client-side resizing and file-size limiting with either a simple jQuery implementation ready to go out of the box or a custom build-your-own implementation that interacts with Plupload’s API. Read more about Plupload here.
For image-heavy sites like shopping carts, backends, etc., the idea of client-size resizing to cut 4MB+ images down to under 100KB before the upload even begins is incredibly appealling.
Plupload provides a lot of power in a simple install. Your script can loop through several runtimes in your prefered order looking for Flash, Gears, HTML5 and Silverlight. The form defaults to a regular form submission if none of the runtimes are present.
Sounds close to perfect, right?
I installed Plupload to test its image resizing powers in a project I’m working on. I chose a photo I shot a few years ago that had three critical elements that tend to degrade during resizing: texture, line and smooth gradient.
There were some obvious differences between runtimes.
Here it is resized in Photoshop using regular bicubic resampling:
There is some jagged line on the mast, but most of the original is preserved. There is a nice, smooth gradient. You can see the seams in the sails and some patches. There aren’t any artifacts or halo around the boat.
Read on for the Plupload demos.
Trust your employees and they’ll give you their best
May 20, 2010
I’m building a custom CMS for a client. On the page where you add blog users to the account (no admin privileges, just blog for the company), I included the following paragraph:
Some general advice about blogging for business: choose staff you trust, define their limits and let them write. Don’t create an approval process. Just let them write. Many companies find this intimidating — “What will they write?!” — “How can I trust them to show the best face of the company?!” Many companies are surprised by the quality and insight that occurs when they allow an open dialog. If there are issues that emerge, then you can deal with them or revoke their blogging privileges if need be.
I really believe in this. And most business owners have the screws so tight, they would really be uncomfortable with employees posting to the blog without approval. At my old job, we were all supposed to write for the company blog. I wrote a good piece about usability. It never saw the light of day because the slackers I submitted it to never got around to reading it and posting it. if I could have just posted it myself, there would have been a new voice on the blog, a new idea, inspiration for other employees to write and everyone would have been happy. But the review process—instead of encouraging trust and openness—brought about resentment and apathy.
Trust your employees to carry the company flag until they prove they aren’t trustworthy. You’ll find out you have some great talent you kept in the well.
Sunset on Charleston Harbor
May 12, 2010
I was playing around with some new Photoshop actions and applied pseudonymfreak’s Retro Love action to a shot I took last fall of a silhouetted palmetto tree on Charleston Harbor from the Pitt St. Bridge in Mt. Pleasant. I found the actions in this Smashing Magazine post.
Unlike a lot of Photoshop freebies out there, this really preserves the character of the original photo but adds some nice lomo funk. Interesting and subtle.
How many of my visitors are using IE6?
April 30, 2010
After a conversation yesterday about browser compatibility, I decided to dive into Analytics and see how many visitors to my most popular website, GoCashiers.com (a guide to Cashiers, NC) are using IE6 and other browsers. Here’s the data from the lasts 60 days.
| IE6 | IE7 | IE8 | Total IE | Firefox | Safari | Chrome | Total | |
| 60 days | 145 | 343 | 597 | 1085 | 381 | 258 | 96 | 1832 |
| %IE | 13.4% | 31.6% | 55.0% | 100.0% | ||||
| %TO | 7.9% | 18.7% | 32.6% | 59.2% | 20.8% | 14.1% | 5.2% | 100.0% |
That was two months worth of visits and 1832 samples. I checked the approximate percentage of IE6 users on some of my other sites to see if there were any vast differences, but it was just about 10% across the board.
I did this same bit of number crunching and IE6 sniffing about a year-and-a-half ago. Back then, IE6 users made up about 1 in 5 visitors. I’m happy to report it appears that half of IE6 users have either died, upgraded or stopped using computers entirely because of their utter frustration with IE6. Kudos to them.
I’d be interested if anyone else out there has any recent data to confirm or dispute my findings.
Airplanes at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago
April 28, 2010
I went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park, Chicago last week during one of their free days (Charleston Museums take note) and took this cool shot of old airplanes hanging from the ceiling. The museum is really incredible with some neat exhibits for kids but some AMAZING collections of old vehicles—like a German U-boat from WWII and an old streamlined Zephyr train. Definitely worth a visit if you’re ever in Chicago.
Here’s the museum from the lake shore:
Wind farm on Cape Cod: a classic drama
April 20, 2010
Goodbye, web design. Here marks the official fork in the road where my web development blog becomes my everything-I’m-interested-in blog.
The wind farm project off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard gets a lot of media attention—way more than it deserves. But we all love a feisty scandal. And the two (or more) sides in the fight represent a quintessential foaming-at-the-mouth not-in-my-back-yard panic. It’s just a ball to watch. Each stakeholding group manages to craft an attorney-stamped sound bite for the twenty seconds of attention the average media consumer can manage.
I understand how those with unbridled ocean views would not want their treasured vista littered with a dinosaur cage of wind turbines. It’s really a shame. Of course, this is America. So for most of the stakeholders this is about money.
I’m not a lawyer. (Remember, I’m a web designer.) I don’t know how the rights to an area of ocean are purchased. I always thought the ocean belonged to all of us even within our “national waters,” which extend some 20 or 50 or 100 miles out to sea. These waters are public domain. How can someone purchase the rights to farm the wind on a given mile of sea?
The idea that we can jam some towers in the ocean floor and attach giant propellers to create power is very appealing. The idea that we have to ruin the ocean view to achieve that is not very appealing. Why can’t those turbines be installed far enough out to shore so they’re invisible—or nearly invisible?
My web life story, or How I became a web developer
March 30, 2010
In the winter of 1999 I bought a copy of HTML Goodies by Joe Burns at a local Barnes & Noble at the recommendation of the geekiest-seeming (and therefore most trustworthy) employee at the store. I built my first website that weekend—an homage to Tyler, my family’s harlequin great dane. Just a few months later, I launched a dog trainer’s website for $250 complete with animated gifs, table-based layout, images sliced in Paint Shop Pro and HTML written in Notepad. My first web job—I was proud.
These were the old days. There was no such thing as a case of DIV-itis. JavaScript hadn’t yet gone out of (and back in) style. DHTML was cutting edge. I was about to buy books on JAVA and VBScript and later regret it. I had never heard the term usability. Google had a very ugly logo.
My quickest, least involved, one-and-done under construction page in years
March 19, 2010
Sometimes under construction pages are necessary. If a company finally decides to build a website, that company should want to get a page up quickly to start soaking up some SEO on their domain. If a website is going through a redesign and the existing website is for some reason problematic, it must come down and a temporary page or microsite must go up in its place. And the rest.
A company I’m working with, Bound’s Cave Oriental Rugs in Cashiers, NC, hired me three years ago to build a site. That site became unmanageable and outdated. It was pulled, and they decided we should go for round two. In the meantime, instead of showing a blank page or logo it seemed that helping their customers with a short message explaining what’s going on and how to get in touch with the company needed to broadcast on the website.
I rolled up my sleeves and built this quick page for Bound’s Cave in about an hour. It’s clean, simple and perfectly explains what is going on. The design isn’t special, but it gets the message across. A small photo gives the visitor a sense of the company.
One hour in, now I can move onto building the real site.
Classy: Spirit Airlines Muff Diving
February 2, 2010
I’m usually open to creative and/or obscure humor. But this is just one big fat failure. I can’t see how they plan to increase sales by sending out references to “muff diving.” In case you don’t know what that is, ask your frat boy buddy. Definitely do not ask your mom.
Maybe Spirit Air knows I’m in their 26-32 male demographic and focus groups have told them 26-32 males looking for deals find muff diving jokes funny. Maybe they’re trying to get negative attention in the media by offending people in order to spread their brand and hope people stumble on over to their website to see how cheap their fares are. Maybe their advertising budget is so small they had to hire your frat boy buddy to write their ads. I don’t know.
I raised an eyebrow this morning when I read this, and I wanted to share. Comments appreciated.
10 great examples of vintage fruit crate label design
January 6, 2010
I’m working on some ideas for a mural design for a potential client. They suggested I check out FruitCrateArt.com which has a huge collection of vintage fruit crate labels. These are my favorites from the site.
Moonbeam Brand Citrus
Best of the Web should encrypt passwords
January 5, 2010
I just signed up for Best of the Web because I’m finally taking my own advice and working on some SEO. In their confirmation email, they sent my username and password. That is not secure. Since they just sent my password to my email account, my guess is they probably store it in their database not just unsalted but unencrypted whatsoever.
This is bad practice. You would think a site as big as BOTW would know better.
Meanwhile, my session expired and I was automagically logged out with a JavaScript alert to make me feel safe. Too bad a real hacker could sniff my connection and have my password already.
Thoughts?
Doing it all as a “web designer”—how do you describe yourself?
January 5, 2010
I wrote before on finding a decent job title as someone who builds websites since “web designer” doesn’t do it for me. I just took A List Apart’s 2009 Web Survey, and this single question brought the problem up again in my mind. What do you call yourself when you’re more than a designer?
Anyone else find themselves in this position? I’m not saying I’m a bona fide expert in each of these, but I work within these subsets of the web often and have enough of a proficiency to say I am competent.
Yet from job title to clients (and former employers), I’m supposed to be pigeon-holed into one or two of these.
How many of you out there cover the whole spectrum?
(Non-) planning for 2010: A growing web design & development shop
January 4, 2010
I sat down to figure out a plan for 2010—to ride the momentum of 2009 and avoid the mistakes from my first year in business as a freelancer—and I realized something. I can’t possibly plan my next full year in business (or quarter for that matter).
What I can figure out is a loose strategy for how to approach the year. Beyond this simple seed of planning, I’d better not waste time trying to predict the future. If you asked me in January 2009 for a simple snapshot of my company—just one year ago—I would have never described where I am now.
The only real full-term plan is to…
From the Flickr Commons: HMS Undine
January 4, 2010
I love schooners. I worked as a deckhand on one for five summers in Maine. I was flipping through the Flickr Commons and happened on this photo. Love it.
The caption on the bottom says, 92 - HMS “Undine” - Fort MacQuarie, Sydney - ([Illegible intial] King Photo, Syd.)
2009 A List Apart Web Survery
January 3, 2010
This really is a great resource. All web-related professionals should take this survey. It only takes about five minutes.
CSS Beauty really isn’t that beautiful
January 3, 2010
I don’t mean to hate on CSS Beauty, but when you’re an influential web design blog with the word ‘beauty’ in your name, shouldn’t you keep up with the times and actually be beautiful? Maybe they should call it CSS Irony. Here’s a link to CSS Beauty in case you want to see it for yourself.
Happy Holidays!
December 24, 2009
It’s funny how many people have wished me a “Merry Christmas.” I even heard someone say, “There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘Merry Christmas.’” (And there isn’t.) I happen to say ‘Happy Holidays’ myself, but I don’t mind when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas. Why do we get so uptight about it?
10 reasons why most blogs suck
November 20, 2009
In no particular order:
- Writing for Twitter clicks instead of a real audience.
- Bad design/no variation in layout
- Lazy writing: little thought, very little research, no editing.
- Writing for SEO keywords.
- Short posts about the same thing we’ve read 1,000 times before with no depth.
- Being too informal and/or biased, i.e. not sounding the least bit objective.
- Being to formal and uptight, i.e. sounding like a corporate megalopoly.
- Inconsistency: not posting regularly.
- Not knowing what one is talking about but talking anyway, a.k.a. ignorance.
- Rampant use of top-10 lists
- Bonus (edit): Not allowing comments. (Thanks, @thetylerhayes)
I have been guilty of all of these at least once. I’m working on it. :)
You can reach me on my Twitter account: @mccambridge.
New blog post on Chucktown Deals: Interview with a deckhand on the Spirit of Massachusetts
November 11, 2009
I’m trying to post more regular content on Chucktown Deals. Yesterday, I visited the Spirit of Massachusetts at the Charleston Maritime Center and shot some video including an interview with a really nice kid, Jeff, a deckhand from the Spirit of Mass.
Here’s the post: http://www.chucktowndeals.com/blog/read/schooners-charleston-ida
I tried to do voice-overs for the first time, and I’m not particularly happy with the way they came out. But hey, you’ve got to do it wrong before you can do it right.
Kayaking Capers Island
November 10, 2009
This weekend, I paddled to Capers Island with a friend. I wrote about it on my Chucktown Deals blog. It’s probably the best thing I’ve written in quiet a long time. There’s also some video there. Enjoy.
http://www.chucktowndeals.com/blog/read/paddling-to-capers-island-nov-2009
Don’t treat your employees like children
November 5, 2009
I hate it when businesses treat their employees like children. They block Facebook or YouTube because they want their employees to work eight hours a day. But instead of getting more productivity, you’re getting frustration. What’s the point? As long as the work gets done, I don’t care what people do all day.
—Jason Fried, one of my business heroes
By being everywhere, it felt like we were nowhere
November 1, 2009
One day we were walking down city streets making eye contact with each other, taking in the local scenery, and the next we were staring at the screens of our hypnotic phones, receiving real-time messages and breaking-news updates from people hundreds of miles away. It was a tradeoff we didn’t exactly ask for. Yes, the concept of distance was all but erased—but so, in a way, was the concept of place. We were sold the notion that we could be anywhere, with the tap of a key. What we only gradually began to recognize was that, by being everywhere, sometimes it felt like we were nowhere.
My first JavaScript game: Captain Adam’s Bar Harbor Birthday Boat Race
October 28, 2009
I built a fully-functional (except in IE, of course) JavaScript game for my nephew’s birthday. Here’s a cheesy video introduction:
Play Capt. Adam’s Bar Harbor Birthday Boat Race, my first JavaScript game, here
BIY: Build a website from scratch | Episode 1: Introduction
October 23, 2009
I’m introducing a series I’ll be releasing as I produce it. BIY: Build it yourself. I’m going to walk you through building your own website from scratch the way I build websites—at the code level. Don’t be intimidated. Once you get a little foundation going, you’re going to feel really good about HTML and CSS, and you’ll be able to make your own website from scratch.
Why would you want to be able to write a website at the code level? There aren’t enough hours in a day to talk about why. For one, once you get going at it, you can build anything you want. You won’t be limited to blogs and blog templates. At the same time, I’ll walk you through some cool design basics so you can make your stuff look good. If you know how to manage your own space, you can keep the SEO value you build and build your brand. Learn the basics of how it’s all put together, and you’ll have a leg up on everyone else who is stuck with whatever Wordpress LETS them do. Plus, what if you’re a business owner? Wouldn’t you want to save thousands of dollars in web design fees doing it yourself?
The web is tricky to build but not hard. If you’ve even been curious about how do to it yourself, follow along.
I got an iPhone!
October 20, 2009
So I’m a couple years late to the party… But I GOT AN iPHONE! I feel so 21st Centrury. Now I can develop iPhone Apps! Yay for me! :) That is all.
One year of freelancing: a video introduction/update to SeanMcCambridge.com
October 19, 2009
Just a bit about what I’m working on these days. And an ounce of webdev philosophy. Video cuts out when my camera battery dies.
jQuery as a design tool
October 19, 2009
JavaScript has come a very long way. If you’re a “dev-signer” like me, you’ve probably fallen in love with jQuery by now. You probably salivate about what you can manipulate after the page loads. Suddenly, the web is becoming a whole lot more interactive, and we’re already starting to see web applications begin to merge with old-school desktop apps. User-interaction and JavaScript is making a lot of this happen. So I’ve been playing around with jQuery’s design-side benefits.
Laying your stake on the web - Gary Vaynerchuck
October 19, 2009
I’m posting this so I can find it when I need to. But if you’re interested in how the web is going to affect advertising as a whole and you want to participate, spend an hour watching this Gary Vaynerchuk Q&A at Big Omaha. It’s great.
Oh, if you’re easily offended by cursing, you might not want to watch. ;)
Gary Vaynerchuk @ Big Omaha 2009 from Big Omaha on Vimeo.
Slacker blogging
October 18, 2009
I always forget to write. It’s strange because I love to write. What’s worse is how I tell my clients they should post to their blog regularly (even every month or quarter if that’s all they can muster). I tell them to keep up with their blog then rarely post to my own blog. It’s not so much hypocrisy as disorganization.
You might identify with this problem.
Shootout Goals launches
September 28, 2009
A little side project of mine this weekend, Shootout Goals launched today. While the full site will have much more functionality, the current iteration is a sort of “hall of fame” for the top hockey shootout goals.
Charleston photo blog
September 15, 2009
I built a blog for Charleston photos on my Charleston deals site last week. I have a BUNCH of Charleston stock, and I get to go out and shoot some new ones more often now. I’m trying to put together a mix of tourist-y shots, artistic shots and lucky shots.
How do you brand yourself?
August 17, 2009
I have been planning for quite a while to break free from the accidental Sean McCambridge Design—accidental because this site/brand/blog was only meant to be my online portfolio and blog before I got frustrated with my then-employer and quit my day job. Branding ideas have been floating about in my head for months now. But how do you define and develop your brand?
Chucktown Deals Unofficially Launches: Charleston, SC Advertising Site
July 30, 2009
I’ve been working a while on a site to help local businesses advertise. It’s called Chucktown Deals, and it’s a Charleston, SC deals site. Business owners and reps can log in and manage their page. Everything is organized by category, and the entire idea is for businesses to announce their deals—on the site and automatically to our Twitter page. For instance, Moe’s might announce their 1/2 price burger night on Tuesday. It’s a great deal for advertising, and the idea is to get a wide selection of local business on the site.
Biking the Cooper River Bridge at Sunrise, Charleston, SC
July 25, 2009
I woke up really early the other morning and couldn’t sleep. What to do? Get on your bike and make a video of the Cooper River Bridge!
5 ways the web has changed the way I consume media
July 24, 2009
Lately, I’ve been starting my mornings with coffee (as always) and NPR’s online stream of Morning Edition. And I’ve been amazed about how much I look forward to the show. Since I last moved, my only media source at home has been the internet. As more and more media are adapted online, on-demand programming has changed the way I use—and view—media as a whole.
Lowcountry Surf Redesign
July 22, 2009
I started working on a newer, better version of my Charleston surf report website last weekend. It’s been up for two years and has been a funky one-page site with lots of data from various sources. This is fine, and I get something like 20 people a day visiting. But it could be a lot better. I’ve been exploring the idea for a while and started getting my hands dirty over the weekend.
Buoy reports, tides and weather on @charlestonguide, @myrtle_beach Twitter accounts
July 19, 2009
I have been playing with Twitter’s API for a while now and have a few bots that provide regular updates. My favorite functionality come from two “sister” accounts, @charlestonguide and @myrtle_beach. This morning, I added offshore buoy reports to both accounts.
How to put a CSS border on a YouTube video
July 10, 2009
CSS trick #21: How to put a border on a YouTube video That’s right! It is possible!!
This isn’t a magical be all, end all solution. But it works.
When it rains, it pours … and gifts me my own personal moat
July 10, 2009
High tide + lots of rain from a summer thunderstorm == Sean’s own personal moat. Good thing I keep rain boots in my truck!
Web job titles need a facelift
April 21, 2009
If it wasn’t clear enough that the web came first and web marketing second, just look at our job titles. Web designer, web developer, interaction designer, user-interface designer, webmaster. Make it stop!
Screen resolution on the way up: less than 1% of my visitors used 800x600 screens
April 20, 2009
I was just looking through the past six months of Analytics data and wondered what people were using these days for screen resolution. I knew screens were getting bigger, but this was surprising. Excluding handheld-size screens, only a miniscule 0.72% of my site visitors used screens less than 1024x768.
Don’t just build a website — build a web presence in the living web
April 20, 2009
You might be asking yourself, what can a website do for my business? As the web continues to progress, step back and think about how you use the web now and how you’re using it more and more every day. As more of us turn to the web as our primary resource for information, it’s not just about having real estate in cyberspace — it’s about being there when people need you. It’s having a personal presence that gives the web some life.
Now with RSS and commenting
April 17, 2009
I just had to point out that I built in an RSS feed and commenting capabilities in the last 24 hrs.
Should I have a mission statement?
April 17, 2009
I’m a big fan of a wildly successful little Chicago-based company called 37signals and I read their blog quite frequently. They had a post yesterday about mission statements and their frequent irrelevance. I’ve thought about having one before, even though my business model hangs heavily on the idea that the traditional business model might be outdated — business plan, what? So I ask, should I have a mission statement? Do you?
10 things Google Suggest knows about us
April 16, 2009
I was playing around with the autocomplete function on the Google home page search box, also known as Google Suggest. I noticed if you started typing in a very vague query, it was really interesting — almost wild — what it would try to guess about what you were searching for. It takes the relative popularity of what you started to type and gives you suggestions for what you might be looking for. So what can we learn about ourselves by seeing what Google thinks we want to know? Here are ten things I found out.
How do you convince your clients to use web standards?
April 16, 2009
I am a huge supporter of web standards. I might not be an absolute purist, but the fundamental concept is a big deal. I read about web standards, I’ve been to Zeldman’s A Conference Apart and I just generally think it’s a great idea. But I sometimes have trouble impressing upon a client how big a deal it is. This can make the difference between a client choosing you over the flashy Flash shop in town or between keeping their broken homegrown CMS monstrosity over your cheaper, SEO-friendly and more-accessible option. So how do you convince your client you’re right?
Good design can change your company
April 3, 2009
No matter what you do, your company incorporates some level of design. It might be your business cards, your accounting forms, your website or your entire product. How can you take advantage of good design to change your company for the better?
Cold call: FAIL
March 26, 2009
I find myself thinking a lot lately about marketing since technically it is in a broad sense the industry I work in. All of my client work is marketing. —Anyway, I just received a cold call about accounting services. The caller talked about what they offer and did not ask me about my company until I volunteered something like, “I’m pretty small, so I don’t really need that right now.” Only then did the caller say they worked to help with startups, etc. That’s when my skepticism meter started to register.
RE:Dear Twitterphiles: Here are the three things I still don’t understand about Twitter. Please help
March 19, 2009
My response to Raina Kelley’s article on Newsweek about Twitter. Here’s an excerpt of what she said:
I am one of the most self-absorbed people I know. If I had been aware that I could broadcast my every thought in 140-character chunks to every one of my acquaintances, dozens of times a day, I would have tried Twitter long ago. But I’ve been Twittering for about a week (OK, I only lasted a day, but I’m still reading other people’s tweets), and I’ve realized that I have nothing to offer you Tweeples except for lies
I started to post a reply in their comments, but after submitting the comment, I was prompted to sign up for an account in order to post (bad user-experience, Newsweek!). So here’s what I had to say....
Good design sells products
March 16, 2009
I just clicked on my first Pandora ad ever. (If you don’t know what Pandora is, it’s great free internet radio that learns what you like. Go check it out: http://www.pandora.com.) Anyway, the only reason I clicked on it was because the product itself was designed well.
Web design, graphic design, PR and marketing: The little guy is more affordable
March 16, 2009
In a bad economy, business are looking to cut costs. Like the first hint of swell that precedes a tsunami, the marketing industry feels it first. But in our strange, dynamic, modern economy, there is another option to consider: give the little guy a chance.
Make your identity yours by being different than your competition
February 16, 2009
No matter how big your company, your marketing efforts are continually establishing and promoting your brand. So how do you make your brand stand for something?
Photo of Rainbow Row in Charleston, SC
February 16, 2009
I’m playing with the idea of keeping a photo blog as part of my website. This might be the first shot. I took this shot of Rainbow Row just after sunrise in early February and played a bit in Photoshop. A simple faux infra-red photography action created this result. Can’t wait to print it big and put it up in my new apartment.
Merry Christmas: Jesus, Judas and compound interest
December 25, 2008
In Living within limits: ecology, economics, and population taboos, Garrett Hardin has a great anology for compound interest. I could summarize it here, but it’s too good — read the whole thing. It’s pretty short and worth it.
An idea for the management of ideas
December 19, 2008
I’m an obsessive reader. If you’re reading this post by following a link on Twitter or a social bookmarking site or a Google search, there’s a good chance you are, too. I don’t know about you, but I’ve become an obsessive reader because I’m obsessed with ideas. Yes. Really. Obsession. Obsession is the right word.
Five examples of websites that make you reach for the back button
December 9, 2008
Web design is a tricky business. Web graphic design, markup, CSS, SEO/findability, programming, usability and database design are all facets of web design, and many of us work within many or all aspects of the industry. But from the user’s perspective, there is only one side to the web: staring into a monitor window.
jQuery is for CSS designers
December 6, 2008
One of the great things about jQuery is how easy it makes JavaScript for web designers who know CSS. JavaScript isn’t impossible, but it’s verbosity and browser-compatibility issues make it a bear. jQuery simplifies JavaScript and makes common and even semi-complicated tasks take less time and frustration to develop.
New website under construction
October 16, 2008
As I’m focusing on rebuilding my portfolio, I’ve decided to create a design for seanmccambridge.com that fits my personality. And I like what I’ve come up with. My old site was located at http://www.lumidev.com. Read about what I’m doing.
An effective website is more than an online brochure
October 16, 2008
Many clients start the web development process with a clear idea of what they want: an online brochure. I don’t blame them — that’s what I thought company websites were all about when I started designing them. By simply handing someone your site’s address on a business card, a mere 3-inch by 2-inch piece of paper, and you can connect them to a wealth of information about your company. Your sales pitch, your company background, your mission statement, your portfolio—all just a domain name away. But this approach is somewhat limiting. With the investment involved it its production, a website can be and should be so much more than a brochure.