Noteworthy Entries

Following is a list of some of the more noteworthy entries on Mike Industries:

  • Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly in Two Minutes — A technique for making a freestanding mobile version of your web site with only a few lines of PHP.
  • sIFR 2.0 — The official release of sIFR 2.0, a typographic technique I co-invented. In use on such sites as ABCNews, MSNBC, AT&T, Nike, and The U.S. Navy.
  • How To Snatch an Expiring Domain — I’m not sure why, but this article has received tens of thousands of views and continues to get a lot of traffic. It’s an inside look at the domain expiration process.
  • Can We Speed Up Browser Evolution? — An in-depth look at why web standards take so long to evolve and what we can do to help speed the progress.
  • How to Win Friends and Influence Art Directors — If you’re just breaking into the design business, you may have a lot of questions as to what is important and how to get started. This article is a quick primer on best practices.
  • DevEdge: The ESPN.com standards-based redesign — In redesigning ESPN.com with web standards, we became the first major media site to drop tables, font tags, and other outdated code in favor of CSS and other best practices. It was a controversial move at the time, dropping support for older browsers and concentrating on new technology, but it has paid off in droves.
  • The Design Authority: Producing a Reaction Through Design — Working on the web doesn’t have to mean abandoning print. Element K Magazine examines this designer’s origins in the analog world and how they still serve as an influence in current work.
Shared
Solitude and Leadership:

Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think.Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information…

Takes a little while to get going, but overall a great article about the virtues of seeking solitude from distractions in order to develop your own original thoughts.

“I think you’ve got a pretty good imagination, despicability-wise!”

“Look Around You - Computer Games”

Can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this BBC series before. Brilliant. Make sure to watch them all. (via daringfireball)

10 New Year’s resolutions for designers:

Do you think Chelsea Clinton asks herself if her mom would understand something complex? No. Because her mom is a badass.

How Doctors Die:

If there is a state of the art of end-of-life care, it is this: death with dignity.

This is the most concise, easily understood article on the perils of end-of-like care in the United States I’ve ever read. It is a must-read, and frankly, a must-heed, in my opinion. (via kottke)

Lost Type Co-op | Browse Fonts:

A nice collection of pay-what-you-will typefaces from Tyler Galpin and Riley Cran.
How to interview a designer with the perfect design exercise:

These sorts of tests are common for engineering hires, but it’s nice to see an example of a good design-oriented one.

Jessica Hische's Lovely Blog:

Embarrassed I had never seen this until today. Lovely work all around. (via drawar)

This recently unearthed video of Steve Jobs at work during the early days of NeXT is a remarkable look inside how he ran meetings, how he created culture at his startups, and how others — like Joanna Hoffman around the 11 minute mark — called B.S. on his reality distortion field. It’s also remarkable in that it reveals Jobs to be a man who picks carrots in pressed work shirts.

The Republican Clown College by WMxdesign. These are so great. Make sure to check out the whole set.

BuiltWith: Web Technology Usage Statistics:

Sometimes when you are deciding on technologies to use on a new site (e.g. jQuery vs. YUI or MS SQL vs. MySQL) it’s instructive to examine what everyone else is doing. BuiltWith has an incredible amount of trending data to help you out in that regard. Very, very cool.

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design:

Lots of good thinking here. No solutions, but a nice reminder that two-dimensional touch interfaces are transitional, not permanent.

Stephen Colbert loses it on-air. Rivals another one of my all-time favorite Colbert on air crack-ups.